University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
A MOTHER IN ISRAEL, AND TWO SONS OF BELIAL.

Ever since the commencement of authentic history,
at least, men have been pretty punctual at dinner,
whatever might be their passions and aspirations,
their joys and their sorrows. Fixed times for meals are one
proof of civilization; it is only animals, children, Hottentots,
and other savages, who eat at any and every hour of the
day; and so, in my character as citizen of an enlightened
republic, I obeyed Ma Treat's prandial summons, although
not hungry.

My respected foster-parents, their chubby grandchild, and
I, just filled the four sides of a small cherry table, spread now
with a clean brown linen cloth, and laden with fried fish,
boiled corned beef, boiled greens, baked potatoes, lettuce, and
dried-apple pie. Pa Treat asked a blessing in his usual
stammering style, but with an uncommon tremor of emotion.
Before long, I observed that Johnny was staring at me in
even more reverential wonder than ordinary, and that Ma
Treat's moon-like, silver-bowed spectacles shone upon me
with an unusual effulgence of affectionate pride and interest.

“Ah, Lewy!” said the good creature, at last, “we know
all about it, and you needn't keep so silent and secret. I do
bless God sincerely that he spared your life, and that he gave
you strength to save that dear child's life. Oh, Lewy! a
horse is a vain thing for safety; Psalms, thirty-third, seventeenth;

and I'm afraid whenever I see anybody trust one;
and I do say that it's one of the greatest mercies of
Heaven—”

Here her voice broke down and crumbled away to an indistinct
whimper; she drew out her handkerchief, smothered
her emotions, and wiped her spectacles.

“That's so,” coincided Pa Treat; “not that all hosses are
quite so awful; but a runaway is the dragon.”

“Oh, it wasn't so serious an affair as you imagine,” observed
I, a trifle flattered, however, at the immediate spread
of my fame. “But who was in such a hurry to tell you of
it?”

“Why, I just went up to the great house, to show them
Irish helps of Mrs. Westervelt's how to bake an Injun puddin',”
said Ma Treat. “Stupid, awkward, catholic creeturs
they are to be sure; and I wish they'd stay in their own
popish countries and worship their saints to home. But Mrs.
Westervelt, she was down in the kitchen, and she let me
know the whole story, and she told it real handsome too,
Lewy, with her heart in her mouth. I declare I was so
scared, and proud, and glad, and grateful, I like to cried
right in the puddin'. Says I, Mrs. Westervelt, says I, I
don't wonder at it a bit, says I, for he was the finest, handsomest,
strongest, best-hearted baby that ever was, and it's
just like him; yes, Mrs. Westervelt, says I, it's just what I
should have expected of him, for I nursed him, and I know
exactly what a nater he had, says I. Mrs. Westervelt she
nodded and looked as amiable as pie, as much as to say that
she was glad to hear it. And now, furthermore, Mrs. Westervelt,
says I, if Miss Mary don't take a liking to him, and
say Yes just as soon as he asks the question, I say that she's
an unnateral, ungrateful girl, not worth paying any attention
to, and ought to die an old maid, says I. Mrs. Westervelt
she smiled, and says she, I think he ought to stand a good
chance. Yes she did, Lewy; you needn't laugh so; she said
just that, and looked as though she could say a sight more;

only she wouldn't, I suppose, for fear it would seem like
courting you right out.”

“But, Ma Treat, what if you have been spoiling my
chances!” was my answer. “I fancy that young ladies dislike
to be dictated to in love affairs. They want their
matches made in heaven, unsuspected by their earthly fellow
creatures, and not certainly known even to themselves
until the decisive moment. They like to move in a mysterious
way, and not have the world pointing out their goal.
You will surely ruin my prospects with Miss Westervelt if
you keep on as you have begun. She won't bear being told
that I am to win her without an effort. Depend upon it,
that, like other handsome girls, she means to be loved long
and well before she loves back. Don't you see that you
have been setting up her pride against me?”

“Not a bit of it, Lewy,—not one bit of it, I tell you,” responded
Ma Treat resolutely, but looking a little alarmed.
“No, Lewy, she ought to govern her pride, and favor you because
you deserve it, without thinking any such foolish nonsense
as you've been talking of. However, I won't say
nothing more about it up there; not another word, Lewy.
You shan't say that I go a-doing you mischief.”

