University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.
IN THE ARENA: WITH SKETCHES OF THE GLADIATORS.

Let us now pass from these scenes on which our history
has essayed to delineate faintly something of the life
which forms the annals of the poor, to those other scenes
and personages of the narrative which we have not been
able to attend to, busy as we were in tracing the emotions
and relating the adventures of the child Lucia, and her
friends, Wide-Awake and Ellie.

The difficulty in a narrative like the history we have
made the attempt to write, is not the detail of the particular
scenes, or the representation of those characteristic
traits which make a picture of some value. The connection
of the incidents is the great task. The writer finds
no difficulty in embracing at a glance the personages, the
incidents, and the end to which the whole group moves:—
but there is another element of the problem which must
never be lost sight of—and that is the reader. For the
reader, however intelligent and sympathizing, there must
always be a more or less literal explanation; for careless,
indifferent, and unsympathizing readers there must be
more—a demonstration. If the links of the history are
not forged completely and wrapped up in flowers, all at a
single blow, these latter say that it is awkward, hastily
composed, a bad work of art;—if anything is left to the
imagination, it is obscure;—if everything is explained, and
dwelt upon, and turned in every light—then it is tedious.

There never has been a writer whose greatest bugbear
was not an unsympathizing reader.

This is the explanation of our fear, in passing from a
series of scenes and characters, to another wholly different:—and
we can only ask the reader to follow us, convinced
as we are, that in the end the connection of every
page of the narrative will be conclusively shown.

We return to Mr. Incledon and his fortunes.

Since the morning when, in the presence of Ellie, this
gentleman and his cousin held that singular conversation,
so filled with coldness and irritation upon the one part,
and so calm and self-possessed upon the other—a hundred
things had happened, which had still further tended to
place in an attitude of hostility these two personages, who
sustained toward each other such singular relations.

Miss Incledon had spoken truly in charging her cousin
with an affection for herself, amounting to a warmer sentiment
than fraternal regard. Placed under his care by her
father—thrown with him at almost every hour of the day—
he had, indeed, dreamed for a time that she could make
him happy as his wife; and he had shown her that she
was more to him than any other woman. Beautiful, winning,
possessed of those traits of mind which enable some
women to throw themselves at a moment's warning into
any mould, to assume any character, Miss Incledon had
easily convinced her cousin that the sentiment he felt for
herself was not more than she experienced for him; and
this had been the position of things, when one evening, at
a ball, Miss Incledon made the acquaintance of Mr.
Fantish.

There must be a magnetic sympathy between persons
of a like mould of character, and although we do not
mean to intimate that the characters of Miss Incledon and
Mr. Fantish were similar, yet they had no sooner met
than they were mutually struck with each other, and had
thus commenced an acquaintance, whose further progress
quite drove from the lady's heart any lingering sentiment
of dubious regard she might have had for her cousin.
Ambitious, and avid of all that enters into the daily life
of a professed votary of fashion, Miss Incledon saw in
Mr. Fantish a complete embodiment of what she worshipped;
and learning speedily that his father was a man
of large wealth, and he himself by no means without fortune
of his own, she had assiduously addressed herself to
the task of winning his admiration—and so of becoming
his wife.

It would be too much, to say that Miss Incledon loved
Mr. Fantish. She was scarcely capable of any sentiment
so exalted and pure as genuine love: and the miserable
idol she had erected for her worship—Fashion, first, last
and always—had corrupted, slowly but surely, any freshness
of heart which she retained. To become the wife of
a man who was regarded as the very light of fashion in
its brightest and most glaring form—to be the mistress of
a fine establishment, and drink to satiety of that intoxicating
draught which bubbles up in the heated atmosphere
of balls, and festivals, and splendid entertainments—this
was Miss Incledon's ambition; and the steps by which
she thought she could arrive at such a consummation were

those to be taken to the altar, with her hand in the delicate
kid glove of Mr. Fantish.

