 | Chapter XIV.
“An Old Acquaintance.” The tenant-house, or,, Embers from poverty's hearthstone |  |
14. Chapter XIV.
“An Old Acquaintance.”
MORDECAI KOLEPHAT pursued his way, with his
chin sunk within his raised collar, and his hat covering
his whole forehead, down to the piercing black eyes,
that seemed to scrutinize every object they encountered.
He well knew the locality indicated in the note which he
had received; for it was one of the many decayed and
crowded tenements which he held in fee, and leased,
through faithful agents of the class of Peleg Ferret, to
thousands of such needy human beings as occupied the
crumbling rooms of Kolephat College. It was the Jew's
custom, at least once a year, to visit his property in various
wards of the city—not, indeed for the purpose of
ameliorating the condition of his tenantry, or to hear suggestions
tending to improvement of the premises, but
simply as a duty owed to himself as proprietary and suzerain
of lands and appurtenances represented by the taxes
which he had paid the city. On these annual tours of
inspection, Mordecai often saw, for the first time, some
lot of land, or dwelling-house, which, during the twelve
months previous, had fallen to his ownership, through due
process of law, including seizure and foreclosing of unsatisfied
fancied, were looked upon by the old usurer in the light
with which conquerors, on their triumphal tours, might be
supposed to regard the goodly sequestrations consequent
on their eminent domain. But, like such conquerors, the
Hebrew little troubled himself about the civilization or
refinement of his new subjects, content that tithes and
dues, arrears and rentals, were duly accounted for by his
chief officers, the agents, who farmed the different demesnes
for their own profit as well as his security.
As regarded the tenants of Kolephat College, or of any
other shambling, contracted, and unhealthy building leased
through his middle-men, little did they know or care of
Mordecai Kolephat. As far as interest to them was conconcerned,
the rich old man might have been a myth, or
that impalpable motive-power—a corporation. They knew
but the individual who periodically demanded the rent,
and whom they grudgingly paid, when able so to do; and
behind him might have stood the Czar of Russia, with
quite as much disposition to redress their grievances, as
the millionaire who reckoned houses, lands, and human
beings, by the unvarying rule of “ten per cent.”
Mordecai Kolephat, therefore, in presenting himself in
the by-ways and passages leading to the locality which he
sought, occasioned no stir or apprehension such as usually
marked the approach of Mr. Peleg Ferret, or other agents
of the Jew's business. He paused in front of his own
property, and looked upward to dingy windows, or peered
into dim alley-ways and entries, without remark or notice
from the squalid people who tramped their errands, in and
hall-ways of a building fronting on the narrow street,
which, in the ward assessor's books, was posted against
his name; but the slatternly women and dirty men, who
stood around, merely looked at him vacantly as he passed,
removed their clay pipes from between their lips a moment,
and then relapsed to apathetic indifference. To
their eyes, Mordecai Kolephat was an old man, in a rusty
brown surtout, and nothing more; for they dreamed not
of Kolephat the rich broker, whose word was law in the
stock market. Even so, O Mordecai! might it be, were
angels, instead of tenants, to encounter thee in thy walks!
The rich Jew—the cunning broker—the grasping landlord—might
be all unrecognized by their exalted natures.
For whom livest thou, O man of millions?—a stranger in
the hovels wherefrom thy golden hoards are heaped!—a
stranger in that other world whither thou canst not bear
thy golden treasure!
But Mordecai Kolephat knew and cared as little for his
tenantry as they did for him; and so troubled himself not
concerning their neglect to greet him as their lord. He
looked only for the place to which he had been bidden;
and, penetrating to the rear pile of shattered tenements,
sought the room wherein, according to the summons, he
was to find “an old acquaintance.”
The row of buildings comprising this property presented
no variation from the general type of tenant-houses.
