 | XXI.
AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE. The Blithedale romance |  |
21. XXI.
AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE.
Thus excluded from everybody's confidence, and attaining
no further, by my most earnest study, than to
an uncertain sense of something hidden from me, it
would appear reasonable that I should have flung off all
these alien perplexities. Obviously, my best course was
to betake myself to new scenes. Here I was only an
intruder. Elsewhere there might be circumstances in
which I could establish a personal interest, and people
who would respond, with a portion of their sympathies,
for so much as I should bestow of mine.
Nevertheless, there occurred to me one other thing to
be done. Remembering old Moodie, and his relationship
with Priscilla, I determined to seek an interview,
for the purpose of ascertaining whether the knot of
affairs was as inextricable on that side as I found it on
all others. Being tolerably well acquainted with the
old man's haunts, I went, the next day, to the saloon of
a certain establishment about which he often lurked. It
was a reputable place enough, affording good entertainment
in the way of meat, drink, and fumigation;
and there, in my young and idle days and nights, when
I was neither nice nor wise, I had often amused myself
with watching the staid humors and sober jollities of the
thirsty souls around me.
At my first entrance, old Moodie was not there. The
myself in a corner, took a quiet, and, by sympathy,
a boozy kind of pleasure in the customary life that was
going forward. The saloon was fitted up with a good
deal of taste. There were pictures on the walls, and
among them an oil-painting of a beef-steak, with such an
admirable show of juicy tenderness, that the beholder
sighed to think it merely visionary, and incapable of
ever being put upon a gridiron. Another work of high
art was the life-like representation of a noble sirloin;
another, the hind-quarters of a deer, retaining the hoofs
and tawny fur; another, the head and shoulders of a
salmon; and, still more exquisitely finished, a brace of
canvas-back ducks, in which the mottled feathers were
depicted with the accuracy of a daguerreotype. Some
very hungry painter, I suppose, had wrought these subjects
of still life, heightening his imagination with his
appetite, and earning, it is to be hoped, the privilege of
a daily dinner off whichever of his pictorial viands he
liked best. Then, there was a fine old cheese, in which
you could almost discern the mites; and some sardines,
on a small plate, very richly done, and looking as if
oozy with the oil in which they had been smothered.
All these things were so perfectly imitated, that you
seemed to have the genuine article before you, and yet
with an indescribable ideal charm; it took away the
grossness from what was fleshiest and fattest, and thus
helped the life of man, even in its earthliest relations, to
appear rich and noble, as well as warm, cheerful, and
substantial. There were pictures, too, of gallant revellers,
— those of the old time, — Flemish, apparently, —
with doublets and slashed sleeves, — drinking their wine
quaffing forever, with inaudible laughter and
song, while the Champagne bubbled immortally against
their mustaches, or the purple tide of Burgundy ran
inexhaustibly down their throats.
But, in an obscure corner of the saloon, there was a
little picture — excellently done, moreover — of a ragged,
bloated, New England toper, stretched out on a
bench, in the heavy, apoplectic sleep of drunkenness.
The death-in-life was too well portrayed. You smelt
the fumy liquor that had brought on this syncope.
Your only comfort lay in the forced reflection, that, real
as he looked, the poor caitiff was but imaginary, — a bit
of painted canvas, whom no delirium tremens, nor so
much as a retributive headache, awaited, on the morrow.
By this time, it being past eleven o'clock the two
barkeepers of the saloon were in pretty constant activity.
