University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
TENDER SYMPATHIES AND SITUATIONS.

Mrs. Perkins Anderson herself, clad in her happiest style —
bracelets on her arms, brilliants on bosom and finger — received
our rover at the entrance, and hastily drew him into the dwelling.
They walked together through a dark passage, her hands grasping
his affectionately, and leading him on to an apartment in the rear
of the building, which, the shutters all being carefully closed, was
brilliantly lighted with wax-candles. The room was, for that day
and region, a handsomely-furnished one. London had supplied
some of its best styles of furniture in the Elizabethan fashion —
great-backed mahogany chairs, massive, such as might befit a coronation;
and massive tables; and a tall clock in the corner, large
enough for the halls of Gog and Magog; and great oval mirrors
against the walls, environed with richly-gilded frames, beautifully
carved with leaves of oak, interspersed with golden acorns. From
these samples, suppose the rest of the catalogue. A luxurious
chair received the lady, and another of the same pattern, wheeled
in front of her, was occupied by our captain of the “Happy-go-Lucky.”

The lady was frank and joyous, and glowed apparently with
the happiness she felt at the presence of her visiter.

“I am so glad to see you again, my dear captain! This is a
real pleasure. You have been so long absent! But let me thank
you at once for that beautiful present of fruits. They are delicious.

But, to see you again, and looking so well, makes me at
once forget the long time of expectation — the weariness of waiting.
You know I count you as among my dearest friends, and
will believe me when I assure you that I have looked and longed
often for the pleasure of this meeting.”

And the lady again took the hands of our captain, and smiled
most sweetly in his very eyes.

“You are kind,” he said, “kind as ever. And I am rejoiced
to find that a gay life, constant society, and increase of wealth,
have not made you forgetful of old friends.”

“How should they? It is they who make life precious; show
the uses of wealth; give the charm to society. Now that you are
come, we shall have a merry time of it. We have, indeed, a gay
circle here — many very clever and interesting people; we constantly
meet, and there is quite a struggle already as to who shall
give the gayest parties.”

“You are aware that I am forbidden to go into society — parties
especially?”

“Forbidden! how — why?”

“My health!”

“Pshaw! what nonsense! You were never looking better —
never more handsome!”

“Thank you. Perhaps I should say my life, rather than health,
depends upon my not being seen in public.”

“Ah! I understand you. Franks warned me to be cautious,
and to send the servants off. But, my dear captain, are not these
precautions very ridiculous? What have you to fear? what have
you been doing?”

“Nothing worse than I have done before. But the court of
England has suddenly grown virtuous, and sensitive to the royal
pledges; and the crown has taught the proprietary lords to translate
`privateer' into `pirate,' and especially to consider one Captain
Calvert a particular offender of the latter class — simply for
not pulling down the British jack in obedience to the shot of a
royal packet of Castile.”

“And why should you? What! the British flag go down before
a Spaniard? I hope you sunk her!”

“The very thing I did. But our royal sovereign does not share
the spirit of his people, and the Spanish embassador has had influence

enough to get me outlawed. So that, my dear Mrs. Anderson,
I am in your power: you see how much I rely upon
your friendship! You have only to report my presence here to
any of the council, and you win a purse of five hundred pounds,
and consign me to dungeon and scaffold.”

“Ah! with my help, you shall have no worse dungeon than
my dwelling — its most sacred chamber. But what fools! Well,
one thing is certain: our people will never quarrel with you for
knocking the Spaniard on the head. You are quite safe with
us—”

“Only so long as I keep unseen. I must make a cloak of the
night while in Charleston, and lie close by day. I might be safe
with your people; but I am warned, by those who know, that it
will not do any longer to appear publicly among them. Your
privy council are already on the watch to snare and take me;
and, did they suspect my presence here now, you would soon hear
of the proclamation, and this would be followed by the search.”

“I am so sorry! I should so delight to have you at my party
on Thursday night! What are we to do? I can hardly give
you up.”

“I must forego the pleasure. But I 'll tell you what I can do.”

“Well?”

