University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
THE PEOPLE OF SEACLIFF.

IN another minute it became clear that I was about to
be received. I heard, floating down the stairway,
that perfumed rush and rustle which breathes from
the robes of woman,—that voice of lace and satin which has
caused my heart and the heart of every properly constituted
man to beat so often and so violently,—that eerie silken whisper
which makes us start and look up even when the siren,
who causes it, passes our lonely rooms unseen, through sombre
hotel entries.

Preparing my face for a smile, and clearing my throat for
the salaams, I awaited the Misses Westervelt. I had already
forgotten the shocking dialogue of the mysterious boudoir;
the descending enchantment had driven it from my spirit; a
new spell was upon me. They entered lightly and gracefully,
first Mary and then Genevieve.

“I am glad to see you again, Mr. Fitz Hugh,” said Mary,
in her sweet quiet way, as though the mild Madonna of Carlo
Dolci had spoken. “We were out in the garden tending our
flowers, or we shouldn't have made you wait so long. You
must excuse Mamma, she has a headache, and can only send
her compliments.”

She gave me her hand frankly, and then waved the rosy-white
fingers toward a chair. In the mean time Genevieve
had only saluted me with a reserved little bow, and just

enough of a smile to show me how sharply, delicately cut
were her aristocratic and somewhat haughty lips.

“Thank you, Miss Westervelt,” said I, “This is more
agreeable to me than the Righi. That was a parting, and
this is a meeting.”

I was not afraid, it will be seen, to pay a bold compliment
to the Misses Westervelt. The truth is, that I felt as if I
knew them well, because I had travelled several weeks with
them; for a month's journey in company gives a closer acquaintance
than a year of ordinary intercourse. In society
the mass of people have few startling topics in common, and
still fewer interests; but among heroic ruins, solemnizing cathedrals,
revered works of art and life-pictures of strange
peoples, sensations rapidly sympathize, and thoughts become
charmingly interchangeable. This is not all the explanation,
but this is enough for the present purpose.

“Oh, but the Righi!” said she. “Just think again of the
Righi before you prefer our parlor to it. We had a carpet
of clouds, you know, instead of a Brussels. And then the
lakes, the awful white mountains, the blinding glaciers, the”—
she checked herself with a little blush at her own enthusiasm.

“Very true,” said I; “but I bring all those things with
me; I have them in my mind's eye at this moment; they
got into the buggy with me at my hotel. The mere thought
of calling on my old friends, summoned up the Righi. By
the way, I see that you have some mementos of Europe
here.”

“The pictures? Oh, yes, we couldn't resist the temptation
of buying a copy or two. We chose one Carlo Dolci, you
see, in spite of Ruskin.”

“But they are not all copies, are they?” I asked. “There
is one, I see, that resembles both of you slightly. Is it meant
for a portrait of either of you?”

“It is my mother's portrait,” replied Mary, gravely, with
a glance at the half-length over the mantel. “It was taken
the year she was married.”

“Not the present Mrs. Westervelt, you understand, Mr.
Fitz Hugh,” said Genevieve, now speaking for the first time.
“You know, or shall know, that our present mamma is only
a step-mamma.”

“I am aware,—I remember,” responded I, passing hastily
over the thorny subject of step-motherhood. “Mrs. Westervelt
is a very charming lady.”

“She charms papa, I believe,” said Genevieve, coolly,—
“and some other people.”

I was quite used to Genevieve's little satirical ways, and
only smiled at a speech which I considered more flippant
than malicious. Miss Westervelt took the affair more seriously,
and gave her sister a beseeching glance of caution;
but the latter had evidently been stirred up to bitterness
by some recent development of step-maternity; and so,
paying no attention to the silent admonition, she went on
in her tirade with a brisk sparkling energy, like the first
flurry of a lighted lucifer. “There is one experience, Mr.
Fitz Hugh, that you men never can appreciate, and that
is the happiness of a young lady,—say a couple of young
ladies,—over whose welfare and prospects broods the love
of a step-mother. You are not so constantly in the nest
as we are; besides, you can struggle out of the step-feathers,
if you don't find them agreeable; you can choose your own
element, like ducklings who have been hatched by a hen.
Mr. Fitz Hugh, did you ever fancy the condition of a chicken
gathered under the motherly quills of a porcupine? I have,
and I assure you that I think it is no laughing matter.”

