 | CHAPTER V.
CEREMONIAL AND MORAL. Seacliff, or, The mystery of the Westervelts |  |
5. CHAPTER V.
CEREMONIAL AND MORAL.
While I was still at my toilet, voices resounded in the
little front yard, and presently Ma Treat bustled up
with the intelligence that Mr. Somerville and those
Van Leers had called to see me.
“Shall I tell them that you'll come down?” she asked.
“Our parlor is yours, Lewy, and you may do whatever you
like there,—smoke or what not. Don't you be afraid because
it's the best room in the house. The best room that we've
got is none too good for your company, Lewy.”
Without knowing Ma Treat or some similarly immaculate
housewife of the olden kind, it would be impossible fully to
estimate the immensity of the sacrifice which was contained
in that proffer. To smoke in her parlor was about equivalent
in her eyes to smoking in church; and I am persuaded that
to no mortal beside myself and my intimates would she have
conceded that fragrant privilege. Thanking her as she deserved,
I told her that it would be more agreeable to see the
gentlemen in my chamber; and in a moment afterwards the
naked staircase rang and the ancient flooring of the passage
creaked beneath the tread of my visitors. First entered,
with his usual forwardness and vivacity, the skipping-jack,
then the two ponderous Van Leers, and lastly Somerville,
suavely nodding precedence to his companions.
“Well, Mr. Fitz Hugh, what sort of a night did you pass
and slapping his boots with a riding-whip. “I assure
you, gentlemen, that I consider myself a man of pretty
strong head; but for once the demon of wine was almost too
much for me, and I hooted and sang like a bacchanal all the
way back to Seacliff. Unless Mr. Fitz Hugh has the most
powerful nerves in the world, I think he must have got between
his sheets in a remarkably happy frame of mind.”
He spoke so glibly, so pleasantly and with such assurance,
that I really hated to spoil his story, although astonished at
its enormous exaggeration. Still, thinking it best for principle's
sake to set him right, and not wishing to make my debut
at Seacliff in the character of a wine-bibber, I expressed my
surprise at the effect of sherry on his system, inasmuch as we
could hardly have drunk more than three glasses a piece.
“Not more than three glasses, you think!” he exclaimed,
with a crestfallen look. “Why, I was just telling Mr. Somerville,
I think, that we must have finished the bottle. Didn't
I say something of that sort, Somerville?”
“Two bottles, you said, my dear fellow. But it makes no
difference. A bottle more or less is of no account.”
Mr. Hunter willingly retreated behind this frail apology
for his flight of fancy, and subsided into a momentary silence,
perhaps somewhat humiliated.
“Mr. Fitz Hugh,” said Somerville, “our visit is partly
ceremonial and partly moral. The ceremonial portion consists
in giving you formal welcome to Seacliff, when you
know already that we are delighted to see you here. As for
the moral or practical portion, I suppose it lies in accepting
your hospitalities. (I was handing cigars and matches.)
Thank you;—I vastly prefer the cheroots; they are milder
and sooner finished. By the way, smoking is quite a moral
exercise since the Reveries of a Bachelor were written. I
have a friend who reads that book through once a year, solely
for the purpose of enjoying his cigars in a proper frame of
spirit. He thinks that, with that preparation, one of these
weeds is equal to high mass.”
“If that is so,” broke in Mr. Hunter, “then I ought to
be one of the best Christians a-going. Gentlemen, I think
I am speaking within bounds when I say that I have smoked
more cigars than any other man of my age. Why, when I
was in college I never thought of going through the day
without puffing off at least thirty. I think you will allow,
Mr. Fitz Hugh, that that was a pretty fair allowance, considering
that I graduated at twenty.”
“You han't graduated yet, and you an't twenty,” put in
Robert Van Leer, rather gruffly.
“I am aware of the ill-natured justice of your correction,
Bob,” said Hunter; “but I shall graduate, and shall be twenty
on or about the same time; vide Family Bible and College
Catalogue. The essential of my assertion remains uncontradicted,
and that is that I have smoked thirty cigars per
diem.”
