University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.

After the breaking up of the party, as described in the
former chapter, Arthur Elwood, on joining the family circle,
and not meeting his host and brother there, as he naturally
expected, expressed his surprise at the circumstance, and inquired
the cause of his absence. But, perceiving that the subject
gave pain to Mrs. Elwood, who deemed it prudent but to
repeat, as she hesitatingly did, what her husband had told her,
that he had gone out, soon to be back, the former forbore any
further inquiries or comments, and soon retired to rest, wishing
her a good-night and pleasant slumbers.

“Good-night and pleasant slumbers!” slowly and murmuringly
repeated the anxious and troubled wife, on whose ear the
words, kindly meant as she knew them to be, fell as if in
mockery to her feelings. “Pleasant slumbers for me! Heaven
grant they may be made so by his speedy coming; but—”
and, being now alone, and thus relieved of the restraining presence
of others, she burst into tears, and wept long and bitterly.

Woman was not created to act independently. The sphere
in which she is formed to move, though different, is yet so immediately
connected with that of man, that her destiny is
inseparable from his. Her happiness and prosperity are not
in her own keeping. The welfare of the husband is the welfare
of the wife; and, if poverty and disgrace, the concomitants of
vice, fall on him, she must participate equally in the physical
evil, and drink as much deeper of the cup of moral misery as
her unblunted sensibilities are more lively, and her sense of

right and wrong are more acute, than those of him who has
become dead to the one and lost to the other. What wonder,
then, that she should so agonize and weep in secret over his
moral deviations, and all the more bitterly, because, with the
most intense desire to do so, she has no power to remedy the
evil? But, for that sorrow and suffering, who before high
Heaven will be held responsible? Who, but the doubly-guilty
husband whose conduct has caused them?

Through the whole of that, to her, long and dreary night,
Mrs. Elwood never once thought of retiring to rest, but kept up
her vigils in waiting and watching for her husband: now listening
pensively to the wind that seemed to moan round her solitary
apartment in unison with her own feelings; now straining
her senses to catch some sound of his approach; and now, perhaps,
throwing herself upon a sofa, and falling, for a moment,
into a troubled slumber, but only to start up at the first sound
of the rattling windows, to listen again, and again to be disappointed.
In this manner she wore away the lingering hours
of the night, till the long prayed-for daylight, which she supposed,
at the farthest, would bring back her truant husband,
made its welcome appearance. But daylight came not this time
to remove the cause of her anxieties. Elwood had several
times before staid out nearly through the night, but the approach
of daylight had always, till now, brought him home;
and, not making his appearance, as she confidently expected,
she became, as the morning advanced, really alarmed for his
personal safety, and would have immediately sent out for him,
but she knew not whom to send. She therefore concluded to
put off the already long-delayed breakfast no longer; and, summoning
her brother-in-law, who, with herself (her son, whom
we have yet more particularly to introduce to the reader, being
temporarily absent from town), now constituted all the family
remaining to join in the repast. The two then sat down to the
table, and partook the meal mostly in gloomy silence, one still
hoping all might yet turn out well, and therefore repressing her

twofold apprehensions; and the other, out of regard to her feelings,
kindly forbearing to pain her with remarks and inquiries
on a subject which they mutually felt conscious was oppressing
the hearts of both.

After the meal was over, Arthur Elwood arose, and, briefly
announcing his intention of going out to look up his brother,
who, he said, would be likely soon to be found at his store, left
the house. At the usual dinner hour, Arthur Elwood returned
to the house, and was met at the door by his anxious hostess,
whose countenance quickly fell as she perceived him to be
alone.

“Have you not yet seen my husband?” she eagerly demanded.

“No, but have heard of him. He is somewhere in the city,
I believe,” replied the other.

“In the city and not return?” persisted the surprised and
distressed wife. “How can this be? — what does it mean?”

“I do not know,” replied Arthur, with a thoughtful and perplexed
air.

