 | CHAPTER XV.
A FRIGHT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. Seacliff, or, The mystery of the Westervelts |  |
15. CHAPTER XV.
A FRIGHT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
In half an hour Mary returned to the veranda, saying
that Willie's troubles were over.
“Well, now I shall put an end to mine,” observed
Genevieve. “I am going to bed.”
“Don't Jenny. Wait till the rest of us go; wait till our
men come home; won't you, please?” pleaded Mary.
“No, I won't please,” returned Genevieve, always particularly
unamiable after any unusual fatigue or excitement.
“The railroad has given me a splitting headache, and I
won't make it worse to oblige anybody. There! do take
your hands off me,—I'm so hot!”
Without replying, Mary put out her lips for a kiss, and
Genevieve gave her one of the sulkiest. This little aside
passed in the front hall, unmeant, perhaps, for my eyes and
ears, but not quite occult, nevertheless, inasmuch as I had just
lounged into the garden and stood in front of the doorway.
If Genevieve must snap at somebody, why should she select
her unoffending sister to bear the bite? For two good reasons:
in the first place Mary was the person who happened
to be nearest her at the moment; in the second place, her
nature was temptingly gentle and uncombative; for your
feminine bully almost always selects a quaker antagonist.
By way of a general observation, and without special reference
to Genevieve, I remark that nearly all our quarrels are
are so distinguished as to boast any) usually pass by on the
other side, while indifferent persons have too few subjects in
common with us to render a tiff often possible. If a man at
the close of his life could count up all the hard words that
he has uttered, he would find, I suspect, that the majority of
them have been vented on his intimates and well-wishers.
Not that humanity is a bad thing, however: it is juxtaposition
which is to blame: without contact, no friction.
Genevieve marched off, and the rest of us remained as we
were. At ten o'clock, as the moon went down, the south
wind rose rapidly, driving before it an army of clouds swift
and sombre; and in an hour more, although not cold nor
exactly stormy, it was as boisterous as a summer night could
be without rain or thunder. I rose once to leave, but Mrs.
Van Leer had become timorous, and protested that I should
not stir until the gentlemen returned, declaring, that she
would follow me home rather than stay with no one but
women. Accordingly, I sat down again, cunningly taking
care to establish myself on the same settee with Mary. Presently
the idea that some prowlers might be looking at her
from behind the garden thickets, frightened Mrs. Van Leer
from the veranda; and dragging Mrs. Westervelt after her,
she retreated into the parlor, where she could hardly be dissuaded
from closing the doors and bolting the heavy wooden
shutters. Nothing could induce her to sit by a window; she
was afraid that a murderous hand would be slipped in and
laid on her shoulder; and so she crept into a corner, beyond
the longest arm's length of the awful out-doors. It was by
way of keeping up her spirits, I suppose, that she talked of
all the murders that she had ever heard of, dwelling especially
on such as had been perpetrated in the country. Some
of her stories were ghastly enough to make a timid person's
skeleton walk straight out of his flesh with fright. She soon
infected Mrs. Westervelt with her childish terror; and there
they both sat, as white as if they had been comfortably murdered
for an hour or two.
All this tended to leave me in a pleasant situation. I was
by the side of my houri, alone, and could talk to her without
interruption. I was visible from the parlor, but dimly;
audible, but imperfectly, for I dared to speak low. Had I
fallen on my knees to Miss Westervelt, or committed any
other similar absurdity, I doubt whether either of the two
married ladies would have had the presence of mind to be
surprised at it. Once I heard Mrs. Van Leer whisper that
if she only had her Bible, she would like to read a chapter,
and oh, if that pious Mrs. Treat would come back and sit
with them! At most times I should have smiled to hear the
devil wishing to turn monk, but then I only noted the remark
with that quick, stealthy mental touch which so often lays
up an idea in the memory when consciousness is not aware
of it.
“So you are not afraid?” said I, addressing Miss Westervelt.
“No. I might be, however, if you were not here. Cousin
Jule is absolutely contagious; and the house is well situated
for a romance, bloody or otherwise. Don't you think so?