“Thirty cigars a day is enormous,” I remarked. “I wonder
you haven't destroyed your digestion.”
“It demands a constitution of iron,” he obligingly admitted,
but seemed to consider that a sufficient concession, and did
not offer to let my faith off at a lower figure. Later in our
acquaintance he retracted ten cigars, and only insisted on
twenty a day, explaining that the others were exhausted in
treating his classmates or purchasing the favorable countenance
of one of the tutors.
Meantime I felt a gentle craving at my heart, which no
observations concerning cigars could satisfy, and which, I
knew, would not be quieted, until I should be able to bring
up the Misses Westervelt as a subject of conversation. To
gain this end after a roundabout, undetected fashion, I turned
to the married Van Leer, and hoped that his wife and the
other ladies of Seacliff had not suffered by the excitement of
the previous evening. Before the slow creature's brain could
realize the meaning of my remark, Hunter answered for
him.
“Thank you, Mr. Fitz Hugh; my sister and cousins are
whenever you feel disposed to call.”
“I believe that the only person who has suffered in consequence
of the evening is Miss Capers,” smiled Somerville.
“Come now, Mr. Somerville! none of that! no exposures!”
exclaimed the skipping-jack, rising from his chair,
and striding to and fro with all the dignity of port that his
short legs would warrant. “A lady's name should be sacred.
We must make allowance, too, for the inexperience of a
mere country girl. When I told you those circumstances,
Mr. Somerville, I understood, although, perhaps, I forgot to
say, that the confession was made under a supposition of the
profoundest secrecy. I feel free to blame you for your imprudence,
because I am able at the same time to declare that I
never before knew you to transgress the slightest, the most
airy boundary of instinctive delicacy. It is the only error,
my friend, with which I have to charge you during all our
acquaintance. In point of fact, however, I can't find much
fault with you for it. The joke was too good a one to keep,
by Jove! Mr. Fitz Hugh, that young lady must be a very
sensitive one, who ventures on sentimentalities and quotes
love verses the first time that she ever meets you. But, gentlemen,
notwithstanding some slight indiscretion in Miss Capers,
I think I can assure you,—and I want you to mark my
words,—that if ever she has a year's experience of good
society, she will emerge from it one of the most entrancing
creatures that ever wore figured stockings. She has the stuff
in her to make a reigning toast of.”
“Milk toast, or dry?” asked Somerville, with a good-natured,
tired smile, like that of a polite man who has heard
insipidities enough.
“Mr. Somerville,” replied the original, stopping short in
his promenade and throwing out his right hand tragically,
“allow me to tell you that you are the most diabolical fellow
at spoiling poetry that I ever met. But I will answer: milk
she has been held long enough to the slow fire of fashion.”
Quite satisfied with his final effort, he took to his rocking-chair
again, crossed his legs, fell back gracefully and lighted
another cheroot. I was unwilling now to recall the names
of the Misses Westervelt to notice, for fear that this voluble
youth might proceed to hint that they too had fallen down at
his feet and worshipped.
“Mr. Fitz Hugh,” said Somerville, taking advantage of
our small friend's brief silence, “I am very glad that you
have joined our little coterie. The circle was large enough
before, to be agreeable; but one or two more well-selected
persons were needed to make it a luxury. I don't think that
you will find time hang heavy on your hands. Indeed, it
would be no compliment to you to prophecy the contrary; for
I believe that, in general, it is only empty-headed people who
find their time a burden. Things here are decidedly pleasant.
I don't, of course, include myself among the attractions of
the place. I am a mere guest, or, in hotel phrase, a transient
and not a permanent. But the long and short of it is, that
there are just about women enough here, and just about men
enough, and they are all interesting.”
“Thank you, Mr. Somerville,” observed Hunter, nonchalently,
at the same time looking with one eye through a smoke-ring
which he had just exhaled.
