 | CHAPTER I.
THE ANCIENT TENEMENT. Edward Manning, or, The bride and the maiden |  |
1. CHAPTER I.
THE ANCIENT TENEMENT.
In a narrow cross-way that leads from the Court House Square
northward losing itself in Old Cornhill, there stands, or did stand
at the period of our story, a low wooden edifice, without any thing
particuliar to draw the attention of the eyes of the passers-by save
its antiquity and dilapidated condition.
Two very stooping stories in height, very long in the direction of
the length of the alley, of a black weather-color, its roof patched
here and there with tough gray moss and its foundation sunken at
least eighteen inches below the pavement, it doubtless dated anterior
to the revolution. The alley in which it stood was but a few
feet in breadth, and was so closely filled on both sides with buildings
appropriate to occupations of various kinds, that it was quite
jammed up in the corner, as it were, and very much in the way of
modern innovations and improvements.
Nevertheless, worthless as this tenement was, it had various occupants.
The lower floor was tenanted by a little cobbler who with
his family rented two rooms, by an African boot-black and second-hand
clothes' broker, who had also two rooms on the right hand of
the dark passage into which the sunken door admitted whomsoever
had the courage to risk his body beneath the tottering lintel. On
one side of the door-way was the cobbler's tin sign, reading
“Kalee Kemp Shoe-maker.” and under the letters of the name
was the expressive and intelligible representation of a shoe done in
black paint upon a light blue ground. Opposite this sign on the
left of the door was “Handy Boot-Blak and old Kloze to sel and
For to By.” Over the cobbler's sign hung a pair of patched boy's
boots as a specimen of Kaleb's skill, and around the sign of the
African broker were suspended upon a cross-stick secured by a
looking far more shining than when they were new, proud testimonials
of the sable operator's renovating talents. In the rear rooms
lodged together a wood-sawyer and a hardy-sturdy German Jew,
the latter being temporarily the boarder of the Knight of the cross
and file.
The entry had bare walls scored with dirt and charcoal markings,
with the plastering gone in many places. The floor was broken
and yawned into dangerous cavities looking into the black cellar,
and its surface was covered with myriads of gashes from the edges
of axes imprinted deeply therein by the occupants who had in common
used the planks as a chopping floor for their fire-wood.
At about two thirds the length of the passage was a flight of
stairs that had lost the centre of gravity and were inclined to tip
off into the entry whosoever was so desperate as to ascend them.
This inclination had been, however, corrected by a strong prop of
timber placed beneath, so that the danger was in a great measure
diminished. The ascent however was perilous to the uninitiated
who could only achieve it by hugging the wall closely.
The middle of each step was deeply worn with the soles of those
who had gone up and down in the last eighty years, but as the
wood portion was only worn away and the iron nails still remained,
forming a sort of knot, the risk of stumbling up or down was very
much increased. Nevertheless up and down those stairs, one-sided,
and dark as they were, many feet traveled every day.
The stairs after descending the half of a circle around a central
upright, terminated on the second floor of the tenement in a sort of
closet, for entry it could not be called. It was unillumined by any
light save what found its way up the stair-way, which in its turn
was lighted only by four panes placed above the door, but which
were so incrusted with dirt that they were about as serviceable for
the purpose for which they were set there, as quares of brown paper.
It is true that when the outer door stood open there was a dim radiance
pervading the enclosure at the top of the stair-way, at which
time it could be seen that there were four sides to it, one being the
stair-way and the other in the shape of three doors. One of these
doors was nailed up by a board placed securely across it, the other
two had latches, one being a little old-fashioned brass knob, the other
a catch made of iron.
The room on the door of which was the common iron-latch was
for the present tenanted by a poet. The door on the left hand
which was barred up so forbiddingly was closed for purposes to be
hereafter made known. The middle door is the one with which we
have to do just now, into which we will enter with the man who
has just mounted the stairs and stops before it. He gives a low rap,
for the occupant has a peculiar habit of bolting himself in, and the
door will, therefore, not yield itself open to the simple turning of
the knob with the hand.
