University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.

Sebastian Ford was the son of an English
trader who lived in Carthagena many years, and
died there in the time of the political troubles which
convulsed that portion of South America; his
mother was a rich Spanish woman, whose beauty he
inherited. After his father's death Sebastian came
into possession of the business, which he soon closed,
and found himself thereby the owner of twenty
thousand pounds. In the latitude of his birth the
two chief ways of spending money were in glory
and gaming. He cared for neither. With youth,
health, and fortune, he went to England, and, carefully
avoiding all introduction to persons with the
name of Ford, lived both in London and Paris, as
Creoles proverbially live; spent a large share of his
money; grew fatigued; and returned home to tropical
luxury, which is cheap, and at one's door. He
met in his mother's house a Catholic priest of his
own age, who was domiciled there, and in her affections.
He make no effort to oust the priest, nor,
like Hamlet, did he discourse with his mother on
the merits of his father, but silently destroyed all
memorial of him—even ravaged her jewel box, from
which he took an ivory painted miniature, and a

locket containing a lock of auburn hair, which he
well remembered. In like manner he made farewell
preparations for a second departure, which he
intended should be final, and one day stood before
his handsome, violent, brainless mother, in an
attitude which made the blood flow to her dusky
face.

“My Sebastian!” she said, casting her rolling eyes
over him.

He pointed, without a word, to the sea; beyond
the window, within her sight, the spars of a vessel
swayed back and forth. She understood his intention,
and, after the manner of Spaniards, poured out a
volume of words without a single gesticulation, then
stopped and stretched out her beautiful bare arms
to him.

“That for the padre!” he said, giving them a
blow with his hat, turned on his heel, and left her.
He set sail for a country where vice and religion are
not to be seen hand in hand. Whether some spark
of his mother's fire burned in his blood still; whether
the sentiment which attaches the soul to the earth
where and from which the body is moulded;
whether the formal selfishness, the conventional
barbarities of his adopted life, or the sombre melancholy
of an empty heart, sent him to his native
land again, no one knew. But for several years
some secluded spot there held him fast. Then he
fell into the hands and life of Argus Gates. So
much of his history, connected with business merely,
he related to Argus. He was a passenger in the

wrecked vessel, and on his way from a West Indian
port, to a port in the Southern United States. He
had credit at a foreign banking house, not unknown
to Argus, and must, of course, wait for funds,
since he had lost all he brought with him. He confessed
he had no especial aim for the future; there
was still enough of his early fortune to enable him
to live in idleness anywhere. So long as a man's
age keeps him in abeyance, one place, he affirmed,
is as good as another for existence. Argus shook
his head at the idea; he, who created motive power
from the circumstances the present offered, and subordinated
them to the completion of an enjoyment
limited to their limits, could not be expected to
sympathize in such a theory. Argus waited for no
inheritance, reversing the fable; he kept his eyes on
the shadows of sensation, and avoided their substance,—except
in the case of Sebastian himself. In
all the relations which affect men, however, Argus
and Sebastian were worthy of each other. They
were both morally deficient; alike sincere, incapable
of trifling; devoid of puerility; gifted with the faculty
of making forcible and dignified all their acts, which
in others might appear grotesque or weak; and
capable of enduring solitude. They differed also.
Where Sebastian was old, Argus was young; his
sharp, clear, positive nature fell into the depths of
a colossal character, which was generally victorious,
because of its ever accumulating reserved forces.

For a long time Sebastian was in eclipse. An
illness followed his shipwreck, which lasted for

weeks; when he recovered it was certain that his
mind was under a cloud. Whether he was haunted
by some recollection, or occupied with anxiety
concerning the future, Argus could not judge. At
times he was possessed by an abstraction which
affected him, as if his sight and hearing were destroyed;
for days he either sat like a statue, in
marble sadness, or walked about the house like a
somnambulist or an automaton. Tempe considered
him ingeniously arranged for a machine, but thought
it a pity he had been gifted with the power of locomotion,
since it caused the danger of his running
against one. But Roxalana, with Argus, felt
strangely attached to him; some secret association
bestowed upon her slow understanding the ability to
comprehend his condition. She thought him in the
despair of exhaustion, and wished that the next
ten years of his life were past, so that the struggle
of change might be over, and the settlement of his
affairs be resolved to the conclusion of his being one
of the family forever. The room intended for
Tempe after her marriage was plainly furnished,
and given to him. He expressed himself satisfied
that the prospect from its four windows revealed no
more of the world than the elms on the lawn, the
garden, and the warehouse above the quay. When
the vine spread its leaves over the summer-house,
and the rose trees budded; when the elms softly
brushed their green, graceful boughs against the
window panes, his mood changed. He said one day
to Argus, that he must go down stairs, and ask a
favor of Roxalana.