“Hush, Genevieve!” said Mary. “Mr. Fitz Hugh doesn't
understand your extravaganzas; and, if he does, I hope he
will be kind enough not to notice them.”

“I am as discreet as a tomb, as a pyramid,” replied I.
“In fact I understand nothing, and confess that Miss Genevieve
has completely mystified me.”

I had already reverted in thought to the plaid silk of dead
leaf colors, and for the first time I glanced at the dresses of

the young ladies to see their tint and fashion. I suspected
that Genevieve had been the misused female of the back
boudoir, and that papa had threatened vengeance upon her
for thwarting the authority or happiness of step-mamma, only
I could detect no sort of sense in that denunciation of universal
exposure. Neither she nor her sister wore anything
like a plaid, not even in the shape of a checked scarf or
ribbon. Both were dressed as French ladies dress, and as
most women who trust their own taste dress, in broad sheets
of plain color, contrasting only in masses and unbroken by
any frivolous deformities of crossings, stripings, prismatic
blotchings or kaleidoscope patterns. To be more particular,
Mary wore a skirt of green silk, Genevieve a skirt of blue
silk, and both had black silk bodices. The auburn locks of
the elder sister, and the flaxen blonde ones of the younger
were alike unadorned, except by their own luxurious braidings
and wavy droopings. Still suspecting that the spirited
and satirical junior of the couple had been the oppressed
heroine of the boudoir scene, I began to ponder whether she
had had time, in the interval between that and her appearance
in the parlor, to change her attire. I am not ashamed
to confess that in those days I was too ignorant of the mysteries
of the female toilet to decide the question. I have
learned better since; but I still declare that a man is unlucky
who has no sisters; that he labors under a serious disadvantage
in studying the multitudinous, the ever-present, and
ever-fascinating problem of womanhood.

I was getting into a state of distraction which would soon
have made me absurd in the eyes of the Misses Westervelt,
had not their attention and mine been diverted by a new incident.
A trampling of masculine heels in the portico, and
then a confident clamor of voices in the hall told the arrival
of some persons who apparently felt themselves at home.

“They have come back?” said Mary, glancing at her sister.
“Why, they but this moment went out.”

“Out at one door, and in at another,” replied Genevieve.

“I presume Cousin Jule found it too hot; she always finds it
too hot or too cold. Our cousins the Van Leers,” she added,
in explanation to me. “Not own cousins, but relatives of
Mrs. Westervelt.”

Alarum, sounding of trumpets, as it were, and enter the
Van Leers. First came a lady of about twenty-seven, medium
sized, walking well, dark-haired, black-eyed, self conscious,
and terribly fashionable; a woman of the world most
distinctly, who had seen all the life she could, held etiquette
at her fingers' ends, and knew exactly what she was about,
every moment of her modish existence. Then followed two
hulking, strongly-built men, evidently brothers, the one thirty-five
and the other twenty-five. They had the same massive
dull features, the same Bœotian brown eyes, the same enormous
chestnut moustaches; both alike, also, were dressed in
the latest morning fashion, and laid defiant exterior claim to
the character of dandy and man-about-town. The eldest had
prematurely lost his front hair, so that his naturally low forehead
showed a counterfeit loftiness. Lastly appeared a foppish
youth of about twenty-two, much shorter and lighter in
frame than his predecessors, the face of him round and lively,
his eyes small black and shiny, his step quick and skipping,
his whole air full of a conceit which was half amusing, half
offensive. The lady and gentlemen bowed as I was presented,
but did not trouble themselves to offer me a remark. The
skipping-jack youth skated lightly about the room for a few
seconds, like an insect upon water, until, hitting against the
piano-stool, he forthwith seated himself upon it and thrummed
in cold blood and unprovoked, the brindisi of Lucrezia Borgia.
His two heavy seniors fell upon a sofa, yawned and
sucked the jasper heads of their canes. Had they entered
as strangers, I should have supposed that here were three
beaux for the Misses Westervelt, and should accordingly
have left the field free to them by paying my compliments
and taking my departure, but as they were only cousins, I
kept my post and waited for them to disencumber the parlor

They had no such delicate intentions, however; the lady
complained to my two pretty hostesses of the dreadful heat;
the two men on the sofa threw in a few words concerning a
proposed fishing excursion. Altogether they seemed to me
under-bred people, whose parvenudity could not be hidden by
any cunning of tailors and mantua-makers.