The individual who has made his appearance at the door is well
wrapped in a rich cloak of blue cloth with velvet facings, and
Spanish fashion over his left shoulder, though as his shoulder wants
manly breadth it slips off quite as often as he arranges it upon it;
but his persevering efforts to make it hang there are creditable to
him. Upon his hands are olive-tinted kid gloves, a very nice fit,
and his pantaloons are of the precise olive shade of his gloves, a
consideration worthy of remark. His boots were very fashionably
made, that is three inches longer and an inch and a half narrower
than the foot. The gentleman himself, for having described the
more important part of the man first, we now take the lesser, the
gentleman himself had a fair skin, a small blue eye, not very expressive,
light hair, not brown but olive, nearly the color of his
gloves as if his hair had been expressly bespoken to match the
gloves and pantaloons, a suggestion quite as reasonable as the visa
versa. He had a very strait prim nose, prim chin, thin prim lips,
and very erect ears; and altogether was a very prim jobber-looking
little man of five and thirty.
He rapped a second time a little louder than the first, and then
flung the fold of his cloak upon his shoulder again and setting his
elbow desperately akimbo to keep it in its place. While he is waiting
for the second rap to receive attention we will precede him into
the room and see why the first was suffered to pass unheeded.
The apartment at the door of which he stands awaiting our
leisure as well as that of the occupant, was a large square chamber
with a low ceiling, and pannelled walls.
It was at a glance a lawyer's office. On one side was ranged
upon broken shelves a skeleton of an old law library, and on another
hung maps, smoke-browned, and cracked with age. Old candles,
boxes, and barrels stood about under the windows or in the corners
crammed with papers, old deeds and all the refuse of an ancient
law office the accumalations of years. In front of a huge, open-mouthed
fire-place that occupied half of the side of the dark, dingy
room, stood a square pine table heaped confusedly with law papers,
law books, newspapers, cap paper, pens, bottles of ink, sand boxes,
wafers, a tobacco-pipe, and a paper of tobacco, a snuff-box upset
and the contents half spilled upon an open letter, a broad brimmed
greasy hat, an umbrella, a silver-headed cane, and a pair of mittens,
a copy of “Tom Paine's Age of Reason” well thumbed, with
a pair of spectacles laying upon the open pages, a Bible with a
cross pictured upon the cover for Roman Catholics to make oaths
upon, a package of writs and another of bail-warrants, an old long
expired Policy of Insurance for that very tenement, and a rat-trap
with the head and fore-shoulders of an enormous rat firmly secured
by the head and shoulders within it!
The fourth side of the room was occupied by a turn-up bedstead.
By the side of the fire-place was a cupboard containing sundry culinary
ware, just sufficient for a bachelor's tenement, which this
room evidently was. At the back of the room were arranged boots
and shoes of a longer size and unfashionable shape, as if the occupant
of the apartment was a man who despised the niceties of
not a very profitable customer to Kaleb in the premises directly
beneath him.
The room altogether was a perfect chaos of odds and ends, every
thing to be found in it, and nothing in its place. Old hair trunks
were here and there gaping with being crammed to surfeiting with
old garments and smoky papers mixed together half and half as if
packed at a fire. The inmate of the room very plainly was wonderfully
independent of Heaven's first law, order! If a book fell
from a table it seemed to lay till it was wanted if for months; and
if a pane of glass was broken the cavity was stoped securely up
with an old hat or waistcoat. The walls were smoked brown, the
ceiling was smoked, the books, the papers, were of a smoky hue,
and a dark murky atmosphere seemed to pervade the place.
There were three chairs in the room; one of them was large,
armed, had a high back and was covered with leather, well-glossed
from frequent wear. Plainly the owner loved his ease in an arm-chair.
He did not, however, take such good care of the ease of his
clients, or whosoever his visiters might be, as the chairs were
weak brothers, one having a leg gone, the other having a broken
back; so that he who sat in the former had to substitute one of his
own legs as a supporter of the equilibrium, while the other had to
humor the crippled vertebræ with gingerly caution or sit bolt upright.
The remaining articles of furniture consisted of a wash-stand
containing a battered tin basin, a broken pail half full of water,
and a coffee-pot, tea-kettle and toasting fork, placedby the fire-place,
in which, under the influence of the breath of a tall, long man down
on his knees before them, glowed brightly the embers of a fire in
preparation for the evening meal.
The personage in question, after blowing at the coals, three in
number, for about two minutes, with his large lips within half an
inch of them, as glowing as the embers themselves, drew back and
taking a book that lay upon the hearth, tore a leaf from it, though
loose waste paper lay within his reach, and turning the leaf up into
a lighter laid it against the coals and once more applied his lips.