It is so lonely, that strange things might happen in it without
being seen or heard by the rest of the world. Then it is
by the side of the sea, so that pirates could land at it and
mysterious boats put out from it laden with dead or living
victims. Then what grand nights we have for tragedies!
Such nights as this, for instance, with the wind and the sea
conspiring to drown every cry for help! roaring, foaming
nights, when the waves rush on the rocks like murderers!
There is one thing more. The house is conspicuous, so that
the country people could point it out from a distance, and
strangers could get a view of it without taking the trouble to
leave the cars. Don't you think we have advantages?”
“Great! I wonder that nobody has had the taste to improve
them.”
“Ah well! I have sometimes had a feeling that something
would happen here,” she continued, speaking low, and with a
very absurd, of course; but it sometimes scares me.”
“I have had the same feeling,” replied I; “yes, and more
than that, an idea that something fearful is going on here,
from day to day; something which you do not see, and which
I do not see, although I am conscious of its presence.”
“I beg of you!” she said, imploringly. “You startle me.
You talk and look too much in earnest.”
She seemed so troubled, that I relented and tried to reassure
her by smiling and by a tone of jest. “Don't look so
grave, Miss Westervelt. The mystery, if there be one, may
be ludicrous instead of serious. Luckily for the world, more
farces happen in it than tragedies. Thackeray insists that
every house has its closet with a skeleton in it. I think,
with due deference to so great a philosopher, that he would
have come nearer the truth if he had asserted that one house
in ten has its skeleton, while the other nine have each a
punchinello. Unfortunately, the laugh of the punchinello
is transitory, while the grin of the skeleton is terribly enduring.”
“Who is our punchinello?” she asked. “You don't mean
Robert? Poor fellow! I won't laugh; he is too good-hearted
to be ridiculed; he truly is. I hope you give him credit for
a good heart.”
“I do, I do, most certainly. I give him credit for the
best of intentions.”
I was, however, very uncharitably delighted to find that
Miss Westervelt claimed nothing more for Robert than that
“good heart” which is so well spoken of in this world and
so much despised. By the way, does any one wonder that
we both thought of Robert as the family punchinello, and
not of Hunter, who was our real buffoon? Let it be observed
that Hunter was no suitor of Miss Westervelt's and
no rival of mine, so that he exacted little of our attention
compared with Robert, who haunted both of us like a clumsy
nightmare, at once laughable and terrible.
“What a pity that we can't all be clever!” was her next
remark.
“What a pity that the valleys can't all be as high as the
mountains!” returned I.
“I know it. If we were all eminent, there would be no
eminence. Still, one can't help regretting that Robert's good
heart could not be mated with an equally good head.”
“Excuse me, I can help it very easily; in fact, I don't
care at all to have him clever,” I replied boldly.
“Why not?” she asked surprised, and then added rapidly,
without giving me time to answer the question, “Oh, I was
going to say—let me see—that Robert is, at least, intelligent
enough to perceive his own want of capacity and to lament it.”
“Yes, and I respect him for it. A humble genius is certainly
one of the noblest moral and intellectual spectacles
possible. But a humble numskull is also a beautiful sight to
behold. Yes, a simple head, meekly conscious of its simplicity,
mourning over the fact daily, and, as it were, asking
pardon for it of its fellows, is in my eyes little less than
venerable.”
“What an ingenious compliment! I am afraid that you
are ironical; but you ought to be sincere; Robert deserves
as much as that. However, it still seems to me a pity that
any good people should be simple, or that any bad people
should possess great talents.”
I thought at once of Somerville, and consequently of the
mystery. I must be cautious,—I must not commit myself,
I reflected,—until that cloud is cleared away, and I know
whether I can venture my happiness in this family without
risk of grievous shipwreck.
“It does seem a moral blunder of providence,” I said aloud;
“at least it seems such to our imperfect human vision. By
the way, I am anxious to ask you one question. Did you
ever wonder that manly beauty, social tact, and brilliant
faculties had been conferred upon—well, I may as well say
it boldly—upon Mr. Somerville?”