I considered myself an intimate acquaintance of the Misses
Westervelt, and therefore did not feel annoyed at being left
for a moment to the society of mine own beaver. While the
others talked, I busied myself in looking at Genevieve and
speculating on her possible connection with the mystery of
the boudoir, but after studying her earnestly for two or three
minutes, I simply came to the conclusion at last that she was
unquestionably a beauty. Her form was small, but very
elegant; her features were uncommonly regular, delicate, and
spirituel; her lip was the most flexible, the most patrician,
the haughtiest that I knew; her eyes were blue-gray, but as
eloquent in their mute speech as the dark orbs of Rome; and
her whole face was refined, although it could not be quite
tender, because of a gleam of pride and a sparkle of satire.
On the whole, she was a wonder of beauty and expression,
considering how small she was, and that she was only seventeen.

Presently my reverie was broken by a remark of the lady
cousin, who, it turned out, was wife of the elder Van Leer.
“Your father has just about reached New York,” she observed.

“Exactly!” struck in the skipping-jack, spinning round on
the piano-stool. “Just about having his pocket picked in
the Canal-street station.” And here he went off in a boastful
narrative concerning an adventure of his own with a pickpocket,
in which the gentleman of the swell-mob suffered
painful discomfiture, getting his thievish wrist broken by the
tremendous gripe of the skipping-jack.

So Mr. Westervelt was not at Seacliff, and had not been
there since early morning! Who then, in the name of Bluebeard's

wives, was that dreadful man in the back boudoir who
was so devoid of pity, and so anxious to expose himself?
And who was the other, the woman, whose very voice seemed
to cower and tremble at his feet, who dared not even weep
loudly, and to whose pleadings he returned such harsh answer?
The idea crossed my mind that they might have
been Mr. and Mrs. Van Leer, playing shuttlecock with the
matrimonial doves, in angry forgetfulness that the holy birds
came from Paradise. Nothing more likely, thought I, smiling
inwardly at the cruel supposition, for I had the common
incredulity of bachelors concerning the happiness of married
people, and in short was an ignoramus of life, as will be often
visible in this history.

At that moment a firm masculine step came along the hall
from the interior haunts of the dwelling. Here is another
hook to hang a guess upon, thought I, and assiduously
watched the doorway. Entered the dandy, the diner-out, the
Apollo of Gothamite tailors, the man who drew at sight on
ladies' hearts, the unrivalled manager of fancy balls and private
theatricals, the high priest of Fifth Avenue mysteries,
Frank Somerville, Esquire, Attorney at Law. He was a
very noticeable man in person as well as in manners and
character. He must have been thirty-seven at that moment,
and he had seen dissipation enough to waste the ruddiest
health; yet he was as erect, as fresh, as unwrinkled, as
graceful in port as if Father Time had but just brought him
to the first full perfection of manhood. Nature seemed to
have gifted him with that imperishable beauty, that eternal
youth, the ideal of which we see in statues of Grecian gods
and heroes. Five feet ten and finely proportioned, he had the
features of an Achilles, a clear pale complexion, stern dark-gray
eyes, waving glossy black hair and a heavy moustache
unequalled in curl and unsurpassed in blackness. I had observed
him in Paris as one of the most perfectly Gallicized
Americans that ever trod a boulevard; in London as a prime
man-about-town, indistinguishable to my eyes from the purest

bloods of the English aristocracy; and I had heard of him
in Italy as the rival of Russian princes, the conqueror of
contesse and marchesine. It was not agreeable to find him
here at Seacliff, ready perhaps to dispute with me the ownership
of any air-castles that I should seek to erect around
either or both of the Misses Westervelt.

