 | CHAPTER VII. Nix's mate |  |
7. CHAPTER VII.
I do remember an apothecary.
Romeo and Juliet.
Oh God! this is death.
George IV.
Fitzvassal left the house of Mr. Temple with
his mind crowded with the revelations of truth which
had been opened to him that evening. He now began
to feel that his voyage of life had heretofore been pursued
without compass or chart, and he could not help
regretting that more light had not been imparted to
him, by which he might have avoided the quicksands
and breakers upon which he had run.
“It is singular,” thought he, as he paced his way
along in the clear moonlight, descending from the
common, “it is very singular how every thing that
man said this evening seemed to me, as soon as I
understood it, like an old familiar truth. Why could
not I have arrived at the same conclusions without
his assistance, and in what consists the difference
above me, so that his eye embraces a wider compass:
but I believe I discerned every object which he pointed
out to me, and why could not I have seen them
as well as he if I had occupied the same ground?”
New light seemed now to be dawning upon him;
his mind had foliated under the vernal influences of
a re-producing sun, and a wider surface was present-sented
for radiant heat to act on.
“It must be,” thought he, “that the difference
among minds consists more in the point of view from
which objects are seen, than from any radical, essential
difference among them. And if this is true, our
ability to discern the true relations of things principally
depends on the ground we occupy.”
Fitzvassal felt that a new era of existence had
opened for him, and as he gazed upon the full-orbed
moon scudding away from the clouds, and illuminating
the fathomless abyss, he thought how beautifully
it seemed the emblem of his own present condition,
reflecting the more subtile influences of another mind,
and driving away the errors that enveloped it, as
that influence descended into the depths of his being,
and spread light where all before was darkness.
From these lofty associations, his mind wandered
to the dwelling-place of Grace Wilmer, which he was
now slowly approaching. The streets were as silent
as in a city of the dead. There stood the house,
bathed in the moonlight, and it seemed to him the
fence that divided the common from the street; and
while the beautiful elms waved gently above him,
and threw their fantastic shadows on the ground, he
gave free action to his heated and uncontrollable
fancy, and revelled in the fairy dreams of voluptuous
romance.
There is an involuntary as well as a voluntary
sympathy in our natures; and though the beautiful
and adored object of his love was dreaming all the
while of Seymour, the energetic mind of Fitzvassal
broke in upon her pure Arcadia, and she murmured
in her sleep from the momentary influence of his
passion.
Who shall go down into the depths of the human
heart, and unriddle all its mysteries: who shall bring
up its joys and its woes, and analyze them in his
mystic crucible?—Oh love! human, passionate affection!
there is more in your least emotion than
poet ever revealed or philosopher thought of: but
there is a love of self, so like to its heavenly radiance,
that the angels are themselves deceived while they
rain down upon the heart the gladness of their happy
paradise.
As Fitzvassal was indulging in the luxury of fancy-woven
images of love and beauty, a sound arrested
his attention, that seemed to come from the very
depths of woe. He turned himself round in the direction
whence the sound proceeded, but all again
repeated; and then, supposing that it proceeded from
his heat-oppressed brain, he relapsed again into the
indulgence of his rapt imagination.
Fitzvassal had already forgotten the occurrence
just mentioned, and was now completely lost in reveries
of enchantment, when he observed a small
figure emerge from the shadow of a tree, and cautiously
approach him. As it drew near, he perceived
that it was a boy, apparently eleven years old; his
clothes much tattered, without any shoes on his feet.
He held a very much torn hat in his hand, and when
he hobbled within ten feet of his object, he stopped,
and asked in a very imploring tone:—
“A little charity, if you please, Sir!”—
The stepson of Abner Classon was what is commonly
called a generous man: that is to say, he did
not love money for itself, and he was willing to
share what he possessed with others. He therefore,
as he happened to have money enough with him,
threw a piece of silver into the boy's hat without any
farther reflection, and walked away; for he had not
yet descended into the sanctuary of sorrow and been
baptized by the tears of human affliction. He who
had wanted sympathy without being conscious of
the want, had not learned that this, above most other
things, is salutary to man.
As he walked away, his thoughts already reverting
to the same current, that can hardly be said
he heard the same expression of grief which had arrested
his attention some moments before, and he
now turned about, determined to ascertain its cause.
He soon discovered that the sounds proceeded from
the little boy who had seated himself on a stone in
the shade of a tree not far from where he had been
standing, and was now sobbing piteously.
“There is no deception here,” thought our adventurer;
“I must find out what ails that boy; he
seems to be in great distress.”
“What is the matter, my little man?” inquired
Fitzvassal of the shivering, sobbing boy.
But he returned no answer, except to sob the
more.
“Are you ill?” said he, as gently as he knew how
to ask.
“I am cold,” at last moaned the boy, “and—I
havn't had any thing to eat for two days.”
“And can't you buy something with the money I
have given you?”
“The shops are all shut up,” replied the half-famished
sufferer, “and mammy—mammy is—dying”—
And he burst into an agony of grief, and wrung
his hands, which glistened in the moonlight with the
tears that fell fast upon them.
