 | Pierre, or, The ambiguities |  |
16. BOOK XVI.
FIRST NIGHT OF THEIR ARRIVAL IN THE CITY.
I.
The stage was belated.
The country road they traveled entered the city by a remarkably
wide and winding street, a great thoroughfare for its less
opulent inhabitants. There was no moon and few stars. It
was that preluding hour of the night when the shops are just
closing, and the aspect of almost every wayfarer, as he passes
through the unequal light reflected from the windows, speaks
of one hurrying not abroad, but homeward. Though the thoroughfare
was winding, yet no sweep that it made greatly obstructed
its long and imposing vista; so that when the coach
gained the top of the long and very gradual slope running toward
the obscure heart of the town, and the twinkling perspective
of two long and parallel rows of lamps was revealed—
lamps which seemed not so much intended to dispel the general
gloom, as to show some dim path leading through it, into
some gloom still deeper beyond—when the coach gained this
critical point, the whole vast triangular town, for a moment,
seemed dimly and despondently to capitulate to the eye.
And now, ere descending the gradually-sloping declivity, and
just on its summit as it were, the inmates of the coach, by numerous
hard, painful joltings, and ponderous, dragging trundlings,
are suddenly made sensible of some great change in the
of all calibers. Grasping Pierre's arm, Isabel eagerly and
forebodingly demands what is the cause of this most strange
and unpleasant transition.
“The pavements, Isabel; this is the town.”
Isabel was silent.
But, the first time for many weeks, Delly voluntarily spoke:
“It feels not so soft as the green sward, Master Pierre.”
“No, Miss Ulver,” said Pierre, very bitterly, “the buried
hearts of some dead citizens have perhaps come to the surface.”
“Sir?” said Delly.
“And are they so hard-hearted here?” asked Isabel.
“Ask yonder pavements, Isabel. Milk dropt from the milk-man's
can in December, freezes not more quickly on those
stones, than does snow-white innocence, if in poverty, it chance
to fall in these streets.”
“Then God help my hard fate, Master Pierre,” sobbed Delly.
“Why didst thou drag hither a poor outcast like me?”
“Forgive me, Miss Ulver,” exclaimed Pierre, with sudden
warmth, and yet most marked respect; “forgive me; never
yet have I entered the city by night, but, somehow, it made
me feel both bitter and sad. Come, be cheerful, we shall soon
be comfortably housed, and have our comfort all to ourselves;
the old clerk I spoke to you about, is now doubtless ruefully
eying his hat on the peg. Come, cheer up, Isabel;—'tis a
long ride, but here we are, at last. Come! 'Tis not very far
now to our welcome.”
“I hear a strange shuffling and clattering,” said Delly, with
a shudder.
“It does not seem so light as just now,” said Isabel.
“Yes,” returned Pierre, “it is the shop-shutters being put
on; it is the locking, and bolting, and barring of windows and
doors; the town's-people are going to their rest.”
“Please God they may find it!” sighed Delly.
“They lock and bar out, then, when they rest, do they,
Pierre?” said Isabel.
“Yes, and you were thinking that does not bode well for the
welcome I spoke of.”
“Thou read'st all my soul; yes, I was thinking of that.
But whither lead these long, narrow, dismal side-glooms we
pass every now and then? What are they? They seem terribly
still. I see scarce any body in them;—there's another,
now. See how haggardly look its criss-cross, far-separate lamps.
—What are these side-glooms, dear Pierre; whither lead
they?”
“They are the thin tributaries, sweet Isabel, to the great
Oronoco thoroughfare we are in; and like true tributaries, they
come from the far-hidden places; from under dark beetling
secrecies of mortar and stone; through the long marsh-grasses
of villainy, and by many a transplanted bough-beam, where
the wretched have hung.”
“I know nothing of these things, Pierre. But I like not
the town. Think'st thou, Pierre, the time will ever come when
all the earth shall be paved?”
“Thank God, that never can be!”
“These silent side-glooms are horrible;—look! Methinks,
not for the world would I turn into one.”
