 | CHAPTER XVI.
THE SORROWS OF HUNTER. Seacliff, or, The mystery of the Westervelts |  |
16. CHAPTER XVI.
THE SORROWS OF HUNTER.
HAS any one noticed the tendency of scandalous stories
to swarm suddenly now and then, like bees, and
settle upon some astonished head, which was far from
expecting such a visitation? You are quietly walking in
your path of duty or pleasure; you are minding your own
respectable or disrespectable business; you are paying no
particular attention to the world, nor it apparently to you;
when all at once you find yourself covered, blinded, perhaps
stung to frenzy; not a square inch of your moral cuticle
without its little winged squatter; agony piercing every spot
not covered by the coat of a brave conscience. It was such
a flying and multitudinous trouble as this which one day overtook
my thoughtless friend, Mr. Frederick William Hunter.
The swarm, much as it astonished him, was one of his own
raising. Ever since the Capers paid their visit to Seacliff,
he had been haunting the mansion of the Capers. To his
cousins, (as he presumptuously called Mary and Genevieve,)
to all the Seacliff people, in fact, as well as to various male
intimates in Rockford, he joked and bragged a great deal
about the susceptibility of Miss Lottie. To Miss Lottie and
others he confided some amazing lies concerning an alleged
rivalry between the Westervelt sisters for his affections. He
had sent forth these falsehoods one by one, in the heedlessness
of distracted vanity, never expecting to hear more of
together, put forth stings, buzzed, swarmed; and all at once
Mr. Hunter became sensible that he was an object of popular
opprobrium. Jolly fathers looked grave at him; coaxing
mothers asked him no more to tea; frisky daughters demurely
avoided his bow; benevolent sewing-societies ripped his character
to rags. Hunter no longer found the milk of human
kindness all cream, but skimmed, loppered even, and as sour
as vinegar. What did people think he had done? Some
responded with one story and some with another; but all
agreed in the fearful generalities of high! fast!! dissipated!!!
Vague horrible echoes of his immoralities reached me from
time to time, but nothing distinct, no interesting particulars,
until one Sunday afternoon, when Ma Treat returned from
“meeting” in Rockford. I saw, before she reached the gate,
that something had happened to disturb the good creature.
Her face was blazing red; she walked fast and fanned herself
furiously; there was a jerk in her gait, and a snap in
her elbow. I thought at first that she was waging battle
with Pa Treat, and wondered at it, for I had never known
them to quarrel. She sat down in the doorway, kept on
fanning herself, nodded her head from moment to moment,
but spake not, and seemed to be waiting for me to ask her
what was the matter.
“So you had a pleasant afternoon, Ma Treat?” said I.
“Pleasant, Lewy? I guess I haven't. I feel as if I had
been among the congregation of the wicked. A wicked doer
giveth heed to false lips, and a liar giveth ear to a naughty
tongue: Proverbs, seventeenth, fourth. I've heard just the
biggest lies that Beelzebub ever dreamed of; lies, Lewy, fit
to ruin a world,—regarded by the eye of faith; lies fit to
make a person's ears burn right off. No, Lewy, I've had
precious little comfort in the sanctuary this day.”
“But what are they, Ma Treat? Are they amusing, these
lies?”
“Well, don't you think, Lewy? they've gone and got up
little Hunter. Just as though Miss Mary, or
Miss Genevieve either, would touch him with a toasting-fork!
I thought at first it was some of Miss Brunson-the-dress-maker's
nonsense, and I was going to give her a piece of my
mind about scandal and tittle-tattle; but she said Mrs. Deacon
Frisby told her, and all Rockford knew of it. Says I, Miss
Brunson, Mrs. Deacon Frisby is a born simpleton, and all
Rockford an't much better. Says I, Miss Brunson, what is
it?—Says she, He makes very free with 'em.—Says I, Which
of 'em?—Says she, One or both of 'em, I don't know which.—
Says I, Miss Brunson, either Mrs. Frisby or all Rockford
lies, one or both of 'em, I don't know which.”
