University of Virginia Library

33. CHAPTER XXXIII.
PETTY REVENGES.

We are apt to speak of reason as the distinguishing attribute
of man, and to prattle, with wondrous self-complacency, upon its
dignity and grandeur. Yet how do we use it? Not one in a
hundred of those who thus pride themselves, and prattle, ever
employ it with any due regard to the superior interests of immortality,
or even of a considerate and becoming humanity.
We use it rather as a drudge — a dog, with which we hunt down
the game that is started by our fancies or our passions — and in
this we exhibit ourselves as children only; our toys and sports
being scarcely a whit more dignified than those of children, and
only more imposing, in our sight, as involving the exercise of intenser
passions, which are far less innocent than those which beguile
the boy.

Here, for example, in this our true story of real life, we are
made acquainted with no small variety of persons — scarcely one
of whom, in the ordinary estimates of society, would be called a
blockhead. For that matter, a pioneer people never can be blockheads.
Here is Molyneaux, who considers himself a monstrous
clever fellow, exceedingly smart and well-appointed in his wits.
Ask him, and, if he answers honestly, and without allowing his
habitual modesty to interfere in the delivery of his response, he
will tell you that no man was ever more adequately endowed, or

trained, than himself, for the greater variety of human and social
achievements.

Ask those about him, and they will so far confirm his opinion
of himself, as to assure you that there never was a better seaman;
that he is bold, vigorous, well-skilled in his weapon; a good leaper,
runner, boxer; as able to lift a clever boat out of shoal water as
any officer on the coast; and, when he talks, that he says deuced
smart things in a smart manner of his own.

He is evidently regarded by all about him as a person much
above the ordinary standard of human intellect; and hence we
find him second officer of the ship; and, further, that a certain
number of the ship's company are resolved to make him first officer,
regarding his claims as superior to his present position.

Yet, with all this, we see that the fellow is a blockhead; that
he is using his wits, much or little, in such a fashion as will probably
get him knocked on the head, with a reasonable prospect
that the brains will be so scattered, after such an event, as to be
of little future service to their present owner or to anybody else.
And yet he uses his reason daily; and prides himself upon the
wonderful sagacity with which he shapes his course, so that his
aims shall be duly seconded quite as much by his prudence as by
enterprise and thought.

But the abuse of his reason lies first in his aims. You see that
his reasoning faculties are under bond wholly to his vanity; and,
let him reason however cunningly, the first step which he has
taken is fatal to the integrity of that very reason which he supposes
to be eminently employed all the time.

The reason which we employ to make the wrong appear the
right, or to enable us to do wrong, is no longer a faculty to be
relied on. Commencing with a lie, all its argument, thus basely
founded, must be false, though it may be logical in the last degree,
if its first assumption of policy be recognised. We have but to
slur over the premise, and we shall see no flaw in the logical
progress, step by step, to the inevitable conclusion: but the
fraud with which we begin, and with which we subject reason to
the uses of a passion, corrupts the entire case; and we have no
more real benefit from this most precious human faculty than if
we were so many brute beasts, to whom all such endowment is
supposed to be denied.

And so with all those whose wilful, wicked, or frivolous passions,
coerce the Reason into a mere slave, carrying out the behests
of a master; the Kislar Aga of the seraglio; the hound
that hunts for us the game which our lusts and appetites, our vanities
and ridiculous ambitions, are perpetually starting. Molyneaux,
but for his absurd vanity, would be no fool — would have
a very fair share of the reasoning faculty — and would probably
escape the summary processes which now threaten the health and
safety, the integrity and soundness, of a moderately-developed
cranium, with a very decent filling up of brains.

You may argue out the case, under the suggestions above given,
with respect to the greater number of our dramatis personœ; and
you need not confine the application to the persons of our drama.
Take the great farce of Society — tragedy or farce — they but too
frequently mean the same thing — and, of all the performing characters,
you find only here and there a single person who uses his
reason with respectful deference, and does not tax its exercise in
the service of a mere passion, having its premises arbitrarily resolved
upon, and looking only to foregone desires for its conclusions.
One's vanity, as in the case of Molyneaux, is the grand
passion; another's, avarice; another's, lust; another's, gluttony;
and so on, through the whole census. The passions, using reason
as a tool, cut the throat of human wisdom.

So our Harry Calvert; so our cassique, his brother; so the
courtly Robert Quarry, governor of the colony; and so the pious
Master Sylvester, alias Stillwater: all of these, running as deep as
their waters may, and exercising whatever amount you please of
the reasoning faculty, have somehow, through some fraudful or
debilitating passion, denuded the cogitating faculty of its best virtues
at the very outset; and now keep it busy, wandering in a
circle, and in movements not half the time so graceful, though
quite as erratic, as those of your tabby, who will suddenly dart
away from her comfortable couch upon the hearth-rug, and put
herself into fever-heat, in the very intellectual chase after — her
own tail!