Built of rotten brick, barely held together by cheap
mortar, the sand of which was continually crumbling out
of gaps between the rickety layers; pierced by narrow,
in the rear; ascended roofward by wooden-panelled staircases,
not two feet wide, crooked and steep, and lighted
only by such dim daylight as might penetrate to the landings
through dingy casements, at the end of each; burrowed
under by cellars, wherein the rats disputed with
lodgers as to which should first starve, stifle, or be drowned
out by tides or the overflowing of gutters; encompassed
and pervaded by fœtid smells, the effluvia of noxious
gases, generated in stagnant water, decaying matter, and
unchanging malaria; crowded with poor people, the bad
and the good, the old and the young, the hopeful and the
repining, the patient and the complaining: in all things, a
veritable tenant-house, and, under that distinction, the
abode of wretchedness, vice, want, and despair.
Mordecai Kolephat did not pause to dwell upon these
matters in connection with his property; but, after passing
the brick-paved court, between the front and rear
buildings, that was piled with dirty snow, proceeded
through an entry till he reached the room of which he was
in search, and knocked at its discolored door. An old
negress presented herself in answer to the alarm, and
querulously demanded his business.
Mordecai Kolephat peered sharply at the crone, who
was decrepid and ugly in the extreme. Her grizzled
locks were filled with ashes, and the scanty covering
which sheltered her from the cold was literally encrusted
with dirt, as were likewise her hands and face. With
wrinkled features, blear eyes, rimmed with red, and distended
mouth, within which could be seen but two yellow,
holding the door with her palsied hands, as if to prevent
the stranger's ingress before he disclosed his purpose.
“Who have you within there?” asked Mordecai, nodding
his head towards the interior.
“Anow—do ye want her?” mumbled the crone. “She's
a most gone!”
The Jew was about to inquire concerning the personage
designated by “her,” when a hand was placed upon the
old woman's shoulder, dragging her back roughly, while
another voice muttered, “Get away, mother, I know what
he wants.” Then Mordecai beheld, emerging from the
darkness within, a dwarfed mulatto man, who said briefly
to him:
“You're Kolephat, master?”
“That is my name,” returned the Jew.
“You'll find the woman dyin'. It's well yer come,
master, for `Old Pris' has got somethin' preyin' on her
mind that consarns you.”
“Ha! `Old Pris!'—it is she!” murmured Mordecai, as
he advanced into the room occupied by the negress.
It was a dark apartment, the walls clammy with mould,
the floor damp and uneven. A few stools, some straw,
and a pile of filthy rags, and shreds of carpet in a corner,
made up the furniture. At first the visitor could hardly
distinguish objects, so destitute of light was the place;
for the shattered frames of its single window had been
covered up with boards, save one solitary pane, that admitted,
through a veil of dirt, such struggling morning
rays as could penetrate between the two high buildings
accustomed to the obscurity, Mordecai saw the hag flitting
to and fro, and the squat, thick-set form of the dwarf,
apparently awaiting for him to speak.
“It was Old Pris that sent the note to me—heh?”
asked the Hebrew.
“Yes, master! The old ooman's g'wine to the rag-heap,
mighty quick now. She's been a rattlin in her troat,
master.”
“Where is she?”
“Yander—ye can't see, master, kin you? Old ooman's
sleep, or playin' possum. I'll stir her up!”
Saying this, the dwarf, whose thick limbs and burly
body Kolephat now saw were clad, or rather draped, with a
collection of ragged strips that scarcely concealed his sable
skin, tramped over the wet flooring to a sort of closet, or
recess, behind the fireless chimney-place, and made some
demonstration upon an object concealed by the darkness,
immediately after which, Kolephat heard his name pronounced,
by a harsh voice, which he recognized as that of
the ancient rag-picker, known to him, during many years,
by the sobriquet of “Old Pris.”
“My good fellow! let us have some sort of a light
here,” said the Jew, as the dwarf emerged again from the
gloom into which he had faded. “I can never see the
woman in this place.”
