University of Virginia Library

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
TRYING TO BELL THE CAT.

I RECEIVED a letter in a yellow envelope, evidently
of counting-house origin, and directed in the high,
strong handwriting of Westervelt, senior. Breaking
a vast seal, so broad and red that it made me think of the
front of a brick store, I laid wondering eyes on the following
pugnacious epistle.

Here was a lively prospect. I should have to fight not
only Somerville, a host in himself, but Mrs. Van Leer and

perhaps Mrs. Westervelt. I had the girls, to be sure; and
the father would arrive to aid me with his feebleness; but
what these fragile natures amounted to, the whole summer
had been witness: they had longed for months to drive Somerville
away, and had not dared attempt it. Indeed, the longer
I thought of the man's astounding impudence in sticking
to a household where he was so suspected and hated, the
more likely it seemed that he would fight a desperate battle,
and sell us a victory that would perhaps ruin the Westervelt
name. After a long cogitation, it seemed best to see him
alone, with the object of getting him out of the fortress by
diplomacy; and so, touching his arm as we dispersed from
the dinner-table, I requested in a whisper that he would
grant me a few moments of private conversation. Assenting
with civil leer, he followed me to my room, threw himself on
the sofa, lit a cigar, and waited my pleasure, smoking with
the most urbane tranquillity. I also took a few whiffs at a
cheroot, feeling that I needed some occupation of that sort to
hide my agitation.

“Mr. Somerville,” I said at last, “I am afraid you would
think it quite odd if I should ask you what you are staying
here for.”

“You are a wonderfully clever person, Mr. Fitz Hugh,”
he replied, assuming the offensive. “You have a natural tact
for divining people's feelings. I should think it quite odd, as
you say; and moreover, I should be tempted to consider the
question slightly rustic.”

“Nevertheless, I venture to put it. Certain strong reasons
oblige me to.”

“There are no reasons that oblige me to answer,” said he.
“Still, out of pure good nature,—out of mere sheer benignity,
observe—I will try to gratify you. I am staying here,
then; first because I have been invited to stay; second, because
I choose to stay. Any more inquiries to make?” he
continued, becoming a little insolent and common in his
manner. “Don't restrain your curiosity out of regard to my

feelings; they are too tough to be punctured by interrogation
points. As for politeness, that is a mere triviality, not worth
our attention, eh?”

“You are not perhaps aware,” I resumed, without noticing
his sneers, “that your presence has given rise to reports injurious
to the character of one of the ladies of the family.”

“Not in the least. How shocking! My dear friend, you
pain me horribly. Don't repeat that, I beseech you, as you
value my peace of mind.”

“Such reports exist, and I beg you to consider the fact
seriously and in the manner of a gentleman,” I went on.
“Your only honorable course, it seems to me, is to leave the
house and keep away from it.”

“Pshaw! nonsense! Come, be a man, Fitz Hugh. Let
us despise the tittle-tattle of a weak world. Our consciences
are pure as new milk, are they not? To be sure, we have
both flirted a little with Cousin Jule; but, after all, we have
kept our innocence. I shall remain and defy slander, sotto
l'osbergo di sentirmi puro.”

“And I, on the other hand, shall be obliged to urge your
departure,” said I. “Don't be astonished, and don't laugh:
it is a very plain case, and I am quite in earnest. Seriously,
Mr. Somerville, I must beg you to pack your trunk and be
off in a quiet way as soon as possible.”

“Upon my honor you are a cool one,” he replied, throwing
down his cigar and fixing a broad stare on me. “Upon my
soul I can't be angry with you, it is so supremely ridiculous.
What the devil gives you the right to govern the house in
this style?”

“Of course I speak as the future son-in-law of Mr. Westervelt.”

He took out his cigar-case, selected another regalia, lighted
it, and drew a few puffs, all with an air of placid pensiveness.

“Fitz Hugh,” he said at last, “I beg pardon,—I don't wish
to hurt your feelings,—but I can't help wondering that you

engaged yourself to this young lady, handsome and amiable
as she is. You are not aware, perhaps, that to a young man
of your person, manners, family, and other advantages, it is
easy to approach girls in other ways than by marriage.”

