 | CHAPTER VI.
CHURM AS CASSANDRA. Cecil Dreeme |  |
6. CHAPTER VI.
CHURM AS CASSANDRA.
We turned from Broadway down Cornwallis
Place, parallel to Mannering Place, and entered
Chrysalis by the side door upon that street.
“I have a word to say to the janitor,” said
Churm.
Pretty Dora Locksley admitted us to the snuggery.
Lighted up, it was even more cheerful
than when I saw it with Stillfleet. The table
was set for supper. The bright teapot, the bright
plates, the bright knives and forks, had each its
own bright reflection of the gas-light to contribute
to the general illumination.
Mrs. Locksley, the bright cause of all this brilliancy,
was making the first cut into a pumpkin-pie
of her own confection, as we entered. It was
the ideal pumpkin-pie. Its varnished surface
shone with a rich, mellow glow, and all about its
marge a ruffle of paste of fairest complexion
lifted, like the rim of delighted hills about a
happy valley. As Mrs. Locksley's knife cleft the
soil of this sweet vale, fragrant incense steamed
away all remembrance of the mephitic odors it
had inhaled, to entertain this fresh, wholesome
emanation? Mine did at once. I felt myself
deodorized from the sour souvenirs of Towner's
slum. The moral atmosphere, too, of this honest,
cheerful, simple home-scene acted as a moral
disinfectant. The healthy picture hung itself
up in a good light in my mental gallery. It was
well it should be there. Chrysalis owed me this,
as a contrast to the serious pictures awaiting me
along its dusky halls, as a foil to a sombre tableau
hid behind the curtain at the vista's end.
Mrs. Locksley offered a quadrant of her pie to
Churm.
“I resign in Mr. Byng's favor,” said he.
“Hail Columbia!” cried I, accepting the resignation;
and as I eat I felt my Americanism revive.
“I 've just seen Towner again,” Churm says,
“and am to sit up with him.”
“Poor fellow!” said Locksley. “Has he any
chance?”
“Poor fellow, indeed!” cried Mrs. Locksley,
in wrath, evidently sham. “Dont waste `poors'
on him, William. Did n't he as much as kill my
poor sister, and ruin us?”
“You don't look very ruinous, Molly. No;
you 're built up fresh by losing money, and not
We must not bear malice, wife!”
“We don't, William. And the proof is this
jelly I 've made for him.”
“Right!” says Locksley. “But, Mr. Churm,”
he continued, and here his bristly aspect intensified,
as if a foe were at hand, “Mr. Densdeth is
back in the steamer. He 's been here to day,
asking for Towner. But he got nothing out of
me.”
“The sight of Densdeth would kill the man.
He shivers at the mere thought of his old master.
We must keep him hid until he dies or gets some
life into him. Good night.”
“A trusty fellow, the janitor,” said I, as we
walked up stairs.
“Trusty as a steel bolt on an oak door.”
“He will keep my secrets, if I have any, as
one of his collegians? He won't stand on the
corner and button-hole everybody with the news
that I never go to bed, and hardly ever get up?
He won't put my deeds or misdeeds in the newspapers?”
“No. If you should say to him, `Locksley,
I 've got a maggot in my head. I am going to
lock myself up in Rubbish Palace and train it.
I want to hibernate for three months and not
see a soul, except you with my meals. Let
me be forgotten!' Locksley would reply, `Very
if you had gone to Kamtschatka.”
“You speak as if such things happened in
Chrysalis.”
“They might, under Locksley.”
“How refreshing,” said I, “to find such a
place and such a person plump in the middle
of New York! But tell me, what is Locksley
to Towner?”
“Towner married our janitor's wife's sister.
Locksley is a very clever machinist. He was
a prosperous locksmith, manufacturing locks of
a patent of his own, until Towner persuaded
him to indorse his paper. Towner had some
fine scheme by which he meant to make himself
independent of Densdeth, and so escape
from his service. His old master had become
hateful to him. But Densdeth did not propose
to let his serf go free. He made it his business,
so both the men think, to spoil the speculation,
and ruin the two, financially. Locksley
lost everything. I got him this place, until he
could look about and take a fresh start.”
I opened my door. From the back of the
sombre apartment, the great black stove, with
its isinglass door, like a red Cyclops eye, stared
at the strangers. The gas-light from the street
shone faint through the narrow windows.