Mrs. Elwood for a moment stood mute as a statue; for, but
too well conjecturing what was passing in the mind of the other,
she durst not ask his opinion. But, soon regaining her usual
composure, she led the way to the dinner-table, where the meal
that followed was partaken much as the one that preceded it,
— in silence and mutual constraint, which was only relieved by
an occasional forced, commonplace remark.

“I shall again go to Mark's store,” said Arthur, with stern
gravity, as he rose from the table, after he had finished his
repast, “and I shall also take the liberty of looking into the
condition of his affairs. After that, I may return here again,
though to remain only for a short time, as I leave for home in
the evening.”

Towards night Arthur Elwood returned, and in his usual
quiet way entered the room where Mrs. Elwood was sitting;
when, shaking his head as if in reply to the question respecting

her still absent husband, which he saw, by the painfully inquiring
expression of her countenance, was rising to her lips, he
took a seat by her side, and, with an air of concern and a slight
tremor of voice, commenced:

“I have been debating with myself, sister Alice, whether it
were a greater kindness to go away without seeing you, and of
course without apprising you of what I may have discovered
respecting your husband and his affairs, or come here and tell
you truths which would be painful, — too painful, perhaps, for
you to bear.”

“'Tis better I should know all,” rather gasped than uttered
Mrs. Elwood. “You will tell me the truth, — others may not.
Go on.”

“Your husband,” resumed the other, “wrote me for the help
of a few thousands, which I would have freely loaned, but for
my suspicions that all was not right with him; and, as I plainly
told him, I came on to ascertain for myself whether such help
would be thrown away, or really relieve him, as he represented,
from a mere temporary embarrassment. I have now been into
the painful investigation, and find matters, I grieve to say, tenfold
worse than I suspected. He is, and must have been for a
long time, the companion and the victim of blacklegs and cutthroats,
and —”

“I suspected, — I knew it,” interrupted the eager and trembling
listener; “and O Arthur, how I have tried and wept and
prayed to induce him to break off from them; for I felt they
would eventually ruin him.”

“Eventually ruin him! Why, Alice, with his own miscalculations
in business, folly and extravagance in every thing, they
have done so already.”

“But the main part of his property,” demanded the other,
with a startled look, “you don't mean but what the main part
of his property is still left?”

“Yes, I do, Alice, — but I see you are not prepared for this.

Still, you may as well know it now as ever. Yes, Alice,
your husband is irretrievably bankrupt!”

Mrs. Elwood was not indeed prepared for this development.
She had foreseen, it was true, the coming evil; but she supposed
it was yet in the distance. She knew her husband's
property had been a large one; and the announcement, from
one she could not disbelieve, that it was all gone, struck her
dumb with surprise and consternation. She uttered not a word.
She could not speak, but sat pale and trembling, the very picture
of distress.

After pacing the room a few moments, with frequent commiserating
glances at the face of the other, whose distress
evidently deeply moved him, Arthur Elwood stopped short
before her and said:

“Sister Alice, my time is about up, — I must go.”

“Have you no word to leave for my husband when he
comes?” asked Mrs. Elwood, with an effort to appear composed.

“No, — none whatever to him; but with you, Alice,” he
added, drawing out a small package of bank notes and dropping
them into her lap, “with you, and for you alone, against a day
of necessity, I leave that trifle — no hesitation — keep it — put
it out of sight — there, that is right. Now only one thing more,
— what of your son?”

“Claud?”

“Yes. You know it has happened that I have never seen
him.”

“I do know it, and have much regretted his absence; for I
wished you to see him. But I am now looking for him every
hour, and if you could delay —”

“No, no, I must go. Tell him to forget, at once, that he was
ever a rich man's only son and heir, and learn to profit by a
rich man's errors; for, till he does this, which, if he is like
others, will require some time, he will make no real advance in
life.”

“Your impression may be natural, but it hardly does him
justice. He is not like most others. Claud is a man now.”

“So much the better, then, for you and himself. But you see
with a mother's eyes, probably, and speak with a mother's heart.
I will inquire about him, however, as indeed I will about you
all. Good-by.”

