University of Virginia Library

2. PART II.
THE LEATHERS'S BASEMENT.

A pair of beautiful partridges, cooked to a turn, had just succeeded
a bass, done in port-wine sauce; the potatoes were hot,
and the pint bottle of champagne had given place to a decanter
of sherry, at the right hand of Mr. Luther Leathers, dining alone
in his basement parlor. A fire of bituminous coal burned very
brightly in the grate. Dividing her attention between watching

the blaze, and looking up placidly to the face of the stock-broker
as he soliloquized over his dinner, sat a hunchback girl of nineteen
or twenty, carefully propped on a patent easy-chair upon
wheels. There was no servant waiting on table. The bread and
water were within Mr. Leathers's reach, and the bell-handle was
at the right hand of the pale and patient-looking little cripple in
the corner.

“Lucy, my dear girl,” said the carver of the partridge,
holding up a bit of the breast of the bird upon his fork, “I wish
I could persuade you to take a bit of this. See how nice it
looks!”

“I know you wish it,” she answered, with an affectionate half
smile, “and you would give me your own health to enjoy it, if
you could, but I have no appetite to-day—except sympathy with
yours.”

Leathers was a short, stout man, of about forty. He had a face
roughly lined with anxiety, and a knit contraction of brows,
which showed a habit of forcibly contracting his attention at short
notice. The immediate vicinity of his mouth, however, was
pliable and good-humored, and, in fact, looked as if neither care
nor meanness had ever been permitted to have a pull upon it. His
hair was pushed rudely away from a compact, well-filled forehead,
the lids were habitually drawn together around his small twinkling
grey eyes, and his head was set forward upon his shoulders,
in the attitude of one giving close attention. A very carelessly-tied
cravat, coat-sleeves turned back over the wrist, and hands
that evidently never wore a glove, showed that the passion for
fashionable life, which reigned up stairs, had little influence on
the thoughts or toilettes in the basement below.

Yet, to the policy or proceedings of his wife, to her expensiveness,

or her choice of friends, her hours of going or coming, her
intimacies or her ambitions, Mr. Leathers made no manner of
objection. He differed wholly from her in her valuation of
things and people, and, perhaps, there was a little dislike of
trouble in his avoidance of the desperate task of setting her right;
but there was another and less easily divined reason for his
strange letting of Mrs. Leathers have her own silly way so
entirely. There was a romantic chivalry of mind, laid away,
unticketted and unsuspected by himself, in a corner of his capacious
brain, and, silly woman as she was, he had married her for
love. In the suburb where he had found her, she was a sort of
school girl belle, and, as he had not then struck his vein of
prosperity, and was but a poor clerk, with his capacities unsuspected,
her station in life was superior to his, and he had first
taken her to his bosom with the feeling of a plebian honored with
the condescending affection of a fair patrician.

To this feeling of gratitude, though they had so essentially
changed places—he having given her a carriage as a millionaire's
wife, and she having only grown silly, and lost her beauty—he
remained secretly and superstitiously loyal. It was his proud
pleasure to give her everything she could ask for, and still retain
his nominal attitude as the receiver of favor. He never, by look
or word, let Mrs. Leathers understand that the promise of eternal
love was not a promise, religiously to pay. Of the dis-illusion in
his heart—of his real judgment of her character—of the entire
abandonment, by his reason, of all the castles in the air for which
he had romantically married—she, fortunately, never had a suspicion,
or asked a question, and he would have cut off his hand
sooner than enlighten her. In public he assumed a manner of
respect and devotion, because his good sense told him there might

be those who would think ill of her if he did not. Ignorant of the
motive, and his appearance not being fashionable, Mrs. Leathers
would often rather have been waited on by Mr. Cyphers, and this
the husband saw without uneasiness, and would have yielded to,
but for the wish to serve her, in spite of herself. With this single
exception of occasional contradictoriness, and the exercise of
quiet and prior authority—as to his own hours of dining, and his
own comforts, and those of hunchback Lucy, in the basement
the stock-broker and his establishment were under the apparently
complete control of Mrs. Leathers, and, thereby, in a state of
candidacy for admission into the list of New York fashionable
aristocracy.

