University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.
CLARA DENMAN, DEAD.

I watched Churm, as he smoked.

Love, disloyalty, penitence, death, — were these
all unrealities, that he could speak of them in his
own history so calmly? Could a man be hurt as
he had been, and overlive unscarred? I had
heard cool men say, that “the tragedies of this
life become the comedies of another, and that we
should some time smile to recall our cruellest
battles here, as now we smile to watch the jousts
of flies in a sunbeam.” Churm's tragedy was
still tragedy to him. He had begun to recite it
with evident pain. But the pain of his tone became
indifference before he closed; and now he
sat there smoking, as if he had related gravely,
but without emotion, the mishaps of some stranger.

I wondered.

He looked through the smoke, caught my
wondering eye, smiled soberly, and said: “Such
an experience as I have described is like a shirt
of Nessus, which one wears until the prickles of

its poisoned serge have thoroughly toughened his
skin. When it ceases to gall, he strips it off and
hangs it by the highway for whoever runs to
take; or if he finds some sensitive friend, like
you, Robert, he lays it upon his shoulders, and
says, `Wear this! The edge of its torture is
gone. It will harden you for the garment the
Fates are weaving for you.'”

“Dear me!” said I, shrugging my shoulders.
“Have I got to stand haircloth and venom?
Well, if that is the common lot, and I cannot
escape, I am much obliged to you for trying to
make me pachydermatous. But you have not
succeeded very well. The story of another's pain
makes my heart softer.”

“Sympathy for others is stout armor for one's
self. But, Byng, you have heard the first tragedy
of the series; listen to the second!”

“The second! Is there a third? Is the series
a trilogy?”

“The third is unwritten. The march of events
has paused while Densdeth was off. And to-day
he steps from behind the curtain with you, a new
character, half inclined to be his satellite. Perhaps
you have a part to play.”

There was a vein of seriousness in this seeming
banter.

“Perhaps!” said I, puffing a ring of smoke
away. “But pray go on. I am eager to hear
the whole.”

“After his wife's death, Denman said to me,
`Mr. Churm, Emma told me that you were willing,
for old friendship's sake, to give an eye to my
two poor girls' education. Suppose you take the
whole responsibility off my hands. I will make
their million apiece for them. You shall teach
them how to spend it.' I gladly accepted this
godfatherly post. The girls became to me as my
own children.

“I shall say nothing to you,” Churm here
interjected, “of Emma.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“You will see her. Judge for yourself!
Clara you will never see. Of her I will speak.
But first what do you remember of the sisters?”

“They were my pets when I was a school-boy.
Emma I recollect as a lovely, fascinating, caressing
little thing. Clara was shy and jealous, full
of panics that people disliked her for her ugliness.
I might have almost forgotten them, except for a
sweet, simple, girlish letter they jointly wrote me
upon my father's death. It touched me greatly.”

“I remember,” said Churm. “Clara consulted
me as to its propriety. Dear child!
sympathy always swept away her reserve. But
you speak of her ugliness, Robert?”

“She was original, unexpected; but certainly
without beauty. In fact, ugly and awkward,
beside Emma.”

“She became beautiful to me by the light that
was in her. I could not criticise the medium
through which shone so fair a soul. She educated
me; not I her. She illuminated for me
the new truths, she interpreted the new oracles;
and so I have not fallen old and staid among
my rudiments, as childless men, with the best
intentions, may.”

“You give me,” said I, “a feeling of personal
want and personal robbery by her death.”

“Fresh, earnest, unflinching soul!” Churm
sadly continued. “How she flashed out of
being all the false laws that check the mind's
divine liberty! Not the laws of refinement and
high-breeding; they, the elastic by-laws of the
fundamental law of love, are easy harness to
the freest soul. In another house than Denman's,
among allies, not foes, what a noble poem
her life would have been!”

“Foes!” said I. “Was there no love for
her at home?”

“Denman admired his daughters. Love remains
latent in him. He has not outgrown
his passion for the grosser fictions, wealth, power,
show.”

“But Emma! The two sisters did not love
one another? If not, where was the fault?”

“Nature made them dissonant.”

“Their foster-father could not harmonize
them?”

“I did my best, Byng. But young women
need a mother. I suppose the mothers in society
shrug up their shoulders, when they talk
of Clara's disappearance and death, and say,
`What could you expect of a young person,
whose nurse, governess, and chaperon was that
odd Mr. Churm?'”

“You were absent when she disappeared?”

“Away from my post. In England. On some
patent business.”

“Pity!”

“I curse myself when I think of it. About
this misery, Robert, I have not learned to be
calm.”

“You did not approve her proposed marriage
with Densdeth, — that I am sure.”

“I knew nothing of it.”

“What! your ward, your child, did not write,
did not consult you on so grave a matter?”

“Her letters had been constant. They suddenly
ceased. Her last had been a pleading
cry to me to succor her father against his growing
intimacy with Densdeth. I wrote that I
would despatch my business, and hasten home.
I never heard again. There was foul play.”