And we must not forget the tender sex, in their assertion of the
right to abuse the virtues of this faculty. They, too, strange as it
may seem, have a reason for all their follies. Take, for example,
the case of Mrs. Perkins Anderson. We have shown you that

she is a smart woman as well as a fine one. She is clever, quick,
has wit, sentiment, and a sort of philosophy — which serves, at
least, to disguise a passion of very doubtful quality so dextrously,
that it passes current as a virtue among half of the fashionable
circle in which she moves and has her being. Ask herself, or her
neighbors, who is the cleverest woman in town, and you are told,
“Mrs. Perkins Anderson, undoubtedly!” She lives well, talks
well, dresses well, dances well, and so lives as never to tax offensively
or in any way inconveniently the community in which she
resides. This is a great virtue in society. There is not a member
of her circle, not one of those persons who claim to be “in
society,” who has the slightest apprehension that Mrs. Perkins
Anderson will ever need their assistance in anything. If they
could fancy, for a moment, that she was in straits for money, they
would not consider her half so intellectual. Of course, were she
to ask for succor, they would instinctively regard her as a person
who had lost her senses. Having no such dreadful apprehensions
of danger in this respect, either to her or to themselves, they
gladly attend her parties; they vote her a trump among court
cards and courtly circles; admire the magnificence with which
she provides, the taste with which she presides, and the fine judgment
which enables her to select her guests with such discrimination
as to prompt each individual thus honored to recognise the
propriety of her preference — in his own case, at least!

But we have seen, as well as Harry Calvert, that Mrs. Perkins
Anderson is still veritably a fool of the first water. Let us not
be too particular in describing the passion or passions — for there
are several busy in her case — which keep her reason (excellent
as the world esteems it) in bondage to a lie! Enough that we
say she has not common sense sufficient to let her prosperity be
sure. She is in excellent worldly condition; has an accommodating
husband, who provides for her magnificently, yet never troubles
her to entertain him; yet she will not let herself alone! She
desires to make a conquest of Harry Calvert. You, perhaps,
fancy that she loves him. Do n't make yourself ridiculous by
such a notion. She has not a bit more love for him than for
Perkins Anderson, though he may better please her tastes. But
she is wealthy and idle-minded; and all persons in this condition
must exercise their brains in some way, and in the provocations

of some petty passion. She fancies that she loves him, possibly;
but the truth is, that she desires to make a conquest. The desire
is stimulated by her vanity. This is one of the weak points of
the sex, and of Mrs. Perkins Anderson in particular. Even as
the young damsel, just rising into seventeen, fancies that she is
an outcast and desolate, unless there be some youth, with newly-budding
mustache, bobbing about her, as a cork, with a feather in
it, bobs along a trout-stream; so these old girls, with nothing to
do, continue to long for similar bobs: though the period may have
long since passed away when the tenderness of the trout makes it
acceptable on the table of the epicure. With idle women this
becomes the whole passion of life — a passion of blended vanity
and appetite; and this is precisely the case with Mrs. Perkins
Anderson. She will waste her smiles and sighs — nay, her caresses
— on Harry Calvert; but if Harry will not suffer himself to
be caressed, she will condescend to Dick or Peter. She must
restlessly wriggle on, in the hope of being precious to somebody.
It is a part of her capital, in the society which she prefers, to be
recognised as an object still of a most passionate attachment.
This is so much food for that vanity which lacks all pretence of
honest passion; and, for such persons, a mere flirtation will suffice
— flirtation being a sort of moral prostitution which only lacks
sufficient courage to be criminal. Not that Mrs. Anderson will
not fall, and sufficiently low too, if properly seconded. But she
does not contemplate extreme cases. She is not too moral for surrender,
if vigorously assailed; but she will content herself, if suffered
to do so, with the small excitements of the flirtation.

Enough! a flirting fool at forty is sufficiently ridiculous, without
needing comment. Harry Calvert knew her thoroughly, and
was not to be deluded by her sentimentality. He, however, committed
one error — that of piquing her vanity by his disregard of
her blandishments. Women do not readily forgive such an offence.
It equally mortifies vanity and self-esteem. The one is
stung, the other humbled.