Saying this, Mordecai placed a shilling in the negro's
hand, who received it with a chuckle, and at once disappeared
through the door. The visitor remained standing
in the middle of the floor, though he heard his name
lugubrious sound of the death-rattle in the old rag-picker's
throat, until the re-appearance of the mulatto, with matches
and a candle, which he forthwith lighted; then, assisted
by the flickering glare, he advanced to the closet, and
beheld the “old acquaintance” who had sent for him.
Old Pris was a pitiable object to look upon, in any
dwelling of a Christian land, even as the place in which
she lay was doleful to contemplate. She was a woman of
more than seventy years, with hair grey, and, at this time,
matted by filth, in clots upon her low forehead. Her
nose was prominently curved showing the type of that
race to which her visitor himself belonged, and on either
side of it gleamed, from under the shaggy brow, a fierce,
unquiet eye, which even now, when about to close forever,
shot forth malevolent rays. Her mouth was shrivelled,
the lips drawn tightly over the gums, beneath which appeared
a row of blackened teeth. This woman lay upon
a heap of rags, reeking with accumulated dirt, a strip of
rotten cloth, the remains of a tattered horse-blanket, constituting
her only covering, while a bundle of straw at her
head, was soaked by falling drops of moisture, which
exhuded through the plaster from the wall without. The
recess wherein she reclined was formed by the span of a
staircase which ascended from the entry outside; but, as
it was hardly deep enough to admit the woman's entire
length, her feet, wrapped in rags, projected out upon the
broken hearth.
For the first time in his life, as he glanced about him,
from the dying rag-picker at his feet, to the drivelling
himself the question, “How do these people live?” He
saw the rags whereon Old Pris was stretched, saw a
wooden stool or two, a fireless hearth, and another mound
of rags opposite, and the truth flitted across the Jew's
mind, that the three wretched ones before him—the dying
and the quick—were all inmates of that narrow, dungeon-like
apartment, breathing the same miasma, suffering the
same privations, dying the same death.
“Got her toes frozed, master, in the great snow, an'
we tuck her in,” here remarked the mulatto, as if interpreting
Mordecai's reflections, and pointing, as he spoke,
to the rags that bandaged the woman's feet. “She was
a-dyin' then, ye see, and been a-dyin' ever since.”
“Two days an' two nights,” mumbled the black crone,
hobbling towards them.
“Has she had food—was she nourished?” inquired the
Jew, and heard in answer, almost as he had anticipated,
a mocking laugh from the dwarf.
“Food is scass, master, hereabouts. Mother, what did
ye eat for break-quest?”
The negress stared vacantly at her dwarf son, but made
no reply.
“Here—take this—you must be starving!” said Kolephat,
drawing a half-dollar from his pocket, and placing it
in the mulatto's hand, who received it with a grotesque
bow. “Go and get food for yourselves!”
The dwarf turned to his mumbling mother, and the two
retired towards the heap of rags, at the other extremity
of the room, where they sat down, and began to converse
hunger. Mordecai Kolephat then drew one of the stools
near the prostrate rag-picker, and sat down, saying—
“Well, Old Pris, I received your note, and have come
to see you.”
“You have, Mordecai Kolephat!” replied the woman,
in a discordant voice, as she raised herself upon one elbow,
and fixed her snaky gaze upon the visitor.
The Jew started, for the glance which rivetted his own
seemed like one that he remembered to have met in the
days of his youth, long years before he had encountered
the degraded being before him.
“You have something to communicate to me, Pris?”
“I have much to say,” responded the hag; “more than
there is time left me to speak. Mordecai Kolephat—will
you promise to listen?”
There was a wild earnestness in the rag-picker's manner,
and her tones, though grating on the ear, were as impressive
as was the strange gleam that shot from under her
thick eyebrows. The Jew bent nearer to her, and
answered—“Yes!”
