 | CHAPTER IX.
A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY. Seacliff, or, The mystery of the Westervelts |  |
9. CHAPTER IX.
A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY.
WALKING up and down the beach in front of Pa
Treat's, next morning, I writhed through a tormenting
meditation on the character and circumstances of
Mr. Westervelt. How unlucky, that of all the fathers of
families in the United States, this particular one, with his
empty exchequer, and woman heart, and baby muscles,
should have fallen to the lot of the imperilled household of
Seacliff! He needed wealth to keep him from under the pecuniary
thumb of Robert Van Leer; he needed courage to
render him a match for the cool, resolute, “interesting villain,”
Somerville; and here he was, poor in pocket and poor
in spirit, a most inadequate and unsatisfactory domestic hero
indeed. A voice at my back, young and impudent as the
abrupt scream of a child's whistle, startled me from the
thorny revery in which I was wandering.
“This is the prince of summer mornings, my dear fellow,”
crowed the debonair Hunter, skipping down the green bank
behind me and clapping a patronizing hand on my shoulder,
with the air of one who expounds the universe to some dulleyed
brother.
Here is the man whom I can profitably question about Mr.
Westervelt, I reflected; here is the man who will tell me the
truth, the whole truth, and, alas! a good deal more than the
truth.
“Good morning, Mr. Hunter,” I said. “I have been taking
can't say that I admire the house;—I candidly admit that the
house is not to my taste; but, on the whole, your friend Mr.
Westervelt has a beautiful place.”
“My dear sir, I passionately wish it were Mr. Westervelt's,”
he replied, lifting his small head so as to look the
house in the face, and flinging out his hand toward it with as
much grandeur of action as if he were a magician, creating
enchanted palaces. “Mr. Fitz Hugh, if there is any one
thing on earth which pains and irritates me more than another,
it is to see a man, sir, a lord of creation, ripe in years
and experience, the sire, perhaps, of lovely daughters, at the
mercy of his wife for the roof under which he shelters his
head. That house, garden, verdant bluff, everything, belongs
to Mrs. Westervelt. Mr. Westervelt cannot touch it to obtain
bread for his lips or save his limbs from prison. It must
be a mortifying reflection to him. My dear sir, I am not
independently rich, but I have an independent spirit; and I
do say that I would never, no matter how provoked and
solicited, place myself in the position of my noble-hearted
and sensitive friend, Mr. Westervelt; never would accept a
penny from a woman which I could not repay on demand.”
He dropped his hand and watched my admiring countenance
with calm satisfaction. I knew that it was unnecessary
to set him agoing again with questions, for, once tapped
on a subject, it flew like new ale, and he ran freely, effervescently,
down to the very emptyings. After enjoying the effect
of his magnanimous declaration for a moment, he proceeded.
“Yes, sir, Mrs. Westervelt is proprietor of Seacliff. Her
husband, too generous and grandly-natured for a man of business,
seldom keeps a place of his own for more than a year
or two. What a situation, Mr. Fitz Hugh! His wife owns
Seacliff, and his children are supported by a cold and unsympathizing
grandfather. Of course you have heard of Westervelt,
senior,—Westervelt, senior, of 800 South Street,—
Westervelt, senior, the millionaire. He has made at least
son the miserable pittance of perhaps one hundred thousand
dollars, in several remittances, all of which has been successively
swallowed up by pecuniary reverses. Westervelt,
senior, still wraps himself in his five millions, and looks on
frigidly while Westervelt, junior, struggles with his circumstances.”
He paused again, turned half round and fixed his shiny
black eyes on my face to see whether I appreciated his antithesis.
Mr. Frederick William Hunter, as I ought to have stated
long ago, was an under-graduate of the University of North
America, a junior, by the rules of college, but an unchangeable
and lifelong sophomore by the dispensations of Providence.