No doubt Calvert felt that this was his danger. He knew the
sex; few men better. He knew her; and he felt that to yield,
but a single hair, and he must have laid his head in her lap — another
Samson in the embrace of a new Delilah. He was too earnest
a man to trifle in a flirtation. He was one of those persons

who, in affaires de cœur, are apt to proceed as the lion is said to
do when he woos his bride! He knew very well that the lady had
no passion at work more profound than her vanity, and he was
not willing to engage in a traffic of the passions at too much cost
to his own. His passions were all terribly intense ones; he knew
not how to trifle with them. Besides, they were all absorbed in
one, and that was hallowed! Over its fortunes there hung the
gloom of defeat, disappointment, death perhaps; the storm; the
wreck; the convulsion; and an agony such as would have been
only mocked by such a feeble sort of passion as worked in the
bosom of Mrs. Perkins Anderson! He knew that she could sigh,
and sigh, and yet feel no pain. Sighing with her was only a
pleasant accomplishment; and, when she spoke of her heart's disappointments,
he had only to look at her and smile. Certainly
Mrs. Perkins Anderson was in most excellent physique. Well
preserved, she had reached that condition of embonpoint which
converts a wrinkle into a ridge, and maintains such an adequate
degree of red upon the cheeks as to render quite unnecessary any
resort to Parisian chemicals. He felt that she would survive any
defeat of hope and heart; that her affections were scarcely skin-deep;
and, though he scrupulously forebore to exhibit his fullest
consciousness of her case — forebore to wound and mortify unnecessarily
by tone, word, or look — he yet did not hesitate to fling
her off and deny. He fancied that he had done this too gently
to offend; but he did not the less pique and disappoint. That she
felt the pique we shall see hereafter.

She felt it, and her vanity brought another passion into activity.
It was, however, rather an instinct, than a thought or passion,
which led her to conceive a purpose of revenge. The agent to be
used for this purpose was no other than our poor little giddy-pated
Zulieme Calvert, otherwise known (but only while in Charleston)
as the Señorita Montano, a belle of the neighboring Spanish province
of Florida; an heiress in her own right; having certain silver-mines
and mountains in Mexico; coffee and sugar plantations
in Cuba; and a princely hacienda, whither she had resort in spring
and winter, in the life-giving and life-preserving region of Espiritu
Santo (or Tampa bay). These — inventions mostly — owed their
birth and circulation to the fertile genius of Mrs. Perkins Anderson,
who contrived, within twenty-four hours after her guest had

reached her domicil, to set these golden bubbles of fancy afloat on
the wings of rumor. She had her policy in multiplying the attractions
of her house; for the fine lady, though in her own set
supreme, had yet certain competitors in society. There were
other coarse, fat, vulgar, and ridiculous women about town — of a
certain age — whose ambition it was to usurp dominion over all the
local exclusives. The Señorita de Montano was admirably
designed to provoke the envy and jealousy of all these people.

Poor child! Little did she fancy the uses she was to be put
to. Frankly admitting herself to be a fool, and ignoring reason
utterly in her own case, Zulieme can not well be brought before
our court for judgment, in respect to those absurdities of moral
which we undertook to canvass passingly at the opening of this
chapter. She was willing to be a child, and to profess nothing
beyond. Her humility affords her ample refuge from our judgment.
But, by way of caveat to the judgment of others, we take
leave to say that, if we take the operations of her feminine instincts
into the account, Zulieme is perhaps not half the fool which
she appears — not half the fool, compared with some of her most
self-assured neighbors; for, entre nous, an honest instinct is not
only a safer, but, in all respects, a wiser guide for humanity than a
corrupt or perverted reason; and, where there is any feebleness
of intellect, it is no small proof of real wisdom to trust nothing to
this blind sort of guide, but modestly to content one's self with a
lamblike deference to tracks, as prescribed by the good old maternal
bell-wether, which we call Nature.

Of course, we can all conceive, very readily, that Miss Montano
— the Señorita de Montano — is to be the great feature, the
lioness, at the receptions of Mrs. Perkins Anderson. But, as we
have hinted, the pique of that lady toward Harry Calvert suggested
certain other objects which may not be so obvious to the unsuspecting
wits of our readers. Let us make them wiser, if we
can; and we can scarcely do this so well as by retracing our steps,
for a brief space, to the period of that interview, already reported,
between Calvert and Mrs. Anderson, in which the former arranged
for the visit of his wife to a town in which he dared not show
himself.

We all remember with what savage coolness Calvert received
the revelations of tenderness which Mrs. Anderson made on that occasion.

When he was gone, and the lady had sufficiently examined
the presents of shawl and jewels he had brought her, she put
them away, with a sigh of satisfaction, and subsided pensively into
her cushions — her thoughts divided between the sensation which
these ornaments would produce among her envious friends, and
the disappointment which she felt at Calvert's cavalier indifference
to her charms, which, as she fondly conceived, would not
have been so slighted by any other cavalier.

