 | CHAPTER I. The midnight queen, or, Leaves from New-York
life |  |
1. CHAPTER I.
[Note to the Reader.—The leaf of “New-York
Life,” which we are about to unclose in the
narrative entitled “The Midnight Queen,” is a
dark and bitter page torn from the book of society.
Too dark, too bitter for fiction, it can only be excused
from the fact, that it is a true history, written
principally by the main personage of the narrative,
in her own way—a sad and harrowing autobiography.
The quiet atmosphere which imbues
the first portions of the narrative will not appear
tame or uninteresting, when it is contrasted with
the dark realities of the sequel. The moral of the
“Midnight Queen,” if it can be stated in a few
words, may be thus condensed:—The utter perversion
of the best faculties of the heart by the fear
of poverty and its fathomless miseries, conjoined
with the love of wealth for its enjoyments and luxuries.]
“My childhood's home! Oh! is there
in all the world a phrase so sweet as this
—“My childhood's home?” Others
may look back to childhood, and be
stung with bitter momories, but my
childhood was the heaven of my life. As
from the hopeless present I gaze back
upon it, I seem like a traveller half way
up the Alps, surrounded by snow, and
clouds, and mist, looking back upon the
happy valley, which, dotted with homes,
and rich in vines and flowers, smiles in
the sunshine far below.
My childhood's home was very beautiful.
It was a two-storied cottage, situated
upon an eminence, its white front
and rustic porch half hidden by the
horse-chesnut trees, which in the early
summer had snowy blossoms among
their deep-green leaves. Behind the cottage
arose a broad and swelling hill,
which, fringed with gardens at its base,
and crowned on its summit by a few
grand old trees, standing alone against
the sky, was in summer time clad along
its entire extent with a garment of golden
wheat. Beneath the cottage flowed
the Neprehaun, a gentle rivulet, which
wound among abrupt hills—every hill
rich in foliage, and dotted with homes
—until it lost itself in the dark waves of
the Hudson. Yes, the Hudson was
there, grand and beautiful, and visible
always from the cottage porch, the Palisades
rising from its opposite shore into
heaven, and the broad bay of Tapoan Zee
glistening in sunlight to the north.
Oh! that scene is before me now. The
cottage with its white front, half hidden
by broad green leaves intermingled with
white blossoms—the hill which rose behind
it, golden with wheat—the Neprehaun
below, winding among the hills,
now in sunshine, now in shadow—the
Hudson, with its vast bay, and the sombre
wall, which rose into the sky from
its western shore; it is before me now,
with the spring blossoms, the voices,
the sky, the very air of my childhood's
days.
In this home I found myself at the age
of thirteen. I was the pupil and the
charge of the occupant of the cottage, a
retired clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Walworth,
who, having grown gray in the
active service of his Master, had come
there to pass his last days in the enjoyment
of competence and peace. Even
now, as in the day when I left him forever,
I can see his tall form bent with
age, and clad in black, his mild pale face,
with hair as white as snow—I can hear
that voice, whose very music was made
up of the goodness of a heart at peace
with God and man. When I was thirteen,
myself, the good clergyman and
an aged woman—the housekeeper—were
the only occupants of the cottage. His
only son was away at college. And
when I was sixteen, my mother, who
had placed me in the care of the clergyman
years before, came to see me. I
shall never forget that visit. I was
sitting on the cottage porch—it was
a June day—the air was rich with
fragrance and blossoms; my book was
on my knee, when I heard her step in
beautiful, and richly clad in black, and
her dark attire shone with diamonds.
Very beautiful, I say, although there
were threads of silver in her brown hair,
and an incessant contraction of her dark
brows, which gave a look of anxiety or
pain to her face.
As she came up the garden walk,
pushing aside her veil of dark lace, I
knew her, although I had not seen her
for three years. Her presence was
strange to me, yet still my heart
bounded as I saw her come.
“Well, Frank,” she said, as though it
was but yesterday since I had seen her,
“I have come to see you”—she kissed
me warmly on the lips and cheeks—
“Your father is dead! my child.”