The feelings of the gentleman, upon whose hand this
adroit attack was destined to be made, may be described
quite as briefly. Mr. Fantish liked what he was accustomed
to style a “splendid woman”—that is to say a
woman whose physical development was admirable, and
whose society enabled him to kill a portion of his time to
his satisfaction. Mr. Fantish did not acknowledge the
presence of character, good or bad, in women: they were
pleasant figures, more or less well dressed, to wile away
an hour with; and when he met a figure, to carry out the
illustration, more than commonly imposing and well decorated,
he admired it with perfect sincerity and honesty.
He was in the habit of saying that women reminded him
of leopards, such as he had seen in menageries; and he
showed the analogy between them, by declaring that both
were handsome, had sharp claws, and obeyed only those
whom they feared. You felt a desire to caress both, he
would add—to pass the hand over the beautiful hair of
the one, or the velvet fur of the other—and if a man had
the nerve to indulge in these dangerous amusements, he
would add, then he was a very lucky fellow, and deserved
to be envied. These opinions were no secrets from Mr.
Fantish's friends, and, indeed, the expression of such
views contributed in no slight degree to the amusement
which his acquaintances derived from their association
with him. There was another species of conversation
very popular in the select circle of this gentleman's friends,
which we forbear from touching upon. We may however

say, that it dealt in a philosophy not favorable to the
strength of female character; and found its most frequent
illustrations in quotations from the works of my Lord
Byron.

When Mr. Fantish made Miss Incledon's acquaintance,
he immediately applied the leopard philosophy, and found
the result eminently satisfactory. He had not seen such
a “splendid woman” for a long time—and indeed the
lady's brilliant complexion, bright eyes, and coral lips,
fresh from the healthful airs of the country, easily gave
her the precedence of the great majority of town beauties,
painfully reduced in “good looks” by the season, ending
far in the spring. Mr. Fantish had admired Miss
Incledon quite honestly, and had paid her many compliments,
which she had heard of course, and was perfectly
sincere when he said that she was much the finest woman
he had seen for years. When a man has this opinion of a
woman and the woman wishes him to have a still better
opinion, it is needless to say that she generally finds means
to give him an opportunity. It soon happened that Miss
Incledon was “at home” to nobody but a gentleman
who drove the most splendid pair of horses in the city—
and who descended daily almost from his vehicle at her
door.

When our history opened, this had been for some time
the state of affairs between Miss Incledon and her admirer—though
not entirely this. Mr. Fantish was not a
refined man—his taste was not very fastidious—but he
had seen a great deal of good society, knew by heart
everything connected with the “properties of things,”

and really could not, no! he could not stand—he told his
friends—the desperate affection of Miss Incledon. He
had known many women—many of them had acted most
extravagantly, for instance, that little danseuse who was
distracted about him—but really a more desperate attack
than that of Miss Incledon, he never had been yet subjected
to. He had heard, he said, of unhappy lovers,
weeping and sighing, and lamenting the obduracy of their
lady-loves, but his was an opposite fate. He was destined
to be smothered with embraces—if he would allow
it—to be stifled with kisses—if he did not resist: his fate,
in a word, was to be wooed and won by a woman, and he
really did not know where all this would end. And then
a good deal of laughter would ensue, and Mr. Fantish
would be regarded as a persecuted saint, and Miss Incledon
as a young lady who wished to throw herself into the
arms of a man who repulsed her.

The reader will now be able to understand the position
which Mr. Incledon's cousin had been made to assume, by
these base and ignoble accusations, which the thoroughly
corrupt man of the world, uttered in the most public
places. When we have briefly spoken of the character
of Mr. Incledon, which as yet we have barely touched
upon, the rebound of these degrading jests upon that
gentleman, will be also comprehended in all its terrible
force.

The son of a country gentleman of great strength of
character and chivalric feeling, Ralph Incledon, had early
developed a character, which made many persons say he
was destined to live over again the life of his grandfather,

the most violent and dangerous man of his time in all the
country side. He seemed to inherit a passion for everything
in which an enormous and superabundant vitality
and energy could find vent. A passionate hunter, he
would ride his horse nearly to death after a fox, or remain
out whole days and nights, deer hunting—and thus he
passed his boyhood, in exercises which developed his
frame into a bundle of steel tissues, and his natural
energy into a devouring passion for excitement.