That moment the nigh fore-wheel sharply grated under the
body of the coach.
“Courage!” cried Pierre, “we are in it!—Not so very solitary
either; here comes a traveler.”
“Hark, what is that?” said Delly, “that keen iron-ringing
sound? It passed us just now.”
“The keen traveler,” said Pierre, “he has steel plates to his
boot-heels;—some tender-souled elder son, I suppose.”
“Pierre,” said Isabel, “this silence is unnatural, is fearful.
The forests are never so still.”
“Because brick and mortar have deeper secrets than wood
or fell, sweet Isabel. But here we turn again; now if I guess
right, two more turns will bring us to the door. Courage,
all will be well; doubtless he has prepared a famous supper.
Courage, Isabel. Come, shall it be tea or coffee? Some bread,
or crisp toast? We'll have eggs, too; and some cold chicken,
perhaps.”—Then muttering to himself—“I hope not that,
either; no cold collations! there's too much of that in these
paving-stones here, set out for the famishing beggars to eat.
No. I won't have the cold chicken.” Then aloud—“But
here we turn again; yes, just as I thought. Ho, driver!”
(thrusting his head out of the window) “to the right! to the
right! it should be on the right! the first house with a light
on the right!”
“No lights yet but the street's,” answered the surly voice of
the driver.
“Stupid! he has passed it—yes, yes—he has! Ho! ho!
stop; turn back. Have you not passed lighted windows?”
“No lights but the street's,” was the rough reply. “What's
the number? the number? Don't keep me beating about here
all night! The number, I say!”
“I do not know it,” returned Pierre; “but I well know the
house; you must have passed it, I repeat. You must turn
back. Surely you have passed lighted windows?”
“Then them lights must burn black; there's no lighted
windows in the street; I knows the city; old maids lives here,
and they are all to bed; rest is warehouses.”
“Will you stop the coach, or not?” cried Pierre, now incensed
at his surliness in continuing to drive on.
“I obeys orders: the first house with a light; and 'cording
to my reck'ning—though to be sure, I don't know nothing of
the city where I was born and bred all my life—no, I knows
nothing at all about it—'cording to my reck'ning, the first light
in this here street will be the watch-house of the ward—yes,
to pay, and wictuals in.”
To certain temperaments, especially when previously agitated
by any deep feeling, there is perhaps nothing more exasperating,
and which sooner explodes all self-command, than the
coarse, jeering insolence of a porter, cabman, or hack-driver.
Fetchers and carriers of the worst city infamy as many of them
are; professionally familiar with the most abandoned haunts;
in the heart of misery, they drive one of the most mercenary
of all the trades of guilt. Day-dozers and sluggards on their
lazy boxes in the sunlight, and felinely wakeful and cat-eyed
in the dark; most habituated to midnight streets, only trod by
sneaking burglars, wantons, and debauchees; often in actual
pandering league with the most abhorrent sinks; so that they
are equally solicitous and suspectful that every customer they
encounter in the dark, will prove a profligate or a knave;
this hideous tribe of ogres, and Charon ferry-men to corruption
and death, naturally slide into the most practically Calvinistical
view of humanity, and hold every man at bottom a fit subject
for the coarsest ribaldry and jest; only fine coats and full pockets
can whip such mangy hounds into decency. The least impatience,
any quickness of temper, a sharp remonstrating word
from a customer in a seedy coat, or betraying any other evidence
of poverty, however minute and indirect (for in that pecuniary
respect they are the most piercing and infallible of all
the judgers of men), will be almost sure to provoke, in such
cases, their least endurable disdain.
Perhaps it was the unconscious transfer to the stage-driver
of some such ideas as these, which now prompted the highly
irritated Pierre to an act, which, in a more benignant hour, his
better reason would have restrained him from.
He did not see the light to which the driver had referred;
and was heedless, in his sudden wrath, that the coach was now
going slower in approaching it. Ere Isabel could prevent him,
ahead of the horses, and violently reined back the leaders by
their heads. The driver seized his four-in-hand whip, and with
a volley of oaths was about striking out its long, coiling lash at
Pierre, when his arm was arrested by a policeman, who suddenly
leaping on the stayed coach, commanded him to keep
the peace.