“Ghostly scenery!” said I, glancing about.
The casts and busts stood white and ghostly
in the corners, and by the door of the lumber-room
a suit of armor, holding a spiked mace
in its fingerless gauntlets, reflected the dull glow
of the fire-light.
“Those great carved arm-chairs,” said Churm,
“stand as if the shadows of so many black-robed
inquisitors had just quitted them.”
“What a chamber this would have been,”
I said, “for the sittings of a secret tribunal, a
Vehmgericht! Imagine yourself and me enthroned,
with crapes over our faces, and Locksley,
armed with one of these halberds of Stillfleet's,
leading in the culprit.”
“Have you selected your culprit?”
“Well, Densdeth is convenient. He might
be brought in from that dark room of his, next
door. The scene becomes real to me. Come,
Mr. Churm, you shall pronounce sentence. Put
on the black cap, and speak!”
“I condemn him to bless as many lives as
he has cursed.”
“A gentle penalty!” said I. “But it may
take time. Who knows but you are making a
Wandering Jew of our handsome Absalomitish
friend? Fiat lux!” I continued, striking a
match, and lighting my chandelier. “Vanish
the Vehm and the halberd! Appear the nineteenth
century and the cigar! Take one!”
Churm smoked for some time in grave silence.
At last he began.
“I loved your father, Robert, like a brother.
For his sake and your own, I wish to be your
friend.”
His benignant manner, even more than the
words, touched me. I felt my eyes fill with
tears.
“Thank you,” said I, “for my father's sake
and my own. I yearn, as only a fatherless man
can, for such a friend as you may be. I hoped
I might count upon you.”
“We have met but those few times in Europe
since your boyhood. I think I know something
of you. Still I may as well have more facts.
What do you think of yourself? Person and
character, now, in a paragraph.”
“Person you see!” said I, standing up, straight
as an exclamation-point. “Harry Stillfleet made
me parade this morning, and pronounced me reasonably
fit for service, legs, lungs, and looks.
Character, — as to my character, it is not yet
compacted enough for inspection. My soul grows
slow as a century-plant. You can hardly look
for blossoms at the end of the first twenty-five
years. I am a fellow of good intentions, — that
is the top of my claim. But whether I am to be
a pavior of hell or a promenader of heaven, is as
hell or heaven pleases. It seems to me that my
out of myself into others. I am dramatic. I
adopt the natures of my companions, and act as
if I were they. When I have become, in my
proper person, a long list of dramatis personæ,
I shall be ready to live my life, be it tragedy,
comedy, or romance. And there you have me,
Mr. Churm, in a rather lengthy paragraph!”
“I understand. And now you have come
home, a working-man, who wishes `se ranger'?”
“I should like to find my place.”
“Your place to live you have found already.
Your place to labor will not be hard to find.
Capable men of your trade are in demand. I
have no doubt I can settle you to-morrow.”
“You are a friend indeed,” said I.
“Home and handicraft disposed of; — and now
this young absentee, with his place to live and
his place to labor arranged, is beginning to think
of the other want, namely, somebody to love.
How is that, Byng?”
“`Hoc erat in votis!'” said I, bashfully.
“It was in mine, when I was, like you, impressible,
affectionate, trustful, and in my twenties.
My forties have a confidence and a special
warning to offer you, Robert, if you will accept
it.”
“No mature man has ever given me the benefit
of his experience. Yours will be most precious.”
“I strip off the battens, and slide back the
hatches, and show you a cell in my heart which
I thought never to uncover. But there comes a
time, after a man's grief has become historical
to himself, when he owes the lesson of his own
tragedy to some other man. You are the man
to whom my story belongs.”
“Why am I the one?”
“That you must discover for yourself. I tell
you my tale. You must adapt it to your own
circumstances. You must put in your own set
of characters from the people you meet. I point
a moral for you; I have no right to impale others
upon it.”
“You might misunderstand and wrong them?”
“I might. This bit of personal history I am
about to give you explains my connection with
the Denmans.”
“It will lead you then to the mystery of Clara's
death?”
“Yes.”
| CHAPTER VI.
CHURM AS CASSANDRA. Cecil Dreeme | |