From the fields and forests he passed to college, where,
in the midst of a new life and new associates, he became
noted for precisely the same animal traits which had
brought forth the hostile predictions of the wiseacres of
his native county. He could ride more vicious horses,
swim more turbid streams, and fence with more dangerous
adversaries, even after a few lessons, than any other young
man in the place. He had struck the fencing master himself
after his fourth lesson: and the plain explanation of
all this was that strength which he had trained so assiduously,
and the restless energy of his temperament, which
must eternally be struggling with something, as though
this were the only condition upon which it rested from
tearing its master. To this character, he added the most
extreme sensitiveness and pride. Of powerful will with a
resolution wholly indomitable, he would tremble at a jest
directed at his honor, and risk his life to punish it. He
had more than once engaged in affrays of the bloodiest
description, against great odds, and nothing but a blind
chance, it seemed to him, had preserved him from the
bullet or the knife. This sensitiveness amounted almost

to a mania; and it seemed nearly a miracle that a man so
ready to resent the least supposed slight, had not long
ago fallen in some desperate encounter. His great personal
strength, and resolution were so well known, however,
that he had been avoided by his companions: and
it was the conviction of this fact which made him one day
set down and reflect coolly upon his own character, and
the direction in which it was leading him. By one of
those sudden revulsions which not seldom happen to men
of powerful organization, he passed from one extreme to
the other, and forswearing all his former habits applied
himself night and day to the mastery of all the fields of
thought which extended themselves before him, inviting
him to come and take possession. Feeling an inborn and
extreme hatred of mathematics, he attacked that first;
and then passed to the languages and belles letters. In
all, his great energy carried him forward over difficulties
which his previous neglect of study had rendered a thousand
times more repulsive. Persisting in his resolution, he
went on in the course he had marked out for himself, and
before the session ended, he had acquired a devouring
passion for the most intense study. His vigorous and
close mind found its true element in those conflicts which
go on from generation to generation among the forces of
adverse philosophies and systems; and, grappling now
with the most acute dialecticians, his mind seemed to live
its normal life so to speak, of sustained and powerful
action.

Returning home with this change in his character, he
went on in spite of the astonishment of his associates—

turning his attention to the profoundest analysis of the
strongest thinkers, on all the great questions of human
concern—a contest in which he spent three years. At the
end of that time he had become a free-thinker—for his
studies latterly were among the dry dogmas of conflicting
theological systems. In this state of mind, he threw
aside his tomes, went to that greatest fruit and treasure
of the Reformation, an open Bible; and thenceforth made
it his study, not his reading only—his intense, exhausting
single study. For a year, he scarcely took another volume
in his hand; and the result of this, as we believe will always
be the result, was a profound conviction of the eternal
truth of Christianity. With this logical conviction came
that other mystery, which would be like the shadow to
the substance, were it not the substance itself, and the
logical conviction but the shadow. He united himself to
the church, and then this man's life was forever changed.
From that time he had but one aim in life—to subdue his
passions; to go through an immense conflict, and finally
to apply himself to some work which should seem to him
worthy of a faith and energy such as he felt himself possessed
of.

He determined to go from the scenes which had witnessed
so many outbursts of passion; and to remain for a
while among the crowds which people streets. He would
apply himself during this time to some study—law, or any
thing he determined—and all this he did. His father
had put his cousin under his charge, and said to him—
“Ralph, watch over her as a brother,”—and this he had
done, passing his days thus in study, observation, and the

half-formed shadow of love. He had met Mr. Sansoucy
upon his arrival—they were old friends, in the country;
and Mr. Fantish, too, was no stranger. He had known
that gentleman at college.

This then, was the man to whom suddenly came the
vague, mocking rumor, he scarcely knew whence, that the
young girl over whose welfare he had promised to watch,
had become the jest of society, the subject of gossip,
nay, of positive calumny, by the base agency of a man
of his acquaintance. The entrance of the very thought
into his mind, caused a crimson flush to come over his
countenance—and his eyes flashed. He rose to his full
height, and cast downwards, as though towards this man,
a glance of disdainful incredulity. Then this expression
passed, and he grew deadly pale.

The words he had heard struck him doubly:—in his
pride, and his love. Dishonor! Could actual dishonor
ever approach him, and from such a source as this man
whom he well knew? For a time he gave way to his fury,
and broke everything which stood in his way, as he paced
his room; then he sat down, and pondered, and grew calm,
and prayed; and from that moment held such a curb upon
himself as few men have ever been able to do.

We have seen how, even in his interview with Miss
Incledon, he spoke with the utmost calmness — and
again, how, at the ball, only a shadow and a contraction
of his brows had indicated the existence of the slumbering
volcano of passion beneath.

Since the ball, some scenes of which we touched upon,
the reports of Mr. Fantish's speeches, and the jests they

produced, had been more and more terribly trying to
Mr. Incledon's pride:—and it is just at this time, that we
again resume the thread, which we lost sight of for a time,
in the consideration of those things which befel Aunt
Phillis, Lucia, and their friends.