A tear stood in her dark eye, a slight
tremor moved her lip—that was all. My
father dead! I can scarcely describe
the emotions which these words caused.
I had not seen my father for years.—
There was still a memory of his face
present with me, coupled with an indistinct
memory of my early childhood,
passed in a city of a foreign land, and a
dim vision of a voyage upon the ocean.
and at my mother's words, there came
up the laughing face and sunny hair of
my brother Gulian, who had suddenly
disappeared, about the time my parent
returned from Paris, and just before I
had been placed in the charge of the
good clergyman. These mingling memories
arose at my mother's words, and
although the good clergyman stood more
to me in the relation of a father than my
own father, still I wept bitterly as I
heard the words, “Your father is dead!
my child.”
My mother, who seemed to me like
one of those grand rich ladies of whom
I had read in story books, seated herself
beside me on the cottage porch.
“You are getting quite beautiful,
Frank,” she said, and lifted my sun-bonnet,
and put her hand through the curls
of my hair, which was black as jet.
“You will be a woman soon.” She
kissed me, and then, as she turned
away, I heard her mutter these words,
which struck me painfully, although then
I could not understand them—“A woman!
with your mother's beauty for
your dowry, and your mother's fate for
your future!”
The slight wrinkle between her brows
grew deeper as she said these words:
“You will be a woman, and must have
an education suitable to the station you
will occupy,” continued my mother,
drawing me gently to her, and surveying
me earnestly. “Now, what do they
teach you here?
She laughed as I gravely related the
part which good old Alice, the housekeeper,
took in my education. Old Alice
taught me all the details of housekeeping;
to sew, to knit, the fabrication of
good pies, good butter, and good bread;
the mystery of the preparation of various
kinds of preserves; in fact, all the details
of housekeeping, as she understood
it. And the good old dame, with her
high cap, clear bright little eye, sharp
nose, and white apron string with a
bundle of keys, always concluded her
lessons with a mysterious intimation,
that saving the good Mr. Walworth
only, all the men in the world were
monsters more dangerous than the bears
which ate up the bad children who
mocked at Elijah.
Laughing heartily, as she heard me
gravely enter into all these details—
which I concluded with, “You see,
mother, I'm quite a housekeeper already!”—she
continued:
“And what does he teach you, my
dear?”
The laughter which animated her face
was succeeded by a look of vague curiosity,
as I began my answer. But as I
went on, her face became sad, and there
were tears in her eyes.
My father (as I had learned to call the
good clergyman) taught me to read, to
write and cypher. He gradually disclosed
to me, (more by his conversation
than through the medium of books,) the
history of past ages, the wonders of the
heavens above me, the properties of the
plants and flowers that grew in my
path. And oftentimes, by the bright
wood fire in winter, or upon the porch
under the boughs, in the rich twilight of
the summer evening—while the stars
twinkled through the leaves, or the Hudson
glistened in the lights of the rising
moon—he had talked to me of God—
of His love for all of us, His providence
watching the sparrow's fall, His mercy
reaching forth its almighty arms to the
lowest of earth-stricken children—of
the shores of the present, not dim and
cloud-shadowed, but rich in the sunlight
of eternal love, and living with the
realities of a state of being in which
there shall be no more sickness, or
pain, and tears shall be wiped from
every eye, and all things be made new
—of the holy mother watching over her
holy child, while the stars shone in upon
his humble bed in the manger—of that
child, in early boyhood, sitting in the
Temple, confounding grave men, learned
in the logic of the world, by the simple
intuition of a heart filled with the presence
of God—of the way of life, led by
that mother's child, when thirty years
had set the seal of the divine manhood
on his brow—how, after the day's hard
travel, he stopped to rest at the cottage
home of Martha and Mary—how he took
up little children and blessed them—
how the blind began to see, the deaf to
hear, the dead to live, at sound of his
voice—how, on the calm of evening, in a
modest room, he took his Last Supper
with the Twelve, John resting on his
bosom, Judas scowling in the background—how,
amid the cedars of Gethsemane,
at dead of night, while his disciples
slept, he went through the unalterable
agony alone, until an angel's hand
wiped the sweat of blood from his brow,
—how he died upon the felon's tree, the
heaven black above him, the earth beneath
him dark with the vast multitude,
—and how, on the clear Sabbath morn,
he rose again, and called the faithful woman
who had followed him to the sepulchre
by the name which his mother
bore, spoken in the old familiar tone,
“Mary!”—how he walked the earth in
bodily form eighteen hundred years ago,
shedding the presence of God around
him; and even now, he walked it still in
a spiritual body, shedding still upon sin-stricken
and sorrowing hearts, the presence
and love of God the Father. Lessons
such as these the good clergyman,
my father as I called him, taught me,
instructing me always to do good and
lead a life free from sin, not from fear of
damnation or hell, but because goodness
is growth, a good life is happiness. A
flower shut out from the light is damned;
it cannot grow. An evil life here or
hereafter is in itself damnation; for it
is want of growth, paralysis or decay of
all the higher sentiments and nobler faculties.