“Suppression of letters?”

“Yes; or I was belied to her.”

“Such a woman would not lightly abandon
a faith.”

“Only some villanous treason could destroy
her faith in me. And such I do not doubt
there has been. I make no loose charges. But
why was I kept in the dark?”

“No rumor of the marriage reached you?”

“A rumor merely. Do you know Van
Beester?”

“That banking snob who tries to be a swell?
a fellow who talks pro-slavery and fancies it
aristocracy? Yes; I was bored with him once
at a dinner in Paris.”

“Van Beester was put in my state-room on
board the steamer when I returned. He had
been in England, consummating a railroad job.
The old story. Eight per cent third mortgage
bonds, convertible. Enormous land grant. Road
running over Noman's Land into Nowhere. One
of Densdeth's schemes. Denman also had an
interest.”

“A swindle? Something Muddefontaineish?”

“O no! Noman's Land, the day the road
was done, would become Everybody's Farm. Nowhere
would back into the wilderness. Up would
sprout the metropolis of Somewhere. Swindle,
Robert? Your term is crude.”

“I suppose Van Beester did not offer it to the
English gudgeons under that name.”

“It was a mighty pretty bait for them, — two
millions in savory portions, a thousand each. I

forget whether some large gudgeon's gills had
taken the whole at one gulp; or whether a shoal
of small fry had nibbled the worms off the bob.
But the whole loan had been stomached in London,
and Van Beester was going home in high
feather.”

“A blatant nuisance, of course. And you
could not abate or escape him.”

“No; unless I shoved him through our porthole,
or slipped through myself. Densdeth was
the man's hero. He could never talk without
parading Densdeth. `Such talents for finance!'
he would exclaim. `Such knowledge of men!
Such a versatile genius! Billiards or banking,
all one to him! Never loses a bet; never fails
in a project! Such a glass of fashion! Such a
favorite with the fair sex!'”

“Pah! `Fair sex!' I can fancy the loathsome
fellow's look and tone,” I exclaimed.

“Then, in a pause of his sea-sickness,” Churm
continued, “he spoke of the Denmans. `Mr.
Denman so princely! Daughters so charming!
For his part he admired Emma,' — `Emma,' the
scrub called her. `But then there was something
very attractive, very exciting, about Clara,
and he did n't wonder that Densdeth had selected
her, — lucky girl!' `What do you mean?' cried
I, appalled. `Don't you know?' said the fellow,
chuckling over his bit of fashionable intelligence.

`I have it from the best authority, Densdeth himself.
Here is his letter. I got it the morning
we sailed. He is to be married the twenty-third.
Blow, breezes! and we shall get there in time for
the wedding.'”

“You could interpret her pleading cry, now,”
said I.

“I seem to hear it repeated in every blast:
`Help, dear friend, dear father, — for my mother's
sake!' A maddening voyage that was! Dark
waters, Robert! I shall hate the insolent monotony
of ocean all my days. I could do nothing
but walk the deck and tally the waves, or stand
over the engine and count the turns.”

“People would laugh at a fellow of my age,”
said I, “for such conduct. It is lover-like.”

“I loved Clara, as if she were spirit of my
spirit. When the pilot boarded us, before dawn
on the twenty-third, I was up chafing about the
ship. He handed me his newspaper. The first
thing I saw was Clara Denman's name among
the deaths.”

“Cruel!” exclaimed I.

“I thanked God for it. Better death than
that marriage!”

“There is still something incomprehensible to
me in your horror of Densdeth. I only half feel
it myself; Stillfleet more than half feels it. What
is it? What is he?”

“We will talk of him another time,” Churm
replied. “Now I must hasten on. I found, as
I said, Clara's name among the deaths, and inside
the paper a confused story of her disappearance
and drowning.

“I was so eager to hear more, that I smuggled
myself ashore in the health-officer's gig,
and took the quarantine ferry-boat to town,
for speed. While I was looking for a hack at
the South Ferry, the return coaches of a funeral
to Greenwood drove off a boat just come into the
slip.

“In the foremost coach I saw the Denmans
and Densdeth.

“I pulled open the door and sprang in.

“I can never forget Denman's look when he
saw me. He blenched and shrank into his corner
of the carriage, cowed.

“There sat Densdeth, colorless and impassive,
opposite me. By my side was Emma, weeping
under a heavy veil, and Denman, with a mean
and guilty look, beside her.

“`It is not my fault,' Denman said, feebly
stretching out both his hands, as if he expected
a blow from me. `I acted for the best, as I
thought, so help me God!'

“Densdeth interposed. His smooth, cool manner
always puts roughness in the wrong.

“`This is a sad pleasure, Mr. Churm,' said

he. `If we had looked for your return, we would
have deferred this sorrowful ceremony.'

“`Denman!' said I.

He started, and held out his hands in vague
terror.

“`Denman!' I repeated. `Here has been
some crime. What have you done with that
innocent girl? Who or what murdered her?'