“Try it,” urged Argus, “fearful she-dragon as she
is, she may grant it. She will be so astonished
to learn that you want one.”

“Dear,” said Sebastian, kissing Roxalana's hand,
“I am awake. I ask something of you.”

“It is granted, Sebastian.”

“Not yet, possibly; will you have me here without
obtaining any knowledge of me? I would have
you accept me as if I were born on that night in
March, instead of having been threatened with death.
I am as much in earnest, as if it were not possible
that my wish comes from a whim.”

“Stay,” she said.

“It must be fondness that prompts me. Is it the
strange old house standing in primal twilight,—the
cold, melancholy, intangible landscape in which it
is set? Is it you, the passionless soul, the central
brooding heart, or Argus, the type of man, neither
existing in Utopia, nor the world of ordinary men,
that gives me these feelings?”

“Whatever reason you may put forward in your
own mind for staying, stay.”

“What I can do for you, Roxalana, will only
prove in the end that my selfishness overpowered
you.”

“I will supply myself then from that selfishness.
Our world is a lonely one, Sebastian; I do not want
society, but at times material for fresh employment.
You would not think it so,—would you? I shall

come to you, and take what it pleases me to take, as
one dips a draught of water from a full vessel.”

“Oh,” he muttered, “I have been badly drained
before this, too. I am not so cunning as to keep
this calm woman-friend from a taint of the old
inspiration.”

Roxalana changed the direction of her eyes, but
not their expression, as Argus entered the room.

“He has thought it necessary,” she said, “to
make some appeal to me about staying here. My
faith is shaken now; I supposed, of course, that he
would remain. Can he not be as happy, Argus, as
you are?”

“You are sublime in your conceit,” he answered.

“Finding, I mean, that when the ways of happiness
are impossible, life is better without. I am sure
you would not dare a change now.”

“You are a solitary, ignorant soul. I have dared
to expect a friend in Sebastian—and have I not
dared changes before? What day was it that I left
this house in pursuit of a man no better than a Dead
Sea apple? Sebastian, what do you hope for in
me?”

“More than I have had, even.”

“The garden will be beautiful soon,” said Roxalana.
“Tempe and Virginia are walking there now.”

“Virginia?” said Sebastian inquiringly.

“Our friend, whom you have seen.”

“Where?”

“Have you not seen Virginia Brande?” asked
Argus.

“No.”

“You had better have your eyes couched.”

“I recollect,” said Sebastian,—“You,—Roxalana
Mat Sutcliffe, and the child—Tempe. Has any
other figure appeared to me?”

“This one,—just outside the door.”

Virginia came in, with a white jonquil in her
hand, followed by Tempe. Sebastian rose, bowed
deeply, and thought of the Queen of Heaven.

“See, this is finer than your tulips, Roxalana,”
said Virginia, advancing, and offering her the flower.

“I do not think so,” she answered. “Give it to
Sebastian; I was just speaking of the beauty of
our garden.”

Quietly handing him the flower, which he as
quietly took, Virginia turned to Argus, but her
voice was drowned in Tempe's exclamation:

“Don't believe that the garden is fine; it is an
old concern which carries on the production of toadstools.
It was laid out in the year one, by my crazy
relative, whose name I have the honor to bear,—
giving me a Sampson-like air. She thought gooseberry
bushes and fat rose trees meant shrubbery.”

“And this?” said Sebastian with a smile, holding
out the flower.

Tempe twisted her mouth, and made no answer.

He fixed his eyes on the flower, and suddenly,
passionately inhaled its peculiar, rich sweetness, as
strong as wine, and threw it away.

Virginia picked it up with an odd smile, and

caressed its crushed leaves with a pitiful motion.

“Needn't have given it to him,” said Tempe
crossly.

“Little Miss,” said Sebastian, “have I provoked
you? The odor stung me.”