 | CHAPTER IX. Ellen Hart |  |
9. CHAPTER IX.
We have now brought our chief character
Henry Hart, to the crisis towards which his
career had been gradually and steadily advancing.
We have followed him from his
first act of duplicity and criminal secrecy
touching the deranged condition of his mercantile
affairs, through all the subsequent acts
it gave rise to, till forgery crowned them and
detection and arrest followed. It is not our
intention to indulge in reflections upon his
moral turpitude, or dwell upon the danger of
a first act of criminal duplicity. This story
carries with it its own moral; and will suggest
its own proper reflections in the mind of
the consequences of guilt, as affecting those
who are cannected with the guilty by the ties
of consanguinity. No man lives for himself,
more particularly the husband and the father.
When such fall, they pull down with them
many a bright head, crush in their descent
many a pure and guileless heart.
Henry Hart, from his magnificent mansion,
was removed to a prison. In the solitude of
his cell he had time for reflection; and bitterly
did he lament his first act of deception.—
The thought of the wretchedness and infamy
he had brought upon his wife and children
acted like fire in his bosom. He was tortured
which way soever his thoughts were turned.
He strove to drown reflection; but each moment
the pale face of his noble wife bending
above him in silent agony, feeling more for
him than for herself; the shrieks of his daughter;
the wondering looks and timid gaze of
his children rose ever before his mind's vision
and drove him to madness!
Thus he passed the first night of his incarceration.
Scarcely less wretched was that
spent within his princely mansion. In vain
the gorgeous mirrors, the sumptuous tables of
marble, the splendid carpets, the costly chandaliers,
the lavish opulence and elegance of
the drawing rooms, to comfort and assuage
the grief of the stricken family. Yet to preserve
this display—this outward show, had
Henry Hart committed the crimes for which
he was that moment in prison. Each object,
on the contrary, as it met the hapless wife's
eyes, as she hung over her child's couch,
pierced her soul with pangs of distress. So
the night wore away! the poor wife now weeping
over her daughter, who would not be comforted;
now mourning for her degraded husband
torn from her by the stern power of offended
justice.
What reader will not say from his heart.
`How much happier would this unhappy
family have been at this moment occupying a
single room in a poor tenement, with humble
but honestly earned fare, than surrounded as
they were by all the manifestations of wealth!'
Yet to escape this humble poverty Henry Hart
had put his hand to forged paper, and was now
the occupant of a felon's cell. In no instance
in the experience of mankind has a wrong act
brought the happiness for the attainment of
which it was committed; but on the contrary,
has placed the doer of it in a more painful position
than he was at the first. This is a truth,
laid down by Holy Scripture and corroborated
by the daily experience of evil doers. Let
men in business, let men out of business, bear
it well in mind? If Henry Hart had adopted
and believed this truth, he would not have
been, maybe a poor man, but he would have
been a poor honest man! He was now poor—
but alas! poor and guilty!
We will briefly pass over the events succeeding
his arrest. Dr. Elmore with noble
disinterestedness offered himself his bail,
which was set at the large sum of $10,000.
But Mr. Hart firmly refused to be bailed out.
`I have offended the laws. It is but just I
suffer the full penalty due to my crime! Besides
what have I to do in the world? Men
have no more confidence in me! I am unworthy
to be re-united with my injured family!
Let me remain here in prison! These walls
are in unison with my spirit.'
But confinement, reaction of long excited
feeling, united with deep remorse of conscience,
after a few days brought on a violent
attack of fever and delirium. Hour after hour
did his faithful wife stand over his low couch
in the prison, and administer to his wants.
While the daily press, and the groups in the
streets were loud in their condemnation and
unspairing in their epithets, she who suffered
most, murmured not, nor looked reproach. At
length his disease grew alarming and his physicians
removed him to the jailor's dwelling,
where after suffering night and day for several
days his erring career terminated in death.
