It was nearly a year since he had landed at New York, and Morton still remained a literary hermit. Society was stale and distasteful to him. He passed three fourths of his day in his library, and the rest on horseback. At length, however, it happened that a cousin of his mother, one of his few relatives in the city, was to give a ball on occasion of her daughter's début; and lest his refusal should be thought unkind, Morton promised to come. He drove to town in the afternoon; and walking through a somewhat obscure street, suddenly, on turning a corner, saw, some four or five rods before him, a well-remembered face. It was the face of Henry Speyer. The discovery was mutual. Speyer instantly turned down a by-lane. Morton quickened his pace, and reached the head of the lane in time to see the broad shoulders of the patriot in full retreat. He soon lost sight of him among a wilderness of back yards and squalid houses. The incident greatly disturbed and exasperated him. "A broken oath is nothing to him," he thought to himself; "he is at Vinal again, dragging at his veins like a vampire."
The evening drew on, and he entered the ball room in a gloomy and dejected frame of mind. After a few words to his relatives, he took his stand among a group who were watching the dancers; and had scarcely done so, when he saw a young lady, simply, but very richly dressed, whose fine figure and powerfully expressive beauty arrested his eye at once. The indifference and listlessness with which he had entered vanished. He soon observed that she was not an object of attention to him alone; for near him stood a certain old beau, well known about town, and a young collegian, both following her with their eyes. The music ceased, and her partner led her to a seat at the farther side of the room. Glancing at his two neighbors, Morton saw that they were in the act of moving towards her; but he, being nearer, had the advantage. Gliding through the dissolving fragments of the dance, he stood by her side.
"Miss Fanny Euston, I see two persons coming to ask you to dance. May I hope that you will reject them for an old friend's sake, and let me be your partner?"
She raised her eyes with a perplexed look, which instantly changed to a bright gleam of recognition, and cordially took his proffered hand.
"So," said Morton, "you have not forgotten me. And yet, as I see you, I hardly dare to take up again the broken thread of our old intimacy. I used to call you Fanny."
"Call me Fanny still," she said, "if only for the memory of auld lang syne."
"I hoped to have seen you before, but you have been away."
"Yes, with my relations, and yours, at Baltimore. I have heard a great deal about you. Your story is the talk of the town. You might be the lion of the season; but I have not seen you at parties."
"No, I have outlived my liking for such matters."
"I cannot wonder at it. What horrors you have suffered! what dangers you have passed!"
"I have weathered them, though."
"You were more than four years in a dungeon."
"Yes, but I gave them the slip."
"You were led out to be shot by the soldiers."
"They thought better of it, and saved their ammunition."
"And yet I see," said Miss Euston, smiling, "that you still remain your former self. I remember telling you that, if you were sentenced to the rack, you would go to it with a gibe on your tongue, and speak of it afterwards as a pleasant diversion. But," she added, with a changed look, "you have not come off unscathed. Your face is darker and thinner than it used to be, and there are lines in it that were not there before."
"Fortune fondled me till she grew tired of me; then turned at me, tooth and nail."
"You banter with your lips, but your look belies your words. You have suffered greatly; you have suffered intensely."
Morton looked grave in spite of himself.
"Perhaps you are right. I have very little heart left for jesting."
The eyes of his companion, as they met his, assumed a peculiar softness.
"You must have suffered beyond all power of words to speak it. The world to you was fresh and full of interest. You were ambitious; full of ardor and energy; loving hardship for its own sake, and obstacles for the sake of conquering them. You were formed for action. It was your element—your breath; and without it you did not care to live. You were high in confidence, and believed that whatever you had once resolved on must, sooner or later, come to pass."
"Why are you saying this?" demanded Morton, in great surprise.
"Out of this life you were suddenly snatched and buried in a dungeon; shut off from all intercourse with men; your energies stifled; your restless mind left to prey upon itself, or sustain a weary siege against despair. Pain or danger you could have faced like a man; but this passive misery must to you have been a daily death."