“But this will never do—this will never do,” said
Fitzvassal, his sailor heart taking pity on the lonely
boy, and trying all he could to convey encouragement
for you. Your mammy shall not die, if I can do
any thing to save her.”
And he then thought of his own mother, whom he
had not seen for years, and he could have wept with
the boy in right earnest.
“Come, my little man,” said he, patting him on
his head, “go with me down to the apothecary's shop
yonder, and I guess we will contrive to get you
something to eat, and to take home to your mammy.”
So saying, he took the boy by the hand, and led
him along with him till they stopped at an apothecary's
store with the sign of Galen's head, situated on Cornhill,
at the corner of what is now called Winter Street.
A dim light gleamed through the window, where was
placed several globular vessels with colored water in
them, and a number of chemical instruments, the
like of which have been in use time out of mind.
Fitzvassal knocked at the door, and almost immediately
there were indisputable indications within
that the summons was about to be obeyed; for the
crash of a broken vial saluted the auditory nerves of
the customers.
In a minute or two the door was unbarred, and a
little hump-back man, with his head in a red nightcap,
made his appearance, holding in his hand a tea-saucer
containing a burning taper.
The disciple of Galen was a middle-aged man,
who, could he have stood up straight, would have
very much warped in the back, he stooped considerably.
He was very much goggle-eyed withal, an
indication of loquacity which the volubility of his utterance
perfectly well answered. His nose, which
was naturally large and shaped at the end like a Florence
flask or a full-blown bladder, was very much
the color of a beet that had been half bled to death,
while the mazes of the vine were pictured there in
exact representation, by the purple veins, several of
which seemed to have broken into one. He wore
under his nightcap a little cow-tail looking scratch,
which came straggling about his ears, and almost
veiled his eyes that were as red as a blistered skin,
and seemed like the peepers of an angry crab. When
he spoke to one, he kept them constantly rolling;
while as often as he could, he supplied his hungry-looking
nose with snuff. He held the taper with his
left hand, and as he opened the door the light
gleamed over his face while he said:
“What will you have to-night? what will you
have to-night, good man? Have you any prescription
from the doctor?”
“Please to let us in, Mr. Saultz,” for that was the
appellation of the apothecary, who had been a fixture
in that place as long as Fitzvassal remembered;
“please to let us in, I have an especial favor to ask
of you.”
And so saying, he placed a piece of gold in the druggist's
like those in a figure of wax, or like a boiled lobster's.
“And what am I to do with all this, please you,
good man?” exclaimed the gobbo, in astonishment;
“what am I to do with all this, please you, good
man? You don't want it all in physic, do you?
For if you do, it will buy a precious quantity.
Perhaps—ah, I see how it is,” said he, looking up
and discovering the mariner's dress of Fitzvassal,
“I see how it is—you want to get a medicine chest,
I know you do—are you going to the West Indies, or
are you”—
“You misunderstand me altogether,” said the
mariner, “I am not at present in want of any medicine,
though I don't know how soon I may be; for
this lad here tells me that his mother is dying
and”—
“Bless my stars!” interrupted Saultz, “you don't
say so? Well, I've got the best assortment of physic
you ever saw, and I will let you have it in any quantity.”
“I tell you that I don't want any of your drugs—
and when I do, I will let you know,” said our adventurer,
who was getting out of patience with the garrulous
compounder of medicines: “what I want of
you now is, to procure something for this boy to eat,
for he is half starved to death.”
“You don't say so!” exclaimed goggle-eyes with
unaffected astonishment; “poor little thing, is it
“and let him be very careful that he don't eat too
much all of a sudden—for it sometimes happens”—
“For heaven's sake,” cried Fitzvassal, “have done
with this gabble, and tell me whether you can get
something for this child to eat? The shops are all
shut up, and we can't find any thing this time o'
night anywhere.”
“Why couldn't you go to the Red Lion yonder?
—I guess they could have accommodated you;
but never mind, I can get something for you, if I can
only rouse up my good wife;—wait a minute—wait
a minute and sit down.”
Whereupon Mr. Saultz very deliberately left the
shop, and thereby afforded his customer a better opportunity
of examining the apartment: but he first
obliged the little sufferer to sit down on a snuff-keg
which was there, with a word or two of encouragement
that it wouldn't be a long time before the
apothecary procured something for him to eat and to
carry to his mother.
The boy, though very ragged, had nothing else in
his appearance, like most beggars, to awaken disagreeable
feelings; for his face and hands were clean, and
he gathered his naked feet under him, evidently from
a sense of shame rather than from the effect of cold;
and this expression of delicacy did not belie him,
though it did not do him justice; for his mortificacation
proceeded from a fear that his squalid, or rather
generous protectress.
How little do they who have grown up to man's
estate trouble themselves about the feelings of children!
It would really seem as if they fancied that
children were destitute of all those fine and delicate
springs of emotion which are recognized in maturer
life, and are the sources of all our joys and sorrows.