Ma Treat set her arms akimbo, and faced me down with
as much severity as if I and Miss Brunson the dress-maker
were one and the same criminal. Dropping her elbows, and
resuming her fan, she continued—
“Furthermore, says I, Miss Brunson, when he begins to
trouble you or Mrs. Frisby, it will be time enough for you to
squall about it.—They are both fifty odd, Lewy, and as plain
as horse-blocks.—She spunked up at that, and was going to
slap back at me, when up comes that poor, simpering, silly
Mrs. Deacon Frisby. Says I to her, What is this about the
Miss Westervelts?—Oh, mercy on us! says she; it was all
a mistake; it wasn't the Miss Westervelts that he was around;
it was Lottie Capers.—There! says I, looking at Miss Brunson,
there goes a basket of lies, smash!—Lewy, she just stood
and choked; if she'd had her scissors, I reckon she'd stuck
'em into me. Oh, she's a tartar! but I guess she catched it
there for about a quarter of an hour. Such a lecter as I read
off about governing the tongue! Well, that was only the
beginning of the battle. I just had to go and take the town
down. Everybody had the stories, some about Miss Mary,
some about Miss Genevieve, some, and mostly, about Miss
Lottie Capers, and some about they didn't know who, nor
what. I talked every minute between meetings, scarcely
too, I was thinking over the stories, and didn't hear a
word of the sermon. I couldn't control my mind, Lewy, no
more than if it was a cart-load of crickets.”
I was puzzled and troubled by Ma Treat's narrative.
Could it be that the Rockford gossips had got an inkling of
the Westervelt mystery, and had only made the mistake of
putting Hunter in the place of Somerville? Could it be that
the little skipping-jack was himself the demon of the intrigue?
Or was the whole farrago of scandal a mere mistake, hatched
from some of the absurd fibs which Hunter was in the daily
habit of laying?
“Do you suppose that the Rockford people have become
seriously prejudiced against the Misses Westervelt?” I inquired.
“Well, not so very much, perhaps, after all, Lewy; I guess
some of 'em are more prejudiced against me, just now; for I've
given it to 'em long and strong, I tell you; here a little, and
there a little more. Then, on the whole, most folks think the
whole affair is one of Lottie Caperses. She's a soft, highty-tighty
piece, always flying about after the beaux like a hen
after grasshoppers, and might do something foolish without
being a bit unnateral. And then again, all the real respectable
folks say it's nothing but one of that little dirty Hunter's
whoppers. For a small man, he can tell the biggest lies,
Lewy! Can't he, Pa Treat?”
“Real light-headed feller;—real rigajig,” affirmed Pa
Treat.
“And I guess that now all the stories will blow over, like
a swarm of mosquitoes,” continued Ma Treat. “But if I
was you, Lewy, I would talk to that little Hunter, and give
him a piece of your mind.”
I did indeed resolve to talk to that little Hunter. He
saved me the trouble of looking him up and broaching the
delicate subject, by coming to my room early the next morning
and opening the scandal-bag himself. He appeared
under the pressure of his troubles.
“My dear fellow, I wish you could help me,” said he, curling
up in a chair as quietly and meekly as a sick kitten.
“I'm in an awful scrape, and haven't the least idea how I
shall get out of it. Look at me!” he added impressively, at
the same time throwing his long hair back from his temples.
“Am I a man that you would take for a Don Juan? Do I
bear the impress of a libertine nature? If so, my countenance
does me the foulest injustice; for I assure you, Fitz
Hugh, most solemnly and upon my sacred word of honor,
that I hold such a character in perfect abomination; if I
were in rags and a pickpocket, I should consider myself a
finer gentleman than the most elegant Lovelace.”
“I have no doubt of it,” said I. Hunter's vanity could
not have been crushed by rags, nor a sense of infamy.
“Thank you, Fitz Hugh! I confess that my nature is
susceptible and amative: I can love woman easily, earnestly,
passionately; I admit it and am proud of it; but, Fitz Hugh,
I always respect her. I would sooner tear my heart palpitating
from my breast, than pluck a single bud from the
Eden of Innocence.”
