University of Virginia Library

4. PART IV.
WHAT BROUGHT MRS. INGULPHUS.

A middle-aged man, of a very high-bred mould of feature, sat
on the forward edge of a chair, leaning far over the table toward
Mr. Leathers. He was dressed for a dinner party, and a pair of
white gloves lay on the cloth beside him; but his face looked
very little like that of a man on his way to a festivity. The
sweat stood in large drops on his forehead and upper lip. His
closed left hand was clutched in the palm of his right; his
elbows were crowded to his side; his drawn-up shoulders crushed
his white cravat into a wisp under his ears, and he sat with his

mouth partly open, and eyes glaring upon the stock-broker, as if
expecting life or death from his immediate decision. Lucy sat in
her chair, looking on, but not with her ordinary calmness. Her
lips were trembling to speak, and her thin hand clutched the handle
of the lever which moved her patent chair, while her little
bent back was lifted from its supporting cushion, with the preparatory
effort to wheel forward. Leathers, on whom her moist
eyes were intently fixed, sat gazing on a bundle of papers, with
his under lip pinched between his knuckle and thumb.

“Think, I implore, before you decide,” said the visitor, at last,
breaking the silence. “You are my last hope! I could not
plead with you this morning in Wall street. I should have betrayed
myself to people coming in. I did not then think of
asking you again. I went home, despairing. Afraid—yes,
afraid—to stay alone with my own thoughts, I dressed to go out.
My wife will be here in a moment to take me up, on her way to a
dinner-party. Oh God! how little she dreams we may be
beggars to-morrow!”

He pressed his forehead between his two hands for a moment,
and crowded his elbows down upon the table. Lucy rolled her
chair a little forward, but Leathers motioned her back.

“You may think,” he resumed, “that I might go to others—
more intimate friends—in such extremity—family friends. But
I know them. It would be utterly in vain, Mr. Leathers! I
have no friend, much less a relative, in the world, of the least use
in misfortune. I had strained my credit to the last thread before
coming to you, in Wall street. Why I suddenly resolved to
come to you, here, with no claim, and at such an unfit hour for
business, I know not. Instinct prompted. It seemed to me,
while I was dressing, like the whisper of an angel!”

Leathers made a movement as if to speak.

“Take care, sir! for God's sake, take care! With one word
you may bind me to you while I live, with the gratitude of desperation,
or you plunge me into ruin!”

The stock-broker took up the schedules of property which lay
before him, and, after an instant's hesitation, pushed them across
the table. During the half-hour, while proud Ingulphus, the
millionaire, had been pleading with him for salvation from ruin,
he had not been examining these, though his eyes were bent on
them. He had satisfied himself of their unavailable value, before
his refusal of the morning. The struggle in his heart between
pity and prudence occupied him now. He knew that the chances
were against his ever seeing again the very large sum necessary to
prevent the present bankruptcy of Ingulphus, and that a turn in
business might make the same urgently necessary to himself tomorrow—but
his compassion was moved. He would have refused
over again, outright and without ceremony, in Wall street; but
Ingulphus had taken him at a business disadvantage, with his
heart uppermost and open, and a pleading angel listening and
looking on.

As the three sat silent, pity gradually overcoming the reluctant
prudence of the stock-broker's judgment, there was a dash of
wheels and hoofs upon the clear pavement near the curb-stone, a
sudden pull-up, and the splendid equipage of the Ingulphuses
stood at Leathers's door. Lucy's heart sank within her, for she
had been praying to Heaven, with all her might of sympathy and
inward tears, for the success of the plea, and she felt that the
influence of this ostentatious arrival was unfavorable. Leathers
looked over his shoulder into the street, and rose from his chair as
the footman in livery crossed the sidewalk to ring the bell.

“For God's sake!” gasped the desperate pleader, in an
agonised tone, knitting his hands together, and turning his face
with the movement, as the stock-broker took his stand before the
fire.

There was refusal in the attitude of Leathers, and in his brow,
compressed with the effort to utter it.

The thin, white fingers of the little hunchback gently took the
hand of her benefactor—now brought within her reach—and held
it to her lips, while the tears dropped upon it freely.

“For my sake!” she murmured, in a tone of appealing and
caressing tenderness, which a more hard-hearted man than her
benefactor would have been troubled to resist.

Leathers turned and opened his large eyes with an expression
of sudden tenderness upon her.

“For your sake be it, then, my sweet child!” he said, giving
her a kiss with a rapid movement, as if his heart had joyfully
broken through its restraint with the impulse she had lent it.

“And now, for the sake of this little angel, Mr. Ingulphus,”
he continued—

But the sudden rush of hope, and the instant relaxation of
despair, were too much for the high-strung frame of the proud
suppliant.

Excited to the utmost tension by anxiety, and, doubtless, for
months overdone with sleeplessness and fatigue, his nervous
system gave way, and, as Leathers turned to him from Lucy, he
fell fainting from his chair.

To ring the bell and send suddenly to the carriage for Mrs.
Ingulphus, was the work of a moment; and, to the astonishment
of the Snedens opposite, and the mingled relief and surprise of
Cyphers and Mrs. Leathers, who were peeping at the carriage

from the drawing-room window, the queen of the up-town fashion
ran up the steps, in full dinner-dress, and went in at the
Leathers's!

A present of a bouquet with the Snedens's card the next
morning was the beginning of Mrs. Leathers's recognition by the
discriminating paste-board of fashion—but there are many, who,
(till they read this story), have considered Mrs. Leathers's admission
to the “lngulphus's set,” as one of the most inexplicable
mysteries of this astounding century.