Thus did the unimpassioned Arthur Elwood, with a seeming
business-like roughness and want of feeling, assume to hide
the emotions which he really felt in the discovery of his
brother's ruin, and in witnessing the distress he had just caused
in communicating it, hurry through the painful interview, and
abruptly depart, leaving Mrs. Elwood to struggle in secret with
the chaos of thoughts and emotions which Arthur's unexpected
revelation had brought over her. She was not left long, however,
to struggle with her feelings alone. In a short time the
sound of a familiar footstep hastily entering the front hall of
the magnificent mansion, — alas! now no longer her own, — suddenly
caught her ear; when, with the exclamation, “Claud, O
Claud!” she rushed forward to her advancing son, and, to use
the expressive language of Scripture, “fell on his neck and
wept.”

“I heard of father's failure,” said the son, a fine looking
youth of about twenty, with his mother's cleanly cut features
and firm, thoughtful countenance, joined to his father's manly
proportions. “I learned, as I came into the city, an hour ago,
that father had just failed, his store been shut up, and all his
property put into the hands of his creditors; and I hurried
home to break the news to you. But I see you know it all.”

“Yes, that the blow was impending, but not that it had already
fallen, as you now report; but it may as well come to-day as
to-morrow or next week. Half my nights, for months, Claud,
have been made sleepless by the bodings and fears of the evil
day, which, as things were going, I felt must eventually come;
but never, till within this very hour, did I dream that our misfortunes
were so near. But, though the storm has burst so

much sooner than I expected, I could bravely face it, could we
say that it was caused by no fault of our own; but to be brought
upon us in this manner, my son, it is hard, hard to bear.”

“But you have not been to blame, mother; and I did not
suppose you thought enough of wealth to grieve so at its loss.”

“I do not, Claud. It is not that; still, I could not help
thinking of your disappointment, even in that view of the misfortune.”

“Mine, mother? Why, I am no worse off than father was
when he started in life; no worse off than thousands who
begin with no other resources than what lie in clear heads and
strong hearts. I can take care of myself; and, what is more, I
can take care of you, dear mother. Surely, you won't doubt
me?”

“No, Claud, no. You have always been my pride, latterly
almost my only hope; and I know not now but that you must
be my only staff, on which to lean as I pass down the decline
of life.”

“And I will be one to you, mother; but come, cheer up, and
let us go in and talk over these matters more calmly.”

The mother and son accordingly retired to her usual sitting-room;
where, since her overcharged bosom had found relief in
tears, and her sinking spirits had been raised by the kind and
comforting words of her dutiful son, she told him all that had
occurred during the two preceding days, which constituted the
brief but eventful period of his absence. They then were beginning
to counsel together on the prospects and probabilities
of their gloomy future; but their conversation was suddenly
cut short by the abrupt entrance of the wretched husband and
father, who, on his way from the hotel where he had spent the
day in sleeping off his debauch in concealment, having received
an intimation of what was going on among his creditors, had
hurried home, with a confidence and self-possession which he
could not summon when he started; for, out of this movement
among his creditors, which he still would not believe was any

thing more than a sort of practical menace to enforce payment,
he saw not only how he could frame a plausible excuse for his
guilty absence, but make the circumstance an irresistible plea for
forcing from his brother a loan sufficient to enable him to arrest
his failure and continue business. On entering the room, therefore,
after saluting his wife and son in a sort of brisk, unconcerned
manner, and muttering that he “thought they would never let
him get home again,” he eagerly inquired for Arthur; and, on
being informed that his brother had started for his home, without
leaving any note or word for him, and especially on being
told by his son — as he at length calmly and persistingly was,
in despite of his multiplied prevarications and denials, what
they all knew, and what he himself should have been the last
to be ignorant of — that the question of his failure, for more
than he could ever pay, had already been settled against him,
he became frantic in the outpourings of his rage, disappointment,
and chagrin; sometimes declaring that the world, grown
envious of his prosperity, had all suddenly become his enemies,
and grossly belied him; sometimes savagely charging his
brother, wife, and son with conspiring together against him;
and sometimes cursing his own blindness and folly. And thus
he continued to rave, and walk the room for hours, till his wife
and son, having partaken their evening meal before his unheeding
eyes, and become sick and wearied in listening to his insane
ravings, — to which they had wholly ceased making any reply,
— retired to rest, leaving him to partake such food as was left
on the table, to occupy, as he chose to do, the same sofa which
his hapless wife had done the night before, to sleep down the
wild commotion of his feelings, and awake a calmer and more
humbled, but not yet a better or much wiser man.