“Mr. Somerville?” she said with a disturbed air. “Mr.
Somerville?” she repeated, as if to gain time to collect her
thoughts. “But you don't mean to hint, I hope, that he puts
his advantages to a bad use.”
“I have certainly suspected him of it. Frankly, I have
no confidence in him.”
“Are you not afraid that you are uncharitable?” she murmured
after a little silence. “I am surprised. I have never
heard you talk in this way before.”
“Don't believe that I talk thus often or of every one,”
I exclaimed, for I shrank at the thought of not appearing
kindly and noble to her. “Let me explain to you what
I feel and mean. Have you never had an instinctive aversion
to this or that person,—a dread of him even,—without
knowing what evil thing to allege against him? You have?
Yes, I know it; all women have had that feeling; most men
also. Now, have you not afterwards felt a curiosity to learn
whether your antipathy was well founded, and whether others
shared it? I think you will allow that such an impulse is
natural and excusable. Will you not?”
“Yes,—yes.—I understand you,” she replied, slowly
and thoughtfully; “I do most certainly excuse all that you
said. I will not repeat it, either; for I am sure that you do
not wish me to. As to my own opinion of Mr. Somerville,—
I cannot tell what to answer. I don't quite comprehend him;
he is a strange man to me. I ought not to say that I dislike
him; for, although I have been acquainted with him several
years, I still know very little of him; and besides, he is a
guest of ours and an old friend of mamma's. He was her
lawyer once, and the manager of her property. But that
was before she married papa.”
“I imagine that he pays very little attention to his profession.”
“I suspect so,” she replied, absent-mindedly. “I wish he
had more to do; then he would not come here so much.”
She recollected herself, and added, “But I do not know anything
against him.”
“I told you,” resumed I, “that I had an instinctive consciousness
of some hidden drama which is enacting in this
house, or at least in this neighborhood. I refer that consciousness
chiefly to the presence of Mr. Somerville. I feel
that he brought the spell of mystery with him, and that if he
should go away forever it would be broken. If there is an
evil genius in human shape among us, it is he.”
“Mr. Fitz Hugh! you alarm me. Don't talk to me so,
if you please. I do doubt him; I am afraid of him; and
yet,—and yet, what has he done? Don't let us speak of it
any more. I am getting as timid as Mrs. Van Leer.”
I leaned forward to obtain a view of the two ladies in the
parlor. Mrs. Westervelt was growing somniferous in spite
of her alarms, and would doubtless have been asleep already
but for the pettish remonstrances and shakings of her companion,
who loved company in misery even more than at
other times. Mrs. Van Leer sat bolt upright and broad
awake, her black eyes wide open and glancing perpetually
from window to window with a ludicrous watchfulness.
“Why don't you come in and close up the house?” she
asked impatiently at sight of my face. “You will catch your
deaths of cold, out there.”
“No danger,” I replied. “I will get a shawl, however,
for Miss Westervelt.”
Stepping into the parlor and picking up a light crape affair,
which lay on an ottoman just as the tired Genevieve had
thrown it down, I returned with it to my lovely fellow-watcher.
She let me draw it over her shoulders and fold the
ends loosely across her neck. Once or twice, perhaps intentionally,
perhaps not, I touched those shoulders in arranging
the fragile drapery, and though the immediate contact was
but with a boddice,—a fragment of silk,—yet my brain spun
in its secret chamber as madly as a whirling dervish. All
recollection of the mystery was dissipated when I resumed
my seat beside her. Somerville, Genevieve, Robert, Mrs.
Van Leer, the plaid dress, the words spoken on the night of
dislodged from my thought in that moment, blew away and
was forgotten like last year's thistle-downs. Yet I sat silent
and unable to speak; it seemed as if my very mind had lost
its voice.
“They stay a long time at Rockford. It must be near
midnight,” said Miss Westervelt.
“I bear them no ill-will for it,” I replied. “They are
doing me the greatest of favors.”