“Stop a moment, Hunter, I don't mean to impeach your
sincerity; still, I wish to observe, that these sentiments are
diametrically opposite to some that I heard you put forth last
week.”
“Don't be hard on me, Fitz Hugh,” he interrupted imploringly.
“I talked like a dunce.—I know it. I was carried
away for a moment—but only for a moment—by the social
sophistries of our witty and fascinating, but, I begin to fear,
godless friend, Somerville. I was a fool, but not a knave,
believe me! On the contrary, ever since I was old enough
to adore female loveliness, I have—I assure you, my friend—
adored female purity. I have regarded it as the fairest
flower of the widespread fields of humanity,—the most priceless
gem of the solemn cavern of time. Such being my real
when I am accused of despising that flower and insulting
that gem. These country gossips, these boorish tattlers
around here, assert that I have attempted to lead astray from
the path to Heaven one of the noblest, sweetest girls that
ever made physical beauty more entrancing by adding to
it the angelic pinions of moral beauty. That girl,—Lottie
Capers,—is worth them all. I too, my friend, feel that I am
the moral equal of any selected dozen of these babbling
rustics. Yet my name has been used for a tar-brush to
blacken hers. What a position for a member of the church!”
“Do you mean that Miss Capers is a church member?”
I inquired.
He blushed, hesitated, and then stammered out with a
queer look, half slyness and half shame, “No;—I am, Fitz
Hugh. I was received into the college church six months
ago, as one of the converts of last winter's revival. Don't
laugh at me. I know I'm a scabby sheep, and shouldn't have
gone near the fold. But that's another unlucky scrape that
I've got into and can't get out of. I was carried away by the
general rush, passed a good examination before the deacons,
and really thought that I had my spiritual diploma. But I
couldn't keep up to the mark, and my religion for the last
three months has been a perpetual flunk and fizzle. I wish
to Heaven that I was comfortably excommunicated! It has
all come of those cursed powows and freshman-hazings, and
initiations, and burials of Euclid, and that sort of thing.
They are good fun, but they are horrid stumbling-blocks to
piety.”
“Then why do you engage in them?” I asked.
“Why, if we don't,” said he, with a curious expression
which seemed to be a struggle of jest and earnest,—“if we
don't, we lose our influence over our unconverted class-mates.”
“At all events, you ought not to talk like a skeptic. I
have heard you do so repeatedly. I have heard you when
you really seemed to think it a remarkable proof of your tolerance,—of
people,—that you did not flatly deny the existence of a
Supreme Being.”
“Oh Lord! I know it,” he groaned. “It's all Somerville's
work, Fitz Hugh. That man is irresistibly seductive.”
“Well, well; let this pass. Don't let us lose time over
your religion. But you must set about crushing these scandalous
rumors immediately. Do you know that certain
people connect your name impertinently with the Misses
Westervelt?”
He seemed thunderstruck, turned pale, and sat with open
mouth, unresponsive.
“You must contradict all that,” I said sternly; and do it
at once, before you pay attention to the nonsense concerning
Miss Capers.”
“I will—I will,” he gasped, while the sweat gathered on
his forehead. “But for God's sake, Fitz Hugh, don't mention
this last affair up at Seacliff. They might think that I
—that I—had been—been lying about them.”
I felt certain that he had, although as yet I possessed no
positive knowledge of it.
“I'm sure I don't know what I've said,” he added, dropping
his brows with a pretence at recollection. “I give you
my solemn word of honor that I respect the very ground they
tread upon. I pledge you my sacred honor as a gentleman
that I would strike that man to earth who should dare to
speak ill of them. Oh Heaven! I wish I could—what shall
I do, my dear fellow?”
“Why, behave like a man. Cleanse your own name and
the names of these ladies. Go to Rockford this afternoon,
and contradict the scandals and wallop the scandal-mongers.
It will be easy work to clear the Misses Westervelt; nobody
has dared to whisper much evil of them. As for Miss Capers,”
I added maliciously, “you will, of course, marry her.”