One of these young men had a rare faculty in the concoction
of gin-cocktails. It was a spectacle to behold,
how, with a tumbler in each hand, he tossed the contents
from one to the other. Never conveying it awry,
nor spilling the least drop, he compelled the frothy
liquor, as it seemed to me, to spout forth from one glass
and descend into the other, in a great parabolic curve, as
well defined and calculable as a planet's orbit. He had
a good forehead, with a particularly large development
just above the eyebrows; fine intellectual gifts, no doubt,
which he had educated to this profitable end; being
famous for nothing but gin-cocktails, and commanding a
fair salary by his one accomplishment. These cocktails,
and other artificial combinations of liquor (of which
fantastic in their differences), were much in favor with
the younger class of customers, who, at furthest, had
only reached the second stage of potatory life. The
stanch old soakers, on the other hand, — men who, if
put on tap, would have yielded a red alcoholic liquor by
way of blood, — usually confined themselves to plain
brandy-and-water, gin, or West India rum; and, oftentimes,
they prefaced their dram with some medicinal
remark as to the wholesomeness and stomachic qualities
of that particular drink. Two or three appeared to have
bottles of their own behind the counter; and, winking
one red eye to the barkeeper, he forthwith produced
these choicest and peculiar cordials, which it was a matter
of great interest and favor, among their acquaintances,
to obtain a sip of.
Agreeably to the Yankee habit, under whatever circumstances,
the deportment of all these good fellows, old
or young, was decorous and thoroughly correct. They
grew only the more sober in their cups; there was no
confused babble nor boisterous laughter. They sucked
in the joyous fire of the decanters, and kept it smouldering
in their inmost recesses, with a bliss known only to
the heart which it warmed and comforted. Their eyes
twinkled a little, to be sure; they hemmed vigorously
after each glass, and laid a hand upon the pit of the
stomach, as if the pleasant titillation there was what
constituted the tangible part of their enjoyment. In that
spot, unquestionably, and not in the brain, was the acme
of the whole affair. But the true purpose of their drinking
— and one that will induce men to drink, or do something
equivalent, as long as this weary world shall
cheerful sense of things present and to come, with
which, for about a quarter of an hour, the dram permeated
their systems. And when such quarters of an
hour can be obtained in some mode less baneful to the
great sum of a man's life, — but, nevertheless, with a
little spice of impropriety, to give it a wild flavor, — we
temperance people may ring out our bells for victory!
The prettiest object in the saloon was a tiny fountain,
which threw up its feathery jet through the counter, and
sparkled down again into an oval basin, or lakelet, containing
several gold-fishes. There was a bed of bright
sand at the bottom, strewn with coral and rock-work;
and the fishes went gleaming about, now turning up the
sheen of a golden side, and now vanishing into the
shadows of the water, like the fanciful thoughts that
coquet with a poet in his dream. Never before, I
imagine, did a company of water-drinkers remain so
entirely uncontaminated by the bad example around
them; nor could I help wondering that it had not
occurred to any freakish inebriate to empty a glass of
liquor into their lakelet. What a delightful idea! Who
would not be a fish, if he could inhale jollity with the
essential element of his existence!
I had began to despair of meeting old Moodie, when, all
at once, I recognized his hand and arm protruding from
behind a screen that was set up for the accommodation
of bashful topers. As a matter of course, he had one of
Priscilla's little purses, and was quietly insinuating it
under the notice of a person who stood near. This was
always old Moodie's way. You hardly ever saw him
advancing towards you, but became aware of his proximity
He glided about like a spirit, assuming visibility close to
your elbow, offering his petty trifles of merchandise,
remaining long enough for you to purchase, if so disposed,
and then taking himself off, between two breaths,
while you happened to be thinking of something else.
By a sort of sympathetic impulse that often controlled
me in those more impressible days of my life, I was
induced to approach this old man in a mode as undemonstrative
as his own. Thus, when, according to his custom,
he was probably just about to vanish, he found me
at his elbow.
“Ah!” said he, with more emphasis than was usual
with him. “It is Mr. Coverdale!”
“Yes, Mr. Moodie, your old acquaintance,” answered
I. “It is some time now since we ate our luncheon
together at Blithedale, and a good deal longer since our
little talk together at the street-corner.”
“That was a good while ago,” said the old man.