As, in my own way, and with such
words as I could command, I recounted
the manner in which the good clergyman
educated me, my mother's face grew sad
and tearful. She did not speak for some
moments; her gaze was downcast, and
through her long dark eyelashes tears
began to steal.
“A dream,” she muttered,—“only a
dream! Did he know mankind, and
know but a portion of their unfathomable
baseness, he would see the impossibility
of making them better; would feel
the necessity of an actual hell, black as
the darkest that a poet ever fancied.”
As she was thus occupied in her own
thoughts, a step—a well-known step—
resounded on the garden walk, and the
good clergyman advanced from the
wicket gate to the porch. Even now, I
see that pale face, with the white hair
and large clear eyes!
He advanced and took my mother cordially
by the hand, and was much affected
when he heard of my father's death.
My mother thanked him warmly for
the care which he had taken of her
child:
“This child will be a woman soon, and
she must be prepared to enter upon life
with all the accomplishments suitable to
the position which she will occupy,” continued
my mother. “I wish her to remain
with you, until she is ready to enter
the great world. But she must have
proper instruction in music and dancing.
She must not be altogether a wild country
girl when she goes into society. But,
however, my dear Mr. Walworth, we
will talk of this alone.”
Young as I was I could perceive that
there was a mystery about my mother,
her previous life or present position,
which the good clergyman did not feel
himself called upon to penetrate.
She took his arm, and led him into the
cottage, and they conversed for a long
time alone, while I remained upon the
porch, buried in a sort of dreamy reverie,
and watching the white clouds as they
sailed along the summer sky.
“I shall be absent two years.” I
heard my mother's voice, as, leaning on
the good clergyman's arm, she again came
forth upon the porch. “See that when
I return, in place of this pretty child, you
lady.”
She took me in her arms and kissed
me, while Mr. Walworth exclaimed:
“Indeed, my dear Madam, I can never
allow myself to think of Frances leaving
this home, while I am living. She has
been with me so long, is so dear to me,
that the very thought of parting with her
is like tearing my heart-strings.”
He spoke with undisguised emotion;
my mother took him warmly by the
hand, and again thanked him for the care
and love which he had lavished on her
child.
At length she said “Farewell!” and
I watched her as she went down the garden
walk, to the wicket gate, and then
across the road, until she entered a bye-path
which wound among the hills of the
Neprehaun into the valley below. She
was lost to my sight in the shadows
of the foliage. She emerged to view
again far down the valley, and I saw her
enter her grand carriage, and saw her
kerchief waving from the carriage window,
as it rolled away.
I watched, O how earnestly I watched,
until the carriage rose to sight, on
the summit of a distant hill, beyond the
spire of the village church. Then, as it
disappeared, and bore my mother from
my sight, I sat down and wept bitterly.
Would I had never seen her face
again!
| CHAPTER I. The midnight queen, or, Leaves from New-York
life | |