“You will certainly find them so when you come to know
them better,” continued Somerville. “The salient point of
my friend Mr. Henry Van Leer's character is, that he has
one of the prettiest, handiest sloop-yachts that ever lay off
Hoboken.”
“That's a fact, Somerville, if you are a joking,” observed
the individual referred to, speaking for the first time since
he bade me good-morning and asked me how I found myself.
“As for Mr. Robert Van Leer,” pursued Somerville, “his
originality breaks out chiefly in shark-fishing. He will catch
“Double that, old feller; hooked about four hundred
weight of 'em one day,” was Robert's remark.
“Mr. Frederick Hunter I shall not praise,” added Somerville.
“Mr. Hunter will praise himself, as the jockey said
of his best horse.”
The two Van Leers burst into a loud laugh, enjoying the
sarcasm ponderously, and, as it were, hippopotamus fashion.
“Gentlemen, I insist upon justice,” exclaimed the satirized
youth, starting up and skating about in his characteristic walk,
one hand holding his cheroot, the other waving as if he were
addressing a jury. “I will not be tried and condemned at
the bar of my friend's wit, without claiming right of appeal.
I lay my case before the world and Miss Capers.”
“Interested parties,” said Somerville.
Hunter shook hands with him in recognition of the flattery,
and sat down again to his cheroot, satisfied with himself and
with all things sublunary. He was not annoyed at being
bantered by his clever friend, but took it as a compliment to
the force and conspicuousness of his own individuality; for,
incredible as it may seem to the modest reader, there is a
vanity so dense that it is proof against all wit, and can be
shattered only by downright billingsgate or a fisticuff.
I learned by this interview that Somerville was the social
bully of Seacliff, driving the men with the same ease that he
seemed to wheedle the women, and managing both with so
much tact, wit, and grace, that it was difficult for them to
detect his tyranny. He was just satirical enough on his
male comrades to make them afraid of him, yet not sufficiently
severe to provoke them into risking a rebellion.
I thought to myself that he would not be able either to
scare or hoodwink me, and I therefore suspected that some
day or other we should have a controversy. However, I felt
amicably disposed toward him for the present, notwithstanding
a slight pang of jealousy when I thought of the Misses Westervelt;
capable of making a man exceedingly uncomfortable, I
resolved to avoid a rupture with him as long as possible.
“Well, Messieurs Van Leer and Hunter,” said he presently,
“I propose that we depart. We have bored Mr. Fitz
Hugh sufficiently, this morning, to make him free of Seacliff
hospitalities for all the summer. We must remember, too,
that he has a right to his dinner. I think I smell hot meat,
and I fancy that our friend's knife and fork are ready for him.
Good morning, Mr. Fitz Hugh. We depend on you for this
afternoon at three. Van Leer the senior, here, proposes to
put his yacht at your service, and let you hunt in his shark
preserve.”
“Very happy; depend on you, sir,” remarked the said
personage, concisely, but with a face full of sincerity. As I
surveyed that broad moon of stolid amiability, his countenance,
I could not but wonder that he should be a hard husband,
wearing matrimony like a crown of thorns rather than
of roses. His brother, Robert, slowly rolled out of his chair,
nodded, and lumbered into the hall, without speaking. Meantime
the skipping-jack uncrossed his legs, tossed the stump of
his cigar out of the window, rose to the fullest altitude of his
five feet four inches, and, by his whole manner, prepared us
for something very impressive in the way of a valedictory.
“Mr. Fitz Hugh,” he enunciated, “I never fancied ship-timber,
nor horseflesh, but I do know that I have a perfect
genius for Jamaica Rum. If you will call at my room, at
any time, I can offer you some of the rarest rum that ever
dispensed its perfume to the Atlantic breeze as it sailed the
Gulf Stream. Will you come? Ah! you will be very
happy—that is the old phrase. But, will you promise to
come? Thank you. Good-morning.”