Ma Treat was touched, but I did not attempt to soften her
annoyance, because I wanted to keep her well-meaning, voluble
tongue under bonds of discretion. For the present her
feelings found vent in lecturing Master Johnny. That hearty
youngster, moved doubtless by original sin, had already devoured
two platefuls of greens, and being refused a third,
stuck out his under lip silently but vindictively.

“Johnny! Johnny!” said Ma Treat with exceeding glumness,
“take in that under lip; pull it right in or I shall snap
it. Oh, Johnny! Johnny! how often has granma told you
to govern your temper! and Johnny don't do it. It's your
wicked, sinful heart, Johnny, that sticks out your lip. As a
man thinketh in his heart, so he is; Proverbs, twenty-third,
seventh. It's the original sin of your wicked nater; that's

the trouble, Johnny; and not because you haven't had greens
enough. Now eat your potato, and try to put down your
naughty heart. See! Mr. Fitz Hugh is looking at you, and
granpa is looking at you, and granma is looking at you, and
the angels are looking at you, and they all feel sorry to see
your sinful disposition.”

Johnny slowly sucked in his rebellious lip; his eyes rose
dolefully to mine, and dropped in profound humiliation; he
swallowed his potato and his spunk together. The one sorrow
of this healthy urchin's life, was the excessive difficulty
of being a good boy. To attain this distinction, at least in
the estimation and according to the teachings of his grandmother,
it was necessary to undergo labors and trials compared
with which a barefooted pilgrimage round the world
would have been a trifle. He must be blameless in deed,
word, and thought; eschew alike sins of commission and
sins of omission; resist the world, the flesh, and the devil;
love all Orthodox Christians, indiscriminately; desire vehemently
the conversion of the heathen; set much store by the
restoration of the Jews to Canaan; understand the prophecies,
and take an interest in their fulfilment; anticipate with
perpetual longing and gladness the coming of the millennium;
besides several minor duties, such as hankering after his catechism,
keeping Sunday, and obeying his grandparents. All
these excellent works, moreover, he was to perform, not because
he liked to be obliging, not out of any good natural
instincts, but from the most mystical and spiritual, the most
unchildlike, the most unearthly of motives. And finally,
when all was said and done, he was to get no manner of
praise for it, because he was still a miserable, detestable victim
of the original sin entailed upon him by his remote
ancestor, Adam. In fact his intrinsic and necessary wickedness
was enforced upon him by his grandmother, with a theological
rigor, and, as it were, ferocity, which appeared to
leave him small hopes of ever becoming anything better than
a perfected scapegrace. She represented him as buried

under an amount of original and acquired iniquity that might
have thrown a small universe into despair; as full of every
evil imagination, capable of committing any crime, and more
than ordinarily responsible for the expulsion from Eden, the
flood and other judgments. Indeed, if Ma Treat's words
were worth anything, Johnny's case was entirely desperate,
both for this world and the world to come. Yet, in spite of
the fiendish wickedness which she constantly attributed to
him, Ma Treat, by some strange contradiction, was exceedingly
fond of Johnny; and if the fat little demon fell down
stairs, or had an indigestion, she worried and watched, and
even cried over him as if she were in peril of losing a cherub.
It was a curious commentary on her hard, literal system of
divinity, and showed that the same was believed by her head
rather than by her heart. In truth, she was a good, kindly
woman, full of natural affection and practical Christian charity,
notwithstanding the grim unswerving faith with which
she reasoned up to her New England puritanism.

By the way, I am inclined to think that our inclement theology
has some connection with our austere and intolerant
climate. If there is no spiritual sympathy, there certainly is
a picturesque similarity of effect, between our comminatory
dogmas and our savage winters, between our fervent religious
aspirations and our resplendent and torrid summers. How
can a population be equable and moderate in its faith when
its thermometer is perpetually raging in the most radical extremes?
With our rheumatic springs, no wonder that we
have been tempted to damn infants, and turn all the heathen
into hell without distinction. There is nothing, to my mind,
which so encourages one to a belief in the existence, power,
and malignity of the devil, as one of your ordinary, obstinate,
hopeless, sullen, savage, and vicious easterly rain storms of
Boston.