“I have my wife with me.”

“What! that little Mexican creature?”

“Yes, I have but one.”

This was said with the faintest effort at a smile. The speech
reminded Mrs. Perkins Anderson of the superior advantages possessed
by her own husband as an Indian trader. And she sighed,
as if in sympathy with the sad fortunes of the rover. But, in a
moment after, she said —

“And she is here, with you?”

“With your consent, she will be with you to-morrow night.
On the strength of your frequent invitations, I have brought her
with me this voyage. She begs your acceptance of these trifles.”

He handed the lady a packet and a case. She opened both
with eagerness. The first contained a shawl — one of those exquisite
fabrics of the East which might be spread over a chamber
as a carpet, yet could be crushed into the compass of a walnut-shell;
the case, as it was opened, flashed out in a blaze from a

cluster of precious gems — their spiritual brightness, so glowing
and ethereal, seeming to need, for confinement, that beautiful setting,
in golden filagree, with which Mexican art, always wonderful
in the execution of such works, had contrived to secure and
illustrate the gems; the setting itself ingeniously devising that a
golden serpent, with mosaics on his back, should “wear a precious
jewel in its head” — should gleam with two precious jewels for its
eyes — and, twined about the fair neck of beauty, should rest its
gorgeous though monstrous head upon the heaving breast of white
below. So were those jewelled birds, that were meant to sparkle
on her brow, to float above her hair, or to perch as a crest upon
the bracelets of her arm.

Mrs. Perkins Anderson, though rich and accustomed to show,
was absolutely silenced by the astonishing beauty and evident
value of the gift. When she did speak her raptures, it was only
to find all superlatives wanting:—

“Superb! wonderful! magnificent! Oh, how beautiful! I
never thought that there could be such exquisite fabrics. And
wought by these Mexicans and Spaniards! It is wonderful.”

Like a sagacious woman, she never once asked our rover how
he got them — by what invasion of Spanish towns; by what fierce
fight with galleons or frigates of Castile and Leon. But she made
some modest hesitation about accepting a gift so costly.

“Consider it only valuable as a gift of love, and then, the more
priceless, the more it becomes us to welcome and to wear it. It
is such, believe me. You have cheered many hours of my solitude,
Charlotte, and you will no doubt contribute to make happy
the young creature, my wife, while she stays with you. Suffer
us to assure you in this manner — for I deal, you are aware, but
little in professions — that we have found your kindness much
more precious to us than these toys can ever be to any human
heart.”

He pushed the jewels back to her as he spoke, and she silently
gathered them into the case and laid them with the shawl behind
her. Abruptly then, and with a greater degree of earnestness,
she said:—

“Your tones are very sad, Harry. Is it ever to be thus?”

“I suppose so!”

“No content?”

“Save in the unrest which, so long as life lasts, must afford me
my only refuge from thought and disappointment.”

“I would I could do something, Harry Calvert, to make you
more cheerful. Can I do nothing? Is the heart utterly sealed?
Is there to be no freedom for it? And such a heart as yours!
Oh, this life! what a thing of contradictions; of ill-assorted associations;
of ties that are bonds, not links; and connections that
only chafe, and do not cheer! Ah, Harry, what a life is mine!
I am compelled to be frivolous, to escape the snares of feeling.
I could love! I could surrender myself wholly to the one affection,
could I be sure of its faith; but as I am—”

“Charlotte, we have nothing to do with happiness. It comes,
or it does not come. It obeys no regulation. It is secured by no
plan, no wisdom, no fine scheme of thought, no human policy or
persuasion. The very caprices of life forbid the idea of happiness.
We are to undergo an ordeal — to work out a certain result
— about which we ourselves have no certainty. We are in
the hands of a power in which our hands are powerless — which
heeds little how we hope, or sigh, or dream, or suffer. We must
keep our hearts silent; stifle what we can; resign, as readily as
possible, what we can; indulge in few expectations; leave all that
we can to the Power whose will is absolute, and before which all
our purposes shrink into nothingness. I am not a fatalist, when
I believe in the Providence

I have erred like the rest, but I am not getting obdurate. I have
simply survived hope — at least in all things in this miserable
state of ordeal which we call life.”