“Of course, of course,” he replied eagerly. “No!” he
sacrifice myself quite to that extent.”
“Sacrifice yourself! I thought she was one of the noblest,
sweetest girls that ever made physical beauty more entrancing
by adding to it the angelic pinions of moral beauty. Isn't
that sort of woman good enough for you?”
“Fitz Hugh,” he replied, putting himself in one of his heroic
attitudes, “I have loved that creature,—loved her to
distraction; but the charm is gone,—my volcano is extinct.”
“No matter,” said I. “You are equally bound to offer
yourself, and, if she accepts, (as she will, of course,) to make
her the best husband you can.”
“Why, the fact is,—I,—I'm not quite free,” he stammered,
“I am implicated with a girl in —; that is, a girl or two.
Oh! no scandal, you understand; only an engagement, or
something very like it.”
“Hunter,” said I, “you show an admirable faith in a guiding
Providence. This is not the first time that I have known
you to commence a story without the least idea how you
would end it.”
“Don't be hard on me, Fitz Hugh,” he begged. “I really
am engaged to somebody at —;—I'll give you my oath
upon it.”
“Only engaged! Then you are more bound here than
there. You must break off all your college flirtations, and
offer yourself instantly to Miss Capers, whom you have been
the cause of injuring.”
“Well! I'll do it—I must—I will!” he exclaimed, starting
up and lifting his right hand as if taking an oath. “I'm
bound as a gentleman and a man of honor to do it. But,
Fitz Hugh, I tell you what! it will be a trial; it will be a
worse job than joining the Church;—I shall regret it all my
life. Come, I may as well make a clean breast and tell you
the exact truth. I never did love that girl enough to marry
her; never meant anything more serious than a trifling flirtation;—a
week or two of amorous dalliance, innocent and
driven into the pitfall of matrimony by a yelping pack of
village gossips,—it is enough to drive one to suicide. I tell
you honestly and solemnly that I would surrender half my
future to escape the gulf that I see yawning at my feet with
Miss Lottie Capers at the bottom of it. She is sure to accept,
you know; girls can't resist biting at a student. Why,
sir, I've known one of my classmates to be engaged to three
damsels in — at once; not boarding-school misses either,
but young ladies in society; every one of them his senior by
a couple of years or so; and he all the while making a perfect
rush among the affections of a fourth. Just think of
what I am losing by engaging myself to a girl who will make
me stick to it or sue me. It would be just like that father of
hers to sue me if I flunked.”
“I am exceedingly sorry for you,” said I, with an affectation
of pity. “It is a miserable situation for a man of feeling
and honor.”
“Stop! a salvatory idea!” he exclaimed. “Fitz Hugh,
I have a plan which will combine honor and happiness;
which will enable me to do what a gentleman should, and yet
escape Miss Capers. As I have compromised her in the
opinion of this stupid public, I will submit to an engagement,
and then induce her to break it by getting myself beastly
drunk, and lying an hour or two in the Rockford gutters, if
the miserable village has any. Make me your compliments,
my dear fellow; the conception is clever and all my own. It
is a desperate course, indeed; it is casting my Christian character
among swine in a frightfully literal manner; but then
it is a very clear case that I shall have to sacrifice something.”
“Certainly, and nothing could be less valuable, it seems to
me, than your Christian character; the swine can't harm it
much, I fancy. Now, suppose we start immediately for
Rockford. I will call with you on the Capers, and back your
suit with the father. There is no other way. As your
friend, I must insist upon it. Come along.”
I was talking all the while in a sort of angry banter, but
I looked immensely resolute and even savage, as if I were
profoundly in earnest. Let no one think that I was too hard
upon the mendacious little blackguard. It was right to punish
him for his impertinent and mischievous falsehoods, and
it was only fair to the injured Miss Lottie to give her the
choice of marrying or sacking him. He drew back from my
proffered arm with an air of consternation oddly mingled
with shame.
“Now, look here, Fitz Hugh,” he implored. “Now, what
is the use of pushing a gentleman on in this desperate way.