“Come now, don't be hard on Johnny,” observed Pa Treat
pityingly, as he surveyed the profound humiliation of that
Lilliputian reprobate. “He an't such a dreadful hard case;

leastwise, not all the time. He only wanted a little more of
the what-d'ye-call-it. Cherk up, Johnny; there'll be another
dinner to-morrow. You shan't want for something to put in
your thingumbob (stomach?)”

Pa Treat could no more call up the right word by land
than by sea; and he had all sorts of unimaginable titles for
furniture and table utensils. In his nomenclature a knife was
generally a tomahawk; a candlestick, a lightning-rod; the
sugar-bowl, the old hat; butter, goose grease, or pomatum;
the rocking-chair, old sneezer; the mantel ornaments, jigamarees.
The world seemed to acquire a new aspect whenever
he spoke of its details.

Doubtless the reader has already noticed, with proper admiration,
Ma Treat's ready quotations of Scripture. Perhaps
it may seem somewhat ill-natured in me to hint that there
was a little harmless pretence in this fluent repetition of
texts, and this careful reference to chapter and verse. After
wondering for a week or so at her extraordinary memory,
which appeared to comprehend the entire Bible in all its minutiæ,
I discovered that she used the same passages over and
over, and that most of them were drawn from the Book of
Proverbs, of which the brief, pungent antitheses stick so
easily to the mind. There was no meant deception, however;
it was unconscious, harmless, and sprang from the best
intentions; the fruit of vanity, it may be, but not of hypocrisy.

But the world does not, perhaps, care to be enlightened
concerning the moral and social peculiarities of my foster-parents,
and, if it good-naturedly takes any interest at all in
my story, would very likely prefer to see me hurry up to the
country-house, and inquire for Miss Westervelt. Well, I
was as impatient to do this as any one could be to have me;
but the Seacliff damask was laid two hours after Ma Treat's
brown linen; and so linger I must, no matter how wearisomely
to myself and the rest of my species. It was not
till three o'clock that I dared think that the moment had
come to venture into the Westervelt presences. Laying

down In Memoriam, with which I had been preparing for a
great lyric effort in conversation, I climbed the bluff, strolled
through the thicketed garden, and entered the open front door
without ringing. It was no novelty, no liberty, this; for I
had done it repeatedly before, and by the invitation of Mrs.
Westervelt: but it led me into another adventure of unintentional
eavesdropping. Finding the parlor empty, I lounged
up to the copy of the Cenci, and amused myself with studying
out the points of resemblance between it and Genevieve.
Suddenly I heard earnest voices and hasty footsteps in the
back boudoir; it was a rush and murmur as if one person
was following and urgently imploring another; it ended when
the door jarred open and closed again behind Somerville.
Flushed, excited, hurried, like a man escaping from reproaches
or importunities, he came in alone, muttering a curse between
his teeth, and, not seeing me, stopped by a window to wrap
up some bright object in a handful of lace. He was not so
quick but that I caught the gleam of gold and the prismatic
flash of diamonds.

What does this mean? I thought. Does my elegant friend
indulge in the eccentricity of pilfering, and rob his hosts in
the very peace and sanctity of after-dinner? That is a lady's
bracelet, and I would swear that I heard the rustle of a
lady's dress in the boudoir. It is not Mr. Henry Van Leer,
then, who is the hero of these mysterious bullyings; it is our
mild and mellifluous exemplar, Somerville. But who is the
lady? Mrs. Van Leer? I will watch, and discover.

I tapped the floor with a boot-heel to warn Somerville of
my presence, but did not feel in the least bound to keep my
eyes from his face, or otherwise humor his supposed evil conscience.
If he had been guilty of any ungentility, his air, as
he turned to me, was the very apotheosis and sublimity of
impudence. He was quite able to endure my stare; he
neither started nor stammered under it; he simply nodded,
and smiled a friendly good-afternoon.