The rhetorical flourish with which he uttered the commonest
things was one of the most amusing points in the deportment
of this young gentleman. When he bade you a good-morning,
it seemed as if he were taking you up into an
the earth and the glory of them, so magniloquent were the
gestures, attitudes, and expressions which he contrived to extract
from his small frame and undersized countenance. As
he marched out of the gate I could not avoid overhearing his
judgment of me. “When I first saw that Fitz Hugh, I
thought he was a gigantesque wooden-spoon, and took no
notice of him,” said he. “But I was mistaken, and propose
now to cultivate him as much as possible. He is a perfect
gentleman, and a remarkably shrewd, well-informed fellow.”
“I understand,” replied Somerville. “He has turned out
a good listener, and that is all you want, you most sociable
and inventive of creatures.”
“Come, come, Mr. Somerville! I have already protested
against being judged on the merits of your satire,” was the
self-satisfied response of a man whose monstrous vanity would
not let him understand that he had been called a babbler and
a liar.
Somerville's prophecy, that time would hang lightly on
my hands at Seacliff, was agreeably fulfilled. Mornings, afternoons,
and evenings, I called on the people of the country-house,
walked, rode, drove, sailed, and fished with them, went
to church at Rockford in their double carriage, accompanied
them to an agricultural fair at Bridgeport, and assisted at all
their evening entertainments of dancing, charades, and tableaux
vivants. By the end of a week I could associate more
pleasant emotions with the spot than with some other places
where I had remained months or years. It was curious, too,
though possibly not incomprehensible, that as my affection for
Seacliff increased, just so, in exact proportion, did I become
more interested in the Misses Westervelt, one or both of them,
I could not tell which. The sentimental reader will perhaps
suspect that it was the Misses Westervelt chiefly who made
the place so charming. I will not undertake to dispute the
sentimental reader altogether; he is often wonderfully sagacious
in his surmises, especially concerning the feelings of the
young girls been two old maids, I should not have gone to
Seacliff, no matter what mystery haunted it.
But the other members of our little coterie were also,
in my eyes at least, a peculiar people. Somerville was the
most wonderful incarnation of blandness, grace, and social
flexibility that I had ever met, reminding perpetually of those
famous carpet-knights, sans peur et sans reproche, the Chesterfields
and Richelieus of old. This idea of his elegance, indeed,
is taken from a young man's point of view, and it is very possible
that had I been a few years older, had I seen more of
society, his polish would not have seemed to me so dazzling
and incomparable. There was a noticeable difference between
his manner toward men and his manner toward women.
In the company of us male beings he had the tone of a man
of the world; clever, practical, feely exhibiting his superior
abilities, full of gay badinage, and often sarcastic; never irritating,
however, because his satire was conveyed in delicate
language, and sweetened with a smile of the suaviest friendliness.
“If I did not know your good nature and your excellent
sense,” this smile appeared to say, “I should not dare to
venture upon such an unworthy piece of pleasantry.” But
Somerville uttered no sarcasms, not even upon his masculine
fellow-creatures, in the presence of women. He thought,
perhaps, that no subject should be presented for their consideration,
which was not perfumed, roseate, halcyon, calculated
to bring out their gentlest emotions, or at least unlikely to
vex their fair faces with ungracious excitement. If he contradicted
them, his doubts were as insinuating as sleep, his
arguments an appeal to their vanity, and his adverse decisions
figures of speech. His whole deportment, indeed, through all
its ingredients of posture, gesture, look, voice, words, and ideas,
was a marvellously soothing prescription, perfectly adapted
to assuaging moral inflammations, producing cheerful opiate
illusions, and leaving the subject of treatment in a delicious
trance of self-satisfaction. Nothing could be more demulcent
it was enough to cure a cold only to hear him talk.
Occasionally, indeed, I wondered whether there might not be
some harshness, some vulgarity of soul, under this downy
coating of courtesy. Might he not, like that fair dissembler,
a peach, have a stone for a heart? It was an interesting
question, but I let it lie for the present, not being able to
answer it.
Another person who deserved and got a great deal of my
wonder was little Mr. Hunter. Only nineteen years old, as
we have learned, he looked twenty-four and talked sixty.
