University of Virginia Library

40. CHAPTER XL.
INQUISITIONS AND ADMONITIONS.

Now and then it seems as if the shallow materialists, who call themselves
Spiritualists because they have revived fetishism and the superstition of savages,
might yet be right in this one affirmation of theirs, that soul may communicate
with soul through some medium other than the ordinary senses.

What man so stolid and so isolated from his kind in heart, but that he has
at times felt that some woman, who merely sat or stood near him, uttering no
word and making no sign and sending him no glance, was yet kindly and
warmly interested in him? An inaudible and invisible messenger has brought
the tale, thrilling the delicate aspens of the affections with glad thankfulness,
and perhaps even arousing the potent echoes of the blood.

Nestoria granted to Lehming a silent throb of sympathy, and he knew it.
It was a delicious moment: for a brief, happy while he forgot his ugliness; it
appeared to him that he was worthy of loving, perhaps of being loved. A
few tickings of the cheap wooden clock on his grimy mantelpiece measured
out to him more of ecstasy than he had known in his whole life before. Then,
little by little, the splendid glamour of extravagant hope faded, and his reason
looked abroad once more upon its accustomed spectacle of a loveless life. He
said to himself that it was folly to sit there gazing at Nestoria's fresh young
beauty, and building for her and himself cloud-castles which could never be
come realities. He would quit her at once, and seek sanity in the streets. It
would be a wholesome self-sacrifice, honorable to his soul and of good augury
for his future.

“I shall leave you two to amuse each other,” he said, rising and putting on
his Lilliputian overcoat. “I have an errand or two to attend to before bedtime.”

“What a man does, that he has,” replied John Bowlder, quoting from his
demigod Emerson. “Nevertheless, as I care not for having, I give myself
little to doing. I want no ownership in errands. I can subsist without such
property. We do not spend half time enough in looking lazily into our own
hearts, as a boy stares at the crumblings and askings of the coals. Let me tell
you, Walter, that your life is too busy. You would be a greater soul if you
did less worldly work. You are over-useful to your fellow creatures. And
Edward Wetherel is taking the same thorny road and travelling in the same
barren circle. I met him to-day. The Briareus had all his spiritual arms full
of projects. It would take an Argus to see all the trouble he is going to make
for himself and others. He wants to cure the sickly, who ought to die; wants
to feed the lazy and stupid, who ought to starve; wants to turn good day laborers
into poor philosophers; wants to do an infinite deal of mischief.”

Lehming could not help glancing at Nestoria. At the name of Edward she
had suddenly leaned forward, and she was now looking steadily into the blaze
of the fire, her face hidden between her hands. He trusted that she believed
somewhat to the young man's advantage, but he could not be sure.

“I think our cousin does well,” he observed aloud. “So far as is visible
to man, he is leading a noble life. I hope that you will not be permitted to
turn him from the way he has taken.”

“Nothing will turn him,” said John Bowlder. “He is a chip of the old
gnarled Puritan oak. He is a Wetherel.”

As Lehming moved toward the door he met Imogen Eleonore entering.

“Ah! is it pos-si-ble?” drawled the schoolma'am, glancing significantly
from Walter to Nestoria, and putting into her tone more of the mustard of satire
than was absolutely necessary to give a taste to her words, as people of
light brains and incomplete cultivation are apt to do when spiteful. “Can
Mr. Lehming persuade himself to leave such delightful company?”

Within the last week or two Imogen Eleonore had undergone a change of
heart, or at least of behavior, for the worse. When she first extended her
gracious beams to the so-called Nettie Fulton, she had expected that that mysterious
young person would revolve around herself, and add to the glory of
the Jonesian system. In such a case she would have continued to shine upon
the girl with all the heat and splendor of her melodramatic affection. But
things had gone otherwise; the little protégée had become the planet; the
sublime patron had dwindled into the satellite.

Not only Mr. John Bowlder, who was a very queer stick anyhow, but also
Mr. Walter Lehming, who had formerly been Miss Jones's particular friend
(as she supposed), had fallen down bewitched before this small stranger, both
being ready to wear their legs to stumps with running on her errands, and to
talk to her by the hour for the wages of her rare and brief answers. It was
certainly most irrational conduct, and a just mind did well to be angry at it.
What was there in Nettie to admire but a pretty face, golden hair, a mystery
of some perhaps undesirable sort, and a certain odd, unexpected cleverness,
which after all was only occasional? Imogen Eleonore could see nothing
more; and in herself she could see a great deal more. She was “intellected,”
as she phrased it, and a remarkable “conversationist,” as she persisted
in spelling it. Her mind was richly stored with matters both useful and sentimental;
she could discourse of grammar and geography and arithmetic and
history and astronomy; and as for the prose and poetry of the “New York
Spasmodic,” who could outquote her?

Yet here were these two men “a-going on” about this little Nettie! And
Mr. Lehming especially! a man whom she had supposed to be “talented!” a
man who held the lofty position of “instructor!” He was bowing down to
that chit; yes, he was actually “sitting up” with her. How ridiculous, particularly
in a dwarf! Miss Jones was, in her own vigorous phrase, “real mad
about it;” she could not put up with such silly “carrying-on;” she was real
mad, and she didn't care who knew it. Even the dignity and puissance of a
male Instructor could not prevent her from showing her grittiness in look,
tone, and speech.

But if she expected to sneer a retort out of Lehming, or to daunt him into
uttering some sidelong apology for his absurd preferences, she was disappointed.
He divined the poor schoolma'am's bitterness of heart and pitied her
for it.

“Walk in, Miss Jones,” he said with his gentlest smile. “Walk in, and
join our friends, and pardon me for leaving you.”