I felt the blood simmer in my forehead, and rose with a
menace which was half involuntary; but he merely waved
his hand deprecatingly, not offering to defend himself; and
so I could not strike him.

“I am not alluding to Miss Westervelt,” he said. I spoke
of girls in general. You hardly intend to champion the
whole sex, I presume. Did you suppose that I was alluding
to Miss Westervelt? What did you imagine that I could
possibly have to say against her? Do you think that I
would repeat any scandal of her, if I knew of one? You
are entirely mistaken if that is your judgment of me.”

“Somerville, be careful of yourself. You know nothing
against Miss Westervelt; and if you intimate that you do, I
will throw you out of the window.”

When I made this disagreeable remark, so indicative in
general of an unhappy temper, I was in such a passion that
I could not hold my hands still, but kept twirling a mahogany
chair on its legs as if it were a top.

“I am silent,” he returned, drawing a sneer so fine that it
was almost invisible.

He watched me steadily all the while, and seeing now, perhaps,
that I was coming to the while heat of anger, he
dropped his libellous insinuations, and resumed the jesting
tone with which he had opened the conversation.

“So I am compromising Cousin Jule by my visits here,
am I? Why, Mr. Fitz Hugh, you might as well blame a
goose for compromising the fox that steals him. Doesn't she
triumph over me? Doesn't she run away with me? Isn't
it a case of simple man-stealing? Answer me that, my dear
sir, you who have suffered in like manner.”

“It is not Mrs. Van Leer,” I replied, slowly, “It is Mrs.
Westervelt.”

He sat up all at once, and for a moment stared at me anxiously,
with a deeper sincerity in his eyes than I had ever
seen in them before; but in ten seconds more he had frozen
over again, and lay there as cold and calm and passionless
as a New Hampshire lake in midwinter.

“Impossible, Mr. Fitz Hugh!” said he, knocking the ash
off his cigar. “This is a serious affair, really. But you
must be mistaken; there cannot be any such unfortunate reports
as you speak of; the world, stupid as it is, would not
point so entirely in the wrong direction.”

“There are such reports,” I replied, infuriated by his talk
about “the wrong direction.” “And the long and short of it
is, Somerville, that you ought to go, and you shall go, and go
directly. I will give you till to-morrow noon to get away.”

His eyes sparkled now, and for the first time in our acquaintance
I saw a quick flame spring into his pale olive
cheek, for in general his visage was fire-proof, and he never
blushed. “Young man,” said he, “you will oblige me by discontinuing
this jest. It has an impertinent look, and there
is not with enough in it to make it endurable. I give you fair
warning that if you don't drop the subject, I will make you
repent of it.”

“The subject cannot be dropped as long as you remain
here,” I replied instantly. “I must insist on your departure
to-morrow. And if you won't leave the house of your own
accord, I give you my word that I will put you out by force.”

“Damn your insolence!” he exclaimed, springing to his
feet and advancing a step toward me. “Damn you! what
do you mean by this?”

I stood up and met him half way, the heavier man of
the two by a dozen pounds, full as muscular, and, I believe,
a good deal more combative.

“Absurd!” he muttered, constraining himself and falling
back on the sofa, while the icy smile stole over his face again
although his hands trembled. “Can't we settle this without
making Yankee Sullivans of ourselves? I beg pardon for

the word insolence:—a damning, you know, is no insult.
Now then, what right have you to banish me in this despotic
style? This house belongs to Mrs. Westervelt; it is her
income which pays the housekeeping expenses; and it is by
her invitation that I am here. I have long been her friend,
and I was her lawyer for years. Is it by her authority that
you order me off in this cavalier fashion? And where is
Mr. Westervelt all the while? Where is the natural and
legal man of the house?”

I remained silent a moment, questioning whether I should
prove his guilt to his face by telling him what I had overheard
of his private conversations with Mrs. Westervelt,
and by showing him the scandalous narrative, allusive to
her, which he had dictated to the Reporter. But I was unwilling
to expose myself to a charge of eavesdropping; I
disliked equally to push my needy literary friend into hostilities
with this unserupulous scoundrel; and, besides, how
absurd to make an appeal to a seared conscience and a
shameless soul! Falling back on the letter of Westervelt,
senior, I handed it to him, saying, “There is my authority.”