No no! I can't do it; there are certain reasons why I can't.
Come, I'll just make a clean breast, and have done with the
whole cursed thing,” he added, sinking into a chair, the picture
of perspiring humiliation.
“Out with it, then!” exclaimed I, drawing myself up
grimly dignified. “What is the reason you can't offer yourself
to Miss Capers?”
“Because I have offered myself, and she refused me,” he
stammered. “That's the truth, so help me God, Fitz Hugh,
and I swear it on my sacred word of honor, I do indeed, as I
am a gentleman.”
He was fairly whimpering now, and looked so ridiculously
ashamed of himself that I could hardly help laughing aloud.
“Incredible!” I exclaimed, pushing my hair up and glaring
mock-heroies at him.
“It is positively true, I do assure you,” he whined. “I
put my heart and hand at her disposal a week ago, and she
rejected both with a bland firmness which destroyed hope.”
And since then you have been revenging yourself by
promulgating lies to her discredit, I thought. The like has
happened before.
“I have cause for wretchedness, you see,” he continued;—
“overwhelming cause, without the lash of scandal. Fitz
Hugh, it seems to me that my present situation would afford
abundant material for an agitating romance.”
His vanity awakened at this idea, and, rising, he paraded
the room, talking with a faint echo of his accustomed magniloquence.
“I have done my duty; I have played the part
of a man of honor; and my reward is to suffer. I believe
that I have strength of soul enough to carry out the plot by
going frankly to Capers, braving his unreasonable, but paternal
and therefore noble rage, and swearing to him that his
child is worthy of his love. This evening, my friend, let us
be at Rockford and hasten the dénouement.”
“Give me your hand, Hunter!” said I, emulating his
melodrama, and biting down a smile. “That resolution does
honor to you and to humanity. I am with you to the end.”
He favored me with a sentimental shake, and walked away
with a gait not materially less pompous than usual. After
tea we borrowed the single-buggy of Henry Van Leer, and
drove over to Rockford, pulling up at the ponderous pine
fence which fronted Mr. Capers' showy but clapboard mansion.
A booby Irish girl conducted us, unannounced, into the
presence of the master of the house. He reposed as an
anaconda might, his small head laying against the back of a
rocking-chair, while his lank body rested on the outer edge
of the seat, and his extremities stretched far away into the
middle of the room. The American is the only man who
knows what to do with the small of his back. He sits on it.
No other nation has made this discovery.
Mr. Capers had a handkerchief over his face, which he
removed at the noise of our entrance. I noticed that the expression
of his long and coffin-shaped countenance was even
more funereal than usual, and that his small eyes were red
and moist as if he had been weeping copiously. He stared
at us in a sort of stupefaction at first, and then, making a
sudden spring, collared Hunter.
“Where is my daughter? Where is she, you little monster?”
he shouted, shaking my scared companion as easily
as a dog shakes an old hat.
“Mr. Capers!—leave go of me!” gurgled the throttled
to strike in self-defence. Oh, Mr. Capers!—do not force me
to—to lose my respect for your gray hairs!”
While talking thus in distracted jerks, he was dangling
here and there about the room, at the end of the long arm of
Mr. Capers, who made the most of his time, feeling that it
was short because his strength was going. After my first
moment of stupefaction, I interfered, and separated the two
feeble gentlemen, without any perceptible resistance. Capers
subsided into his rocking-chair, and gave way to a burst of
tears.
“Now, sir! what does this mean, sir?” shouted Hunter,
ruffling his own feathers as he observed the drooping pinions
of his antagonist. “I demand an explanation. If it were
not for your reverend senility, sir, I would take bodily satisfaction.”
“Where is my daughter? Bring back my daughter!”
returned Capers, sobbing.
“I haven't seen your daughter. I don't know anything
about your daughter,” asserted Hunter.
“She disappeared this morning, sir,” observed Capers in a
piteous whisper, turning his tearful eyes upon me. “I hope
you will pity a bereaved father's affliction. I have been
robbed of my child, sir.”