“Speak! what is the difficulty here? Be quiet, ladies, nothing
serious has happened. Speak you!”
“Pierre! Pierre!” cried the alarmed Isabel. In an instant
Pierre was at her side by the window; and now turning to the
officer, explained to him that the driver had persisted in passing
the house at which he was ordered to stop.
“Then he shall turn to the right about with you, sir;—in
double quick time too; do ye hear? I know you rascals well
enough. Turn about, you sir, and take the gentleman where
he directed.”
The cowed driver was beginning a long string of criminating
explanations, when turning to Pierre, the policeman calmly desired
him to re-enter the coach; he would see him safely at his
destination; and then seating himself beside the driver on the
box, commanded him to tell the number given him by the gentleman.
“He don't know no numbers—didn't I say he didn't—that's
what I got mad about.”
“Be still”—said the officer. “Sir”—turning round and addressing
Pierre within; “where do you wish to go?”
“I do not know the number, but it is a house in this street;
we have passed it; it is, I think, the fourth or fifth house this
side of the last corner we turned. It must be lighted up too.
It is the small old-fashioned dwelling with stone lion-heads
above the windows. But make him turn round, and drive
slowly, and I will soon point it out.”
“Can't see lions in the dark”—growled the driver—“lions;
ha! ha! jackasses more likely!”
“Look you,” said the officer, “I shall see you tightly housed
this night, my fine fellow, if you don't cease your jabber. Sir,”
he added, resuming with Pierre, “I am sure there is some mistake
here. I perfectly well know now the house you mean. I
passed it within the last half-hour; all as quiet there as ever.
No one lives there, I think; I never saw a light in it. Are you
not mistaken in something, then?”
Pierre paused in perplexity and foreboding. Was it possible
that Glen had willfully and utterly neglected his letter? Not
possible. But it might not have come to his hand; the mails
sometimes delayed. Then again, it was not wholly out of the
question, that the house was prepared for them after all, even
though it showed no outward sign. But that was not probable.
At any rate, as the driver protested, that his four horses
and lumbering vehicle could not turn short round in that
street; and that if he must go back, it could only be done by
driving on, and going round the block, and so retracing his
road; and as after such a procedure, on his part, then in case
of a confirmed disappointment respecting the house, the driver
would seem warranted, at least in some of his unmannerliness;
and as Pierre loathed the villain altogether, therefore, in order to
run no such risks, he came to a sudden determination on the
spot.
“I owe you very much, my good friend,” said he to the
officer, “for your timely assistance. To be frank, what you
have just told me has indeed perplexed me not a little concerning
the place where I proposed to stop. Is there no hotel in
this neighborhood, where I could leave these ladies while I seek
my friend?”
Wonted to all manner of deceitfulness, and engaged in a
calling which unavoidably makes one distrustful of mere appearances,
however specious, however honest; the really goodhearted
most unpleasant scrutiny; and he abandoned the “Sir,” and
the tone of his voice sensibly changed, as he replied:—“There
is no hotel in this neighborhood; it is too off the thoroughfares.”
“Come! come!”—cried the driver, now growing bold again
—“though you're an officer, I'm a citizen for all that. You
havn't any further right to keep me out of my bed now. He
don't know where he wants to go to, cause he haint got no place
at all to go to; so I'll just dump him here, and you dar'n't stay
me.”
“Don't be impertinent now,” said the officer, but not so
sternly as before.
“I'll have my rights though, I tell you that! Leave go of
my arm; damn ye, get off the box; I've the law now. I say
mister, come tramp, here goes your luggage,” and so saying he
dragged toward him a light trunk on the top of the stage.
“Keep a clean tongue in ye now”—said the officer—“and
don't be in quite so great a hurry,” then addressing Pierre, who
had now re-alighted from the coach—“Well, this can't continue;
what do you intend to do?”