But we do not propose to describe in detail the rapid descent
from opulence and station to poverty and insignificance, which
now transpired to mark this era in the singular fortunes of
Elwood and his family. Their history, for the next three
months, was but the usual painful one which awaits the failed

merchant everywhere in the cities. The crushing sense of
misfortune which, for the first few days after the unexpected
blow has fallen, weighs down the self-deceived or otherwise
unprepared victims; the succeeding weeks of dejection and
mortified pride; then the painful trial of parting with the
showy equipage, the costly furniture, and the cherished mementoes,
which had required, perhaps, the care of half a life in
gathering; then the compulsory abdication of the great and
conspicuous mansion for the small, obscure, hired cottage; then
the saddening bodings and deep concern felt in seeing the
means of living daily diminishing, with no prospect of ever
being replenished; and, finally, the humiliating resort of the
wife and children to the needle or menial employments, for
the actual necessaries of life, — these, all these, are but the
usual graduated vicissitudes of sorrow and trial which are
allotted to those whose folly and extravagance have suddenly
thrown them on the downward track of fortune, and which the
Elwoods, in common with others, were now doomed to experience,
and, on the part of Mrs. Elwood, especially, with aggravations
not necessarily incident to such reverses. She would
have borne all the deprivations and evils incident to her husband's
failure without a murmur, could she have seen in him
any amendment in those habits and vicious inclinations which
had led to his downfall. But she could not. The hopes she
had confidently entertained, that his misfortunes would humble
and reform him, were doomed to disappointment. He still
madly clung to his old associates of the gambling-table; and
all the money he could get was lost or squandered among them,
till he became too poor and desperate even for them, and they
drove him from their society to join another and a lower
set, who in turn compelled him to seek other still lower and
more degraded associations. And so descended, step by step,
along the path of degradation, the once princely merchant, till,
despised and shunned by all respectable men, he became the
fit companion of the meanest thimble-riggers of the cellars,
and the lounging tipplers of the streets.

His case, however, as hopeless as it might appear, was not
permitted to become an irretrievable one. Through a seemingly
accidental circumstance, a light one day broke on his beclouded
and half-maddened brain, that led to a self-redemption
as happy for himself and family as it was unexpected by all.
A former friend, one morning, moved perhaps by his forlorn
appearance, in passing him with a light carriage, invited him
to ride a few miles into the country; where, being unexpectedly
called off in another direction, he left Elwood to return on foot
by a nearer route across the fields to his home. After travelling
some distance, he reached an elevation which overlooked
the city, and, feeling a little fatigued, he sat down on a mossy
hillock to rest and enjoy the prospect. As he cast his eye over
that busy haunt of men, with its numerous spires shooting upward,
its long lines of princely dwellings, its encircling forest
of masts, its lofty warehouses, and other evidences of wealth
and business, his own former important participation in its
busy scenes, and his present worse than insignificant position
there, rose in vivid contrast in his awakening mind; and the
thought of his past but squandered wealth came up only to add
poignancy to the sense of his present poverty and humiliation,
which thus, and for the first time, was brought home to his
agitated bosom. Suddenly leaping from his seat, from the
torturing force of the reflection, he exclaimed: “Must I bear
this? Cannot I still be a man? I will! yes, before Heaven,
I will!” And, resuming his seat, his mind became intently
engaged in studying out ways and means for carrying the sudden
but stern resolution into effect; when, after another hour
thus employed, he again jumped up, and, with the air of one
who has reached some unalterable conclusion, he rapidly made
his way homeward.