“I am astonished, sir; I am truly grieved,” said I. “Still,
I think I can assure you that Mr. Hunter has had nothing to
do with her disappearance. I give you my word that he has
passed the entire day at Seacliff, and that Miss Capers has
not been seen nor heard of there.”
“My friend Mr. Fitz Hugh is quite right, sir; I can
vouch for his perfect veracity in this respect, sir,” put in
Hunter. “As a gentleman, Mr. Capers, and as a man of
honor, I declare that I know nothing of this disappearance
of your daughter—nothing of its cause—nothing, sir, of its
nature. I called this evening solely to offer you my sympathies
and my assistance.”
This closing assertion was of course a fib, but I did not
think it worth while to contradict it.
“In that case, Mr. Hunter, I ought to apologize for my
violence,” said our afflicted friend. “I do apologize. I beg
your pardon. I trust you will excuse a man whose brain is
shaken by such a calamity.”
“Mr. Capers, I forgive you with all my heart,” returned
Hunter solemnly. “Think no more of it. Your character
is still venerable to me. I admire your piety and respect
your pugnacity. More than that, I pity your misfortune.
What can I do for you, sir? My whole manhood, bodily
and spiritual, is at your service.”
“She disappeared this morning, sir,” repeated Capers,
looking at me and speaking in the slow, meek monotone
which was peculiar to him. “We have not found a trace of
her. I went to her mother's grave, thinking that she might
be there, decking it as usual with flowers. I had the whole
town searched,—sent telegraphs everywhere. No one had
heard of her. At last I found a letter in her room, directed
to me. It stated that she preferred to marry without my
consent, rather than die of a broken heart with it. I don't
know who she has gone to marry, sir. Several persons
wanted her. She was very attractive to gentlemen, sir; she
was like her mother in that respect,—though not so handsome.
When I saw Mr. Hunter, I thought that perhaps he
had carried her off. That was the reason I ran at you, Mr.
Hunter. I beg your pardon, sir. I know that you sympathize
with me. I know that you appreciated her. I thank
you for it.”
“Mr. Capers—say no more about it,” exclaimed Hunter
in a quavering voice. “I appreciated—I adored her. If I
could find the man who has taken advantage of her youth
and confiding innocence, I would be his Nemesis,—I would
destroy him, sir.”
“I think you, sir,” replied Capers, mildly. “Your intentions
are good. But perhaps you had better not destroy him,
mother; let us visit the faithful departed. I was about to
start for the burying-ground when you came. Shall we go,
gentlemen?”
“With mournful pleasure, Mr. Capers,” responded Hunter,
earnestly. “There is something solemnizing, restraining,
and sanctifying in the churchyard. Standing by the graves
of our friends, death seems near, eternity awful, and the
promises precious.”
He started and glanced sidewise at me, seeming to hope
that I had not heard him. For one moment the burnt-out
passion of the last revival had flickered up in the poor contemptible
backslider's heart, and he had repeated half-unconsciously
one of his old pious exhortations, as a drunkard on
the morning after his debauch will drowsily hum the chorus
of a drinking-song. So ashamed was he of this momentary
effervescence of devout feeling, that, when he met my eye,
he absolutely gave a faint wink, as if to assure me that he
was merely quizzing Capers. But the effort at deceit and
bravado was ineffectual, and for one instant his countenance
was a crimson mass of humiliation.
A walk of five minutes brought us to the ancient cemetery
of Rockford. Two hundred years ago the Puritan founders
of the town had selected this sterile stretch of gravelly
earth as a very poor bit for tillage, and therefore an economical
and safe asylum for their honored dead. The solemn
husbandry of the sexton had made barrenness fertile, and
clothed the spot with a denser, darker verdure than any of
the fields about it. Long and vigorous were the grasses,
multitudinous and bright the wild flowers, which had their
roots in the graves, and drew their life from the death below.
Wonderful, terrible, and beautiful is the chemistry of the
churchyard. Men who, while they walked the earth, were
hard, cold, unsympathizing, unpoetic, become changed in
nature when they are laid under earth, and begin shortly to
spring up in tender turf, to bloom forth in sweet-breathed
bow gratefully before the winds of summer. They are more
humble and gentle than they were once haughty and cynical.