It is time that the grown world went to school to
some one who has not forgotten the tender susceptibilities
of childhood, that it may learn to sympathize
with the little sufferers. The germinating bud
has within its folded recesses all the beauty and the
fragrance of the flower; and the gentle distillations
of heaven sink as sweetly into its secluded shrine,
and the sunbeams fall there as soothingly, as on the
prouder petals that would claim all to themselves.
How many a sweet spirit withers beneath the blighting
frown of an unsympathizing guardian; how many
a one retires to weep in solitude, because it is not
loved as it would be, and is not comprehended in its
affection! We little imagine what arcana we read
when the words “of such is the kingdom of heaven”
pass from our unheeded utterance!
The shop of Mr. Saultz was unlike any thing of
sort we would find in these days of improvement. It
looked more like the beginning of a museum than
any thing else; the shelves were filled, without much
order or arrangement, with bottles of various descriptions
labelled as containing drugs and garden seeds, much
covered with dust, as though they had not been disturbed
for years. Shells of various kinds were scattered
here and there, and minerals in abundance. In
one corner of the room were seen the legs and feet
of a skeleton, hanging from under a very dusty and
old blue cloak; while from the ceiling, in the opposite
corner, was suspended the skin and feathers of
an enormous screech-owl, gloaming on you with his
his round beady eyes. On the counter were several
jars of snuff, a box of wax candles, another of Dutch
pipes, and a pair of medicine scales. Over the fireplace
were hanging two nearly obliterated engravings
in black frames, and one other round black frame,
a little over the others in the centre, contained five
profiles, cut from black paper on a white ground.
In the fireplace was a heap of smouldering ashes,
showing that the embers had been covered up; and on
one side, in the corner of the same, a tea-kettle was
swinging from the end of three interlocked pot-hooks,
the uppermost of which was attached to a large
crane. Near the fireplace was a round table, of hard
black wood like ebony; this stood on three claw feet,
supported by a stem, the whole like a bird's leg and
foot. The top of the table swung up and down, and
it now stood against one corner of the room like a target.
The shop was separated from the sleeping-room
of Mr. Saultz and his wife by a door, the upper half of
the inside for the security and convenience of those
within.
While Fitzvassal was waiting for the re-appearance
of Saultz, and was in the meantime amusing
himself by running his eyes over the premises, the
latter had dispelled the visions of undarned hose and
unpatched inexpressibles, and the phantoms of sausage
meat, bacon, and smoked herrings, which danced
in strange confusion before the nocturnal vision of
Mistress Debora Saultz.
“Good wife! good wife,” exclaimed Saultz, the
smothered tones struggling through the door to the
shop; “Debora, I say!”
“Yaw—aw!” gaped the bewildered housewife,
“brown soap—smoked herrings!—”
“Good wife, I say! good wife! wake up, I say,
Debby!” and from the sound that found its way to
the shop, Fitzvassal knew that the apothecary was
trying to shake the drowsiness out of his wife; “get
up, good wife—marry I say—stir your stumps—
come!”
“Lord a' massy, Simon—yaw—aw!” replied the
dame, unconscious as yet of life; “you're always disturbing
a body.”
“Can't you get up?” asked the apothecary, who
thought that his spouse was waking.
“Soap—herrings,”—murmured the woman with
in a moment.
Seeing this, the desperate apothecary seized his rib
by the shoulders and shook her with all his might,
crying lustily at the same time;
“Debby! Debby! stir your old lazy stumps—the
house is a-fire!”
This appalling sound, with the unaccustomed agitation
of her mortal body, brought Mistress Saultz
bolt upright in bed in an instant, in another instant,
she was on her feet, crying out with all the agitation
conceivable,
“Lord a' massy on us!—is the house a-fire, sure
enough?—Oh Simon, Simon; Oh my bacon, my bacon,
Lord a' massy on us!”
“The house has no notion of being a-fire,” said
the apothecary, “I only wanted to wake you, that's
all.”
“Lord, how you frightened a body;—Oh dear!
I never shall get over it as long as I live, I am all
in a flusteration—Oh dear me! how came you to do
so—you good-for-nothing,—you!”
“Debby, my love!” said her husband, willing to
pacify her, “you are well paid for this disturbance
—see here!”
And he placed in her hand the piece of gold that
Fitzvassal had given to him in advance for services
to be rendered.
“And, my dear”—he continued—“the good man
a poor hungry boy he has brought with him.”
It would be difficult to say how large a share
the little yellow piece of eloquence had in moving
the sensibilities of Mistress Saultz; but at any rate
we will give the woman her due, and allow her that
large share of good-heartedness which seems to be
the common inheritance of her sex, and which even
vice and crime cannot wholly obliterate in their
bosoms; we will not pretend to analyze her motives
too closely, but she immedately exclaimed, on this
intelligence being imparted to her by her husband;
“Massy on us! the dear, poor creature! Oh, yes,
Simon, it well becomes Christian folks to help the
poor and needy;—there's the sausage-meat that was
left to-day, you know,—and there's some cold chocolate
that's easily warmed;—do you kindle some fire,
Simon, and I'll be ready presently;—the poor dear
boy! and so he shall have something to eat, he
shall!”