Some men are born sophomores; remain sophomores until
death, in spite of sheepskins and every other human circumstance;
perhaps go into the next world and exist through the
intermediate state as sophomores. He was a wise fool in
the profoundest and truest sense of the compound. His
memory was remarkable; he committed with enviable facility;
he could spout long passages of Greek and Latin hexameter;
he was equally familiar with the poetry of his own language;
he wrote fluently, and was the most copious orator of his
society debating-club; but in spite of all these things, he was
incurably and inevitably ridiculous. In short, he was one of
those remarkable persons who are undeniable fools, without
being exactly underwitted. He had no prudence, no common
sense, and no modesty, except the mock species. His lying
was so brazen and barefaced, so extravagant, unnecessary,
and purposeless, that it would have been disgusting, had it
not been done with a certain curious taste and artistic feeling.
Is there not, for instance, something graceful and æsthetic in
the account which he gave me of the troubles of Mr. Westervelt?
What sublimity of eulogium, what tenderness of
sympathy! Yet there was nothing in it, for at other times
he made sport of the poor gentleman's situation, grinning at
But just now it tickled his whim to be the pathetic orator;
and his whim was his god, which he worshipped and obeyed
reverently. On the whole, his conversation had a high degree
of personality, picturesqueness, and interest. There was
one particularly good thing in it, and that was, that he
sunk the student as much as he possibly could, in the man of
the world, rarely troubling us with college songs and immemorial
anecdotes, and only recurring to such words as rushing,
flunking, fizzling, in his moments of supreme excitement.
Just now Mr. Hunter was suffering a temporary ostracism
from the university, in consequence of having entered a tutor's
room clandestinely, and demonstrated his delicate humour by
breaking the furniture. The college police had surprised him;
single-handed he had dispersed the official mercenaries;
but in their precipitate flight they had contrived to drag him
before the Faculty. As it was not his first offence, nor thought
likely to be his last, unless something was done to moderate
his wit, and as, furthermore, he had already been rusticated
without much apparent benefit, he was this time punished
with downright dismissal, only softened by a hint at future
reinstatement in case of suitable reformation and humiliation.
Accordingly he was continuing his class studies, nominally, at
Rockford, but actually at Seacliff.
I nodded with an air of entranced comprehension to his
last sentence, and he resumed the history. “I am informed,
on the best of authority, that Westervelt, senior, considers
his son an imbecile in money matters, and only grants him an
annual allowance of three thousand dollars, which is strictly
dedicated to the support of the family. Whenever I write a
novel, Mr. Fitz Hugh, I shall introduce a portrait, somewhat
satirical, you understand, of this Westervelt, senior. He is
a most curious, whimsical, prejudiced, opinionated old covey,
as dry and withered and bitter as snakeroot. Among his
other singularities he has taken a violent dislike to me, for no
reason, that I can imagine, except that I once drove by his
livery-stable pacer. I looked back and politely lifted my hat
to him in apology; but the old gentleman's bile was stirred,
and he totally refused to recognize me; indeed, he had had
the insolence to cut me once or twice before. Since that time
the breach has been past healing;—I never call on him in
New York, and he never comes to Seacliff. As for his
granddaughters, they make him one stiff visit annually, when
he lectures them furiously on economy, and sends them off
with two hundred and fifty dollars a-piece to buy new dresses.
I don't think he exactly hates them, but he doesn't care to be
troubled with them. The fact is, they are women; and Westervelt,
junior, he says, is another woman; and women, in his
opinion, are bores; an opinion, Mr. Fitz Hugh, with which I
am sometimes tempted to coincide. I have had a great deal
of trouble with the fair sex in my time. You have no idea
how frantic the city girls are after us North America fellows.”
While Hunter poured forth his little stream of information,
foaming, so to speak, with conceited grimaces and gestures,
I subsided rapidly into a low condition of spirits. Miss
Westervelt, then, was grandchild of Westervelt, senior, of
South Street; was heiress, more or less apparent, to a considerable
share in an estate of four or five millions; was, in
short, so throned on golden expectations as to be entirely out
of reach to an undistinguished, semi-indigent person like myself.
To conceal my distress I remarked gayly, “He must
be a tremendous character, this Westervelt, senior. Whenever
I pass through South Street again, I shall try to peep
into his den and get a view of the old tiger.”
“Somerville goes to New York to-day,” said Hunter.