If the reader will please to take another glance at that
vigorous missive, he can easily imagine, I think, the suffocating
disgust and wrath of the “dirty rogue,” as he read it.
He bore the torture like a martyr, however, only turning
ghastly white, as he glanced over the evil epithets and the
order for his ignominious expulsion, and uttering no word
until he had handed back the letter. Then his wicked laugh
burst forth, lifting the short upper lip, and exposing those two
long front teeth, which gleamed like tusks through his moustache.

“I will teach Westervelt, senior,—I will teach the whole
rabble of you, that I am not to be driven,” he cried, huskily.
“I could crush this family. I have it in my power. I could
drive it from society. From this time—all of you—keep
silent! leave me alone! or I will make you wish yourselves
in hell. As for you, my lad, you and your gardener, I warn

you not to lay a finger on me. I carry pistols, and I swear
to God that I will be the death of you if you touch me. And
now—lastly—once for all—I tell you that I will stay here as
long as you stay—as long as I choose. Do you hear me?—
understand me?”

He made me think of an enraged tiger, he was so handsome,
so graceful, and at the same time looked so devilishly
wicked and cruel. The contrast between his usual smooth
gentility of demeanor, and his present animal ferocity was
immense and stupefying. People who have only known the
man as a sublimated fashionable of fascinating manners and
conversation, who have merely seen him jesting at table, or
smiling through a drawing-room, would find it hard to believe
that he had in him so much of the wild beast. His voice
was scarcely human, and his features swollen, in this moment
of full liberty that he had granted to his passions. He attempted
no violence, however, and made no gesture of attack,
but only glared on me a moment, and then left the room
before I could recover my wits to act or answer.

The interview had been far more lively than agreeable or
satisfactory. I had been villainously defied and baffled; and
in return I had only been able to insult Somerville; that is
to say, supposing I could insult such an invulnerable blackguard;
for when a man is already in the gutter, it is clearly
impossible to kick him down stairs. I paced my room for an
hour, revolving various plans for getting rid of him, but discovering
no better expedient than the shoulder-hitting idea
of Westervelt, senior. Downright fisticuffs, however, I would
reserve to the last extremity; and, meantime, I would keep
silence concerning both the altercation and its causes. I
judged from the quiet air which pervaded the family during
the day, that Somerville had thought best to observe a similar
discretion. We silently enjoyed our secret, and only looked
sheathed daggers at each other. It occurred to me that I
had probably gained for myself that exceedingly rare distinction,
so often imagined but so seldom realized, a life-long

enemy; but the thought gave me no uneasiness, for youth
does not dread combats, and, to save the Westervelts, I would
have provoked a vigilance committee of enemies. The fear
that he could disgrace that name it was, that chiefly troubled
me, and made me hesitate to serve my proposed ejectment
on him. Such a profligate desperado would not stick at any
libel, however atrocious or self-condemnatory; and the viler
the slander, the more greedily would it be swallowed by all
the simple and all the scurvy portion of humanity. And
then, what could I say in defence of Mrs. Westervelt? What
could she say in defence of herself?

Her husband came at six of the afternoon. I guessed
that he had delayed his arrival through dread of the coming
crisis, but he said that he had been too late for the previous
train, which was also characteristic, and therefore probable.
He colored when Somerville offered his hand, but he shook
the hand, and stammered, “Pretty well, I thank you.” Then
the flush fled from his thin cheeks, and he turned deathly
pale, as his wife came forward from her boudoir, and put up
her white lips for his kiss. His children he embraced so
tremulously and passionately, that the daughters stared at
him with a vague, timid questioning in their blue eyes, while
little Willie asked, outright, “Papa, what the matter?”

“Nothing,—nothing, Willie,—papa's business,” he muttered;
and looked the picture of conscious guilt rather than
of injured innocence.