"Who," interrupted Morton, "taught you, a woman, to penetrate the nature of a man, and describe sufferings that you never felt?"
"Your mind was like a spring of steel, springing up the more strongly the harder it was pressed down. The suffering must have been deep indeed from which you could not rebound. To have escaped, to have reached home, and to have found any thing but relief and delight——"
"Home!" ejaculated Morton, bitterly, as a sharp memory of the anguish which had met him on the threshold came over him. "A prison may be borne with patience. Those are fortunate who have felt no keener stabs."
The words, equivocal as they were, were scarcely spoken, when he had repented them. Fanny Euston was silent for a moment. "Can it be possible," she thought, "that the stories whispered about, that before he went away he was engaged to Edith Leslie, are something more than an idle rumor?"
"Why do you look at me so searchingly?" thought Morton, on his part, as, raising his eyes, he saw those of his friend fixed on him in a gaze in which a woman's curiosity was mingled with a fully equal share of a woman's kindliness and sympathy. He hastened to escape from the critical ground which he had approached.
"I can retort upon you," he said. "You have had your ordeal, too."
"What, do you see its traces? Do you find me scorched and withered?"
"I see," said Morton, "such traces as on gold that has passed through the furnace."
"Truly, I have cause to rejoice, then; for I remember that, among other compliments, you once intimated your opinion that I was possessed with a devil."
"I am afraid that I pushed to its farthest limit my privilege of cousinship."
"And yet, when I look back to that time, I cannot help thinking that you had some reason for believing that an influence from the nether world had some share in me."
"Now pardon me, if I am rude again. Looking at you, I can see the same devil still."
"Indeed, and you will console me now, as you did then, by telling me that a dash of viciousness is necessary to make a character interesting."
"I should prune and explain my speech. By a devil, I did not mean a malicious imp of darkness, wholly bent on evil. I meant nothing more than certain impulses and emotions,—passions, if I may call them so,—very turbulent tenants, yet of admirable use when well dealt with. These were the devil whom I used to see in you, and whom I see still."
"I shall tremble at myself."
"Then you are not so brave as you were when you leaped the fallen tree at New Baden. Your demon has ceased to have an alarming look. I think you have turned him to good account. Shall I illustrate from the legends of the saints?"
"In any way you please; but I should never have expected you to resort to so pious a source."
"St. Bernard, crossing the Alps on some holy errand, was met by Satan, who, being anxious to prevent his journey, broke one of his carriage wheels. But St. Bernard caught him, sprinkled him with holy water, doubled him into a wheel, and put him upon the carriage in place of the broken one. The legend says that he answered the purpose admirably, and bore the saint safely to the end of his journey."
"Your legend is absurd enough; but I think I catch your meaning, and wish I could think you wholly in the right. It is singular that you and I have never met without our conversation becoming personal to ourselves. We are always studying each other—always trying to penetrate each other's thoughts."
"On one side, at least, the success has been complete. As you look at me, I feel that you are reading me like a book, from title page to finis."
"You greatly overrate my penetration. I am conscious, at this moment, of movements in your mind which I do not understand."
"And would you have me confess them to you?"
"You might repent it afterwards; and that would make a breach between us."
"You are a miraculous woman, to postpone your curiosity to a scruple like that. No, I would not have spoken of confession, if I should ever repent it. Do you know, I would rather open my mind to you than to any one else I am now acquainted with."
"But you have male friends; very old and intimate ones."
"Excellent in their way; but I would as soon confess to my horse. Find me a woman of sense, with a brain to discern, a heart to feel, passion to feel vehemently, and principle to feel rightly, and I will show her my mind; or, if not, I will show it to no one. Now, after this preamble, you have a right to think that I should begin to confess something at once. But first, I will ask you a question."
"What is it?"
"Tell me what effect you think any long and severe suffering ought to have on a man—something, I mean, that would bring him to the brink of despair, and keep him there for months and years."
"What kind of man do you mean?"
"Suppose one given over to pleasure, ambition, or any other engrossing pursuit not too disinterested."