And while she was so speaking, she was bustling
about and hurrying on her clothes with all possible
despatch.
Saultz, in the meantime, gathered together some
chips, and raking out the live coals from the ashes,
proceeded to build a fire: and as he was thus busily
employed, his guests drew nigh to catch the earliest
heat that was evolved from the crackling wood.
In a few minutes after, Mistress Saultz appeared,
came to the man who had given gold for his necessities,
and patting the poor boy under the chin so affectionately,
that he broke out again into fresh sobbings,
while the big tears coursed down his cheeks.
“Don't cry now,” said the kind-hearted woman,
hoping to soothe the feelings of the child, “don't cry,
my dear little fellow; you shall soon have something
to eat,—Simon! Simon, I say, get some more
chips here; you can never get the chocolate to boil
with such a fire as this—massy on us, what's got
into the good man!”
“I can't find any more kindlings, Debby,” answered
Simon, “can I split up this old cover here?”
“Lord a'massy on us!—do hear the good man;—
can he be crazy? Why, the next thing he'll be doing,
will be to split up the window shutters;—go along
into the wood-house, Simon, there are plenty of chips
there;—break up the boxes, indeed!—I should like
to see it done in my house:—If it wasn't for us women,
I don't know how the men would get along;
—break up the boxes? I should like to see him do
it!”
But before she had done talking about it, Saultz
had very meekly withdrawn on his wife's errand,
and he now appeared with his arms full of dry chips,
which were laid upon the fire, that soon imparted a
genial warmth to the room.
The good wife now brought out the target-looking
spread with a clean white cloth, on which she placed
a couple of bowls; “for, may be,” she said, “the gentleman
himself would like to taste a spoonful of chocolate
on such a coolish night.”
Fitzvassal thanked the woman, but told her that
he did not require any food.
Mistress Saultz now poured out the steaming
chocolate, and encouraged the boy to partake of it
after adding suitable quantities of milk and sugar:
and the little fellow drank it with all the eagerness
that might have been expected in one of his years,
who had tasted nothing for two days.
As the boy became refreshed by the food, his countenance
brightened up, and he would now and then
cast a look upon his benefactors, a look in which a
sweet smile was blended with more familiar melancholy,
as if he had not words to express his gratitude,
but would have those to whom he was indebted
be sensible of his feelings.
“I wish,” said he at last, breaking silence, and
heaving a sigh as if a part of his grief had been
taken from him, “I wish mammy could have something
too.”
“And hasn't your mammy any thing to eat no
more than you—poor, dear soul?” inquired the good-hearted
woman.
At this, the little fellow burst into tears again,
by the music of human sympathy.
“I'll tell you what it is,” exclaimed Fitzvassal,
“turning to Saultz and his wife, who were sitting
by the table, and leaning their elbows there in a mood
of considerable interest, “I'll tell you what it is—
I am determined, now I'm in for it, to see the end
of this business. I met this little half-starved boy
in the street, and he told me that his mother was dying
of hunger.”
“Lord 'a massy on us—you don't say so?”—ejaculated
Mistress Deborah.
“A thousand pities!” joined Mr. Saultz.
“And who knows,” resumed Fitzvassal, “but that
this poor woman is at this moment all alone; no
hand to help her, and destitute of common comforts?”
“May be she is lying in”—conjectured Mrs.
Saultz.
“Is any body with your mother?” inquired our
adventurer.
“No, Sir,” sobbed the boy, “she is all alone.”
“When did you leave her?”
“At sun-down, Sir; she told me to call on the
governor.”
“And did you do so?”
“Yes; I went to his house on Fort-Hill.”
“Well!” said his benefactor, “did you inquire for
him?”
“Yes, Sir; but the servant turned me away.”
“The monster!” exclaimed Fitzvassal, but reflecting
a moment, he added; “the man didn't realize
that you were so much in want. How far off does
your mother live?”
“Close by, Sir.”
“Will you go with me to the place?”
“Oh yes, indeed, yes indeed!” exclaimed the boy,
who, never dreaming of so much kindness, was half
frantic with joy at the very suggestion.
“And now, my good woman,” said Fitzvassal,
turning to Mistress Saultz, and putting two pieces of
gold in her hand, “I shall want you to go with us.”
“Oh certainly,” replied the dame, rising and court-seying,
“certainly, Sir, if good man has no objections:
and perhaps I had better take with me a leetle motherwort;
for if the poor woman, as is very likely,
should be really lying in, it would be a blessed comfort
to her, as sure as you are born.”
“You have no objections to your wife's accompanying
us?” said Fitzvassal, rather inquiringly, and at
the same time placing a piece of gold in his hand also;
“she may be wanted, and I shall probably require
some medicines, for which I will pay you most liberally.”
“Not the slightest objection—not the slightest”—
answered the man, all but dumb-foundered by the
quantity of gold that had so suddenly fallen upon
him—“Go, get your hood, Debby, and go with this
to be done—ahem!”
“We shall certainly let you know,” interrupted
Fitzvassal, helping out the assumed modesty of goggle-eyes,
and finishing what he would have said:—
“we shall certainly let you know, and shall depend
on your services; in which case you shall be paid
extra.”