Formerly they had not a thought nor an emotion for the
beauty of nature, and now they are transformed into a portion
of that beauty. Really, when I look upon certain of my
fellow creatures, persons of the baser sort, grovelling, deformed
and despicable natures, it sometimes seems to me
that it will be a species of promotion for them, a higher grade
of development, when they are metamorphosed into graveyard
thistles and mullens. A man had better be grass for
an undertaker's horse than tread the earth but to stamp it
with violence and pollution.
Mr. Capers and Hunter walked straight toward a part of
the cemetery chiefly devoted to the moderns, as was shown
by a fashionable congregation of marble pillars and obelisks
which gleamed whitely through the dusk of evening. I
lingered here and there, to pull the moss from the face of
some half-sunken brown headstone, and to spell out the by-gone
virtues of the venerable sleeper below. A man must
needs study epitaphs to get an idea of the moral decadence
of the human race in his own generation. I believe that I
am not at all uncharitable toward my personal friends and
acquaintance, when I declare that no such spotless and
attractive people exist now as have mouldered away in our
ancient churchyards, if headstones may be trusted. What a
shining catalogue of saints might be gathered from those
eulogistic tablets! What a pity that we have only such
brief and dry biographies of creatures so elevated and exemplary,
whose whiteness of soul should have been perpetuated
by both statuary and stationery, and who doubtless were not
because God took them! Or is it possible that these sermons
in stones are too good to be true, and that the carver
made noble what the Creator but made tolerable? Let us
imagine a modest ghost,—who has been pacing the churchyard
penitently all night, or doing some spiritual deed of
morning and glancing at the inscription before he glides
again under the stone. “A good husband,” he reads, and
says, “Ah! but I was often harsh and bitter.”
“A faithful father,” he continues, and begins to doubt
whether he is not at the wrong slab.
“A most exemplary Christian,” the sentence concludes.
Here he holds up both his hands with amazement, exclaiming,
“Alas! either men have lied concerning me, or this is
not my place.”
It is doubtless a hard thing to compose an epitaph. First,
you must satisfy the friends of the incomparable deceased,
and then you must satisfy the carping public, and lastly, you
would like to satisfy yourself. Harder still would the task
be if we had to consult and content the dead; and that, not
because he would be vain, but because he would be humble
and truthful. I never find one of these vaunting headstones
defaced, but what I suspect that the ghost did it.
If ever a departed spirit had reason to obliterate its own
epitaph for very shame at its fulsome panegyric, it was the
spirit of the lamented Mrs. Capers. Such a list of virtues,
such a catechism full of excellences, as the bereaved husband
read to us from the superb glistening obelisk! It was like
the epitaphs which will be written during the millennium.
“I got that up myself, with the help of my sister and our
good minister,” said he. “I only left out one important point
of her character. She was remarkable tasty in dress, sir;
but somehow I couldn't bring that in nicely. I was very
sorry, sir, for it was one of the chief things in her; but perhaps,
on the whole, it wasn't a proper idea for a graveyard.
Oh, sir! that lady was a treasure to me. I never appreciated
her properly until she left me. Nor I never quite
knew how much I lost in her, until to-day, that my daughter
quit me so mysteriously. If Mrs. Capers had lived, she
would have guided Lottie, and Lottie would have been here
this minute, instead of wandering far away from the tomb
together.”
There was a sincerity of emotion, a pathos of single-heartedness
about this very singular man, which occasionally
almost hid his simplicities and eccentricities, as the flowers
of a plant will sometimes overbloom and half cover its leaves.
I could not help reverencing him at that moment, and instinctively
removed my hat in a sudden start of sympathy.
“Yes, my wife! our Lottie ought to be here!” he repeated
in a louder tone.
“She is here papa,” whispered a girlish voice behind us;
and then came a rush of female vesture, a sob, and a scream.
There was the runaway Lottie hanging on her father's neck,
kissing him and crying in his shirt-bosom.