“Not to ride further with that man, at any rate,” said Pierre;
“I will stop right here for the present.”
“He! he!” laughed the driver; “he! he! 'mazing 'commodating
now—we hitches now, we do—stops right afore the
watch-house—he! he!—that's funny!”
“Off with the luggage then, driver,” said the policeman—
“here hand the small trunk, and now away and unlash there
behind.”
During all this scene, Delly had remained perfectly silent in
her trembling and rustic alarm; while Isabel, by occasional
cries to Pierre, had vainly besought some explanation. But
though their complete ignorance of city life had caused Pierre's
two companions to regard the scene thus far with too much
the heart of a strange town, Pierre handed them out of the
coach into the naked street, and they saw their luggage piled
so near the white light of a watch-house, the same ignorance,
in some sort, reversed its effects on them; for they little fancied
in what really untoward and wretched circumstances they first
touched the flagging of the city.
As the coach lumbered off, and went rolling into the wide
murkiness beyond, Pierre spoke to the officer.
“It is a rather strange accident, I confess, my friend, but
strange accidents will sometimes happen.”
“In the best of families,” rejoined the other, a little ironically.
Now, I must not quarrel with this man, thought Pierre to
himself, stung at the officer's tone. Then said:—“Is there any
one in your—office?”
“No one as yet—not late enough.”
“Will you have the kindness then to house these ladies
there for the present, while I make haste to provide them
with better lodgment? Lead on, if you please.”
The man seemed to hesitate a moment, but finally acquiesced;
and soon they passed under the white light, and entered
a large, plain, and most forbidding-looking room, with hacked
wooden benches and bunks ranged along the sides, and a railing
before a desk in one corner. The permanent keeper of the
place was quietly reading a paper by the long central double
bat's-wing gas-light; and three officers off duty were nodding
on a bench.
“Not very liberal accommodations”—said the officer, quietly;
“nor always the best of company, but we try to be civil. Be
seated, ladies,” politely drawing a small bench toward them.
“Hallo, my friends,” said Pierre, approaching the nodding
three beyond, and tapping them on the shoulder—“Hallo, I
say! Will you do me a little favor? Will you help bring
trouble, and be much obliged into the bargain.”
Instantly the three noddies, used to sudden awakenings,
opened their eyes, and stared hard; and being further enlightened
by the bat's-wings and first officer, promptly brought
in the luggage as desired.
Pierre hurriedly sat down by Isabel, and in a few words gave
her to understand, that she was now in a perfectly secure place,
however unwelcoming; that the officers would take every care
of her, while he made all possible speed in running to the
house, and indubitably ascertaining how matters stood there.
He hoped to be back in less than ten minutes with good tidings.
Explaining his intention to the first officer, and begging him
not to leave the girls till he should return, he forthwith sallied
into the street. He quickly came to the house, and immediately
identified it. But all was profoundly silent and dark.
He rang the bell, but no answer; and waiting long enough
to be certain, that either the house was indeed deserted, or else
the old clerk was unawakeable or absent; and at all events,
certain that no slightest preparation had been made for their
arrival; Pierre, bitterly disappointed, returned to Isabel with
this most unpleasant information.
Nevertheless something must be done, and quickly. Turning
to one of the officers, he begged him to go and seek a hack,
that the whole party might be taken to some respectable lodging.
But the man, as well as his comrades, declined the
errand on the score, that there was no stand on their beat, and
they could not, on any account, leave their beat. So Pierre
himself must go. He by no means liked to leave Isabel and
Delly again, on an expedition which might occupy some time.
But there seemed no resource, and time now imperiously
pressed. Communicating his intention therefore to Isabel, and
again entreating the officer's particular services as before, and
promising not to leave him unrequited; Pierre again sallied
sound of any approaching vehicle was audible. He ran on,
and turning the first corner, bent his rapid steps toward the
greatest and most central avenue of the city, assured that
there, if anywhere, he would find what he wanted. It was
some distance off; and he was not without hope that an empty
hack would meet him ere he arrived there. But the few stray
ones he encountered had all muffled fares. He continued on,
and at last gained the great avenue. Not habitually used to
such scenes, Pierre for a moment was surprised, that the instant
he turned out of the narrow, and dark, and death-like
bye-street, he should find himself suddenly precipitated into
the not-yet-repressed noise and contention, and all the garish
night-life of a vast thoroughfare, crowded and wedged by
day, and even now, at this late hour, brilliant with occasional
illuminations, and echoing to very many swift wheels and
footfalls.