The apothecary's face shone with marked evidence
of satisfaction at this assurance, and Mistress Debora
turned into the bed-room, and in a minute after re-appeared
with her cloak and hood on.
“And now,” exclaimed the woman, “I only want
to get the motherwort, and then I shall be all ready;
poor, dear creature, I hope the child wont be born
and no motherwort tea for the woman;—Simon,
sweet-heart! get an ounce of motherwort.”
And Mistress Debora assumed all the blandishing
persuasion of manner of which she was capable.
The help-meet of good man Saultz was what the
world calls a kind soul; and she was, to do her justice,
as ugly as she was good. Her figure looked
like a well-stuffed pillow tied in the middle, surmounted
by a New England old-fashioned suet-pudding
in a night-cap. Her eyes were small and light
green; her nose, buried in her cheeks, showed its
whereabout more from its snuffiness than from its
extreme beauty of outline. Her hair was very red,
and could not be made smooth by any known art of
and the figure of Mistress Debora Saultz ought to
be before the reader.
Mistress Saultz, next to going to extra meetings
at the Reverend Sloman Morphines, liked nothing
so much as grannying, or, as she called it, seeing women
comfortably lying in. She always insisted
that there was nothing wanting to make Boston a perfect
paradise but a lying-in hospital, and she was at
that very time using her best endeavors to get up a
society for the promotion of the object dearest to her
heart.
“The old women of Boston,” she used to declare,
“may say what they please about it; but I know
well enough that they will never be able to get along
without societies. Massy on us! there is more to
be done in a society than in a church congregation.”
Notwithstanding all this zeal for the public good,
and her extraordinary care for posterity, there were
not wanting those who were malicious enough to accuse
Dame Saultz of the diabolical crime of aiding
and abetting witchcraft. Some went so far as to charge
her directly with having furnished sundry women
with herbs, with a guide for preparing decoctions
that would enable those who drank of them to ride
through the air on pitchforks and broomsticks; and
one positively asserted that she had been in company
with Debby Saultz at a communion near the
Spouting Horn, at Nahant, and that she saw her
dozen others over to Egg-Rock in a thunder-storm.
However this may have been, one thing was certain—she
was fond of grannying, and was now in
her element; because she had worked herself up to
the belief that nothing short of her favorite employment
could have been required at this time of the
night. Accordingly, every thing being made ready
for the expedition—for it must not be imagined that
granny Saultz had left behind her any of those odds
and ends that in their sum-total constituted the fitting
out of such a craft—they started off in the cold
moonlight for the dwelling-place of the boy's mother.
It was now near the middle of October, when the
weather is very changeable, and it was still more so in
New England at the time we are now referring to.
Within the past hour and a half, a dark cloud had
been slowly rolling up its heavy drapery, and its deep
edge now nearly touched the moon. The wind,
too, had arisen, and was now howling mournfully
among the many trees with which the metropolis of
New England was provided, and the fallen leaves
were whirled about in eddies, whose rustling sound
hymned with the fitful gusts the most desolate harmonies.
There was a spirit of melancholy and
gloom abroad that sank into the very heart of Fitzvassal,
and perhaps sounded deeper vibrations for
the soft music that but a little while before had melted
his fancy and revelled in the elysium of love.
He now almost regretted that he had engaged in
this adventure; for he was cheerless and sad, and
withal weary with the unusual excitement he had
undergone that night; and he would fain have laid his
head upon his pillow, nay, willingly would he have
wrapped himself the closer in his watch-coat, and
thrown himself on the bare earth, so might he for a
few hours bury himself in the God-ordained oblivion
of sleep.
The little party walked along in silence, the boy
trotting with unequal footsteps, trying to keep up
with his benefactor, whose mood of abstraction prevented
him from noticing with what rapidity he was
going.
“Massy on us,” exclaimed Mistress Debora, who,
like Johnson's Time in pursuit of the bard of Avon,
panted and toiled in vain after Fitzvassal, “Massy
on us, how fast you travel! I wish Doctor Sikes,
bless his heart! had such a pair of legs as you have
—he wouldn't keep the women a-waiting so then, as
he does now. Lauks! I could go as fast once myself,
but I can't now—”
“'Ask your pardon, Madam,” said Fitzvassal,
apologizing as well as he could for his forgetfulness,
“but really I wasn't aware of walking quite so fast.”
“Did you ever have the rheumatis'?” inquired
as she spoke.
“I can't say that I ever had,” he replied.
“It's pesky bad, I can tell you,” said the dame,
continuing to rub her arm; “I've had it now these
four weeks e'en-a-most, and it seems as if nothing
was good for it. I've tried hards'-lard, that Dame
Jenkins recommended to me,—she that lives by the
sign of the stump-tailed-bull, down the north eend,
right opposite good-man Giles's;—I suppose you know
her as well as you do the town pump. Says she to me,
one day—Don't walk quite so fast, if you please, Sir,
—Debby, says she—for she always calls me Debby;
Debby, says she, and says I what? Where's Thankful?
says she, and says I, Thankful's down stairs,
and says she, is she? Call her, says she; and I
called her you know, and it so fell out that, after all,
she wasn't there. Dear me, how fast you do go;—
well, as I was saying—
“How far is it,” interrupted Fitzvassal, addressing
the boy, and wholly unmindful of the garrulous old
woman, “to the place where your mother lives?”