“My child! my child!” shouted Capers, grappling her
round the waist, and sticking his head over her shoulder,
after the fashion of stage-fathers.
“I have returned; pardon me, papa,” whimpered the
young lady, while her eyelids dripped like caves upon the
paternal linen.
“You shall leave me no more;—I forgive all,” cried the
father.
It was perfectly sentimental, and melodramatic. Nothing
was wanting in place, time, action, words, voice, or gesture, to
heighten the delusion, and make me believe that I was surveying
the closing scene, the agonizing dénouement, of a popular
play in some third rate-theatre. Precisely the same
thing, done on the boards, would have tapped the lachrymal
glands of a thousand industrious, unromantic, commonplace
people. Poor novelists and playwrights are perpetually caricaturing
real life, with a faith in human stupidity which pays
us no compliment; but here real life, in the hands of two
simpletons, was absolutely made to caricature the work of
poor novelists and playwrights. That nothing might lack to
the romance of the occasion, an unexpected recognition took
place. I had just restored my hat to its astonished head, and
which was raging beside me, when a hand was laid on my
shoulder and some one behind me said, “How are you, Fitz
Hugh? Ain't you going to speak to me?”
The voice was familiar, notwithstanding a tremble in it,
and helped me to recognize the faintly starlit form and face
of Barker, the friend with whom I had dined on the day I
first saw Seacliff.
“Why, Barker! how do you find yourself?” returned I.
“What brings you here?”
“I have the honor of being the husband of that lady,” he
whispered, in a sort of sob of anxiety.
“Oh! I see. Well, now is your time; fall on your knees.
I'll make away with myself. See you to-morrow when all is
happily settled.”
Seizing Hunter, who had stood in a staring trance ever
since the sudden appearance of the runaway, I gently
dragged him out of the yard, so as to leave the family at full
liberty to arrange its dislocated affairs. He was perfectly
submissive, walked like other people instead of skipping, and
made no disturbance beyond a little mild moaning.
“Oh! what a moment!” he murmured, when we had
reached the high-road. “Ah, Fitz Hugh! one such experience
is enough for a man's life. I supposed that I had lost a
noble woman; but I see that I have let slip a seraph.”
I could hardly help laughing at the ninny. He really
thought that the melodramatic seene which we had just witnessed
was full of the highest earnestness and the purest
pathos. To me the only wonder was, how a grave, serious
fellow like Barker, a man not brilliant, but uncommonly sincere
and practical, could have been caught by such a sentimental
little goose as Miss Lottie. However, many a sensible
man before him has saved up all his weakness for his
choice of a wife.
The rest of the evening was spent in contradicting whatever
rumors may have existed to the injury of the Misses
crony to crony, eating his own words, but he did it faithfully;
this minor trial being much lightened perhaps by the remembrance
of the gigantic bereavement which had just overwhelmed
him. “Why, old feller,” was the usual reply of his
gossips, a smile of friendly contempt meanwhile spreading
over their faces,—“why, old feller, I never believed it;
knew it was one of your stories;—girls like them ain't a
going to stand your kissing.”
It was quite characteristic of Hunter that he soon began
to plume himself on the disappointments and humiliations of
this memorable evening. He thought that they made him an
interesting personage, a very hero of the furnace of affliction,
fit to excite the wildest wonder and affection of woman.
Vanity is the most deceptive and derisive of practical jokers,
leading its multitudinous victims to flaunt their follies and
misfortunes, their short-comings and vices, their every peculiarity
in short, however witless and unimportant, before the
eyes of a grinning world. How many a man among us has
boasted himself as being somebody because he differed from
certain other men in a thing of no consequence; because, for
instance, he hated pancakes, or turtle soup, or some other
dish which the generality of us have agreed to admire!
While we laugh at Hunter, therefore, tricked out as he is
with conceit, let us not forget that other and more enlightened
satisfaction of laughing at ourselves.
| CHAPTER XVI.
THE SORROWS OF HUNTER. Seacliff, or, The mystery of the Westervelts | |