“Alas! what a confession! Survived hope! Why, Harry,
even I, who claim to be disappointed also, have not survived
hope.”

“Have you weighed it?”

“No, Heaven forbid! I simply let myself alone, and employ
the day as profitably for pleasure as I can.”

“Why, so do I, and so does every man, woman, and child.
But who can see far enough ahead to resolve that the pleasure of
to-day will not be the pain of to-morrow? Besides, we are beings
of different grades. Some swim and sing through life, touching

the sands lightly, as some little bird or insect; others, with
sterner will, or heavier wing, dive deep, soar high, move rapidly,
and with too much earnestness, not to bruise themselves perpetually
in the superior violence of their effort. I am of this nature.
It is an enviable condition, that of a lightness which takes nothing
seriously — which may be bird or butterfly, satisfied with a day's
exertion, and singing or soaring only for its little hour.”

“And you hold me one of these creatures, Harry?”

“No—”

“You do, Harry Calvert — you do! But you know me not.
I live in the world — I must live in it — since I have hardly a
home. What is here? Beauty, you will say — grandeur even,
for such a region — and wealth. I have luxuries — food — trappings
— servants — in abundance. But, Harry, need I say to you
that I am here in a solitude? I am alone — no home — for I have
no companionship.”

Our cruiser showed himself a little uneasy. He rose and paced
the room. The lady was growing sentimental. Tears were in
her eyes as she drew this melancholy picture of human desolation
in the case of one who flourished at all the balls of the season.
And there was that empressement in her manner which seemed
likely to compel his sympathies to a participation in her griefs.
He did not answer her, but silently strode the apartment to and
fro, never looking up. She rose and followed him, laid her hands
upon his shoulder, and continued, even more earnestly —

“You do not believe me, Harry!”

“Why not? Who can know where the serpent coils — under
what flower? who say how the heart writhes with secret tortures,
wearing yet a face wreathed in smiles? I must not judge of your
case, having a sufficient knowledge of my own. But why speak
of either? Can they be amended?”

“Alas! I know not. O Harry Calvert, I so long for sympathy!
This terrible isolation — this waste of feeling — this consciousness
that our hearts give forth their waters, as fountains in
the desert, with none to see, or seek, or taste!”

“But the very fact that they flow proves life — not unprofitable
life. In their own fullness they find content.”

“Ah! but they finally cease to flow, finding that they flow in
vain. The fountain chokes at last.”

“Unless an angel comes down at night to trouble it.”

“Ah, would the angel come! But why should this waste be?
Why should the heart long in vain for the very nourishment
which is its only need and craving? Why, of all these myriads
whom we could love, and whose love one might deserve and requite,
should we still sigh in loneliness, thirsting for living waters
of love in vain?”

It must not be denied that Mrs. Perkins Anderson was a very
interesting woman. Not exactly handsome — scarcely pretty —
she was yet interesting. She had a face which sparkled with animation
and intelligence; she was short, but not bulky of figure,
and she dressed, as may be conjectured, to a marvel. And now,
as she indulges in the pathetic mood, she may reasonably imagine
that she must be irresistible. Certainly nothing can be more unnatural,
in the case of a brave and gallant gentleman, than to
refuse his sympathies when Beauty weeps — and when that Beauty
still keeps her youth, and when those tears are enforced by eloquent
pleadings of a warm fancy and a somewhat copious thought!
For, though an ignorant woman, so far as early education is concerned
— ignorant of letters and science, and scarcely awakened
to the deep truths that lie in art — Mrs. Perkins Anderson had so
lived, and was so susceptible of education, could so rapidly absorb
from life and society, and had such natural gifts, that, upon occasion,
she could rise to eloquence.

She was destined to waste it on the present occasion. The
eyes of Harry Calvert settled upon her with a keen and searching
glance. He was no sentimentalist. His deep, earnest tones were
in unison with the stern, cold, troublesome query which he put.