“Just round the next corner,” said the boy, “we
are almost there.”
They had now, after walking up Cornhill, turned
down an obscure alley at the left, not far from King's
Street, a place where a large number of rude habitations
were crowded together on both sides, the gables
of which projected over so far that it would have
moon was now deeply veiled in the clouds, and the
wind increasing, drove down on the pedestrians a
sharp sleet, which almost cut through the skin, and
added materially to the uncomfortable feelings of
Fitzvassal and his companions.
“Massy on us!” exclaimed the woman, treading
very carefully behind the others, “if I had known it
was going to be so dark, I would have fetched a lantern.”
“This is the place,” said the boy, shivering with
the cold, and stopping at what appeared to be a cellar
door, which slanted a little over the side of the
alley.
“What! down this cellar?” inquired Fitzvassal,
astonished that the boy did not go to the door of the
poor hovel at which they had stopped.
“Yes, Sir,” answered the boy, “we've lived there
ever so long, but it isn't a good place for poor, sick
mammy.”
The child then raised the cellar door, which was
comparatively light from its decayed state, and laying
it back, said:
“I will go down first, and strike a light, and then
you can see the way;—it's very dark down there and
muddy;—it won't take me long to get a light.”
Whereupon the lad descended, followed by Fitzvassal,
leaving Mrs. Deborah Saultz alone in the alley.
“Lord 'a massy on us!” vociferated the dame, “I
shall be scared to death, e'en a-most to death, if you
leave me here all alone.”
And she stood stamping her feet, and blowing on
the ends of her fingers to keep away the cold.
Meanwhile the boy, followed by his benefactor,
reached the bottom of the ladder that led down to
the apartment; for the steps consisted of nothing
but planks, nailed on the timbers in such a way as to
present their edges for a foothold. In a short time
the former was engaged with flint and steel in striking
a light; and while this was going on, the ears of
our adventurer were pained by sounds of the most
helpless distress.
A small rush-candle was soon lighted, and a scene
of human poverty and suffering presented itself, of
which before he had no conception; and his first reflection
was;
“Is it possible, that in the heart of my native city,
the metropolis of New England, such abject want
and misery can be found, in the very midst of affluence,
luxury, and extravagance!”
He then thought of Mistress Saultz, who was waiting
above, and he proceeded immediately to bring her
down, which operation was effected with no little
difficulty.
“Is it you?” murmured the sick woman to the
boy, who now approached the bed where she lay—
“Oh Willy! thank God, you have come, my child.
where have you been, my child? God bless you!”
In reply to this, Willy put his arms round her
emaciated neck, and kissing her, wept profusely;
nor did he relinquish his position till Mrs. Saultz
came forward—Fitzvassal, from motives of delicacy,
remaining in the back-ground.
“These good people, mammy,” said the boy, “have
come to see you; they gave me something to eat,
and said that they would come and see you, mammy!”
“God bless them,” cried the woman—“but it is
too late!”—
Mistress Saultz was not inactive all this while;
but after feeling of the poor woman's pulse, and looking
at her thin, pale face, with her eyes shining unhealthily
in the large orbits where they had sunken,
said to her in a soothing manner:
“Is there any thing I can do for you, my good woman?”
“Who are you?” feebly inquired the patient.
“Mistress Saultz is my name, ma'am; Mistress Debora
Saultz,—perhaps you have heard of Simon
Saultz, the apothecary?”
“Oh yes!—I have heard the name”—
“He is my good man, he is,” said the woman.
“Pray tell me what ails you?”
“Nothing!” said the sick woman, mournfully.
“It will soon be over!”
“You're not a-going to die, I hope,” said Mrs.
Saultz, “there's always hope, you know!”
“God's will be done!” exclaimed the woman.
“Amen!” said Mrs. Saultz.—“But, cheer up, cheer
up, tell me what ails you, and I will try to do what
I can for your comfort.”
Saying this, she applied a smelling bottle of ammonia
to the woman's nose, thinking it might revive
her.
“Water!” exclaimed the woman, feebly, as if she
were fainting, and had no power of further utterance.
Mrs. Saultz bustled about a good while, and at
last espied a broken cup and the lower half of a
pitcher containing some water, with particles of rotten
wood and dirt settled at the bottom. She poured
out a little of this, and gave it to the woman, who,
after keeping her eyes shut for a time, seemed to revive.
“Thank you!” said the woman.
“Mistress Saultz!” she resumed, after a pause,
“when I am gone”—
“Dearest mammy!” exclaimed the boy, “don't
talk so!—oh ma'am!” said he, turning to the other
imploringly, “do give mammy something to eat,—
she is starving to death”—
“Massy 'on us, ma'am!” inquired the woman, energetically,
“you don't say you are famishing for
possible.”