In the meanwhile his house and furniture
were attached and a few days after his burial,
were sold at auction to which flocked all the
fashionable ladies in the city who were unfeeling
enough to forget at what sacrifice of
domestic happiness this mansion had been
laid open to the public eye? How few sympathized
with the disgraced and widowed
Mrs. Hart, who, while her rooms were thronged
with thoughtless purchasers, was with her
children occupying a room in the basement
bathed in tears. The same evening Dr. Elmore
came for them in a carriage and took
them to a small but neat house in a humbler
part of the city, which with characteristic
delicacy he had fitted up and plainly furnished
with every comfort, but without any luxuries.
Here, in the education of her children and
assisted by Ellen in giving lessons to a few
pupils whom her friend Dr. Elmore obtained
for her, Mrs. Hart endeavored to forget her
unhappiness and to find that solace in her
children of which she had been deprived in
her husband. None who knew her in her
prosperity now came nigh her, and this neglect
was to her sensitive mind a great relief.
Her few acquaintances were formed among
the humble and contented neighbors around
her; and she sought to forget that she had
ever moved in any other sphere. Dr. Elmore,
whose name she taught her children to mingle
with their little prayers and for whom the
beautiful Ellen felt the affection of a child towards
an honored father, used occasionally to
visit them. He had wisely refrained from offering
her any assistance beyond that of his
first act of benevolence in placing them in
their new abode, and getting her pupils; and
he knew that such was the independent character
of Mrs. Hart she would have refused
any pecuniary aid he might have offered.
Two years Mrs. Hart thus supported herself
by teaching and her needle, assisted by
Ellen, who had now become a remarkably
beautiful girl of eighteen. There is, however,
no certain repose to any one in this life.—
Changes chase each other like the clouds, and
vicissisitudes are as much the lot of man as
sunshine and showers. Dr. Elmore had,
doubtless, the intention in prospect in making
his will to make such a bequest as should
enable Mrs. Hart to live more easily; and
perhaps settle upon her the tenement in which
she lived, which was his own and which he
had suffered her to occupy gratuitously. But
this intention was prevented from being carried
into execution. Dr. Elmore with all his
benevolence of character and excellence as a
man and a christian had in common with
many men an undefined feeling of reluctance
to making a will while in good health; as if
from a secret fear that death would soon follow.
He, therefore, put it off from year to
year, anticipating a gradual decline which
should both forewarn him of approaching dissolution
and give him time to arrange his affairs.
`But man proposes and God disposes.'
One pleasant spring morning as this gentleman
was leaving his dwelling to make a visit
to Mrs. Hart, to inform her that he had obtained
a very desirable situation for Ellen as
a governess, he fell upon the steps in an apoplectic
fit, and being conveyed into the house
died in a few minutes.
The grief which the death of their benefactor
caused the objects of his benevolence was
sincere and profound. He had been to them
like a father—and a friend. He was the centre
around which their affections entwined
themselves; the object of their purest gratitude.
Circumstances soon proved to them
how great a loss they had met with. Their
benefactor stepping from the very first between
them and the cold world, had turned
aside its shafts from their breasts; and guarded
by his friendly beneficence they had not
suffered from their sudden fall and deep affiction,
all that otherwise they would have experienced.
But now they were destined to feel deeply
and keenly the privations of friendless poverty;
to which is added the heartless whisperings
of the reproving, who with utter want
of charity were disposed to heap upon the
wife and children the infamy of the husband
and father's act.
Dr. Elmore's estate fell into the hands of
administrators, his son Edward being at the
time of his decease absent in Europe where,
after completing his medical studies under his
father's eye, he had gone for the purpose of
completing his knowledge of surgery and me
dicine in the Hospitals of Paris.
Administrators, like corporations, are too
often without souls. The administrators on
the estate of Dr. Elmore were men of substance
and respectability, business men, and
familiar with their duties They went to work
in a business way to settle up the estate. It
may truthfully be said of them as Scripture
said of the Pharaoh who ruled after Joseph's
death:
`And now there rose up a new king over
Egypt who knew not Joseph.' These men
knew not the widow of Dr Elmore's beneficence.