II.
“I say, my pretty one! Dear! Dear! young man! Oh,
love, you are in a vast hurry, aint you? Can't you stop a bit,
now, my dear: do—there's a sweet fellow.”
Pierre turned; and in the flashing, sinister, evil cross-lights
of a druggist's window, his eye caught the person of a wonderfully
beautifully-featured girl; scarlet-cheeked, glaringly-arrayed,
and of a figure all natural grace but unnatural vivacity.
Her whole form, however, was horribly lit by the green and
yellow rays from the druggist's.
“My God!” shuddered Pierre, hurrying forward, “the
town's first welcome to youth!”
He was just crossing over to where a line of hacks were
by a short, gilded name, rather reservedly and aristocratically
denominating a large and very handsome house, the second
story of which was profusely lighted. He looked up, and
was very certain that in this house were the apartments of
Glen. Yielding to a sudden impulse, he mounted the single
step toward the door, and rang the bell, which was quickly responded
to by a very civil black.
As the door opened, he heard the distant interior sound of
dancing-music and merriment.
“Is Mr. Stanly in?”
“Mr. Stanly? Yes, but he's engaged.”
“How?”
“He is somewhere in the drawing rooms. My mistress is
giving a party to the lodgers.”
“Ay? Tell Mr. Stanly I wish to see him for one moment
if you please; only one moment.”
“I dare not call him, sir. He said that possibly some one
might call for him to-night—they are calling every night for
Mr. Stanly—but I must admit no one, on the plea of the
party.”
A dark and bitter suspicion now darted through the mind
of Pierre; and ungovernably yielding to it, and resolved to
prove or falsify it without delay, he said to the black:
“My business is pressing. I must see Mr. Stanly.”
“I am sorry, sir, but orders are orders: I am his particular
servant here—the one that sees his silver every holyday. I
can't disobey him. May I shut the door, sir? for as it is, I can
not admit you.”
“The drawing-rooms are on the second floor, are they not?”
said Pierre quietly.
“Yes,” said the black pausing in surprise, and holding the
door.
“Yonder are the stairs, I think?”
“That way, sir; but this is yours;” and the now suspicious
black was just on the point of closing the portal violently upon
him, when Pierre thrust him suddenly aside, and springing up
the long stairs, found himself facing an open door, from whence
proceeded a burst of combined brilliancy and melody, doubly
confusing to one just emerged from the street. But bewildered
and all demented as he momentarily felt, he instantly stalked
in, and confounded the amazed company with his unremoved
slouched hat, pale cheek, and whole dusty, travel-stained, and
ferocious aspect.
“Mr. Stanly! where is Mr. Stanly?” he cried, advancing
straight through a startled quadrille, while all the music suddenly
hushed, and every eye was fixed in vague affright upon
him.
“Mr. Stanly! Mr. Stanly!” cried several bladish voices,
toward the further end of the further drawing-room, into which
the first one widely opened, “Here is a most peculiar fellow
after you; who the devil is he?”
“I think I see him,” replied a singularly cool, deliberate, and
rather drawling voice, yet a very silvery one, and at bottom
perhaps a very resolute one; “I think I see him; stand aside,
my good fellow, will you; ladies, remove, remove from between
me and yonder hat.”
The polite compliance of the company thus addressed, now
revealed to the advancing Pierre, the tall, robust figure of a remarkably
splendid-looking, and brown-bearded young man,
dressed with surprising plainness, almost demureness, for such
an occasion; but this plainness of his dress was not so obvious
at first, the material was so fine, and admirably fitted. He
was carelessly lounging in a half side-long attitude upon a
large sofa, and appeared as if but just interrupted in some very
agreeable chat with a diminutive but vivacious brunette, occupying
the other end. The dandy and the man; strength and
effeminacy; courage and indolence, were so strangely blended
to decide whether there was any genuine mettle in him, or
not.