“It's no matter now,” replied the sinking sufferer,
“God's will be done! I have deserved it all, and
more;—but oh,” she cried, and it seemed as if her
heart would break when she uttered it—“oh my
son! my son! could my Heavenly Father but have
permitted me to see you but one moment before I
died—oh, how I have prayed for that—for that!—
oh my son, my Edward!”
As those words struck upon the ear of Fitzvassal,
who in the meantime being beckoned to by the
amazed nurse, came forward, it seemed as if all the
blood in his body rushed to his head at once;—for
his ears rang, and he staggered like a drunkard;—
but as he pressed one hand to his forehead and the
other to his breast, while the equilibrium of vitality
was returning—he sprang to the side of the bed, and
gazed on the woman like one petrified with astonishment.—The
patient, shading her glazed eyes with
her lean and skeleton fingers, glowed on him with a
most wo-worn expression, then choking and struggling
for utterance, she suddenly spread out her hands
and exclaimed—
“My son! my son! merciful God, I thank thee!”
“Do not my eyes deceive me? can it be possible?”
cried the bewildered man. “Good God, am I not
dreaming? Oh, my mother! my mother!”
And Fitzvassal fell upon his knees at the side of
was reclining, and seizing her cold, clammy hands
with his, he buried his head in his agony.
Mistress Saultz turned aside, and wept like a true
woman, holding her checked apron to her eyes.
She had never witnessed such a scene before, and
she held the boy by one hand, who fixed his gaze
on his protectress with his large, inquiring eyes,
staring as if he had just waked from a dream.
At length the paroxysm of surprise, distress, grief,
joy and suffering, all blending for a moment into one
thought, and that agony subsiding, Fitzvassal raised
his head, and gazing on his mother, while he still
pressed her damp, cold hands in his, exclaimed—
“And have I then been reserved for this—my poor,
dear mother!—Is it indeed, you, that I behold in this
forlorn situation?—Great God! save me from such
a reality!—drive from me the vision!—let me not
be tortured beyond endurance!”—
“Oh, my son,” interrupted the woman, who seemed
to be gifted for the time with extraordinary energy,
“do not talk thus,—rather thank the giver of all
good that we have been permitted to meet again in
this world”—
“For the love of Heaven!” exclaimed the son,
half-frantic with the reality of his situation, and addressing
himself to Mistress Saultz, “run to your
house, and procure some sustenance suitable to one
in such a condition.—Go!” cried he, almost madden.
the order immediately—“go, or I will strike you
dead on the spot.”
“I shall never be able to find the way back again,
in the world,” said the woman, half terrified out of
her senses.
“Let the boy go with you, then.”
“Oh, yes, I will go with you,” said the little fellow;—I
know that this gentleman will take good
care of mammy.”
“It will do no good!”—murmured the woman—
“I cannot eat—give me a little water—there! that
will do,” said she, moistening her lips with it.
“I tell you to go immediately,” exclaimed Fitzvassal—“Some
good can be done, and shall be done—
Go, Mistress Saultz, for God's sake! and that soon:
—here, I will help you”—
“So saying, he proceeded to assist the woman,
who mounted the ladder much more easily than she
had descended it, and the boy accompanied her.
“Now, make all possible haste!” urged Fitzvassal,
“and by all means bring some good wine;—you
shall be well paid, depend on it!”
Mistress Saultz declared that she didn't care
about the money, and for the time she probably
spoke the truth. Guided by the boy, she now made
the best of her way toward her own house, while
Fitzvassal descended again to that unparalleled abode
of poverty and woe.
“Do not grieve for me, Edward!” said his mother,
anxiously—as the afflicted son once more approached
the bed of his suffering parent—“do not
grieve for me, Edward, I shall soon be at rest”—
“Tell me, mother, as you love me and value my
happiness—tell me how you came to such a deplorable
condition?
“Oh, my child, it were a long story to tell—and I
have not strength enough to waste on it;—it was all
for the best—your father”—
“What of him?” eagerly inquired the son, stung
to the very quick by the name.
“I forgive him from my heart;—he loved me once
—at least I thought he loved me;—but Heaven knows
how I have loved him—even to the last—”
“May the curses that come after a hard and horrible
death cleave to him, and damn him forever!”
screamed the son, almost forgetful of his mother's
sufferings, in the degree of hatred which he felt for
his unnatural sire—
“Oh, my son,” said the sinking mother—“do not
curse—do not curse—bless rather!—curses come
back with fearful fury on us;—do not curse—I
would bless thee, my son, with my dying breath—
but I cannot bless thee cursing!”
And while she spake her eyes filled with tears,
and Fitzvassal fell down upon his knees and asked
her forgiveness.
“There!” she continued, “that is a good, dear
evil”—
“And there's that scoundrel, Classon!” ejaculated
Fitzvassal, “how could he see you suffering thus?”
“Do not blame him,”—said the mother, imploringly—“for
heaven's sake, my son, do not blame that
man;—he never pretended to love me;—poor man!
he has enough to be sorry for without thinking of
me”—
Fitzvassal ground his teeth, but said nothing;
while his breast heaved convulsively, and the demon
of vengeance gnawed at his very heart-strings.