In the investigation of the real estate
the tenement occupied by Mrs. Hart was
found to be a portion of it. They learned that
it had been two years occupied by a Mrs. Hart
—widow of the notorious Henry Hart, who
had been imprisoned for forgery and died before
trial.
`Ah, I am surprised Dr. Elmore should
have rented a house to such a person,' said
Mr. Straitpurse, who was a man of money
piety; being a church member and notorious
for long prayers at the monthly concerts; and
a man of feeling; for he felt for every poor
body, and all they got was feeling! `We
must see into it, and see if the rent has been
regularly paid on quarter day.'
`Suppose we call by as we go down to State
street. The house is in our way: and I should
like to see personally all the property that
comes under our control,' said Mr. Straitbrim;
who had been a wholesale grocer and
was now President of an Insurance Compapany.
Finding in his outset in life religion
convenient he passed for a quaker on the
faith of his grandfather, who had been of that
sect; and he therefore, wore a low strait collar
to his coat and a white cravat tied very
precisely in a single bow in front; a white
hat something broad in the brim; and drab
pantaloons. Thus he let his garb go in the
world's eye in the place of religious profession;
and under the mark of rigid morality
enriched himself by ways and means that
would not stand very well the test that will
analyse human motives and actions at the
final judgement.
Such were the Pharisees into whose hands
Mrs. Hart had fallen. She was seated in the
lower back room of the little two story house
which Dr. Elmore's benevolence had sheltered
her and her little ones in from the storms
of a heartless and finger-pointing world, sewing
upon a garment she had taken to make,
and feeling deeply her loneliness, and the entire
dependence of her children upon her feeble
efforts; Ellen was in the same room practising,
with a sad heart, upon a piano, Dr. Elmore
had hired for her, a piece of difficult
music she was to teach her pupils that afternoon.
Tommy and Grace, the first in his
eleventh year and the other nine, were at
public school—that noble institution of our
free land, which is the foundation of its greatness
and power; where the poorest can obtain
knowledge side by side with the rich; the
son of the wood-sawyer drink in wisdom and
strength at the same fountain with the `merchant
prince!'
The room was furnished very plain but perfectly
neat; and a few flower pots of rose geranium
and heliotrope were in the windows.
Mrs. Hart though pale and serious had lost
none of her refined beauty, which was re
vived in her daughter, than whom few maidens
in Boston were more lovely. Her person
was singularly graceful, and though she
wore a calico dress, no one would have noticed
that it was not of the richest cashmere;
for her face alone drew the attention of the
observer. It was refined in character, and
purity and gentleness dwelt there as if in
their native heaven! Her smile was full of
sweetness, and her fine blue eyes beamed with
intelligence and feeling. Her face was intellectual
without being severe; it was wisdom
blended with love. Her complexion was
brilliant, and the soft glow of her cheek rivalled
the rose in delicacy of color. But the
chief beauty of Ellen Hart was her glorious
cloud of hair. Its hue was neither brown,
nor auburn, nor chesnut, but a blending of
the three with a golden radiance that played
richly upon it at every movement of her head.
It was not its hue alone that made it beautiful!
It was of the softest texture, and when
in sportiveness little Grace would come behind
her as she sat at the piano and steal out
the comb that scarce held its rich weight, it
would fall like a mantle over her shoulders
and sweep the floor! She had worn it free on
her neck until she was fifteen, when its length
compelled her to bind it up.
It was now braided and tastefully intertwined,
braid within braid, fold within fold, and
fastened in a sort of quadruple bow, resting
low upon her neck; a style as tasteful as it
was graceful.
They were thus occupied, mother and
daughter, when a knock was heard at the
door.
| CHAPTER IX. Ellen Hart | |