With these words he went his way; and we shall do best to follow him.
He had not met Edward Wetherel since the evening when Nestoria's hints, or
rather her silence, had seemed to clothe him in the garb of murder. He had
not been able to muster the courage and the hardness to look him in the face.
Now he was going to see him; to cross-examine his countenance and demeanor;
to judge, if it were possible, whether he were guilty or not. He

found the youthful millionaire, lately one of the most ostentatious of prodigals,
living in a single plainly-furnished room, which served both as parlor and
bedroom. The meeting between the pair was in one respect very remarkable.
The inquisitor's eye wandered and his voice faltered, while the supposed
culprit was as calm and brave as innocence ever is.

“You are economical,” said Lehming, seating himself in a hard, well-worn
chair, and glancing about the somewhat dingy chamber.

“I have wasted money enough in my time,” replied Edward. His manner
in making this confession was admirable; it had none of that conceit with
which reformed spendthrifts are apt to speak of their bygone extravagances;
it expressed honest regret and self-reproach.

“A man in your situation is exposed to two great temptations,” continued
Lehming. “Wealth is beckoned to by lavish pleasure on one side, and by
avarice on the other.”

“I am shielded from both for the present,” said Wetherel. “I consider
myself the trustee of this estate, and not the owner. But even if I were
really rich. I hope that I should not be a fool. My ideas of what is fine in
life have changed. Of course the pendulum may swing back; I may become
what I have been; but I trust not.”

It seemed so clear that he meant even more than he said—there was such
testimony of a profound renovation of character in his very calmness of utterance
and demeanor—that Lehming turned upon his devils of suspicions, and
cast them out.

“I do not wish you to be an ascetic,” he observed with the frank kindness
of friendship. “All extremes of conduct verge on irrationality. The extremist
does evil as well as good. Calvin purified the church, but his preachings
were too violent, and there has been a harmful reaction against them. Your
well-meaning and pure-hearted uncle was in his way a Calvin. He did you
little good while he lived.”

“It was hard to do good to such a jackanapes as I was,” said Wetherel.
“Do you know that a few months ago I was a prodigious ass? It is enough
to make one both laugh and cry to think of it. When I was actually in a state
of insolvency, I bought myself a two-hundred-dollar dressing-gown. I was
such an amazing jackanapes that I thought it a fine thing to wear a velvet and
brocade dressing-gown. I received my friends in it when they came to lend
me money to pay my board bills.”

Lehming smiled, for he believed in his relative's innocence of crime, and
the credence made him light-hearted.

“I used to attribute your profuseness to the influence of Wolverton,” he
remarked.

“Wolverton was not a model,” assented Wetherel. “But I never knew
him to be quite so bereft of common sense as myself. There was some judgment
in the man, and it helped him to some morality.”

Here, by one of those coincidences which seem so frequent and so striking
to the imagination, the person who was the subject of conversation made his
appearance. There was a rap, and before Wetherel could fairly say, “Come
in,” Wolverton entered.

“Unceremonious,” he observed in his easy, assured, pleasant way. “But
I have something which I consider devilish important to lay before you two
gentlemen,” he went on with an earnestness unusual in him, he being commonly
a talker of the elegantly languid type. “Came to see Wetherel about
it, but glad to find you both here. Don't you care anything about your relative,

Miss Dinneford? I do; not that I have the honor to know her much,
but I hate to see a nice girl in danger of coming to grief—that is, when she's
connected with a friend of mine,” he added, quite unconscious of the horrible
cynicism of his qualification. “And come to grief she certainly will, if she
marries that d—d Poloski. I've found out something about the man more
than we knew, Wetherel. I fell in with a detective, a low sort of blockhead
named Sweet, who wanted to pump me about the—the Wetherel affair, you
know. Well, Sweet casually mentioned Poloski, and as I hate Poloski I asked
what he knew of him, and he told me a doose of a story. He says the noble
foreigner is certainly an adventurer—well, we supposed as much, I take it—
that's not new. But he went on to say that he gets his living in all sorts of
queer ways—not only by poker, as we are experimentally aware, but by other
means less—genteel. That is, so Sweet thinks, and thinks he can prove. He
has his eye on him; has traced him after midnight to Riley's saloon; horrid
bad place, if you know it. Of course Poloski might claim that he was there
to study character and idioms. But Sweet followed him in, and found that he
had gone up stairs alone with Riley, and also that he had the name of courting
Riley's daughter—pretty little wild girl, Sweet said. The fellows there chaffed
her about the Count, and she bridled and giggled and all that sort of thing.
That was about all the man had to tell me. But don't you see that the thing
looks dark? Of course I hate Poloski; he is something of a rival of mine in
two or three places; I hate him a little, and despise him more, and so forth.
But prejudice aside, I claim that his case looks dark. And in my opinion—
begging your pardon for interfering in a family matter—you two fellows ought
to look after him. Just imagine this girl—excuse me, I mean Miss Dinneford—just
imagine her married to Poloski. The next thing you would hear
would be that she was abandoned, perhaps in Europe or the Lord knows
where, and coming to grief all by herself. Don't you think so yourself now,
Wetherel?”

Edward's only reply was to rise from his chair with a mien of indignant
excitement, such as the defunct Judge Wetherel might have worn in the
sterner agitations of his youth, and such as we might perhaps fairly impute to
many previous Wetherels. Wolverton rose also, and walked to the door.

“Don't let me detain you,” he added as he went out. “The quicker you
put your oar in, the better. He might pop any day, and put things beyond
curing.”

In a minute more Wetherel and Lehming were on their way toward the
Dinneford house.