“What an age it seems, Edward!” said his mother,
fixing her eyes on him, “what an age it seems,
since I saw you—and how you have altered, too!”
The only response the object of her affections
could return to this, was a faint and melancholy
smile, in which the very picture of heartsickness
was undisguisedly portrayed.
While he gazed on her—her eyes rolled upward.
“Mother!” exclaimed the son, wishing to arrest
her attention, that he might be relieved from an apprehension
that she was fainting—Mother! will you
have some water?”
“It is growing dark,” replied the dying woman,
“don't take away the candle, Edward!”
“Dearest Mother!” cried the terrified man; “look
on me, dearest mother!”
Where are you, my son?” faintly murmured the
woman; “I do not see you, where are you?
And as she spoke, the unequivocal signal of dissolution
showed itself in that most appalling of all
sounds, the death-rattle.
“Where are you, Edward?”
“Here I am, by your side, my dear, kind mother.”
“Don't leave me again.”
“Indeed, indeed, I will never leave you again.”
Though Mistress Saultz had been gone but a few
minutes, those minutes seemed to Fitzvassal as many
hours;—“Why can they delay so?” thought he in
the misery of his impatience.
“Who are they?” inquired the dying woman,
stretching her pale, emaciated fingers in the direction
of the cellar door.
“What do you mean, my dear mother?” replied
the son.
“Who are they, there! Oh, now I know;—look
at them Edward!—do you see them?”
“Dearest mother!” ejaculated her son, believing
that her mind had wandered, and that any further
reference to the subject would add to her delirium.
“They are beautiful and bright creatures.—See!
they are beckoning to me—I will go with them—but
not quite yet—Edward, my love! are you here?”
Fitzvassal bowed his head upon his mother's bosom,
and wept like a child—“God bless you, my son!
farewell!”
The unhappy man perceived a slight shuddering
beneath him, and he lifted his head to gaze on his
mother's corpse!—He laid his hand upon her heart,
but it was still and quiet; he lifted her arm, and it
fell from his grasp heavily and dead; her eyes were
fixed in their sockets, and as he pressed the cold lids
upon them, there came no sign of life, and he held
his hand there till the current of his own life chilled,
and he thought of her seducer and his affections
withered up, while his heart for the moment overflowed
with bitterness.
The bereaved son then knelt on the bare ground,
and poured forth an imprecation, deep and earnest, on
that man who had given him life, and been the means
of destroying his mother; and before he rose again,
he had sworn terribly that nothing should prevent
that vengeance which the sacrifice before him demanded.
“Yes!” he exclaimed aloud, “by thy sainted
spirit, thou best of mothers! by all thy deep afflictions
and unheard-of sufferings! by thy pale, lifeless
body, that now lies before me, I swear that Edmund
Vassal shall bitterly atone for this deed!”
And he seated himself upon the side of the stiffened
corpse, and gave vent to his concentrated misery.
The cellar in which these sufferings were, showed
the very picture of penury. The bare ground, without
one plank to keep off the dampness, was its only
floor, and this so wet and muddy, that the most robust
was no furniture there, unless a couple of old packing-boxes
could be called such, which served for a
bedstead to keep the straw from the mud, and another
which was used for a table. Other than these,
there was nothing that could be called so. The cellar
door was much broken, and the walls of which the
apartment was made, were so dilapidated, that in the
day-time one could not well help seeing into the street.
Such was the wretched abode in which the unhappy
mother of Fitzvassal had lived for months,
and where she now lay in cold obstruction, dead.
To such a place it was provided that her miserable
son should be led, that he might take the blessing of
his mother. Happy for him if his heart had been
already softened by suffering to receive the imprint
of that impression which her dying words should
have made. But, unprepared for so great a calamity,
his heart rebelled against the ordinances of heaven,
and he cursed and bemoaned his fate, as one
which had been cruelly forced on him, and which
he believed he did not deserve.
Mrs. Saultz and the boy Willy now arrived with a
basket containing such matters as was judged to be
best for the poor woman whose spirit had already
gone: and when the good-hearted creature found
that she was dead, she wept with unaffected feeling.
The poor boy could find no limits to his affliction.
He threw himself on the lifeless body, and wept bitterly.
to him, he refused to be comforted.
“Oh mammy, my dear, lost mammy,” he would
say, “I shall never see you again—Oh! I shall never
forget how kind and tender-hearted you have been
to me! I will die with you, my dear, dear mammy,
indeed I will.”
The day now dawned, and Mistress Saultz, under
the direction of Fitzvassal, paid all those melancholy
offices to the dead which custom and propriety render
necessary. A suitable coffin was procured, and
permission obtained from the apothecary for the body
to be conveyed to his own house, from which it was intended
that the burial should proceed. The boy was
placed under the care of Mrs. Saultz, and Fitzvassal,
retiring to the Red Lion, called for a room, on entering
which he locked the door, and threw himself
on the bed, exhausted and spiritless. In a few moments
after he was buried in a death-like slumber.
| CHAPTER VII. Nix's mate | |