University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.

The winter passed. No shock or jar deranged the
machinery which society keeps in running order, and
which sometimes runs over society, crushing, tearing,
mutilating it. Even Sam Rogers nodded in the vicinity
of its wheels, and Parke trifled with its cogs and springs,
playing a desperate game, to test it. Early in the spring,
the owners of the ship Hesper offered a captain's berth
to Sam Rogers, for an Arctic voyage, which he accepted,
and prepared to sail. The cotillon parties ended in
February, but a grand ball was projected by Parke,
which included Sam in his managerial capacity. It was
postponed several weeks, on account of the severity of
the weather. Spring arrived, with snow, gales, and
rain. As soon as the sun softened the roads into decent
travelling, the night for the ball was appointed. Everybody
had been dull before, but now Crest was astir. A
thin blueness stole up the sky, and tinged the bay,
whose waters, released from the bondage of ice, danced
upon the shore in chopping billows and hissing foam.
The pools, which had stood in the fields and ditches,
sank through the mats of dead grass, and the frogs began
to croak in a circle round the town. Garden paths
grew smooth, and garden patches mellow, in anticipation
of the burst of leaf and bud. Elsa said the weather
had been so bad, that she wondered why the Lord hadn't
started a grove of Ingy-rubber trees, so that people

might have the stuff for shoes at hand, to paddle in the
water with. It was the way things went in this world;
she supposed that the trees grew where it never rained
nor snowed. Jason remarked that he was sorry to have
Nature lay down her arms; he liked the music of her
bands better than the fiddles and horns at the hall. It
was a pity, she said, that he had not been born a wild
Mohammedan, so that he might have trained as he
pleased, and nobody been the wiser for it.

“After the ball, Philippa,” said Parke, “we will visit
Theresa.”

“After the ball,” Sam commented, “I shall be off,
thank God, in the Hesper.”

“After the ball,” hoped Mr. Ritchings, “something
of the old time may come back.”

“The ball is nothing to us, Charlotte,” said Clarice
Lang. “Our privileges are the same.”

“The same,” Charlotte replied, with a conscious smile;
“it makes no difference whatever to him.”

“Him,” said Clarice angrily; “I wish he would not
come this way so often. Have you but one thought?”

“When was he here?” Charlotte asked, too willing to
talk on the dangerous subject.

“I believe he comes when we are away; I know it,
you poor, silly fool; he amuses himself by showing you
attention.”

“Mind your own business, Clarice,” said Mrs. Lang,
looking inquisitively at Charlotte. “It is for you to
attend to the concerns of your soul.”

“Pooh, I go to meeting to kill time. What is the use
of my soul to me? No more than my body is. Both
are worthless.”

Charlotte looked at Clarice with such an expression
of denial and doubt, intelligence and superiority, that
her mother, who was still observing her, shook her head
so violently that she attracted a wondering attention
from Clarice, who asked her if she wasn't flared.

“Stay at home, then, you abominable,” Mrs. Lang
cried.

“No,” said Clarice firmly, “I wish to keep out of the
way.”

“Dear me,” exclaimed Charlotte peevishly, “what
way?”

“For all me, he shall have full swing; when some
other whim takes his idle brains, I'll give up religion,
as you have, and bear your whining and pining till you
get over it. A little of you will suffice his vanity.”

“We get over every thing, we do,” said Mrs. Lang,
giving to the winds whatever secret thought might have
disturbed her. Kicking off her shoes, as she always did
in moments of excitement, she broke out with a souvenir
of the plantation:—

Clarice cursed her, and Charlotte cried bitterly.

The ball made a difference to them all. It opened
the door of discovery. Two of its guests, from a town
below Crest, named Clark and Cook, made themselves
obnoxious to Sam Rogers in the early part of the evening,
by telling him they were on the look-out for a handsome
girl, with a streak of black, named Lang. “She
may be coming,” said Mr. Clark, “as she keeps company

with the manager, young Auster; we have seen
them in our village several times. I can't say as I
blame him; she is as pretty as a pink. Ain't they
talked about here?”