"It would depend on how the suffering was taken."
"Suppose him resolved to make the best of a bad bargain."
"Why, the effect ought to be good, I suppose,—so the preachers say."
"I do not wish to know what the preachers say. I wish your own opinion."
"Are you quite in earnest?"
"Quite."
"Such suffering, rightly taken, would strip life of its disguises, and show it in its naked truth. It would teach the man to know himself and to know others. It would awaken his sympathies, enlarge his mind, and greatly expand his sphere of vision; teach him to hold present pleasure and present pain in small account, and to look beyond them into a future of boundless hopes and fears."
"Now," said Morton, "you have betrayed yourself."
"How have I betrayed myself?" asked his friend, in some discomposure.
"You have shown me the secrets of your own mind. You have given me a glimpse of your own history, since we last met."
"And so, under pretence of confessing to me, you have been plotting to make me confess to you!"
"No, you shall hear my confession. I have it now, such as it is, at my tongue's end."
"I have no faith in you."
"Perhaps you will have still less when you have heard this great secret. You remember me before I went away. I was a very exemplary young gentleman,—quiet, orderly, well behaved,—of a studious turn,—soberly and virtuously given."
"You give yourself an excellent character."
"And what should be the results of the discipline of a dungeon on such a person?"
"Discipline would be a superfluity, considering your perfections."
"So I thought myself. Nevertheless, for four years, or so, I was shut up, with nothing to look at but stone walls, under circumstances most favorable for the culture of patience, resignation, forgiveness, and all the Christian virtues; and yet the devil has never been half so busy with me as since I came out; never whispered half so many villanous suggestions into my ears, nor baited me with such scandalous temptations."
"That is very strange," said Fanny Euston, who was looking at him intently.
"For example," pursued Morton, "a little more than a year ago, in New York, he said to me, 'Renounce all your old plans, and habits, and antiquated scruples—reclaim your natural freedom—fling yourself headlong into the turmoil of the world—chase whatever fate or fortune throws in your way—enjoy the zest of lawless pleasures—launch into mad adventure—embark on schemes of ambition—care nothing for the past or the future—think only of the present—fear neither God nor man, and follow your vagrant star wherever it leads you."
Morton knew that, restrained and governed as it might be, there was quicksilver enough in his companion's veins to enable her to understand what he had said, and prevent her being startled at it. But he was by no means prepared for the close attack she proceeded to make on him.
"Such a state of mind is foreign to your nature. You have prudence and forecast. You used to make plans for the future, and study the final results of every thing you did. There is something upon your mind. It is not imprisonment only that has caused that compression of your lips, and marked those lines on your face. You have met with some deep disaster, some overwhelming disappointment. Nothing else could have wrought such a convulsion in you."
Morton was taken by surprise; and, as he struggled to frame an answer, his features betrayed an emotion which he could not hide. Fanny Euston hastened to relieve his embarrassment, and assuage, as far as she could, the tumult she had called up.
"With whatever fate you may have had to battle, your wounds are in the front,—all honorable scars. Your desperation is past;—it was only for the hour;—and for the other extreme, it is not in you to suffer that."
"What other extreme?"
"Idle dreaming;—melancholy;—weak pining at disappointment."
"No, thank God, it is not in me to lie and whine like a sick child."
"You are the firmer for what you have passed. Manhood, the proudest of all possession to a man, is strengthened and deepened in you."
"What do you call this manhood, which you seem to hold in such high account?"
"That unflinching quality which, strong in generous thought and high purpose, bears onward towards its goal, knowing no fear but the fear of God; wise, prudent, calm, yet daring and hoping all things; not dismayed by reverses, nor elated by success; never bending nor receding; wearying out ill fortune by undespairing constancy; unconquered by pain or sorrow, or deferred hope; fiery in attack, steadfast in resistance, unshaken in the front of death; and when courage is vain, and hope seems folly, when crushing calamity presses it to the earth, and the exhausted body will no longer obey the still undaunted mind, then putting forth its hardest, saddest heroism, the unlaurelled heroism of endurance, patiently biding its time."