“Then, I will speak to you of the past,” whispered the
old woman. She paused, for the rattling breath in her
throat impeded her utterance, but, in a moment, exerted
herself anew. “I will tell Mordecai Kolephat of the time
when I was young, and walked the streets, as a lady, that
I've since raked for the rags I'm lying on. A lady was I
once, with rings on my fingers, and silks on my back—with
fresh, red cheeks, and teeth white as the pearls that bound
my neck, and eyes bright as the diamonds on my forehead.
tempted our mother in the garden, spurning the ground
I trod, and the hearts that were cast down at my feet
in homage. He! he! even I—the old rag-picker!—
he! he!”
The horrible, chuckling laughter was ended by another
choking rattle in the hag's withered throat. The listener
shuddered, and drew back from the distorted face that
was shaken up and down, in the fitful candle-light, like a
hideous mask.
“Don't be frightened, man! 'Twas but a pleasant
memory of the past, when I had riches, and beauty,
and lovers—ay, lovers plenty, Mordecai! Are ye listening?”
The Jew nodded, and again fixed his gaze on her,
which he had withdrawn before the horrible grimaces
that her wild mirth had occasioned.
“One there was—a lover! who knelt and kissed the
dust at my feet, and swore to me body and soul, if I'd
cast him not away. And I loved the youth, Mordecai!
I loved him!”
The hag's voice grew strangely soft, as she uttered the
last words, and the Jew suddenly felt a curious emotion
stirring in his bosom.
“I loved him, for we had plighted our troth in youth—
and he was one that a woman well might love. But,
nevertheless, I spurned him, Mordecai Kolephat!—drove
him away, with frenzy in his brain—because he was poor!
hah! Mordecai, because the youth was poor! Was it
not right, old man?”
The red glitter darted from those serpent eyes, seeming
to fascinate the Hebrew's senses. He gasped wildly,
as if his breath were stifled. He essayed to speak, but
the sound died on his lips. Old Pris laughed, once
more, her fearful laugh, and drew herself up suddenly
to a sitting position, on the rags, her shrivelled hands
clasping her knees, and her head supported by the wall
behind.
“Ay, Mordecai Kolephat! I drove him away, for his
poverty, and wedded a rich lover, to ride in my carriage,
and have my liveried servants, as a lady should. But he
was avenged!—my lover was avenged!”
“And how?—and how?” demanded Mordecai, scarcely
knowing what he uttered.
“By the downfall of her who had deserted him,”
answered the woman. “By the curse which clung unto
her as a leprosy—wasting her riches, and searing her
beauty, and shrivelling the pride of her heart. By the gold
which he amassed while she sunk down to beggary—by
the good name which he gained amid men, while she—
Rachel the traitress—became a mock and a shame among
women” —
“Hold—woman! hag!” gasped the listener, “what
memories do you awaken in my brain! Who tutored you
to this?”
“Tutored!” echoed the rag-picker, with a fierce laugh.
“Mordecai Kolephat! where is the Rachel of your youth,
whom you waited for long, and lost at last—because you
were poor? Look at `Old Pris,' Mordecai! and see if
Rachel still lives!”
The Hebrew covered his eyes with clasped hands, and
groaned aloud. In an instant, memory rushed back and
pictured the woe of his youth; the unselfish love he had
cherished for a beautiful daughter of his race; the heartlessness
with which she had broken her plight to him, in
order to marry a wealthier suitor; his madness and
despair at her treachery; and, finally, the recklessness
which made him cast himself into the world's struggle, to
wrestle with fortune till she yielded her gold in abundance,
and made him the selfish, grasping man he had since
become. All those shadows of the past flitted phantom-like,
in one moment, over his mind; and then, uncovering
his eyes, he looked once more upon the hideous features
of his “old acquaintance,” who rocked her withered body
to and fro, and muttered slowly—
“Yes, Mordecai Kolephat, I am—Rachel!”
| Chapter XIV.
“An Old Acquaintance.” The tenant-house, or,, Embers from poverty's hearthstone | |