“What will you take to drink?” Sam asked abruptly,
longing to knock him down; “there's something below.”

“What will you take, Cook?” asked Clark, dubiously.

“Oh, any thing that's round; beer, cider, lemonade,
or switchel.”

“Switchel be damned!” cried Sam; “come down
stairs.”

If those fellows were only on board his ship, he
thought, he'd truss them by the throat with a clew-line.

They were ushered by him into a small room at the
back of the hall, where, on a table, stood a candle, a few
tumblers, a sugar-bowl, and a bottle that was empty.

“Somebody has availed himself of all the opportunity,”
Sam said. “Excuse me a few minutes, I'll bring
up a supply.”

Clark and Cook begged him to take his time Miss
Lucy—they liked a chance to cool off, and he started on
a run for Jason's.

“There's no watered liquor there,” he muttered; “I
must chisel some brandy out of Elsa, and drink those
blackguards drunk.”

He reached a back door breathless, and entering on
tiptoe, listened at the kitchen door—there was no sound
within; of course Elsa had gone to bed! He must have
the brandy, however; so he crept up the kitchen stairs,
opened the doors of several dark rooms, and at last

opened the door of her room. She had on her night-cap,
and was reading aloud in the Bible when he entered,
“Or the golden bowl be—”

“Broken,” he said.

“What are you conjuring about here for?” she asked,
surveying him with composure; “to read my Bible, and
repent of your sins, sir?”

“Elsa, I want a bottle of that old Cognac; quick,
they sell poison at the tavern, you know.”

“What do you want of it?”

“I've got a case at the hall—a brace of strangers,
who will have liquor.”

“You needn't come here with your braces; however,
I'll ask Sarah.”

“No, no—don't torment me; I am in earnest.”

She was out of the room with her candle, and pretended
to be uncertain where to find it.

“It is up garret, in a demijohn.”

“I'll go for it.”

“No—it is down cellar, in a jug.”

“Give me the candle; you are enough to make the
parson swear.”

“There's a bottle in the buttery; now, I recollect
Sarah opened it yesterday, to give old Mr. Weaver a
gill. Now, old Mr. Weaver”—and she stopped short.

“Mr. Weaver wove a yarn as long as yours, which
will be cut short, mam.” He put his arm round her
waist, lifted her feet from the floor, and carried her
down into the buttery, where, after some exploration,
the bottle was found.

“Much obliged, Elsa, we'll drink your health,” he
said, hurrying out.

“I shouldn't wonder,” she soliloquized, on her way
back, “if he should look upon the wine that is red. His
father drank more than any man of his age in Crest; he
was full from morning till night.”

“Shall I mix your grog, gentlemen?” he asked, reentering
the room where Clark and Cook sat drumming
on the table, keeping time with the band overhead.
Looking at each other, they said they didn't think they
needed it strong—they were not used to it—but that
they might be as well hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and
he might. He poured brandy enough in each glass to
make a green hand madly drunk, mixed much sugar in
it, and handed it to them. It was taken with “my respects,”
and winking eyes, together with a declaration
that it was “first-rate swipes.”

“Now for a jig,” exclaimed Sam, with an air of high
satisfaction.

“Jig it is, and with the beauties, if you please.”

Partners were found for them, and places in the
dance. Sam stood in the vicinity, to watch for the first
symptoms of intoxication, for drunkenness in the ballroom
should be put down with a high hand. The heat
of the room, the noise and the motion, he calculated
could not be borne many minutes. But to his surprise,
when the quadrille was over, they came to him, and
asked how the bottle stood.

“Where we left it; come, try luck again.”

“If it is all the same to you.”

The dose was increased and repeated; its effect was
sudden. Sam immediately proposed going over the
way to the tavern, to have a smoke. An assent with a
hooray was given, and without hat or overcoat the party

rushed over, and Sam piloted the way into an empty
room.