“Of what, really, do you complain, Mrs. Anderson?”

“Oh, do not, Harry, use an address so formal. We have known
each other too long — have been tried friends too long — for this:
call me, I entreat you, as before — call me Charlotte.”

“Well, Charlotte, of what do you complain?”

“Of bonds — of fetters!”

He was dull of comprehension.

“Of what nature?”

“I am the wife of one who loves me not.”

The question that followed was a somewhat annoying one:—

“Do you love him?”

“No!” cried the lady, grasping the arm of the inquirer, and
looking intently into his face — “no, Harry, how should I? In
what should he interest me? How should such as he control
affections such as mine? He, bent only on the acquisition of
money — cold, selfish, indifferent — leaving me lonely—”

“Does he interest you when here?”

“No!”

“Then you are quits; for it is clear, Charlotte, that you do
not interest him, or he would remain, in compliance with your
wishes.”

The lady's cheeks flushed up to her eyes.

“But, Harry, do you hold me incapable of interest in the eyes
of a gentleman?”

“Far from it! At all events, you always interest me, and
never more than when I think you erring and unreasonable, as I
hold you now.”

“Ah, Harry, that speech should only be made by a lover.”

How very sweetly and tenderly the lady smiled as she uttered
this courteous reproach! But there was no answering smile on
the face of our cruiser. He had long before sounded the lady's
shallows. She belongs to a well-known school, who use sentiment,
perhaps unconsciously to themselves, only as a cover for
passion. She probably deceived herself. We will suppose so,
through charity. Many do, no doubt, deceive themselves through
some such medium as sentiment. The class is somewhat increasing
in modern times, since gradually society has begun to shake
off very generally the sense of duty. All idle women, having a
certain amount of smartness, and no children to attend to, and no
household duties to perform, or devolving all these upon servants,
are necessarily in this very danger. There is a gradual growth
of morbid sentimentality, which deals freely in this sort of sophistication,
but which has its real root only in passion. Our rover
is himself a man of passion, but not a rover in this respect. His
passion is true, and therefore concentrative. All passions which
lack in concentrativeness are morbid, diseased, unresting, and capricious,
as those of a ground-sparrow. You may console the
broken heart in an hour, by giving exercise to the blood. Captain
Calvert was not pleased to echo the lady's sentimentalities —
nay, he was rather disposed to probe them.

“Charlotte,” he said coolly, but in the deepest tones of his sonorous
voice, “I repeat the question — of what do you complain?”

“Have I not said of isolation, abandonment, indifference, neglect,
on the part of him who ought to love me?”

“But you have just as distinctly admitted that you do not love
him.”

“Because he neglects me.”

“But, Charlotte, did you ever love him? Think, now, before
you speak. You knew him before you married. He was always
the same person — a person nowise attractive, externally, to a
woman; shrewd and persevering, but not intellectual; nowise refined;
totally inelegant; coarse of manner as of structure, and just
as cold, no doubt, and indifferent always. All this, Charlotte, I
have from your own report. Did you ever love this man? What
was he, or had he, to win a woman's love — your love?”

“Alas! I was a mere girl, Harry.”

“A pretty old one,” was Harry's secret suggestion, but he did
not say it.

“You mean, by that, that you deceived yourself in the belief
that you did love him?”

“Yes,” very faintly.

“But, by the same process, you deceived him as well as yourself.
May not the secret of his indifference be found in the fact
that he has discovered your secret? Now, Charlotte, he was
much more likely to have loved you than you him. You had attractions
for the eyes of men. You had grace, vivacity, delicacy,
and intelligence. You had — and have — such charms as might
satisfy any man of proper taste and feelings. I think it probable
that Perkins Anderson had always a tenderer regard for you than
you for him. Nay, I think he still has. What does his life show
you? He goes off into the wilderness, leaving you to loneliness
and isolation. Yet he leaves you in abundance; he provides for
you sumptuously before he departs; he raises you to a social state
which affords him individually no pleasure; he is pleased to know
that you shine in society — is pleased so to crown your home with
delights, and your person with ornaments, as that you shall necessarily
shine in society. He, on the other hand, while he denies
himself your society, denies himself all these pleasures which he
leaves to you; he penetrates the wilderness; he perils his life