“Somerville would be delighted to present you to him; or
perhaps I had better give you a letter of introduction; in fact
I will do so, I insist upon it.”
He had forgotten what he had told me five minutes before
about the cessation of intercourse between himself and Westervelt,
senior. He often lost track of his own stories thus,
I learned long afterwards, that he had never been acquainted
at all with Westervelt, senior, who would have nothing to do
with the Van Leers or their kindred.
“Is Somerville off?” I asked eagerly. “Why—how—
what sends him away?”
“Mr. Fitz Hugh, I beg your confidence,” said he, with an
impressive wave of that significant right hand, and a circular
glance of caution which swept the horizon. “You are a man
of the world, like myself; a word to the wise is sufficient:
secrecy!! My friend Mr. Somerville, for whom I have the
highest, the profoundest respect and admiration, is a man of
fascinating manners, accomplishments, and social powers, who
has the misfortune to be irresistibly attractive to women, and
is therefore the terror of suspicious husbands and fathers.
My friend Mr. Westervelt indulges in the one solitary weakness
of dreading his influence. Westervelt, senior, hates
him; has forbidden his own house to him; has requested
that he shall not be invited to Seacliff. [And yet Somerville
was to present me to this Westervelt, senior.] You may
well suppose that the knowledge of these facts grates on the
susceptibility of a man so delicate and courteous in soul as
Somerville. He sees that the politeness of the master of the
house is constrained, that there is no heart in it; and he
leaves. For my part, if I were Mr. Westervelt, I would
scorn these miserable doubts and suspicions. They are a
reflection, as unnecessary as undeserved, on his wife and
daughters, Mr. Fitz Hugh.”
You poor fool! I thought. Can't you see that he is simply
looking to the safety of your own feather-brained sister?
I had learned a great deal from Mr. Hunter, though, to be
sure, I could not exactly decide what was wheat in his narrative,
and what was chaff, inasmuch as he invariably related
the true and the false with the same fluency, the same picturesqueness
of circumstance, the same animation of voice
and gesture. He was the most unfathomable liar that I ever
he actually believed what he said, or, at least, felt a sensation
delusively similar to belief. His very heart went out in his
fibs, and experienced an emotion of pride and gratitude when
they were well received.
I resolved to walk up to Seacliff and see for myself
whether Somerville was really about to leave. For once,
possibly in a fit of absence of mind, Hunter had told the
truth; our elegant friend, dressed in travelling attire of
English plaid, was suavely, smilingly, but with a mild melancholy
in his Grecian countenance, bidding farewell to the
ladies. Mrs. Van Leer expressed her regret at his departure
with a brazen liberty of speech which amazed and disgusted
me. Mr. and Mrs. Westervelt were embarrassed,
and at a loss for remarks, wandering up and down with that
look which people have when they feel themselves at liberty
to say anything but what they feel. Mary was reserved;
Genevieve silent also, but sullen; the Van Leer men as inexpressive
as usual.
A sudden fancy seized me to go to New York with Somerville
and learn something positive concerning his habits and
character. When I proposed to be his companion down, he
welcomed the offer with a warmth of manner, which, in itself,
without a single compliment, conveyed the impression that he
was not only delighted, but surprised and positively grateful,
as if I had accorded to him some especial favor and honor.
It is so easy for an elegant veteran of the world to flatter a
young fellow, without even taking the trouble to lie!
In those my migratory days I always kept a carpet-bag
ready packed for short trips, and thus I was able to present
myself fully equipped in five minutes. Robert Van Leer
drove us in the double carriage of the family to the Rockford
station. Robert was in good spirits, which, indeed, was commonly
the case with him when he had eaten well and the
weather was fine, for he had strong sympathies with the
physical creation.
“I say, Fitz Hugh, old feller, come back in a hurry now,”
he roared at me over his shoulder. “Don't you stay more
'n a couple of days now. We shall miss you like thunder.
Genevieve 'll miss you particular, haw haw haw. I say,
Somerville, I've got a plan for Fitz Hugh; he's got to marry
Genevieve the very day I marry Mary. An't that a good
idea, eh?”