A flame rewarded his exertions and placing upon it a few splinters
he laid carefully over them a couple of sticks of wood about the
bigness of a carpenter's rule and anxiously watched, still on his
knees, the gradual progress of ignition. Having thus far accomplished
his achievement, he arose from the ashes and hung upon a hook
above the fire a venerable-looking tea-kettle, which he had already
filled with water.
This done, he re-seated himself in his chair and resumed the examination
of a volume in yellow-buff calf binding, lettered “Criminal
Laws,” which then lay open upon the table.
He could now be seen to better advantage than when upon the
hearth. He was a tall, angular-jointed man, with a large black head,
a low square forehead, much wrinkled and half whiskers which
were beginning to show gray. His features were strong, heavy but
shrewdly intelligent with a vicious or wicked cast to them. His
as the low projecting roof of his old tenement overtopped the windows
of the second story. His physignomy was so massive that to
the ordinary observer he looked dull and sluggish; but the keen
looker could detect the most active watchfulness vigilant and covert
beneath all. His lips were very prominent and fleshy, but
marked with good sense and moreover with sensuality.
He wore a snuff-colored coat that looked as if it had been the daily
companion to his back for eleven years, and snuff-colored trowsers
and snuff-colored cloth vest, all three very much worn and faded, and
stained till almost every hue from drab to black was represented in
spots upon them. Yet they were whole and substantial and showed
not so much poverty of apparel as negligence of costume. In
height he was not under six feet, his neck, however, which was very
long and scraggy, making up a fair proportion of his height. A narrow
fold of white cravat encircled his throat leaving fully exposed
Adam's apple,” which was a most formidable protuberance in his
thorax.
Such was the personal appearance and dress of Simmins Satchell,
Esq., Attorney at Law, or rather ex-Attorney, for he was no longer
a member of the bar, having been degraded from it some years past
for some dishonorable practices. He nevertheless, continued to
hover on the verge of the courts, or better to say, to linger in their
purlieus.
To describe the character and draw a true picture of this man
would be to write a history of a life of fraud, dishonor, and criminal
transactions, more especially that part of his life which had transpired
since his professional degradation. He was one of those
“broken-winded and dishonored members of the legal profession,”
to be found in all large cities, who are driven to prostitute their talents
and learning, no longer available in an honorable way, to the
basest of ends, advising for fees the rogue and the swindler, how
far they can trespass on the community without making themselves
amenable to the laws; and for this purpose carefully digest the
criminal laws that they may note and avail themselves of every
vantage point for the benefit of each lawless client, if the applicants
to a man no longer recognized at the bar as a lawyer, can properly
be said to be clients.
As he sat leaning back in his arm chair poring over the volume
which he held, from time to time he would thrust his big dirty hand,
into his thick, short, black hair and rub with great energy the top of
his head, a habit peculiar to him when perplexed, and closely thinking.
At the same time he would project out his under-lip and
purse in his upper, knit his beetle brows and thereby make himself
of aspect most hideous. But black and ugly as he looked, he looked
intellectual still. His keen bright eye beamed with profound
intelligence and sagacity. And to do Simmins Satchell justice he
was an able lawyer and well read in his profession. He had the
talents and industry that, properly directed and rightly balanced by
moral sense, would have placed him, now in his forty-seventh year,
profession, catering to the lowest villanies that dishonor mankind.
It is not important to mention here the circumstances which led to
his degradation. It is sufficient to say that a natural or educational
want of moral honesty was the cause and the secret of his
fall.
The day was drawing to a close as he sat leaning back in his
chair, to catch the light from the low windows with one knee laid
over the other. The windows looking into an alley and sunken under
the projecting roof, let in little light when the sun got low, and thus it
was evening in his room when the sun was shining brightly upon
the roof of the town. He was about to turn his book to catch
the fire-light, when he heard the rap at his door already alluded to.
He laid down the book and prepared to rise to go to the door and
admit the comer, when the tea-kettle began to boil. He stopped to
remove it from the hook, and in doing so forgot to use a newspaper
holder that lay at hand and thereby burned his hand so heavily,
that he dashed the kettle to the hearth and ripped out a series of
curses that would have done credit to his friend Tom Paine, in his
most blasphemous moments.
He placed the kettle upon its base again with the dimunition of
half its contents, and then the knock being a second time repeated
he approached the door and unlocking it, said grumly,
“Come in!”
And the prim little gentleman in the dapper hat walked in.
| CHAPTER I.
THE ANCIENT TENEMENT. Edward Manning, or, The bride and the maiden | |