It was Miss Westervelt again who had to break a terrific
silence. “But you ought to pity Cousin Jule. There she is,
frightening herself nearly to death.”
“Cousin Jule is a ninny,” said I. “She hasn't half the
cause for alarm that I have.”
I wanted to be asked what cause for alarm I had; and
Miss Westervelt knew that I wished it, or she would have
been no woman; but she either did not choose or did not
dare to gratify me. Her reserve piqued me, and disheartened
me also, for I took it as a reproof to my forwardness.
Back ran my wits, like Mistrust and Timorous at sight of the
lions, rolling down the hill Difficulty clear into the slough of
Despond. Some ignoramus of women and manners has observed
that faint heart never won fair lady. I should like to
know what truly earnest and noble heart ever won its lady
without at least a dozen faint turns before it achieved victory.
Recommencing the dialogue in a spirit of contemptible poltroonery,
and trying to assume an air of mere jesting, I observed
that Mrs. Treat's remarks concerning a certain evil
perambulator had so shaken my nerves, that I quite dreaded
to go home alone.
“So much the better,” she said. “Most people are not
sufficiently afraid of the personage you speak of. But I
know that what you say is affectation, or rather jesting. You
are not timid, and I have reason to be grateful for it. Every
time that I am reminded of that narrow escape of mine, I feel
that I have not thanked you sufficiently for risking your life
might have killed me, or at least rendered me deformed for
life. Oh, it would be dreadful, certainly, to become a cripple
at a blow, or to be stricken straight into idiocy. I think that
I would rather have my eyes closed forever than to see nothing
aright with them,—to have them always cheated and
mocked by delirium. How horrible it would be to go right
out of reason into madness! Not to know my friends, not
to know my father, my sister!”
I felt that a crisis had come in my life, and that I was
about to utter my own destiny. I do not know what I should
have said, for there were no words in my brain, but only a
confused whirl and hum of emotions, such as we all have felt
at moments, filling the eyes with the light of their passage
and striving to utter themselves without speech. I dare believe
that all the fates and fairies were listening on tiptoe for
my next syllable, dying to know what it would be and what
would be the answer to it. That mysterious syllable, loaded
with results of gladness or disappointment, I had no chance
to enunciate, for just in that moment of moments, Mrs. Van
Leer sprang from her sofa and ran out to us, exclaiming,
“Oh, Mr. Fitz Hugh! Oh! what was that?”
“What was what?” I returned, with an impatience
which was natural if not justifiable.
“Oh! that noise. I'm sure I heard something up stairs.
There! there it goes again! Oh! there certainly are robbers
up stairs. Do go up and see what it is. No, don't go;
stay here with us.”
Something had in fact fallen in the room above; some
light article of furniture, I thought, like a chair or lampstand.
At that instant quick footfalls and a whisper of
drapery fled down the stairway, and Genevieve rushed into
the parlor, her Cenci-like face so pale and frightened that
I hardly noticed the carelessness with which her dressing-gown
folded her. Indeed, I had very little chance at first to
observe anything, for the moment that she appeared I had
and made a faint of it. Carrying the absurd creature into
the parlor, I laid her on a sofa, where she remained until her
wits got the upper hands again.
“What is the matter, Jenny?” demanded Mrs. and Miss
Westervelt together.
“I—I do—don't know,” stammered poor Genevieve,
whose lower jaw was not under control. “Something waked
me up, and then I heard the dresses fall in our closet, and
I ran down.”
“Stay here,” said I, checking Mrs. Westervelt and Mary,
who were about to rush up stairs, I suppose after Willie.
“Give me a light, and I will see who is there.”
“Oh, Mr. Fitz Hugh, be careful! don't be gone long!”
exclaimed one or both of the sisters.