“A broken ornament, which I am to get repaired in New

York,” he added, as he dropped the valuable package into
his breast-pocket. “The ladies will be mortified to find that
you have been left alone. They are full of admiring gratitude
for your heroism, I assure you. Mrs. Van Leer has
just had a quarrel with me because I threatened to repeat
her last compliment on Mr. Fitz Hugh. Of course, she carried
her point, and I had to promise secresy.”

Mrs. Van Leer! thought I. Thank you for telling me so
much. I understand now who is the lady of the boudoir.
As for the cause of the quarrel, my friend, I fancy that you
would hardly swear for such a trifle as you mention.

“Very hard and uncharitable in Mrs. Van Leer to deny
me such a gratification,” I said, aloud. “But where is Miss
Westervelt? I hope she has not suffered at all from her
escapade.”

“A little more than she chose to confess at first. Good
pluck the girl has; but nerves and pluck are separate things.
Ladies will have their faint turns, you know; and she had to
drink her camphor-water and go to bed. That is why you
were not sent for to dinner. At the risk of committing flattery,
I must tell you that she insisted on staying up to receive
you, and that I had to use all my authority, as the senior
gentleman of the family, to make her retire. So don't be
surprised to hear Mrs. Van Leer call me Doctor Somerville.
I want to forestall her satire.”

By this time my mind was somewhat drawn away from
that incident of the bracelet. I was gratefully titillated by
the compliments which Somerville had contrived to stick into
me, while I was somewhat indignant at the jesting tone in
which he had spoken of Miss Westervelt's faint turn, and still
more at his exerting any domination over her, especially such
as tended to keep her out of my way. He might have acted
for the best in his interference, but it was not pleasant to
know that he dared interfere. Of course, I did not make
myself ridiculous by either looking or uttering my annoyance:
I simply twisted my moustache with a nonchalant air, and

asked him if he did not think Mrs. Van Leer clever; yes, I
twisted my moustache, and surveyed myself in the glass as
if I didn't care a straw for Mrs. Van Leer or any other
woman.

The entrance of the lady referred to prevented Somerville
from replying to my question. Within two or three minutes
thereafter, her husband and his brother, Genevieve and
Hunter made their appearances successively, while Miss
Westervelt sent excuses, thanks, and a promise to see me
to-morrow. The conversation was general and just tolerably
uninteresting. I spent some little time in furtively watching
Mrs. Van Leer and Somerville, and finally left the house
none the wiser for my sidelong investigations, but followed by
a brood of harassing doubts and suspicions which vexed me
sorely in my lonely chamber.

One thing was perfectly clear, and that was that I had
made a great mistake in my brief life at Seacliff. Taking it
for an opera comique, I had whirled round the stage dancing
and smiling like a crowned bacchanal, when all the while it
was a tragic theatre in which some grave mystery or woful
drama was evolving. Suddenly my festive garland had been
torn from my head; a word of dark, weighty significance had
been whispered in my ear; and I had become sensible of
the solemnity of the place and time.

The longer I thought of the secret understanding or misunderstanding
which evidently existed between Mrs. Van
Leer and Somerville, the more momentous it appeared.
She was just the vain, light-headed, flippant-tongued flirt
that one naturally expects to find astray, when the world's
busy bellman, Rumor, goes about the streets crying, Lost!
As for him, he was, or at least seemed to my young eyes, a
cool, adroit, brilliant man of the world, a perfect master of
flattery, a connoisseur of the female heart, as handsome in
person as he was modish in manner, and in short, the ideal
of a woman-killer and cavalier servente. Whether his morals
were bad I did not know, although since the afternoon I

more than suspected it. But why was he so harsh and menacing
toward Mrs. Van Leer, or whomsoever else may have
been the weeping woman of the boudoir? What was the
meaning of that bracelet which he had torn away with violence
and curses? Would he condescend to torment a
woman by robbing her of her trinkets? Had he quarrelled
with Mrs. Van Leer, and demanded back some pledge of
former affection? Was he jealous of this ornament because
it had been presented by another? What? Why? Who?
I went through a round of perplexing questions, and found
no satisfactory answer.