“Too young, Robert,” said I, coolly, although disturbed.
“A girl of seventeen isn't old enough to be married.”
“Genevieve an't old enough!” exclaimed Bob, contemptuously.
“An't she, though! An't she, Somerville? What
was that you said the other day about women being like
potatoes?”
“Don't recollect. You are thinking of Hunter, perhaps,”
observed Somerville.
“No, I an't thinking of Hunter; it was you,” insisted Bob.
“You said women were like potatoes;—old enough when
they were big enough.”
The coarse blockhead roared with delight over the comparison,
never suspecting that it was an absolute insult to
Genevieve. All the way to Rockford he continued to babble
about the two marriages; but interesting as the subject
was to me, I did not find his remarks worth remembering.
The New Haven train soon screamed down upon us, and
halted with the usual snorting and shuffling to receive passengers.
“Good bye! good luck, old boys!” shouted Robert; and,
tumbling into the baggage-car, we were off.
Let us rejoice that there exists in this world, not everywhere
indeed, but in some extra-civilized countries, that
free-and-easy institution, that ambulatory club-room, the
smoking-car. There you can enjoy one of the greatest and
cheapest of luxuries; there, too, you can get rid of those disagreeable
people who don't smoke. But in this wonderful
land of ours, the brag of all creation, such a thing as a
smoking-car is nearly unknown; and in consequence a traveller
dying for his customary Havana, must generally resort to
the baggage-car: a gloomy, contracted pen, almost windowless,
where he has nothing to sit on but a hat-box, and where
he is sure to be smashed flat in case of a collision: a pen,
too, which an inhospitable placard forbids to him, and from
which he is liable to be excommunicated by the conductor,
on suspicion that he is a mail-robber or a trunk-picker.
Somerville and I were both smoking, and hence the baggage-car.
Seating ourselves on a sailor's grimy sea-chest, Somerville
talked of Paris, Florence, Greece, and Constantinople,
while I meditated my objects in leaving Seacliff. In the first
place I meant to stick close to my friend and inveigle his
secrets from him by artful conversation; to track his doubles
in New York, ascertain his haunts, and take note of his companions;
in short, to learn his character and his possibilities
for evil. In the second place, I proposed to make the acquaintance
of Westervelt, senior, by whatever unforeseen
means might present itself; with some dim, vague, unlikely,
stupid intention of giving him a hint concerning the mystery
of Seacliff; with some hope also, that I should engage him
in the task of barring the demon from my paradise.
Accident favored me at first, and I made a suspicious discovery.
Drawing out his handkerchief suddenly to intercept
a sneeze, Somerville jerked from his breast pocket a little
chinking package. As it fell against my pantaloons, slipped
down between my feet and unfolded there, I naturally picked
it up for him, and could not avoid seeing that it was a lady's
watch, costly in make and furnished with a heavy chain, at
the end of which dangled some jewelled trinkets.
“Doubly obliged,” said he, coolly wrapping up the expensive
trifle in the scrap of newspaper from which it had
dislodged, and restoring it to his pocket. “I think your
pants saved it from smashing. I should have been annoyed
to see it injured. It was handed to me to get it cleaned.”
“You seem to be the patron saint of damaged gimcracks,”
and maladies. I saw you in possession of a lady's
bracelet the other day.”
“I am a jeweller's man, you see. I have benefited the
trade largely in my time; and I know where to get a thing
done well and quickly.”
“And you are quite skilful too, I suppose, in getting a
cracked reputation mended,” I observed, pushing on my
cross-examination.
“Really, I never tried;—I keep clear of those reputations,”
he said, bursting into a laugh in spite of an evident
effort to check himself. Whether he was amused at the
clumsy cunning of my remark, or at the immense hypocrisy
of his own answer, he very naturally did not explain, nor I
demand an explanation. I simply saw, what I had half
noticed before, that his laugh was peculiar and disagreeable.
It lifted the middle of his upper lip and exposed two long
white teeth which gleamed beneath the black moustache in a
manner that reminded me of snakes, alligators, and such like
slimy, dangerous creatures. Perhaps he knew that it was an
unpleasant laugh to look upon, for he generally smiled his
merriment quietly, and in a very gracious, becoming fashion.