I will not conceal the fact, that as I mounted softly to the
second story I took out my pocket-knife, and, opening the
large blade, slipped it into my sleeve. It was a miserable
weapon, not two inches and a half long; but I grasped the
handle firmly and resolved to make it do. I was not alarmed,
for I am pretty stolid as regards the mysterious terrors of
darkness, and, being strong in muscle, am not much troubled
by that instinctive shrinking from pain which is the foundation
of physical cowardice. Traversing the upper hall on
tiptoe, I entered the chamber from which Genevieve had just
escaped. Will any lady comprehend me and believe me
when I say that the only circumstance about that room
which frightened me was the impudent fact that I was in it?
The mystic articles of attire which lay over chairs, the bed
with its coverlet thrown back, the two pillows, one dinted
and the other fresh, the pair of wash-stands, the very towels
even, all combined to make my heart beat horribly.
There was no one in the room, and nothing suspiciously out
of place, except that two chairs lay overturned at the bedside.
The closet, a long, passage-like affair, only contained
a couple of hat-boxes, half a hundred dresses, as it seemed
together on the floor in one corner. Respecting their sanctity,
I laid no profane hands on them, and withdrew my
bachelor presence. It was not till long, long afterwards that
I ever confessed to any one, how, on my way out of the
room, I stooped and kissed most gently, most reverently, that
undinted pillow; yes, that one and not the other. I had just
performed this act of devotion when it struck me that I heard
a noise in the closet; and so opening it again, I walked to the
end, and investigated the afore-mentioned pile of silks, delaines,
and muslins. Yes, there was a somebody hidden there, and a
very small somebody too, and I had him out in an instant,
kicking mildly and blubbering vigorously. It was Willie
Westervelt, in his nightgown, and frightened half out of his
infantile senses.
“Oh, please, please!” he begged. “Willie will be a good
boy. Willie won't tell any more 'tories.”
On looking at me and seeing who it was, he gave an
“Oh!” of astonishment, and stopped crying, although he
caught hold of my coat, as if for protection.
“What is the matter with you?” said I. “What are you
here for, Willie?”
“I thought it was the devil,” he replied, whimpering
again. “He shan't come and take Willie. Willie won't tell
any more 'tories.”
“No, of course he shan't,” I asserted. “Come, we'll go
and see your mother and sisters. Why, Willie, you have
scared them terribly. No, no, don't cry. The devil shan't
have you. I'll cut his tail off if he comes here.”
Willie gave a hysterical giggle, but was only half reassured
by this heroic promise. I took him in my arms and
walked down stairs, calling out as I descended, “Here he is;
here is Master Tom Thumb, the burglar.”
Mrs. Westervelt had gone, taking some back way to her
child, but the two sisters rushed into the hall and burst out
laughing at sight of us.
“And was that all?” asked Genevieve, her color coming
back to her cheeks in a torrent.
“Yes, that was all. I found him in the closet, frightened
there, I fancy, by Mrs. Treat's sermon.”
Just then carriage wheels rattled up to the front gate, and
loud jovial voices told that the revellers had returned. Shaking
back her dishevelled hair, Genevieve snatched the candle
from me with one hand, dragged Willie along with the other,
and escaped up stairs as her sister and I turned into the
parlor. I expected to find Mrs. Van Leer stark insensible,
but she had come to, as precipitately as she had gone off.
To see the energy and fluency with which she set upon the
four truants, the moment they entered, one would have
thought that Bob and Somerville, and Hunter, as well as her
husband, had sworn to love, honor, and cherish her. The
two Van Leers, naturally unpolished, and just now, well
champagned, roared with laughter. Somerville was perfectly
sober, perfectly bland, regretful and apologetical.
“Most certainly, Mrs. Van Leer,” said he. “You are
quite right. We are exceedingly to blame for staying away
so late. Our single, solitary excuse is our confidence in the
heroism of Mr. Fitz Hugh.”
“Oh! Mr. Fitz Hugh is very well,” cried Mrs. Van Leer.
“Of course it was very kind in him to stay with us. If he
hadn't, I should just have marched down to Mr. Treat's and
spent the night there. But even Mr. Fitz Hugh is no
match for a house full of burglars.”
“Burglars!” roared Bob. “Oh, good Lord! you don't
mean to say burglars have been here! Oh Lord! Oh
Mary!”