While the besotted Elwood was undergoing, so unexpectedly,
even to himself, such a moral transformation in the solitude of

the fields, an event occurred to his sorrowful wife at home,
which was equally unexpected to her; which, though of a
wholly different character, produced an equally great revulsion
in her feelings as the one happening to her husband, about
the same hour, was to him, or was producing in his feelings,
and which, by the singular coincidence, seemed to indicate that
the angel of mercy was at length spreading his wings at the
same time over both heads of this unfortunate family. She
had been having one of her most disconsolate days, and was
sitting alone in her little room, gloomily pondering over her
disheartening trials, without being able to see one ray of light
in the dark future, when she received a call from one of her
husband's chief creditors; who announced that those creditors,
at a recent meeting, having ascertained her meritorious conduct
and needy situation, had voted her the sum of five hundred
dollars, which, confiding in her discretion for a judicious outlay
of the money, he now, he said, had the pleasure of presenting
her. And, having placed the money in her hands, and taken
the tear of gratitude — which, preventing the utterance of the
word-thanks she attempted, had started to her cheek at the unexpected
boon — as a sufficient acknowledgment, he kindly bade
her adieu, and departed.

That evening the husband and wife met as they had not for
months before: each at first surprised at seeing the unclouded
brow and hopeful countenance of the other, but each soon instinctively
feeling that something had occurred to both, which
was not only of present moment, but the harbinger of happier
days to come. When confidence and hope are springing up in
doubtful or despairing bosoms, the tongue is soon loosened
from the frosts of reserve, however closely they may have before
imprisoned it. Elwood, with many expressions of regret
at his past conduct, and of wonder at the blindness and folly
which had permitted him so long to persevere in it, told his
gratified companion all that had that day passed through his
mind, — his sudden sense of shame and degradation; his bitter

self-reproaches, and succeeding determination to reform; to
atone for the past, as far as he could, by future good conduct;
to begin, in fine, the world anew, and, after placing himself
beyond the reach of those temptations to which he had so fatally
yielded, devote the remainder of his days to honest industry.
And she, anxious to encourage and strengthen him, and fearing
his total want of means might defeat his good resolutions, — she,
also, as she believed it would be true wisdom to do, informed
him of her good fortune, and offered him a portion of her unexpected
acquisition, to enable him to engage in such business as
he should decide to follow. They then discussed, and soon
mutually agreed on, the expediency of leaving the city, where,
as they had once there enjoyed wealth and station, they must
both ever be subjected to mortifying contrasts, — both constantly
doomed
and he be exposed to temptations which he might not always
have the firmness to withstand.

“But I resolved,” said Elwood, after a pause, “not only on
going to the country, but on to a new lot of land in the very
outskirts of civilization. You, however, should I succeed in
getting up comfortable quarters, would not be content to make
such a place your home?”

“Anywhere, Mark; and the farther from the dangerous
influences of this wicked city, the better. Yes, to the very
depths of the wilderness, and I will not complain.”

“It is settled, then. I was once, in one of my early excursions,
along the borders of the wild lakes lying on the northeastern
line of New Hampshire, where a living may be obtained
from the cultivation of the soil alone; but where more may be
made, at particular seasons, in taking the valuable furs that
there abound. There I will go, contract for a lot of land, and
prepare a home, leaving you, and Claud, if he shall decide for
a woodman's life, to come on and join me next summer.”

“That Claud will do; for he often declares himself disgusted
with the trickery of trade, and to be longing for the country
life of his boyhood. But here he comes, and can speak for
himself.”

The son now joined in the family deliberations, and learning,
with surprise and gratification, what had occurred during the
eventful day, joyfully fell in with his father's proposition; when
it was soon decided that the latter should take half the money
that day given to Mrs. Elwood, to lay out in a lot of land and
house, and immediately proceed on his journey.

Whatever Mark Elwood had once firmly decided on, he was
always prompt and energetic in executing. Before nine o'clock
that evening, his knapsack of clothing was made up for a journey
on foot, which, contrary to the wishes of his wife and son,
he decided should be his mode of travelling. He then went
to bed, slept six hours, rose, dressed, bade his family good-by,
turned his back on the now loathed city, and, by sunrise next
morning, was far on his way towards his designated home
among the distant wilds of the North.