The family meal of that evening was a sorry occasion.
Mr. Westervelt ate nothing, said nothing, and soon left the
table to go and sit in the nursery alone with his little boy.
Mary and Genevieve were silent, observant and evidently
anxious, although as yet they could hardly have been aware
that the hollow which had long muttered under their feet was
yawning into an abyss. Henry Van Leer had gone to New
York, and Robert was at his new boarding-place. Mrs. Van
Leer, entirely ignorant and unsuspicious, talked on in a jesting
way, which grated painfully upon the rest of us, who

were removed as by a great gulf from her frivolous hilarity.
Somerville showed a calmness that was insolent, and a gayety
that was brutal; absorbing great part of the conversation,
and speaking in his fullest, firmest, most musical tones; laughing
frequently, and showing the hateful glare of his two long
front teeth through his moustache. He did not address himself
to Mrs. Westervelt directly, but he seemed bent on quelling
her agitation by the magnetism of his audacious manner,
having informed her, doubtless, of the situation of things,
and laid his orders upon her to wear a face of unconcern.
She did her best: she looked no one in the eye; she could
do no more. It is a strange, shocking thing to see the face
of one whom you have esteemed growing whiter and whiter
as you gaze on it, and to believe that it is a vampyre of remorse
at the heart, which is sucking the blood away from the
cheeks so ravenously.

After tea, Mrs. Westervelt was called into the nursery, and
I did not see her again until next morning. About nine
o'clock, her husband appeared in the hall, pacing it from end
to end, silently, ghost-like, his shoulders bent, his hands
clutched together behind him, and his head bowed in utter
dejection. At the end of what seemed to me an hour, although
less than half that probably, he beckoned me to him, and,
without waiting for me or speaking, turned up-stairs, dragging
himself along wearily by the balusters, entering my room,
locked the door behind us, and flung himself on the sofa.
His heart was beating the breath out of him, I know; for,
when he spoke, it was like one who has been running
violently.

“Mr. Fitz Hugh—I wanted to see you—I suppose you
know why,” he began, in short gasps. “There have been
reports—against my wife. They are false—false! I have
just had a long—conversation with her. I assure you—I do
beg you to believe—that they are falsehoods—wicked falsehoods.
She may have been imprudent. No no!—she has
not been even that. They are lies from end to end. She

has told me the whole truth, I am convinced. I know her
better than any one. I can—I know that I can—confide in
her.”

He was obliged to stop for a moment, and draw a long
breath to cool the heated blood that was choking in his lungs.

“I am quite sure,” said I, “that Mr. Somerville is the
author of these slanders; and I am sure, also, that he is
capable of any falsehood.”

“Yes yes—a great liar,” he answered, eagerly. “But
have you thought—has it never occurred to you—that these
stories might refer to some one else; to—some Rockford
lady—or, perhaps, to Mrs. Van Leer?”

“I am sorry to say that I fear not. I received a note,
to-day, from your father, stating expressly that the calumnies
affect Mrs. Westervelt, and that Somerville is the calumniator.
Your father is a very accurate person, I believe.”

“Yes, yes,” he moaned. “He told me the same thing.
But, I thought it might be a fancy—a strong expression of
his. If he has written it—.”

“I have another proof as to the personal identities,” I
continued. “Here is a libel which I got from an old schoolmate
of mine, who, I am sorry to say, has to make his living
by picking up items for the New York Tattler. Somerville
dictated it to him, in payment, ostensibly, for favors in the
way of lunches, cigars, &c., but really, perhaps, for some bad
object, which my friend could not guess. I secured it in time
to prevent its publication.”

I handed him the unfinished bit of defamation which here
follows:—

“Fashionable Immorality.

“The saints of Gotham will be grieved, and the sinners
wickedly delighted to learn that low life is creeping up-stairs
in our beau monde. Being saintly ourselves, we regret to
hear, on the best authority, that one of our most fascinating
`gay Lotharios' and diner's-out has encountered another
bonne fortune in the aristocratic circles of New York. The

frail fair one is of a race distinguished for its dollars, and the
name which she now bears is fairly fragrant with bank-notes,
railroad-bonds, and other flowers of fortune. Great is money
in this moral city of ours, but the wealth of the East cannot
buy back lost virtue.

“Lady has an uninteresting husband; is in the flower of
age, lively and handsome; supports Lothario; gives him her
watches, rings, and laces to sell; has been seen with him at
Saratoga and Newport; is now with him at a country-house in
the land of steady habits. Affair commenced in 18—.