“`No,' said he, drearily. `She is dead. That
is bitter enough. Not murdered! O, not murdered!
Do not be so harsh with an old friend!'

“`Denman,' said I, `an older friend than you
committed her daughter into my hands on her
death-bed. In her name I accuse you. I say,
you have tried to crowd this poor child into a
marriage she abhorred. I say you drove her to
death. I say you murdered her, — you and
Densdeth.'

“He gave me a dull look, — a pitiful look, for
that proud, stately man, — and turned appealingly
to his supporter.

“`Mr. Churm,' said Densdeth, `it is not like
you to talk in this hasty way. I refuse to be
insulted. My own distress shows me how the
shock may have unbalanced you. But this heat
and these baseless charges are poor sympathy for
a parent, a sister, and a betrothed, coming from
the funeral of one dear to them. Is it manly,
Mr. Churm, to assail us? I appeal to your real

generosity not to sharpen our grief by such cruelty.'

“Of course he was right. I was a brute if
they were not guilty. I was silenced, not satisfied.

“Densdeth went on, with thorough self-possession.
The man's olive skin is a mask to him.

“`You have a right, Mr. Churm,' said he, `to
hear all the facts of Clara's death. I will state
them. Ten days ago she took a sharp fever from
a cold. One afternoon she became a little light-headed.
But at evening she was doing well, and
in such a healthy, quiet sleep that we thought she
needed no watching. Indeed, we believed her
recovered from the trifling attack. In the morning
she was gone, — gone, and left no clew. We
instantly organized search, with all the care that
the tenderest affection could suggest.'

“`Yes, yes! we did our best!' Denman eagerly
interrupted.

“`Four days ago,' continued Densdeth without
pause, `her body was found, floated ashore
on Staten Island. It was disfigured by the
chances of drowning, but there were no marks
of injury before death. She was fully identified.
We suppose, and the doctor concurs, that at
night her fever and light-headedness returned,
that she left the house, strayed toward the river,
fell from some dock, and was drowned.'

“Denman shivered as Densdeth concluded his
curt, business-like statement.

“`Yes, yes, Churm!' said he again. `I did
my best. Do not say murder, again! Do not
be so harsh with an old friend! Tell him, Densdeth,
tell him how we spent care and time and
money to recover the poor child. Do not let
him think anything was neglected.'

“He looked feebly from Densdeth to me.
Then he turned to his daughter.

“`Speak, Emma!' said he, almost peevishly.
`Why do you not help justify your father?
Tell Mr. Churm that your sister's death is only
a misery, no fault of ours.'

“Emma made no reply, but sobbed uncontrollably
behind her veil.”

“Poor girl!” I interjected, as Churm paused
to look at his watch. “A dark beginning of
life for her! I pity her most tenderly.”

“It is almost eleven,” said Churm. “I must
go to my patient, Towner, without delay. And
now I can say to you, that I believe he knows
something of Clara's tragedy. When he speaks,
I shall learn where the guilt lies.”

“You suspect guilt then?” I asked. “The
facts do not satisfy you? Have you a theory
on the subject?”

“I have no doubt the final facts are as Densdeth
gave them. But what are the precedent

facts? What crazed my child? What unbalanced
her healthy organization of mind and
body? No trifling influenza. No bashful bridal
panic of a girl. No, Byng; among them, they
had hurt her heart and soul. There is the
murder! Her father I believe to be in Densdeth's
power.”

“How?” I asked.

“How I can only divine from parallel cases.
Denman has perhaps overstepped honesty to
clutch wealth. Densdeth knows it. Densdeth
has said, `Give me your daughter, or be posted
as a rogue!' Denman has made the common
mistake, that, if he could elude the shame of detection,
he would escape the remorse of guilt.”

“So they took advantage of your absence to
use quasi force with the lady?”

“Yes; and they belied me, or Clara would
have awaited my protection. Ah, Robert, I
dread some crushing infamy was revealed to
her in that house. No common shame, no common
sorrow, would have maddened her to wander
off and die. And now good night, Robert!
Keep this tragedy in mind — in both its parts.
One such story, well meditated with the characters
in view, may be the one needful lesson
and warning of a life. And let the whole be
a sacred confidence with you alone!”

“It shall be. Good night.”

He wrung my hand and went out.

Let me recall him as he turns away.

A sturdy, not clumsy, man of middle height;
fair skin, ruddy, not too red; nose resolute, not
despotic; firm upper lip, gentle lower; glance
keen, not astute, nor vulpine; expression calm,
not cold; smile humorous and sympathetic;
voice and laugh of the heart, hearty; a thoroughly
lovable man, — the man of all others
to be husband and father.

Besides, a man of vast ability and scope. Nature
seemed to have no secrets from him. He
handled the mechanic forces, he wielded social
forces, with the same masterly grasp. Wherever
civilization went, it bore his name as an
inventor, an organizer and benefactor to mankind.
He was skill, order, and love.

And yet he lived alone and weary; his life,
as he had told me to-night, all desolated by
the shadow of a sin.