He was one of the most braggart, garrulous, shallow, puppyish,
superficially plausible, mischievous, well-meaning, restless,
skipping creatures, who ever had a high opinion of
himself without meaning thereby to depreciate his fellow
men. He was not malicious, nor uncommonly vicious; his
failings, in fact, partook more of the character of suicide than
of murder: they were considerably to his own injury, without
doing much damage to others. His stature was small and
his weight trifling, but he was not in the least suspicious of
it. His conversation was nicotian and spirituous, hovering
with tireless satisfaction about the subjects of tobacco and
strong liquors, and dispensing a moral aroma which reminded
one of the odors of a bar-room. He had such high
sentiments of honor that I cannot blame him severely for not
always trying to act up to them; and perhaps it was in consequence
of his immense respect for the truth, that he usually
magnified and adorned it as much as possible. One result of
this last peculiarity was that his talk had an inexhaustible
variety; he never, or hardly ever, told the same story twice
in the same way; his freedom from the monotony of facts
was delightful. In short, he seemed to converse on the
principle that two lies make a truth, just as two negatives
make an affirmative. In all his communications concerning
his own history he acknowledged the existence of the ideal
Hunter much more distinctly than that of the real Hunter.
lie, when his Subjective had conceived a heroic truth, he related
the circumstance as if the latter alone had spoken, and
had thereby conferred immortal honor on the name of Hunter.
So of physical courage: the actual man sometimes trembled
for his person; the fictive man was invariably as brave as
Achilles; and the lion-like emotions of the latter were
reported as the deeds of the former. During the first few
days of our acquaintance I made various absurd mistakes as
to the identity of these two individuals, and, hearing of the
transcendent worthiness of Hunter the poetic, imputed it all
to Hunter the prosaic, who in fact was subject to the ordinary
weaknesses of humanity. By a little effort you can easily
see a common person's ideal standing up alongside of him;
and the loftier, the more ethereal it is, the smaller and
earthier it makes the poor reality appear. Hunter, however,
never could distinguish between himself and his parhelion.
He made a mistake in the morale which would be
very nearly paralleled in the physical world, by a man who
should ignore his own body and only acknowledge the existence
of his shadow or his reflection in the mirror. What
an extremely ridiculous blunder, and how fortunate for the
dignity of humanity that so few of us fall into it!
The Van Leer brothers would commonly be considered
very uninteresting individuals. They were as silent as
Spartans, and as stupid as Bœotians. Their intellectual and
moral nature seemed to be feeble and imponderable in proportion
as their physique was muscular and weighty. They
were so much alike that when one was present you did not
miss the other, and so dull that when both were absent you
did not miss either. Yet, in spite of this unusual vacuity
of character, they afforded another proof of the great rule that
no human being exists, whose mind, like his face, has not
some distinctive features, some indestructible expression of
individuality. They had a certain brute resistance, a vis
inertia, a “strength to sit still,” which unobtrusively demanded,
Honesty of purpose, when they had a purpose,
was as natural to them as the hair of their heads; and in
their broad faces appeared a bovine modesty and mildness
which expressed the stolid benignity of their characters.
The only superficial difference between them was, that Robert
was the least taciturn and the most easily attracted. He
soon granted me his friendship, his trust, his confessions, his
admiration, and rather more of his presence than I would
have required if the choice had been left me.
As for his brother, it was weeks before I penetrated his
seven-fold bullhides of phlegmatic reserve, to where the blood
was warm and the heart was beating. One cause of this
greater reticence, doubtless, was that he had a wife; for the
confidences of a married man do not easily flow out toward
his bachelor acquaintance. He has another duct for his emotions;
he has told his tale to one who always hears him well;
he need not repeat it at reckless random; his desire for sympathy
is satisfied. And yet this poor fellow and his wife are
always quarrelling, I said to myself; for no other hypothesis
can satisfactorily explain the words of wrath which exhaled
through the keyhole of the boudoir. No wonder at it, I
added; they are totally different in tastes and temperament;
and her levity must naturally become impatient of his heaviness.