(Two squares, at least; usual fat jokes; quotation from
Don Juan.)

“Mr. Fitz Hugh, this is villainous!” exclaimed Mr. Westervelt,
springing up, and pacing the room. “Villainous!
villainous!” he repeated, unconsciously tearing the paper to
shreds.

“Villainous indeed!” I answered. “But not necessarily
true, whoever it was meant for. I am confident that Somerville
is one of the greatest liars breathing.”

“Why didn't you show this to me before?” he asked, turning
upon me angrily. “How long have you had it? How
could you keep this from me when it affected me so? I
would have turned him out,—turned him out.”

“Please observe,” said I, “that there are no names mentioned.
There are details which apply to your family, but
which would apply also to other families. Even the Reporter
did not know who the lady was. How could I come to you
with such a vague slander, and say `That affects you!' You
would have asked me for proofs, and I should have had none.
This paper shows nothing certainly but that Somerville is
capable of propagating slanders.”

“Oh! what won't he say!” he exclaimed, throwing himself
anew on the sofa, and covering his face with his hands.
When he spoke again, it was to ask what his father advised.

“To turn him out; of course to turn him out; by force, if
necessary.”

“Well—yes, he shall go. I will exert my authority. I
will. I will not have him here. It will seem strange. It
will make a great scandal. But he shan't stay. I will not
be so tormented and disgraced.”

Silent a while longer, he at last rose to go, saying earnestly
and pleadingly, “I can rely upon you, then? You will support
me? You won't forsake us?”

“I will stand by you,” I affirmed, giving him my hand.
He shook it, wrung it, seemed to hang upon it; then took out
his handkerchief and wept while I unlocked the door.

“Good-night, my good friend,” he sobbed, and walked
away on tiptoe.

I followed him in a few minutes, but he had gone to his
room for the night. Somerville's mellow tones and Mrs. Van
Leer's constant laughter came in through the open windows
from the deepest shadows cast by the garden thickets. The
girls were in the hall, listening to Bob's second edition of his
voyage to Sandy Hook. This was pretty nearly the condition
of things until within an hour of midnight, when Robert
took himself off, dragging Somerville along with him for
walking company. Mrs. Van Leer joined us, and began to
tease Genevieve to sleep with her, pleading that she couldn't
sleep alone, wasn't used to it, didn't dare to, and shouldn't
close her eyes without Jenny's aid and comfort.

“But if I go with you, then Mary will be lonely,” says
Genevieve, who did not care to leave her sister because, perhaps,
they had confidences to interchange.

“Oh no, she won't. She isn't afraid. Besides, she is in
the main body of the house. Now my room is in the wing,
and robbers can get in so easy!”

“Quite an inducement for me to be there,” was the reply.

“Oh! but two of us, you know;—that's so different from
one. Come, now,—I shan't sleep a wink unless I have somebody
with me. I just lie and look at the win—dows. Come,

Jenny, that's a good girl,—do stay with me. Now, why won't
you? You always have when Henry has been away. Now,
Jenny, do, please!”

So at last Jenny did please, somewhat poutingly, and Cousin
Jule carried her off, as the troublesome fairy in the story-book
carries off the unwilling beauty. Somerville returning soon
after, the house was closed, and we went our respective ways
to pillows which for that night were stuffed with thorns rather
than poppies. For my part, knowing that I could not sleep,
I merely threw off my coat, seated myself by the window,
and looked at the Sound, which had swooned away to perfect
rest, and gleamed majestic, ocean-like, shoreless through the
misty gauze of moonlight. There is something tranquillizing
to a disturbed spirit in long contemplation of vast and
peaceful expanses of nature. The heavy trials which have
weighed upon us all day, the terrors that seemed to hide the
heavens from us, grow light, grow small, rise from us and
float afar, minute as motes of dust, in that sense of immensity
and eternity, which insensibly streams over the mind
from gigantic stretches of sea, and from heavens filled with
shining hosts innumerable. Unquestionably there were others
in that house who needed a mightier consolation, and who
sought it, not indirectly through nature, but directly from the
All-Father. I felt sure that my dear little girl, alone in her
room, was kneeling and praying, with anguished pleading of
spirit, with tears, doubtless, and with her beautiful head
bowed low in trembling fingers. At the thought of that I
also bent my head and whispered, for the idea that she was
praying seemed to me enough to make the universe prayerful.