Leaving this part of my enigma, I became quite indignant
at the thought that such a questionable intrigue should exist
under the same roof with so much purity. Who should
interfere and put a stop to the painful contradiction? I was
too much of a stranger to do it; the Van Leers' were too
leaden-headed, and Hunter too feather-brained; the lady of
the house was too enervate; the girls were too young. I
fell back on Mr. Westervelt as the only possible champion
of the outraged, or, at least, endangered sanctity of the
family; as master of the house, husband, father, church-member,
and social aristocrat, his was the right to sweep
away with a swift hand this spider's nest of scandal. I remembered
him, to be sure, as a small, frail, light-complexioned,
light-haired man, very neat in dress and fastidious in
manner, extremely afraid of dirt and dirty people, and painfully
timid in approaching porters, baggage-masters, hackmen,
and in general all hale, sanguineous, muscular personages.
Not by any means had he impressed me as a heroic
nature, or commanded my confidence in case of emergency,
whether physical or moral. But then he was in alien lands,
surrounded by mysterious and unreasonable police regulations,
bullied by his passport, and ill at ease in French.
Under the wings of the American eagle, standing on his
country's laws, fighting for his hearth, I hoped that he would
be another creature and show himself worthy of the household

throne. He was to come home next day, and I might
trust in his presence to turn the troublesome mystery out of
doors.

But would he discover the intrigue? Had any one but
myself appeared to discover it? This last question had not
hitherto occurred to me, and it staggered my suspicions, for if
Somerville and Mrs. Van Leer were not doubted by the
members of the family in which they lived, I might be very
wrong in doubting them. Well, I would still be watchful,
but I would be cautious, silent, charitable. There is no more
common mark of a mean soul, no more certain index of low
instincts, if not of low breeding, than to question, on slight
grounds, the moral worth of our fellow-creatures. Besides,
the subject was a disagreeable one, and I hated to think of it
seriously.

There was still another bugbear looming in my future.
The two facts, that Mr. Westervelt needed rich sons-in-law,
and that Bob Van Leer was worth two hundred thousand
dollars, frightened me not a little when I had fairly surveyed
them in unison; they made up a very gigantic and horrible
scarecrow, which to the eyes of my imagination towered
grimly on the brow of Seacliff, and seemed to say to my
heart, as it circled longingly about the place, “Don't try to
light here, you vagabond!” Would Miss Westervelt marry
for money? was an impertinent question which presented
itself. I rejected that hypothesis with indignant negation,
but admitted lugubriously that she might marry to save
her father. What man in my condition of spirit would not
have wasted at least an hour in running over the list of his
effects, and speculating as to how he could double, treble,
quadruple the modest aggregate? How could I quickest
change thirty thousand dollars into two hundred thousand?
I thought of operating in stocks, of buying western lands, of
hunting up a mine, of digging for Kidd's treasure, of begging
a government contract, of trying a lottery ticket, of importing
a cargo of Shanghae roosters. “`Let me be quickly rich,'

said Ortogrul; `let the golden stream be swift and violent.”'
I would have been willing to go early to bed and early to
rise for the remainder of my life, if it would certainly have
made me wealthy, according to the blessed promise of the
proverb.

Finally, in my aspirations after riches, I bethought me of a
certain good genius, whom I had hitherto intended as my
guide only to fame. For the sake of a woman, that greatest
of tempters, I resolved to turn Literature into a gold-digger,
and make her slave in Demas's filthy mine, instead of leading
me through some æsthetic land of Beulah toward the
shining towers of Fame's Eternal City. In the first place,
Messrs. Bookworm and Binder should immediately, and
without any further nonsense, publish MY BOOK. I made
a calculation, that, if they could but sell the certainly conceivable
number of one hundred thousand copies, the profits
therefrom would go far toward making me acceptable
to a needy father-in-law, while the literary glory would be
sure to win the daughter. I believe that many a young
fellow, who, after all, is not particularly vain, has some such
delusion concerning the possibilities of his first book. I wrote
to Messrs. Bookworm and Binder;—I besought them to let
me loose at once on the public;—I exhorted them not to be
afraid of summer as a bad season for sales; in short I tried
to communicate to them some of my own enthusiasm concerning
myself. The publishing matter arranged, and no other
short and easy way to riches seeming to be just then open, I
went to bed immediately, and to sleep as soon as might be.