Some years had gone by since the cousins had met; years
peculiarly productive of the greatest conceivable changes in the
general personal aspect of human beings. Nevertheless, the
eye seldom alters. The instant their eyes met, they mutually
recognized each other. But both did not betray the recognition.
“Glen!” cried Pierre, and paused a few steps from him.
But the superb-eyed only settled himself lower down in his
lounging attitude, and slowly withdrawing a small, unpretending,
and unribboned glass from his vest pocket, steadily, yet
not entirely insultingly, notwithstanding the circumstances, scrutinized
Pierre. Then, dropping his glass, turned slowly round
upon the gentlemen near him, saying in the same peculiar,
mixed, and musical voice as before:
“I do not know him; it is an entire mistake; why don't
the servants take him out, and the music go on?—As I was
saying, Miss Clara, the statues you saw in the Louvre are not
to be mentioned with those in Florence and Rome. Why,
there now is that vaunted chef d'œuvre, the Fighting Gladiator
of the Louvre—”
“Fighting Gladiator it is!” yelled Pierre, leaping toward
him like Spartacus. But the savage impulse in him was restrained
by the alarmed female shrieks and wild gestures
around him. As he paused, several gentlemen made motions
to pinion him; but shaking them off fiercely, he stood erect,
and isolated for an instant, and fastening his glance upon his
still reclining, and apparently unmoved cousin, thus spoke:—
“Glendinning Stanly, thou disown'st Pierre not so abhorrently
as Pierre does thee. By Heaven, had I a knife, Glen,
I could prick thee on the spot; let out all thy Glendinning
blood, and then sew up the vile remainder. Hound, and base
blot upon the general humanity!”
“This is very extraordinary:—remarkable case of combined
imposture and insanity; but where are the servants? why
don't that black advance? Lead him out, my good Doc, lead
him out. Carefully, carefully! stay”—putting his hand in his
pocket—“there, take that, and have the poor fellow driven off
somewhere.”
Bolting his rage in him, as impossible to be sated by any
conduct, in such a place, Pierre now turned, sprang down the
stairs, and fled the house.
III.
“Hack, sir? Hack, sir? Hack, sir?”
“Cab, sir? Cab, sir? Cab, sir?”
“This way, sir! This way, sir! This way, sir!”
“He's a rogue! Not him! he's a rogue!”
Pierre was surrounded by a crowd of contending hackmen,
all holding long whips in their hands; while others eagerly
beckoned to him from their boxes, where they sat elevated between
their two coach-lamps like shabby, discarded saints. The
whip-stalks thickened around him, and several reports of the
cracking lashes sharply sounded in his ears. Just bursting
from a scene so goading as his interview with the scornful Glen
in the dazzling drawing-room, to Pierre, this sudden tumultuous
surrounding of him by whip-stalks and lashes, seemed like the
onset of the chastising fiends upon Orestes. But, breaking
away from them, he seized the first plated door-handle near
him, and, leaping into the hack, shouted for whoever was the
keeper of it, to mount his box forthwith and drive off in a given
direction.
The vehicle had proceeded some way down the great avenue
place?
“The Watch-house of the — Ward,” cried Pierre.
“Hi! hi! Goin' to deliver himself up, hey?” grinned the
fellow to himself—“Well, that's a sort of honest, any way:—
g'lang, you dogs!—whist! whee! wha!—g'lang!”