“Cold and insensible!” exclaimed the lady, after some ten minutes
of moody meditation.

“He sees how I feel. He knows how much I think of him.
Yet he mocks my affections. In his heart he mocks at mine!
His smooth and courtly compliments do not deceive me. Is it
possible that he thinks lightly of me — despises me? Ha!”

And she rose quickly, and stood before the great circular mirror.
The survey consoled her. When did it fail to do so, in the
case of vanity — that self-deceiving passion which drinks in aliment
from so many thousand deceptive sources? Her eyes brightened:—

“No! it can not be that he despises my affection. Is he dull,
then? Can he not see, for himself, how much more precious
would be his sympathies than the most fervid passion of the man
to whom I am fettered? Ah! he would say, the man to whom I
have sold myself! Was not that his own sarcasm? Did he not
imply, even if he did not express it? And does he not admit that
he, too, had sold himself? He talks of gratitude as prompting
him to marry this Zulieme; but would he have married this Spanish
woman, of whom he speaks as a child — which is almost saying
she is a fool — if she had not brought him a golden dowry?
He admits that he loved another, even while he married her! In
what, then, does his conduct differ from mine, and how should he
dare rebuke me for a weakness of which he was just as guilty
himself? He loves another: he avows it, and to me; ay, at the
very moment when I am showing my affection for himself! Cruel,
scornful, insolent! He might have spared me that. And she
lives — this other, this preferred one — but where? Not here, certainly.
She is lost to him for ever: that he admits. Living, yet
lost! Then she must be the wife of another. Ah! it is not his
virtues, then, that make him cold to me. He would no doubt

bear her off from the more fortunate husband, if she would suffer
it — ay, if she but showed him, as I have done, how much he
was preferred. Who can she be? I must worm the secret from
him!”

She again resumed her place upon the cushions. She lay with
languid air, at length. But her cheeks were flushed, and her
eyes brightened, with the heightening fever in her veins, as, step
by step, she reconsidered the details of her interview with the
reluctant rover.

“But what a man he is! How noble in form and presence!
What an air he carries! — what a haughty yet subdued aspect!
what sweet but powerful tones in his voice! what authority in all
his words! I could be that man's slave sooner than the honored
wife that I am! I could share his poverty with pride, brave his
dangers without fear: while now, blest, as he tells me, with wealth,
and safe in society, I have no satisfaction in either. That he
should taunt me so!

“Ay!” she murmured, with increase of bitterness in her accents
—

“Ay! he could refer me to my wealth and position, as sufficient
to console me for this wretched life; lacking all sympathy; in
which the heart broods over its own loneliness, while the passions
gnaw upon it, keeping it for ever bleeding! Wealth, to a wanting
heart! Society and fashion, to one who asks only for love's
precious aliment! O Harry Calvert! how can you, with your
own heart denied, commend such wretched food to mine? It is
in very mockery that you have spoken, and I will never forgive
it!”

She wept at the self-drawn picture of her own wretchedness.
For the moment, she persuaded herself that it was true to the
life. The quality of reason, warped by the master-passion to its
purposes, had rendered her conclusions sufficiently logical to satisfy
her thought. She really wept at her own fancied sorrows.

“And this Spanish woman? this child, as he calls her! She
is pretty, even in his eyes — pretty and gentle; a child, and dependent
on him: yet he loves her not! She is not capable of his
affections; she can not understand him; does not suffice for his
heart — does not know her own! And they have no children —
no children, no more than I! Yet he is sure of her; he can trust

her! He relies upon her instincts for her fidelity; upon her simplicity,
forsooth, to protect her passions! Indeed! and he thinks
he knows the nature of the woman-heart! We shall see — we
shall see!”

And now she laughed, as certain other thoughts rose mischievously
in her brain. She laughed merrily.

“We shall try her. He braves the trial. I gave him proper
warning. He can not blame me! It is he that exposes her to
the peril, not I! I do not throw it in her way. I use no arts,
no arguments, to persuade her. There is the fruit upon the tree:
let her pluck and eat if she will! He himself is willing to conduct
her to the garden; he himself shows her the tree; and he
turns to me, with cool exultation, and says:—

“`I can trust her safely. Her instincts are too childish to be
vicious. She will only dance under the tree; she will only look
on, while others eat, without any desire herself.'