I had not yet observed how steadily Nature tries to
obviate extremes, and to restore endangered equilibriums,
by leading us to love and unite with our opposites. Tall men
marry short women; dull men marry lively women; and so
it should be. I myself was six feet high, and prayed for a
little wife, if any. Returning to Mr. and Mrs. Van Leer, I
confess with shame, that their matrimonial disagreement was
a humorous spectacle to me, and that I watched its symptoms
with a malicious gusto, for which, in all poetical justice, I
ought to have been punished by the gift of a Xantippe. In
a spirit of still deeper compunction, I admit that I one day
related to Somerville my eaves-dropping adventure at the
that I took it as a reproof to my babbling, and proceeded
to stammer forth that very likely the whole proceeding was a
mere boisterous joke on the part of Mr. Van Leer.
“A charitable suggestion,” said he; “but don't be deceived
by it. Our friend Henry will have to go through several
processes of transmigration, and be a monkey at least once,
before he becomes capable of a joke. I am afraid that he
and Mrs. Van Leer are simply getting used to each other,
and wearing off their corners by attrition.”
About the only discord in the life of Seacliff was an occasional
sharp note from Miss Genevieve. At least once every
day she seemed to remember some unpleasant mystery in the
household existence, and gave tongue to a sarcasm or two,
meant to startle, I could not exactly swear whom, although I
always glanced inquiringly at the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Van
Leer. Clever and handsome as the girl was, I began to dislike
her as a tartar. But in spite of these little jars, my first
week at Seacliff was wonderfully pleasant, and lingers on my
memory now like an echo of gay music. Van Leer's yacht
played the chief instrumental part in our social harmony. In
this fleet, fragile skimmer, we waged fierce maritime war
against the sharks and other finny tribes, besides making excursions
to the Narrows, Long Island, Bridgeport, and New
Haven. Mrs. Van Leer always went, always got sea-sick, always
blamed her husband for it, and vowed she would never
go again. The rest of us were good sailors, and endured her
sufferings with much philosophy. The Van Leers considered
themselves very clever in working their coquettish little clipper,
and quite equal to taking the conceit out of a stiff breeze;
but, in case of a long excursion, they remembered the possibility
of a northeaster, and reinforced their seamanship with
the amphibious wisdom of Pa Treat. My foster-father was,
like Ulysses, a knowing navigator, and a much enduring man:
in a squall he could manage the yacht as easily as trundle a
wheelbarrow, and in a calm he could let the Van Leers have
him from being a perfect commander, was his entire
inability, except in a blow, to think of the right word at the
right time; for on sea as on shore he had temporary names for
things, and was in a fair way, if his influence should become
extensive and permanent, to make an entirely new speech of
the Anglo-Saxon, and necessitate a radical revisal of Webster's
Dictionary. The helm, for instance, was sometimes the
thingumbob, sometimes the jigamaree, sometimes the rinktum.
He used to amuse us immensely by observing, in his slow,
stammering way, that it was about time to furl the crimkum-crankum,
or to set the rigajig, or to port the what-d'ye-callum,
at the same time pointing with his forefinger to illustrate
his imperfect utterance. But it was interesting to observe
how this impediment fell from off him in a moment of danger,
and how clearly and promptly his orders came when the
yacht was dipping her bulwarks, and the sea was whitening
under the angry breath of a squall. Who has not known of
similar or parallel cases? Many an experienced surgeon feels
his knife shake until the moment that he applies it to the
flesh. I once travelled with a dead shot, whose hand used to
tremble like a leaf while he raised his weapon, but who in
the act of firing, was transformed to marble, and never missed
his mark.
But let us linger no longer among such helter-skelter
reminiscences of character and unimportant incident. Really,
these writers of books sometimes become excessively tedious.
| CHAPTER V.
CEREMONIAL AND MORAL. Seacliff, or, The mystery of the Westervelts | |