“Norr cigars,” said Mr. Clark, who felt poorly in his
head; “something strong—fetch on pipes and some
niggerhead.”

“Exactly,” said Sam, locking them in as he went out,
and returning in a moment.

“Speaking of niggerhead,” remarked Mr. Cook, who
had seated himself on two chairs, and was poising his
head on the sharp slat of a third, “Where is that Lang
girl? I didn't see young Auster round, either—taking
a walk in the suburbs, maybe.”

“Let it all out, you white-livered son of a gun,” said
Sam, furiously. “What do you mean?”

“'Mong frens, you know,” said Mr. Clark, placably.

“By George,” answered Mr. Cook, “you had better
be milder, it would be good for you. Your town will
have news soon that will run like wild fire, and your
sprig, Auster, with his dam airs, will have a hyst.”

“Dam,” Mr. Clark uttered.

Mr. Cook bent forward and whispered in Sam's ear,
lost his balance, and fell on the floor, where he went to
sleep. Sam looked at Mr. Clark, who was trying to
smoke a pipe with the bowl downward, and vainly
igniting Lucifer matches on his boot-soles, his cuffs, his
knees, and the carpet.

“You'll do,” said Sam.

“We'll do,” replied Mr. Clark. “n gor thank you
—you'll do to-morrow.”

Before noon the next day, despite Sam's precaution,
an intangible rumor spread over town. It was not
traced to any particular source, no one dared to meddle

with it at first, but Rumor is an “insane root”—once
partaken of, its madness grows. From “Have you
heard?” the step was taken which confirmed the truth
of the connection between Parke and Charlotte. In
common with every soul in Crest, with the exception of
the Auster family, Sam heard all the gossip. Parke
Auster's good name bit the dust. The most grovelling
details accompanied the descriptions of Charlotte Lang's
beauty and gentle manners. If the blow had fallen—as
the feeling and the tongue of the public would, in the
first flush of detection, have had it fall—on the family, it
would have crushed Sarah and Philippa, but tongue and
feeling were soon exhausted, and the family were still
in ignorance. Sam went to Jason's every day with the
heart of a culprit. He looked into the face of each one
for some inspiration to direct him what course to pursue—how
to temper the awful fact. None came. The
Hesper demanded his time, was the excuse he gave for
making his visits so short, and for avoiding Parke. But
one evening, when Philippa had begged him for a farewell
game of chess, they met.

“Your last games?” asked Parke.

“Yes,” Sam answered.

“I have half a mind to go on the voyage with you.”

“Better stay here.”

The tone of his voice was so significant, that Parke
went round to the back of Philippa's chair and mutely
interrogated him. He returned the look with one eloquent
with contempt.

Parke quietly took a chair near him, and waited till
the game was finished, and he had risen to go. When
the outside door was reached, Parke laid his hand on the

latch, stood before him, and said, “You have heard
something.”

“Let me pass,” demanded Sam, with a husky voice;
“let me pass, or—”

“No, it won't be worse with me if you stay. Sam,
you know it all.”

“I do.”

“I imagine the town knows it.”

“Everybody.”

“Do they know,” he spoke with an accent that made
Sam's blood run cold, “that I shall marry Charlotte
Lang?”

“Now by God, Parke, you shall not do it! You
must not, cannot do it! Nature is against it—the whole
race!”

“I am a little old fashioned, Sam; she is the mother
of my child, Parke Auster's child! Has the town mentioned
that fact yet?”

His tone of self-disgust, resolution, dogged daring, and
his air of painful ennui, blasé, suffering, are not to be described.

“I—I'll see you to-morrow; there's a man waiting
for me now, about a chronometer. Good-by. How
could you? If she hadn't been—damme, give me your
hand!”

Parke was crying now like a baby in Sam's arms. He
wiped his own eyes, moved from one foot to the other,
swore at the world, and every thing in it, and finally led
Parke into his room, and sat up the whole night with
him.