Mary instinctively retreated before the excited youth, who
was advancing upon her as if he proposed to shield her in
his arms from the peril which had vanished.
“No burglar at all, Cousin Jule!” she exclaimed. “It
was Willie,—nobody but Willie.”
“That is so, Mrs. Van Leer,” I added. “Willie is the
seems to have given him the nightmare. He woke up, ran
into his sister's room, knocked a chair over, crept into the
closet, and pulled down some dresses to hide himself. That
is the whole affair.”
“Oh, that Mrs. Treat!” burst forth Cousin Jule. “Oh!
I wish that woman was sunk. If I saw her drowning, I
wouldn't throw her a stick to save her;—I wouldn't, I
wouldn't, I tell you I wouldn't—no such thing;—I'd see her
drown, and glad of it. I've a great mind to slap Willie, too.
What business had he to alarm the whole house! Where's
Mrs. Westervelt? I want to give her a lecture about bringing
up children.”
The poor woman still trembled from head to foot with
terror, and could hardly be held responsible for her confusion
of speech. She rushed up stairs now, taking the only candle
that remained in the parlor, while Mary ran on before her,
forbidding her to touch Willie, or to scold him either, until
she could set him a better example of courage.
“Keep a stiff upper lip, Jule,” laughed Henry Van Leer,
as he followed heavily on his wife's track. Bob tramped
after him, boisterous with wine, excitement, and stupidity;
and Somerville drew me along, observing in a whisper,
which I then hardly noticed, that the scene would be
amusing.
When we reached the open door of the room Mrs. Westervelt
was coddling and soothing Willie, who, like most children,
cried vehemently at the voice of sympathy. I merely
glanced within, and immediately started back, stung by serpents.
Genevieve had drawn forth the dresses which the
little boy had torn down from their hooks in the closet, and
was shaking them out one by one, preparatory to replacing
them. The one which she had in her hand at that moment
was the fatal plaid silk of dead leaf-colors.
How little we know of what is passing in the thoughts of
our fellow men, even when they stand so near us that their
have seen what was in my spirit just then, he would have
stepped out of my reach. For one instant I contemplated
evil to him; then, turning on my heel, went down stairs
without a word of good-night; went away from the house
without a glance backward.
No human being sinneth to himself or herself alone.
Sooner or later, by some unimaginable path or other, the
consequences of every guilt, however secret, however unshared,
will steal upon some person innocent of it, and
stab him to the soul. Nature takes a broad revenge upon
wickedness, punishing not the culprit only, but parent,
brother, sister, lover, friend, and even stranger. Because
there had begun in that family, a dark drama, in which
I had no part, and which I even hated to suspect, it had
been decreed that I should suffer the blight of hope and the
death of love. “No man liveth to himself, and no man
dieth to himself.”
I reached home, locked the front door after me, and was
creeping slowly up stairs in the dark, feeling as if there were
not another being in the world beside myself, when I heard
Ma Treat call to me from her bedroom, “Lewy, is that
you?”
“Ay ay. What! awake yet?” I replied, rather impatiently,
and with a vague sense of injury at being spoken
to.
“Yes, Lewy. I ha'n't fetched a wink of sleep since I got
home; I'm as wakeful as a starved mouse, Lewy; and all
for that little creetur. I'm so sorry I spoke sharp to him,
and fretted his little heart, and troubled Miss Mary. I'm
jest like a foolish old hen, that's always trying to set on
other folkses' eggs. My old father-that's-gone-to-heaven's
opinions was, that it took a mighty good Christian to mind his
own business; and I'm beginning to come round to his idee.
Did the poor little heart cry very long, Lewy?”
“I don't think any great harm was done, Ma Treat,” said
the subject.
“Well, I'm so glad! So he quieted away, and got himself
off to sleep, dear creetur, did he? The tongue can no
man tame, Lewy,” she added, forgetting for once to name
chapter and verse. “Now go to bed, dear, and good-night.”
| CHAPTER XV.
A FRIGHT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. Seacliff, or, The mystery of the Westervelts | |