“And he knows that there will be others to persuade — others
of his own treacherous and artful sex — who will help raise her
to the branches, so that she may help herself — nay, will brave
any danger rather than she should forego the temptation! Well,
I will take care that there shall be a tempter: and we shall see
if her boasted simplicity of heart will afford her any better shield
than mine!

“There is that young Cavendish, a most courtly gallant; as
handsome and eloquent as Belial; as impudent as the devil; as
licentious as any in the court of Charles; who has been caressed
by maids of honor — precious maids of honor! — and he has come
hither to escape the consequences of this very free caressing! I
have but to whisper a word in his ear, and he will show her
where grow the beautiful fruits of perdition! He will conduct
her to the tree! Ha! ha! Harry Calvert.

“He shall have opportunity enough. Yea, Harry Calvert,
since her simplicity of heart is so perfect a security, she shall rely
on that wholly. I shall use no watch, no restraint. And what
should I care if she falls? what is it to me?

“Yes, indeed, it may be something to me! who knows? Now
that he holds her to be so perfect in virtue, her childishness of
character becomes a virtue in itself. Infantile simplicity redeems
all other defects; and it is by this one quality that she maintains

her ascendency over him. This lost, he flings her off with scorn.
He will do it. He is then justified in her abandonment. The
debt of gratitude is obliterated by the stain upon his honor; and
she is one, at least, out of my way! His faith in her fidelity
makes against my passions, even when they show themselves subject
to his own. Well, we shall cure his blindness. She shall
be tried, at least. Let her go through the trial as she can! Cavendish
shall be the tempter; and he is just the man to make his
way with such a creature — such a simpleton. He is cunning as
a serpent; playful as a kitten; handsome; fashionable; a famous
dancer and singer; will carol love like a nightingale, yet mock
all the while; and with a mouth always full of the sweetest, fantastical
speeches, he is audacious enough for anything.

“If she withstands him, she is a miracle of women. We shall
see; and when the fruit is eaten, Harry Calvert shall also see!
He is not a man whom you can blind through any self-conceit.
He can be made to see without needing that I should lift a finger.
And see he shall, or I am not Charlotte Anderson!”

Such were the meditations, such the purposes, of Mrs. Perkins
Anderson. Do you set her down, accordingly, as a monster?
Oh, no! she is only a clever woman, “in society;” having a rage
for personal appreciation; ambitious of notoriety to the last degree;
seeking it from no matter what sources; easily piqued by
disappointment; and aiming at nothing more than — petty revenges!

But in your simplicity, dear reader, you cry out:—

“Petty revenges! Do you call such a crime as she meditates
a petty one?”

Yes, indeed! According to the conventional standards to
which the good lady is accustomed, it may be held a very petty
sort of revenge; really, a very moderate way of resenting a disappointment!
For you must remember that people of this description
do not regard virtue with any such sublime sentiment of
veneration as possesses your unsophisticated bosom. They hardly
regard its loss as a matter of evil or regret. It is only the exposure
of its loss which they have need to fear. They are only too
happy to expose each other's sins, while indulging in their own.
For themselves, they are not at all solicitous for its safety. The
quality has some repute, and must be assumed to be in their possession.

What they really and only dread is, the scandal of the
loss; not the absence of the thing itself. They may think as the
lady in the Proverbs —
They have only to wipe the mouth carefully after the eating, and
all 's right with the consumer; for the simple reason that all seems
right with the world!

With such an appreciation as Mrs. Perkins Anderson had of
virtue in the abstract, you may hold her to be quite moderate in
the sort of revenge which she proposed to take, at once of Harry
Calvert and his wife — the one, for the indifference which he had
shown to her charms; the other, for that most impertinent simplicity
of heart by which she was assumed to be less assailable than
wiser people.

And to the fall of Zulieme from the grace of innocence, Mrs.
Perkins Anderson pledged all her faculties. All that her intellect
could do — her arts, her reason — must be done, to realize
that result which was required to bring consolation to her own
mortified vanity — her own unsatisfied desires. But we must
reserve the process of her working for yet other pages.

Shall the tempter succeed? Shall the innocent one succumb?
These are the questions. They hang over a thousand fortunes
daily. We rise at morning, and the bird sings joyously in the
roof-tree, and the flowers smile without stain, all odorous, in the
garden beneath our eyes; and they beguile us to unconsciousness
as we walk forth. We forget the caprices of Fortune; we think
nothing of the Fates! We, too, sing and smile, not dreaming
what the hour shall bring forth; especially as, with too many of
us, there lies a serpent among our flowers — sleek, smooth — who,
even if we see it, looks not so much like a serpent, but rather like
Mrs. Perkins Anderson: and her we take to be a friend! She is
so sweet, so smiling, so very loving!