Imperially the moon went down, inspiring the light clouds
along the horizon with a radiance which, for the moment,
rivalled her own, and then leaving them tarnished, blackening
like corpses. The whole night of earth and air, notwithstanding
the multitudinous stars, became at once sombre by
comparison with the vanished splendor. A sympathetic

gloom oppressed me, and seemed to bid me prepare for some
approaching peril. I had intended to go to bed when the
moon should be down, but I felt less able to sleep now than
ever, and so remained for an hour longer at the window, gazing
moodily at the Sound, which darkened steadily as long
columns of cloud advanced over the heavens. High in air
there must have been wind to impel that vaporous army, but
on earth not a breeze lifted its wings, and the hush, the stagnation,
the suspense of nature was like omnipotence.

Suddenly through the holy silence crept a low sound which
made my temples throb as if they echoed to it. A door at
the back end of the upper hall opened so quietly, that, had it
been day instead of night, or had the faintest wind stirred
the garden leafage, I could not have heard it.

It is Somerville, I thought. Can he be going to run
away?

I stole across the room, my steps muffled by the thick carpet,
and knelt at the keyhole. The floor of the hall was
covered with oil-cloth, but so cautious and steady was the
walk of the person outside, that I did not distinguish a single
footfall, and half concluded that he had not left his room.
My pulse had beaten an hour into the space of a minute,
when I heard the latch of the door opposite mine quietly
lifted. Could it be that Miss Westervelt, unable to sleep,
was coming out at that time of night, to join her sister, or to
speak to her father? Or was it possible that Somerville had
the wickedness to dare enter her chamber? If this last supposition
were true, I could divine without a moment's reflection
what was the cunning knave's object;—that he meant to
be found there, to compromise her, and thus either force her
to marry him, or gain a firmer hold than ever on the unhappy
family. In another moment I distinguished a faint
metallic sound, like the gliding of a key into a keyhole. I
flung my door wide open and bounded into the hall. There,
under my hand, was Somerville, half dressed, kneeling at the
threshold of my little girl's room, and trying to pick the lock
with some thievish implement.

He sprang up, but too late to defend himself. I levelled
him with a blow, which to this day it does me good to think
of, and then, throwing myself across him, attempted to hold
him down and throttle him. He writhed from under me,
however, and we both rose together.

“Who's there?” I heard Mary call from within.

“Keep your door locked,” I replied. “Don't let any one
in.”

I had scarcely spoken when I caught a heavy blow on my
forehead which staggered me against the wall. I struck
back, blind and blundering as a beetle, but hit him by accident,
and knocked him away from me during the moment
necessary to recover my senses. Had it been daylight, I
might have got soundly beaten, for Somerville was a fair
boxer; but in that darkness, it was not easy to feint and
parry, and weight proved an overmatch for science. In a
moment or two I had laid hands on him and stretched him
out on the floor, with a knee on each arm, and my fingers
twisted in his neckcloth. He struggled and tried to lift me,
but a little choking brought him to reason.

“Well, curse you! what do you want?” he gasped.

“Swear that you will go to your room and stay there all
night,” said I.

After some farther writhing and muttering, he obeyed, and
I let him rise. He stood motionless an instant, as if doubting
what to do, but walked away without speaking when I told
him to be off. A gentle tap on Mary's door and a whisper
of my name through the keyhole induced her to open it sufficiently
to speak to me.

“Oh! what does this mean?” she asked, sobbing with
fright.

“I have had an altercation with Mr. Somerville,” I replied,
not choosing to increase her alarm by telling her the cause
of the scuffle.

“With Mr. Somerville? Oh, Louis! has he hurt you?”

“Not at all, dear. I hurt him. Have you a bolt?”

“Yes.”

“Well, push the bolt and turn the key, and then go to
sleep. There is no danger.”

I stood a few minutes in the hall, but heard no noises
about the house, and concluded that the rest of the family
had slept through the disturbance. Returning to my room
I threw myself dressed on my bed, and perhaps slept, I can
hardly say.