among the savages; his life is one of daily toil and nightly anxieties:
and these toils are taken, and these anxieties borne, you say,
in the pursuit of gain — but the gain enures to you! He sends
his treasures home to you; and, should he perish to-morrow, he
has already put you in possession of independence. Do you doubt
that this has been an object of his care — knowing that his life is
at perpetual hazard — that he yet finds his consolation in the fact
that he has made ample provision for you?—”

“As if money constituted the ample provisions of life!” the lady
said, somewhat scornfully and impatiently — “as if life had nothing
else for which to live! — as if mere bread, and meat, and fine
linen, could console a starving heart, nourish a withering affection,
requite and refresh the thirsting soul that seeks for love or nothing!
O Harry Calvert, is it from your lips that I hear such
approval of the most mercenary aims of life?”

“Charlotte,” said our rover, “I like you too well, am too much
your friend, to suffer you to fall into any delusions, either as regards
yourself or me. In respect to myself, it will be safe to suppose
that I have no sane purpose in life. I peril it for gain, you
suppose; but I fling away all the winnings of the game. My life
is profligate; yet there is no passion which I pursue with hope or
expectation. If you will know it, the only passion which I ever
entertained, with all my heart, all my soul, all my strength, has
foiled and mocked me; its arrow has shot into my soul, and left
nothing but a harrowing venom, that keeps me from sleep as it
keeps me from enjoyment. My energies are watchful and restless
ever, simply because my hurts allow me no repose. I toil and
adventure, not for gain — for nothing, briefly — but because I dare
not hope for rest!”

“And is it so, Harry Calvert?”

“It is so! And you?”

“Ay, what of me?”

“Your unhappiness is more the result of the absence of a true
care, than the presence of any earnest anxieties.”

“Oh, Harry!”

“It is so with thousands. You must not talk of disappointed
passions, unless you can assure me that you have had an object,
precious to all your affections; the first and only always in your
thoughts; a being for whom you could die; for whom only you

would care to live — before I can suppose you to be the sufferer
which you persuade yourself you are. There are very few persons
who ever meet with such an object. A blind passion, eager
for satisfaction, will make — does make — this object for itself;
and hence the disappointments of life — which is never to be satisfied
with life, simply as it is! Men and women marry, half the
time, through restlessness — impatience of their actual condition;
not through a desire for happiness — for this is an object which
few persons seek. They seek rather the gratification of a desire
— seek gold — seek one another — and, would seek more wisely,
were they governed in their search always by some honest passion,
having an object in its aim which had been already commended
to their sympathies and confidence. They too frequently seek in
marriage for the object, not for the object in marriage. Some
marry for bread and meat, which, having them, and not doubting
that they will continue to have them, they persuade themselves
that they despise; others seek show, wealth, an establishment; others
the gratification of a wanton vanity, or a still more wanton lust!”

“Hush, Captain Calvert — hush! You are quite too free.”

“You must not quarrel with truth. It is so seldom you can
get it. Well! disappointment waits on most, and all that remains
to us is to economize the wreck of our affections; to make the
most of our mistakes; to resign ourselves, as patiently as possible,
to the fates which we have made. Believe me, you have as yet
suffered no disappointment of the heart, having not yet fastened
all its hopes upon some ideal creature, who has first warmed your
imagination and controlled your sympathies through your own
conception of a model husband.”

“Ah, but I have, Harry!” with a deep sigh, and a look of the
tenderest interest — “ah, but I have!”

“It is too late, now, Charlotte, either for that being or yourself,
supposing him to be still in existence.”

“He is! he is!”

“Better, then, for your sake, that he were dead!”

“Oh! why — why? Dead!”

“You can never be the same to him as at the time when you
were unmarried to another.”

“Ah, but I did not know him then. It was only when I came
to know him, that I found my present bonds were fetters.”