Of course, Leathers, the stock-broker, had a heart; and, like
other hearts, human and disappointed, it might have buried its
hopes without a funeral, and sought consolation elsewhere without
a drum. It was necessary that he should love and love well.
How long a want of this nature may go unexplained in the breast
that feels it—the love-needing man being miserable, he knows
not why—depends on circumstances; but, as Leathers was
beginning to turn his un-escapeable business faculty of attention
upon himself to see what the deuce he wanted, and how to get it,
he was accidentally appointed, by the whim of a nominating committee,
one of the wardens of a poor-house. Compelled, for his
character's sake, to visit and report upon the condition of this
establishment, he chanced to see, in one of the wards, a little
orphan hunchback, whose pitiful and delicate face excited his
compassion. His unemployed heart sprang to the child—he
adopted her, and took her home—gave Mrs. Leathers a carriage
and horses on the same day, to appease and propitiate her—and

thenceforward had an object of affection, which, (engrossed with
business as he was,) sufficed to fill the void in his existence.

Lucy had no other name, that she knew of, but that was
enough. Her education had been such as she could pick up in
an alms-house, but she was fond of reading, and passionately
fond of music, and when her benefactor was not at home, she
was happy with her books in the arm-chair, or with her piano,
and Mrs. Leathers seldom saw her except at breakfast. Lucy
thought the stock-broker an angel, and so, to her, he was. He
loved her with a tear in his throat, and kissed her small, white
forehead at night and morning, with a feeling many a brilliant
beauty has sighed in vain to awaken. At half-past three, every
day, Leathers alighted from the omnibus, at his own house, having,
perhaps, passed his wife in her carriage, on his way up from
Wall street, and, with an eager happiness, unexplained to himself,
went in at the basement door and sat down to his punctual
dinner. Lucy dined with him, or sat by the fire. From the
moment of his entering she had no thought, wish, or attention,
for anything but him. Her little thin lips wore an involuntary
smile, and her soft, blue eyes fairly leaned up against his heart in
their complete absorption in what he said. She showed the most
pleasure, however, when he talked most about himself, and, by
questions and leadings of the conversation, she drew from him,
daily, the history of his morning, his hopes, successes, obstacles
or disappointments.

He did not confess to her, for he did not confess to himself,
why this or that “operation” had pleased him, but there was
sympathy in having its mere mention heard with carnest attentiveness,
and he felt expanded and lightened at heart by her

smile or nod of congratulation. This daily recital, with its
interruptions and digressions, usually occupied the hour of dinner,
and then, genial with his glass of wine and his day's work,
Leathers drew up his chair to Lucy's, and had no earthly desire,
save the passing of his evening between her talk and his
newspaper.

Little stuff for poetry as there would seem to be in Wall-street
mornings, Leathers was not undramatic, in his view of his own
worldly position, and in his descriptions of business operations to
Lucy. He had, early in life, looked askance, with some bitterness,
at people with whom he could never compete, and at refinements
and advantages he could never attain. Too sensible a man
to play a losing game at anything, he had stifled his desire to
shine, and locked down the natural chivalry, for which, with his
lack of graces, he was so certain to lack appreciation. In giving
up all hope of distinction in matters of show, however, he had
prepared himself to enjoy more keenly the satisfaction of controlling
those who were its masters, and it was this secret feeling of
supremacy, over the very throne of the empire that had rejected
and exiled him, which gave his business the zest of a tourney, and
made him dwell on its details, with delight in Lucy's eager and
sympathetic listening.

The household, in short, went on very harmoniously. Mrs.
Leathers was never up at breakfast, and usually made her dinner
of the lunch in her boudoir, at which Mr. Cyphers daily played a
part, and drank his bottle of champagne. Leathers was asleep
when she went to bed, she asleep when he got up; she spent
money without stint, and used her carriage as she and Mr. Cyphers
pleased, and that made all comfortable above stairs. Below,

Leathers was autocrat undisputed, and all was happiness
there.