He walked into the room quietly and gravely, with no
effort at effect. Evidently it would be impossible to pick
flaws in his manners so long as he chose to keep the polished
side of them toward me. I noticed that Genevieve colored
and only half glanced at him as he entered, and that Mary
introduced him to me with a constrained air which seemed to
indicate some stronger feeling than mere youthful embarrassment.
Mrs. Van Leer's eyes, on the contrary, flashed with
frank gratification, and she beckoned the new-comer to her
side with an easy boldness which gave one the idea of relationship,
and disagreed strangely with the excited blush that
tinted her cheeks. That they were not relatives, and that the
lady was simply one of the numberless fascinated ones, I soon
discovered. “How are you, Mr. Somerville?—How do you
find yourself?—Got rested, my dear feller?” were the salutations
of the skipping-jack and the two Bœotian brothers.

“I am really glad to see that you are able to be about,”
observed Mrs. Van Leer, with a smile that was meant to be
charmingly saucy. “How imprudent it was of you to come
all the way from New York in one morning! Oh, don't protest
that you are well; you hadn't strength enough to go out
with us, you know. I do hope that the country air will set
you all right again.”

The smile and the look with which Somerville listened to
these trivialities formed an expression that was deliciously
adulatory; it seemed to tell Mrs. Van Leer that he was perfectly
entranced with her badinage, and considered it the
liveliest, the cleverest, that he had heard in a long time.

“There is a prospect of my improvement,” said he. “I
have the pleasure of congratulating Mrs. Van Leer on the

beneficent effects of country air. It turns the fairest lily to
a rose.”

“What a shameless flatterer!” whispered the lady, pretending
to shake her ringlets at the compliment; but her very
skirts rustled with satisfaction, and her face became more
roseate than before.

“Ah, Sis! everybody knows that you hate adulation,” maliciously
observed the skipping-jack, who, it appeared, was
Mrs. Van Leer's brother, and called himself Mr. Frederick
William Hunter.

After a while Somerville came over to me, remarking that
he remembered having supped with me in Paris. That
supper, eaten at the Maison Dorée by two dozen Americans,
in honor of somebody's election, I perfectly well recollected;
nor had I forgotten the presence of Somerville, who that
evening dawned on my acquaintance in the character of the
prince of good fellows, the greatest of convivialists; but I
was surprised and a trifle flattered that my own youthful and
very timid assistance on the occasion had made any impression
on his memory. I told him so frankly, observing that it
was very kind in him thus to distinguish my twenty-fourth
part of the festivity. The smile with which he answered this
remark was peculiarly winning and gratifying, it seemed to
say: “I am charmed that you think so much of my good
opinion; let us be friends forever.” Then he turned gayly
to Mrs. Van Leer, and called on her to acknowledge that here
at last was a modest man.

“Every one is modest in your company, Mr. Somerville,”
was her reply, spoken in a flippant tone, but with a coaxing
face.

“By contrast to my own conceit, I suppose,” said he, laughingly,
but looking fervent thanks for her implied acknowledgment
of his crushing superiority. Such was his usual
method of receiving a compliment, as I found when I knew
him better. He seemed to think so much of it as coming
from you,—he had such an air of sticking it proudly in the

most conspicuous button-hole of his memory,—that he left
you in the thankfullest frame of mind imaginable, feeling
moreover that you could not say or do enough for him in
future. It was like offering a lady a bouquet, and seeing her
place it in her bosom. In such a case it is the donor who
is the obliged person, and it is the recipient who confers a
favor.