“You are wise,” I observed. “It shows both charity and
good sense to let the poor broken trifles alone.”
I had been a little alarmed by his laugh, and a little posed
by his affectation of virtue. I did not wish to have him think
me either silly or vulgar; for a young man generally craves
the respect of other persons, even of those whom he dislikes;
and I had a particular regard for Somerville's unquestionable
cleverness and knowledge of society.
“I quite agree with you,” said he, following out his usual
trick of complimenting people for ideas which he had himself
suggested. “Let us avoid scandal. The less we roll it
about, the less there will be of it. It is only weak or dirty
people who enjoy dirty insinuations and give easy credit to
dirty stories. Human nature is bad enough, but not near so
classes may be none too worthy of the name, but they are far
more worthy than the disreputable classes represent them.
The corrupt are engaged in an eternal conspiracy against
the good fame of the decent. For instance, a rumor comes
out that some lady in a fashionable or religious circle has
fallen from virtue. The tale is instantly welcomed by all
the rakes and harlots in town; they rejoice in it, plead for
it, magnify it, proclaim it; they fairly wallow in it like hogs
in the mire. For my part, I can easier credit that a gay
Lothario will lie, or that circumstances will deceive, than
that a woman, who has been educated purely, will commit
that folly which in her is the crime of crimes, the sin inexpiable,
the misstep from which there is no recovery. I
think that such would be the creed of every true gentleman.”
Oh, the interesting villain! I thought; the sentiments are
just and magnanimous; but what does he mean by counterfeiting
them? Has he mistrusted my suspicions of him, and
does he intend to shame me out of them with the fear of
being considered one of the vulgar and disreputable? I
must be cautious, or I shall put myself in a false position.
He threw away his cigar now, and seemed to be awaiting
my pleasure to leave the baggage chaos. Determined to be
polite and insinuating, at no matter what cost of the means
of happiness, I tossed out of the window a delicate cheroot
only half smoked, bowed him through the door, and followed
him into the passenger cars. Disappointment and derision
pursued my novitiate in detective-policemanship. As we
sidled through the second car, looking for a vacant place in
the long rows of crimson velvet cushions, a fan touched Somerville
on the arm, and a genteel pretty lady of twenty-two
or twenty-three, who seemed to be travelling alone, blushingly
pronounced his name. With a gesture of apology for quitting
me, he halted, and took the single unoccupied seat by
her side. Another Mrs. Van Leer, perhaps, I thought, as I
rest at last by the side of a tobacco-chewing mariner, the
owner, possibly, of the aforementioned grimy sea-chest. The
task of amusing myself on the way down was not a difficult
one, for I had only to think of Seacliff and its inhabitants.
Arrived at New York, I sought out Somerville again, but
he had already got into a hack with his lady friend, and I
could guess but very vaguely at their destination from seeing
them drive up Broadway. The station of the New York
and New Haven Railroad was then in Canal Street, close by
the St. Knickerbocker. I took a coach to that palatial hotel,
exchanged a nod with the condescending and gentlemanly
proprietor, secured with some difficulty the grandiose attention
of one of the perfumed clerks, and was graciously designated
to a room in the seventh story, with a sublime look-out
over New York City and State. Having washed, dressed,
and lunched, I walked down to the reading-room, carried a
paper to one of the front windows and watched an hour or
so for Somerville. There were a hundred chances to one
that I should not see him; and the majority carried it, as it
ought in a democratic country. Admitting at last, with much
indignation, that I had totally lost scent of him, I resolved to
visit the lair of Westervelt, senior, and see what sort of
game he looked like.
I set off on foot down Broadway. The sweeping crowd
of earnest-eyedd pedestrians soon effected a diversion in my
ideas, and became an amusement. As I noted the endless
diversity of faces, the multitudinous dissimilarities of height
and form which passed me, I imagined how infinitely greater
would be the contrasts presented to my eyes, could I see the
spirits of that hurrying throng, as I now saw its merely outward,
temporal presences. One visage would be black with
the passions of hell, and another luminous with the purity of
Paradise. This man would shrivel into a dwarf of grovelling
meanness, while that would tower majestically above my
dim sight, holding his glorious brow even with the heaven of
would present themselves in unimaginable varieties of hatefulness.