“Still too late for both, since you can no longer bring him the
tribute of a virgin heart. How should he believe you? how persuade
himself that the same fancies which deluded you to wed
another, will not, in their caprice, beguile you from him?”

“Never, never, Harry Calvert! I could die for him!”

“Better live for yourself,” he answered, gloomily. “Charlotte
Anderson, let us not be children. Let us be friends. Suffer me
to be yours. As a friend, I should be faithful to you to the last.
As a lover — nay, were I even that particular person whom you
had made your ideal — which is, of course, impossible — I should
fly your presence as I would the pestilence!”

A deep sigh from the lady, who sank back in her chair at the
same moment, responded to his speech. Her eyes were gushing
with tears. He took her hand, and in softer accents said, touching
his own breast:—

“Judge of the wreck here, Charlotte, when I tell you that this
young wife, whom I propose to bring to you, is one of the loveliest
creatures whom your eyes ever beheld. She brought me
wealth, and such devotion as it was possible for such a child-soul
as hers to bring: yet would I now, a thousand times, cheerfully
give up life itself, to restore her to the condition — the child-place,
and peace of mind, in which I found her, and whence, in
one of the phases of my insanity, I won her to my arms. But I
can neither stab her with this truth, nor do the cowardice of suicide.
It is no reproach to her charms when I say that I have no
joy in them — as, at the same time, I tell you there are no charms
for me in life.”

“Yet she is a beauty?”

“Yes! You will say so when you see her.”

“A Mexican beauty?”

“A Spanish beauty, of the purest blood.”

“And loves you?”

“I think so — as far as so infantile a nature is capable of love.
But to our conception of that master-passion it is scarcely in her
power to rise. She is a creature all levity. Give her crowds:
she will live in a ballroom; will dance without resting, nightly —
all the night; loves glitter, music, show; loves admiration, gallantry
—”

“And you fear not to trust her with me?”

“Why should I fear?”

“Here, such a being as you describe her will have admiration
enough, and be liable to a thousand temptations. There are
younger sons of courtiers about town — gallants who have taken
their lessons at the court of Charles, and boast of the patronage
of the duchess of Portsmouth. They are handsome fellows —
macaronies — dandies; as unscrupulous as handsome; bold and
audacious as gallant; and possessed of all the arts which are so
apt to ensnare the unsophisticated female heart. Do you not fear
them?”

“No! In the very unsophistication of Zulieme, I am secure:
she is secure. Her faith in me assures my faith in her. The
very sports of her people, in which she has been trained, are an
additional security. She will not comprehend the language of
gallantry, except in the ear of her vanity. It will go no deeper.
Her heart can not be touched.”

“She speaks our language?”

“After a fashion — brokenly, but prettily.”

“Well, Harry, I will do for her all I can — though I am not
suffered to do anything for her husband!”

“You will do for me, Charlotte, when you do for her. Franks
will bring her to you to-morrow night. And now, Charlotte, God
bless you, and send you relief from this unrest! It is the unrest
that properly haunts all that lack an object — that lack cares and
necessities. If you had children, now —”

“Children! Heaven forbid — and by him! Go, Harry Calvert
— go! You are a man without a heart.”

“Would it were so, Charlotte! — But God bless you, and
make you wise enough to lose all memories which are troublesome!”

The cavalier was gone. The lady sank back with a sigh, covering
her face with her hands. We must not ask what are the
thoughts and sorrows of one who has no cares. But, lest the
reader should suffer too much anxiety, from what he has seen
of her present state of feeling, we beg to mention that, in ten
minutes after, she was busily engaged locking the gorgeous necklace
which Calvert had brought her, about her fair, white neck;
trying the bracelets upon her arms; weaving the diamonded birdcrests

in her hair; and, finally, folding the delicate shawl tastefully
about her shoulders, while she walked before the great oval mirrors,
watching with delight the beautiful effects produced by these
fine gifts.

“It is the loveliest shawl!” she exclaimed, as she reluctantly
folded it away in its original case.