The sights and sounds which met the eye of Pierre on re-entering
the watch-house, filled him with inexpressible horror and
fury. The before decent, drowsy place, now fairly reeked with
all things unseemly. Hardly possible was it to tell what conceivable
cause or occasion had, in the comparatively short absence
of Pierre, collected such a base congregation. In indescribable
disorder, frantic, diseased-looking men and women of
all colors, and in all imaginable flaunting, immodest, grotesque,
and shattered dresses, were leaping, yelling, and cursing around
him. The torn Madras handkerchiefs of negresses, and the
red gowns of yellow girls, hanging in tatters from their naked
bosoms, mixed with the rent dresses of deep-rouged white women,
and the split coats, checkered vests, and protruding shirts
of pale, or whiskered, or haggard, or mustached fellows of all
nations, some of whom seemed scared from their beds, and
others seemingly arrested in the midst of some crazy and wanton
dance. On all sides, were heard drunken male and female
voices, in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, interlarded
now and then, with the foulest of all human lingoes, that dialect
of sin and death, known as the Cant language, or the
Flash.
Running among this combined babel of persons and voices,
several of the police were vainly striving to still the tumult;
while others were busy handcuffing the more desperate; and
here and there the distracted wretches, both men and women,
gave downright battle to the officers; and still others already
handcuffed struck out at them with their joined ironed arms.
Meanwhile, words and phrases unrepeatable in God's sunlight,
of by tens of thousands of the decent people of the city; syllables
obscene and accursed were shouted forth in tones plainly
evincing that they were the common household breath of their
utterers. The thieves'-quarters, and all the brothels, Lock-and-Sin
hospitals for incurables, and infirmaries and infernoes of
hell seemed to have made one combined sortie, and poured out
upon earth through the vile vomitory of some unmentionable
cellar.
Though the hitherto imperfect and casual city experiences
of Pierre, illy fitted him entirely to comprehend the specific
purport of this terrific spectacle; still he knew enough by
hearsay of the more infamous life of the town, to imagine
from whence, and who, were the objects before him. But all
his consciousness at the time was absorbed by the one horrified
thought of Isabel and Delly, forced to witness a sight hardly
endurable for Pierre himself; or, possibly, sucked into the
tumult, and in close personal contact with its loathsomeness.
Rushing into the crowd, regardless of the random blows and
curses he encountered, he wildly sought for Isabel, and soon
descried her struggling from the delirious reaching arms of a
half-clad reeling whiskerando. With an immense blow of his
mailed fist, he sent the wretch humming, and seizing Isabel,
cried out to two officers near, to clear a path for him to the
door. They did so. And in a few minutes the panting Isabel
was safe in the open air. He would have stayed by her, but
she conjured him to return for Delly, exposed to worse insults
than herself. An additional posse of officers now approaching,
Pierre committing her to the care of one of them, and summoning
two others to join himself, now re-entered the room.
In another quarter of it, he saw Delly seized on each hand by
two bleared and half-bloody women, who with fiendish grimaces
were ironically twitting her upon her close-necked dress,
and had already stript her handkerchief from her. She uttered
Pierre soon succeeded in returning with her to Isabel.
During the absence of Pierre in quest of the hack, and
while Isabel and Delly were quietly awaiting his return, the
door had suddenly burst open, and a detachment of the police
drove in, and caged, the entire miscellaneous night-occupants
of a notorious stew, which they had stormed and carried during
the height of some outrageous orgie. The first sight of the
interior of the watch-house, and their being so quickly huddled
together within its four blank walls, had suddenly lashed the
mob into frenzy; so that for the time, oblivious of all other
considerations, the entire force of the police was directed to
the quelling of the in-door riot; and consequently, abandoned
to their own protection, Isabel and Delly had been temporarily
left to its mercy.
It was no time for Pierre to manifest his indignation at the
officer—even if he could now find him—who had thus falsified
his individual pledge concerning the precious charge committed
to him. Nor was it any time to distress himself about his luggage,
still somewhere within. Quitting all, he thrust the bewildered
and half-lifeless girls into the waiting hack, which, by
his orders, drove back in the direction of the stand, where
Pierre had first taken it up.
When the coach had rolled them well away from the tumult,
Pierre stopped it, and said to the man, that he desired to be
taken to the nearest respectable hotel or boarding-house of any
kind, that he knew of. The fellow—maliciously diverted by
what had happened thus far—made some ambiguous and
rudely merry rejoinder. But warned by his previous rash
quarrel with the stage-driver, Pierre passed this unnoticed, and
in a controlled, calm, decided manner repeated his directions.