The monsters that spawn in the sunless caverns of the
sea, the unnamed creatures that inhabited the first ages of
creation, the ghostly, formless shapes of Chaos and Old Night,
the chimeras, hydras, sphinxes, griffins, and centaurs of antique
credence, would not be so abnormal to my sight as
would be these incorporeal fellow-beings of mine, could I
behold them. How many a man, with the spirit of a murderer,
goes through life innocent of blood! How many
another, who longs to commit foul outrage upon innocence,
and who does not slay his passions but secretly feeds them
with vicious reveries, is always held by the chains of fear or
of circumstance within the limits of external virtue! Such,
at least, is the orthodox theological view of these moral dissimilitudes.
If the transcendentalists and optimists are right,
they are not monstrous, but normal, and the mere “steppingstones
to better things.” It is a gentle belief, certainly, and
very attractive in its catholic charity.
Apropos of these reflections, I tried to fancy the spiritual
man of Somerville, walking beside his physical man, and
contrasting hideously with its graceful and dignified beauty.
Would it so contrast, or was I doing him injustice? That
was exactly the question which I intended to solve. In the
mean time neither his spiritual nor his physical man appeared
to me.
Turning into South Street, I looked for No. 800, resolved
to know Westervelt, senior, at least by sight, and perhaps
hoping, in my silly heart, that I should fall into accidental
conversation with him, and win his instant favor. Would it
not have been a beautiful thing to charm his stony nature,
to coax him to offer me his granddaughter, and to be the
means of reconciling him with the family of Seacliff? There
was the Quincy granite portal of the money god's temple,
and there was that name which represented so many dollars,
painted unostentatiously on a small tin placard, scratched
I think that I felt somewhat as Christian did when he
passed the cave of Giant Pope in the shadowy valley. This
is the den of an ancient caitiff, I said, who could do me fearful
harm, dungeon my life in despair, break my heart on the
wheel, crack all my sinews of hope, and surround my feelings
with consuming fagots of disappointment. Then I nearly
laughed to think of the angry astonishment of the old gentleman,
if I should walk in some day and address him as
Grandfather!
While I loitered, a small, thin, alert man of seventy or
seventy-five, with large Roman features, great gray eyes,
and short stiff white hair, brushed upright, stepped briskly
into the doorway from the interior, and stared sternly at the
Quincy granite stores opposite, very much as if he had
resolved to knock them down that afternoon, and build better
ones next morning. He talked impatiently to himself, and
beat a sharp tattoo with his cane on the granite doorstone.
As I resumed my walk, and passed slowly by him, a tall,
portly gentleman came to his side and looked down at him
with precisely the same expression as if he were looking up
at him. “So,” said he, “you decidedly disapprove of the
operation, Mr. Westervelt?”
“Yes, sir,” returned the senior, in a voice as sharp, distinct,
and decided as the click of his cane. “Disapprove of
it altogether, sir. You don't want two more clippers any
more than you want two camel-leopards. Shouldn't weight
yourself, so, sir. Why, sir, my dunce of a son couldn't have
a worse idea. No, sir; no more clippers. Good-morning,
Mr. Jones.”
Down he came from the doorstone, brushing against my
shoulder, and stamping vigorously away ahead of me, without
a single glance, favorable or unfavorable, for my person.
So that is her grandfather! I said to myself. He resembles
her rather less than the dry root of a peach-tree resembles
the golden fruit which swings among the green branches
above it.
This was the whole of my acquaintance with Westervelt,
senior, for some time. I walked back to Broadway, on the
look-out for Somerville; but it was not easy to find such a
slippery needle in such a vast haymow as New York; and
at last I returned, dispirited, tired, hungry, and cross, to the
St. Knickerbocker.
| CHAPTER IX.
A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY. Seacliff, or, The mystery of the Westervelts | |