The conversation soon became general, for Somerville
made it so. He tossed off several amusing subjects in succession,
started people on the tracks best suited to them, and
seduced even the two Van Leer mummies into a delusive
show of liveliness. Indeed, the charm of his society did not
proceed so much from the wit or wisdom of what he said, as
from his tact in tempting you to reply. This, however, I did
not then clearly perceive; this I discovered long afterwards,
and by dint of much observation; for Somerville was a hard
man to find out, because he was so very agreeable. But,
clever as he was, and interesting as the whole circle had
become under his influence, I could not be diverted from
noting his voice and manner, with a view to decide whether
he was the man of mysterious exposures. Rapidly I became
convinced that the mere suspicion of such a thing did him
the harshest, stupidest injustice. His deportment, to speak
figuratively, consisted entirely of lines of beauty, underformed
by a single straight mark or angle. His voice was a luxury
to hear; mellow, powerful, varied, rhythmical, delicious, and
reminding one of the medium notes of a fine organ; very
different indeed from the tones of the invisible miscreant
of the boudoir, which, muffled as they were by the heavy
door, had still reached me hoarse and contorted with passion.
Somerville may be a dangerous man to ladies, I
concluded; but it is not in his nature to treat them with
coarseness and violence.

I turned again to the eldest Van Leer, and, after a very
brief trial, brought him in guilty. That he was just the man
to bully a woman, became more evident to me every time that

I ran my eye over his flat forehead, unintellectual breadth of
face, heavy jaws, pugilistic build, and other indications of a
most fleshly nature. To be sure, there seemed to be no sense
in his telling his own wife that he would expose her and himself
together; but, on the other hand, what intelligence or
appropriateness of utterance could you expect from the anger
of such a manifest barbarian? Then Mrs. Van Leer wore
a check of green and crimson, which might easily be mistaken
for an arrangement of dead-leaf colors. Yes, you are
the domestic hero, thought I, and if Carlyle were only here,
you would have a worshipper.

While I pulled at the tangled threads of my mystery, the
conversation skipped on from subject to subject, until Van
Leer the elder laid strong hold of it, and with one vigorous
haul brought it clear over from a criticism on “Modern
Painters,” to the consideration of shark-fishing.

“Mrs. Van Leer, is that true?” asked Somerville. “Your
husband says that you circumvented a couple of sharks yesterday;
hooked them handsomely, and ruined their prospects
for man-eating.”

“Cousin Jule has always been famous for catching sharks,”
observed Genevieve quickly.

The remark in itself seemed to be an innocent one enough,
but the manner of its utterance was so cynical, biting, and
almost vicious, that I glanced around the company to see who
had felt the teeth. Somerville was as unclouded and benignant
as June sunshine, not even turning his eye on the
pungent beauty. The married Van Leer was also perfectly
unmoved, but then it was possible that no satire could pierce
his dense blubber of stupidity, any more than the fangs of a
rattlesnake can penetrate that other gross animal who is such
a horror to Jews and such a comfort to Irishmen. The only
startled persons were Miss Westervelt, who looked alarmed,
and Mrs. Van Leer, who looked angry. Really, Miss Genevieve,
thought I, you are a little too sharp; you have no
business to go blabbing family misfortunes in that way; you

would not make a nice wife, nor even a pleasant sister-in-law.

“I tell you it's grand sport, shark-fishing is,” observed
Robert Van Leer, the second of the brothers. “Look here
now, Genevieve, you ought to try it. You see, you don't
pull him in yourself; you lay out your line, and, when the
feller bites, we haul him in for you; and you look on and
swing your bonnet. The last feller that Sis caught was a
strapper, and gave us the heaviest kind of a long pull and a
pull altogether,—didn't he, Henry? Look here now, Mary
and Jenny, you go out with us next time, and have some
sport, won't you?

“Are they land-sharks?” asked Genevieve, with a significant
crisp of her lips.

“No, no,” explained the ponderous youth, without in the
least understanding her meaning. “They're a small kind;
not man-eaters, you know; not in the least dangerous except
to your clothes; you'll have to wear some old clothes, for
you'll get all slime. Come, Mary, I say you try it this afternoon,
or to-morrow.”

“By land-sharks,” said I, drawing a bow at a venture, “I
suppose Miss Genevieve means mermen; fellows of an amphibious,
doubtful, brutal nature, who creep unsuspected into
human society and fill it with troubles.”

“Exactly,” replied Genevieve; “all such outlandish creatures
as gamblers, rakes, roués, and hateful people generally.”

There was a smile on the faces of Somerville, and the
skipping-jack; but the eldest Van Leer showed no signs of
remorse, nor even conviction.