The issue was, that after a rather roundabout drive they
drew up in a very respectable side-street, before a large respectable-looking
house, illuminated by two tall white lights
stir within, spite of the comparative lateness of the
hour. A bare-headed, tidily-dressed, and very intelligent-looking
man, with a broom clothes-brush in his hand, appearing,
scrutinized him rather sharply at first; but as Pierre advanced
further into the light, and his countenance became visible, the
man, assuming a respectful but still slightly perplexed air, invited
the whole party into a closely adjoining parlor, whose disordered
chairs and general dustiness, evinced that after a day's
activity it now awaited the morning offices of the housemaids.
“Baggage, sir?”
“I have left my baggage at another place,” said Pierre, “I
shall send for it to-morrow.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the very intelligent-looking man, rather
dubiously, “shall I discharge the hack, then?”
“Stay,” said Pierre, bethinking him, that it would be well
not to let the man know from whence they had last come, “I
will discharge it myself, thank you.”
So returning to the sidewalk, without debate, he paid the
hackman an exorbitant fare, who, anxious to secure such illegal
gains beyond all hope of recovery, quickly mounted his box and
drove off at a gallop.
“Will you step into the office, sir, now?” said the man,
slightly flourishing with his brush—“this way, sir, if you
please.”
Pierre followed him, into an almost deserted, dimly lit room
with a stand in it. Going behind the stand, the man turned
round to him a large ledger-like book, thickly inscribed with
names, like any directory, and offered him a pen ready dipped
in ink.
Understanding the general hint, though secretly irritated at
something in the manner of the man, Pierre drew the book to
him, and wrote in a firm hand, at the bottom of the last-named
column,—
“Mr. and Mrs. Pierre Glendinning, and Miss Ulver.”
The man glanced at the writing inquiringly, and then said—
“The other column, sir—where from.”
“True,” said Pierre, and wrote “Saddle Meadows.”
The very intelligent-looking man re-examined the page, and
then slowly stroking his shaven chin, with a fork, made of his
thumb for one tine, and his united four fingers for the other,
said softly and whisperingly—“Anywheres in this country,
sir?”
“Yes, in the country,” said Pierre, evasively, and bridling
his ire. “But now show me to two chambers, will you; the
one for myself and wife, I desire to have opening into another,
a third one, never mind how small; but I must have a dressing-room.”
“Dressing-room,” repeated the man, in an ironically deliberative
voice—“Dressing-room;—Hem!—You will have your
luggage taken into the dressing-room, then, I suppose.—Oh, I
forgot—your luggage aint come yet—ah, yes, yes, yes—luggage
is coming to-morrow—Oh, yes, yes,—certainly—to-morrow—of
course. By the way, sir; I dislike to seem at all uncivil,
and I am sure you will not deem me so; but—
“Well,” said Pierre, mustering all his self-command for the
coming impertinence.
“When stranger gentlemen come to this house without luggage,
we think ourselves bound to ask them to pay their bills
in advance, sir; that is all, sir.”
“I shall stay here to-night and the whole of to-morrow, at
any rate,” rejoined Pierre, thankful that this was all; “how
much will it be?” and he drew out his purse.
The man's eyes fastened with eagerness on the purse; he
looked from it to the face of him who held it; then seemed
half hesitating an instant; then brightening up, said, with sudden
suavity—“Never mind, sir, never mind, sir; though rogues
sometimes be gentlemanly; gentlemen that are gentlemen
their friends; and their only friends are their dollars; you have
a purse-full of friends.—We have chambers, sir, that will exactly
suit you, I think. Bring your ladies and I will show you
up to them immediately.” So saying, dropping his brush, the
very intelligent-looking man lighted one lamp, and taking
two unlighted ones in his other hand, led the way down the
dusky lead-sheeted hall, Pierre following him with Isabel and
Delly.
| Pierre, or, The ambiguities | |