And he seemed inclined to say not a word more. His
existence looked so colorless and torpid, — so very
faintly shadowed on the canvas of reality, — that I was
half afraid lest he should altogether disappear, even
while my eyes were fixed full upon his figure. He was
certainly the wretchedest old ghost in the world, with
his crazy hat, the dingy handkerchief about his throat,
his suit of threadbare gray, and especially that patch
over his right eye, behind which he always seemed to be
hiding himself. There was one method, however, of
bringing him out into somewhat stronger relief. A glass
of brandy would effect it. Perhaps the gentler influence
of a bottle of claret might do the same. Nor could I
against me, if — with my painful consciousness of the
frost in this old man's blood, and the positive ice that
had congealed about his heart — I should thaw him out,
were it only for an hour, with the summer warmth of a
little wine. What else could possibly be done for him?
How else could he be imbued with energy enough to
hope for a happier state hereafter? How else be
inspired to say his prayers? For there are states of our
spiritual system when the throb of the soul's life is too
faint and weak to render us capable of religious aspiration.
“Mr. Moodie,” said I, “shall we lunch together?
And would you like to drink a glass of wine?”
His one eye gleamed. He bowed; and it impressed
me that he grew to be more of a man at once, either in
anticipation of the wine, or as a grateful response to my
good fellowship in offering it.
“With pleasure,” he replied.
The barkeeper, at my request, showed us into a private
room, and soon afterwards set some fried oysters
and a bottle of claret on the table; and I saw the old
man glance curiously at the label of the bottle, as if to
learn the brand.
“It should be good wine,” I remarked, “if it have any
right to its label.”
“You cannot suppose, sir,” said Moodie, with a sigh,
“that a poor old fellow like me knows any difference in
wines.”
And yet, in his way of handling the glass, in his
preliminary snuff at the aroma, in his first cautious sip
of the wine, and the gustatory skill with which he gave
to recognize the connoisseur.
“I fancy, Mr. Moodie,” said I, “you are a much better
judge of wines than I have yet learned to be. Tell
me fairly, — did you never drink it where the grape
grows?”
“How should that have been, Mr. Coverdale?”
answered old Moodie, shyly; but then he took courage,
as it were, and uttered a feeble little laugh. “The flavor
of this wine,” added he, “and its perfume, still more
than its taste, makes me remember that I was once a
young man.”
“I wish, Mr. Moodie,” suggested I, — not that I
greatly cared about it, however, but was only anxious to
draw him into some talk about Priscilla and Zenobia, —
“I wish, while we sit over our wine, you would favor
me with a few of those youthful reminiscences.”
“Ah,” said he, shaking his head, “they might interest
you more than you suppose. But I had better be
silent, Mr. Coverdale. If this good wine, — though
claret, I suppose, is not apt to play such a trick, — but if
it should make my tongue run too freely, I could never
look you in the face again.”
“You never did look me in the face, Mr. Moodie,” I
replied, “until this very moment.”
“Ah!” sighed old Moodie.
It was wonderful, however, what an effect the mild
grape-juice wrought upon him. It was not in the wine, but
in the associations which it seemed to bring up. Instead
of the mean, slouching, furtive, painfully depressed air of
an old city vagabond, more like a gray kennel-rat than
any other living thing, he began to take the aspect of a
after I had myself quaffed a glass or two — looked less
shabby than when we first sat down. There was, by
and by, a certain exuberance and elaborateness of gesture
and manner, oddly in contrast with all that I had
hitherto seen of him. Anon, with hardly any impulse
from me, old Moodie began to talk. His communications
referred exclusively to a long past and more fortunate
period of his life, with only a few unavoidable allusions
to the circumstances that had reduced him to his
present state. But, having once got the clue, my subsequent
researches acquainted me with the main facts of
the following narrative; although, in writing it out, my
pen has perhaps allowed itself a trifle of romantic and
legendary license, worthier of a small poet than of a
grave biographer.
| XXI.
AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE. The Blithedale romance | |