“That is a clever fancy,” observed Somerville,—“that
wicked people are not of human race, but steal in among us
from some outcast species, commit their evil deeds, and then,
perhaps, return for safety to their own place.”

“It makes one think of the story of Branca Doria, in
Dante's Inferno,” said Miss Westervelt.

“Story of who? I say, what's the joke?” inquired Robert,

vaguely guessing that somebody had caught an idea
which he had missed. “Come, Mary, let's hear it.”

“Mr. Fitz Hugh knows all about it,” replied Mary, unwilling
to put herself on exhibition as a connoisseur of Dantesque
literature.

“Branca Doria belonged to the upper ten in Genoa, about
six hundred years ago,” said I, as Robert's slow eyes turned
inquiringly upon me. “He died one day, very unexpectedly,
and in the strictest privacy. As no one was by at the time,
a certain devil, name unknown, took the opportunity to enter
the body, deceive the relatives, and get himself into good
society. Of course he became a politician, held office,
brought on a crisis, and disgraced the respectable name of
Doria in various ways. Those, Mr. Van Leer, are the facts
of the case, I believe, although the devil always denied
them.”

“Did he? Confounded old liar!” observed Robert, with
a horselaugh either for my wit or his own. “Well, where is
this story? Not in the Bible, is it? Sounds something like
the Bible.”

“Dear me! Oh, Robert, you are too comical,” laughed
Genevieve. “You mustn't suppose that all the devils are in
the Bible. Some of them are too modern to be mentioned
there.”

For the first time Somerville glanced a reply to one of the
hits of this captious little lady. A comical look, a sort of
jesting grimace it was, which said much to her doubtless, but
provokingly little to me, the uninitiated, who stood only at
the door of some grotesque mystery, and vainly tried to recognize
human figures traversing the darkness within. On
the whole, however, I felt pretty sure that all these sarcastic
flings referred to the domestic tyranny of Mr. Van Leer;
and I naturally decided that Genevieve was extremely unamiable
in harping so constantly and sharply on a subject of
such a delicately private nature. Still, this piquancy gave
her a decided appearance of character, and made her conversation

amusing. A mere acquaintance, a simple caller on the
family, like myself, must necessarily forgive it, and indeed be
thankful for such a frank and interesting originality, remembering
that very few young ladies have the courage to risk
their matrimonial prospects for the sake of expressing their
feelings. Independent as the girl was, however, she colored
under Somerville's glance of humorous comprehension, and,
twisting away from him, began a conversation with me. She
was wonderfully clever for her age, and amused me for fifteen
minutes with odd remarks upon Europe. She thought that
the French could never be a truly great people until they
stopped lying; it was very much against them, too, that they
had so little real respect for women; no nation could be very
virtuous or noble, in which women were not listened to;
women had more heart than men, and were therefore more
refined, more moral; nearly all moral truths were reached
through the heart and not through the head; such were the
philosophies of precocious Miss Genevieve.

Presently the Van Leers and Somerville went off on a
walk along the sea-shore, in order, as Robert expressed it, to
start up an appetite for prog; the mention of dinner reminding
me that I had made a long call, I rose to depart.
Miss Westervelt asked me to stay and dine, in family style;
but I had a previous engagement which obliged me to decline.

“Come back in the afternoon, then,” said she. “There
will be something going on. We shall either ride or fish.
You can walk over, if you like,—I know that you are a
wonderful walker,—and we will send you back on wheels.”

I thanked her, and accepted the invitation, so far at least
as regarded the evening. As for dinner, and the immediate
post-prandial hours, I had agreed to pass all that time with
an old acquaintance whose paternal mansion was one of the
chiefest architectural glories of the village where I was now
stopping. Does the public incline its million ears to catch
the name of that village? Really it pains me to keep my

many-headed friend and patron in ignorance, but I have
been counselled not to mention the geographical title of the
respectable place in question. Villages are so sensitive, you
know, and so very terrible in their vengeances! For convenience'
sake, however, I must call it something; and so, hoping
no offence, I shall make bold to designate it as Rockford.