University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

It was impossible, now, that I should feel any such indifference.
Curiosity was awakened, within me, and sharpened into
activity all those other emotions which had been merely roused
before. Every thing about her lowly household had now an interest
in my sight which kept me feverishly alive to every sound
which reached my ears from, and every movement of life which
took place in, that quarter. Her ugly, little, bilious-faced and
fiery-eyed protector, was, in particular, an object of excessive
concern with me; and I followed his rickety movements, as he
went abroad, and was careful to scrutinize them as he returned
home, as if it were possible for me to derive from such a scrutiny
a knowledge of those secrets which had become so annoyingly
worth knowing. I was not long, however, permitted to maintain
this watch upon his movements. On the third morning
after the night on which we had encountered, I was impressed

with the conviction, after resuming my usual post of survey at
my window, that the dwelling of the suspicious pair was no
longer occupied. An air of unusual stillness overspread the
establishment. The windows and doors were all sealed up and
silent. No smoke ascended from the chimney—no voice resounded
from the enclosure—no old woman knocked at the gate
for entrance—nobody went in and nobody came out. It presented
a lamentable contrast to the busy hum of the thick clustering
hive around it. I waited with some impatience for the
breakfast hour. I hurried through the meal without asking
whether I had satisfied appetite, and certainly without doing
justice to my landlady's coffee biggin. I hastened back to my
window, and waited for the customary departure of my male
neighbour on his daily journey. He failed to appear as usual;
and I was pained to think that I should hear no more music
from the lips of the sweet, but melancholy stranger. My fears
were well-grounded. My venerable landlady congratulated herself
at dinner, that those noisy people, across the street, who
sang so loud, had moved away under cover of the last night—
the latter circumstance being one that awakened all the good old
lady's apprehensions for the security of the rent due; in which an
old lady of like dimensions with herself, had, it appears, considerable
interest. But even this fear did not diminish her satisfaction
at the removal when she recollected her escape from the
music which annoyed her. The other sounds from the `rookery,'—vile,
various and discordant as they were—never offended
a single sense in her whole system. They were natural
and familiar, and, like certain other natural and familiar objects,
they “signified love.”

But to me this confirmation of my fears brought with it a
degree of discomposure for which I was myself unprepared. I
had sustained a loss, which pressed for the moment heavily upon
me;—the loss of that object of secret sympathy which responds
to our emotions, though in tears that we are not permitted to
see, and in sighs that we cannot hear. I felt the privation so
seriously, and my curiosity had been so highly stimulated, that I
could no longer keep within the house, and actually sallied forth,
on the wild-goose chase of looking-up the fugitives in such a city
as New York.

A few hours ramble soon cured me of this folly, though it
failed to bring me to my senses. I gave up the search after persons
whose names I did not know, and who, if they had not left
the city, could only have found shelter in some one of the
thousand purlieus of destitution which cover its filthy spots. I
returned home soured and dissatisfied, and went back, in sheer
doggedness of purpose, to my solitude and studies.