"And how if its time never come?"
"Then dying at its post, like the Roman sentinel at Pompeii."
Her words struck a chord in Morton's nature, and roused his early enthusiasm, dormant for years.
"Fanny," he said, "I thank you. You give me back my youth. An hour ago, the world was as dull to me as a November day; but you have brought June back again. You would make a coward valiant, and breathe life into a dead man."
Miss Euston seemed, for a moment, in embarrassment what to reply; indeed, she showed some signs of discomposure, contrasting with her former frankness. They were still in the recess of the window. She was visible to those in the room; while he, standing opposite, was hidden by a curtain. At this moment, a gentleman, with a slight limp in his gait, approaching quickly, accosted Miss Euston, smiling with an air of the most earnest affability. She looked up to reply, but, as she did so, her eyes were arrested by a sudden change in the features of her companion, who was bending on the new comer a look so fierce and threatening, that she scarcely repressed an ejaculation of surprise. Mr. Horace Vinal followed the direction of her gaze, and saw himself face to face with the victim of his villany. He started as if he had found a grizzly bear behind the curtain. The smile vanished from his lips, the color from his cheeks, and he hastily drew back, and mingled with the crowd.
This sudden apparition, breaking in upon the brightening mood of the moment, incensed Morton almost to fury; and his anger, absurdly enough, was a little tinged with a feeling not wholly unlike jealousy. He made an involuntary movement to follow his enemy, but recollecting himself, smoothed his brow and calmed his ruffled spirit as he best might.
"You seem to know that man very well," he said to Miss Euston.
"Yes, I know him."
"He seems to think himself on excellent terms with you."
"He has charge of my mother's property."
"You are good at reading faces. I hope you liked the expression on his, as he slunk away just now."
"It was fear—abject fear. Why are you so angry? Why is he so frightened?"
"His nerves, you may have observed, are something of the weakest. He is my attendant genius, my familiar. A word from me, and he will run my errand like a spaniel."
"How could you gain such power over him?" she asked, in great astonishment.
"Magnetism, Fanny, magnetism. The effects of the mesmeric fluid are wonderful. See, the polking is over; they are forming a quadrille. Shall we take our places in the set?"
During the dance, Morton looked for his enemy, but could not discover him till it was over, and he had led his partner to a seat.
"Look," he said, "there is our friend again; in the next room, just beyond the folding doors, talking with Mrs. —— and Mrs. ——. He seems to have got the better of the shock to his nerves; at least, he stands up manfully against it. Mr. Horace Vinal has a stout heart, and needs nothing but valor, and one other quality, to make a hero. But his face is flushed. I fear he suffers in his health. See, he makes himself very agreeable. Vinal was always famous for his wit. Pardon me a moment; I have a word for my friend's ear."
Fanny Euston looked at him doubtingly.
"Pray, don't be discomposed. There's no gunpowder impending. Vinal is not a fighting man; nor am I. What I have to say is altogether pacific, loving, and scriptural."
And passing into the adjoining room, he approached Vinal, who no sooner saw the movement, than he showed a manifest uneasiness. His forced animation ceased, his manner became constrained, and while Morton stood near, waiting an opportunity to speak to him, he withdrew to another part of the room. Morton followed, and pronounced his name. Vinal, with pretended unconsciousness, mingled with the crowd. Morton again tried to accost him, and again Vinal moved away. Impatient and exasperated, Morton stepped behind him, touched his shoulder, and whispered in his ear,—
"You fool, do you know your danger? Speyer is looking for you. I saw him this afternoon. He looks as if he needed your charity. You had better be generous with him. He is a tiger, and will be upon you before you know it."
Anger and terror, of which the latter vastly predominated, gave a ghastly look to Vinal's face, as he turned it towards Morton. But he drew back without a word, and soon left the room.
"Where is Mr. Vinal?" asked the wondering Fanny Euston, as her companion returned to her side. The momentary interview had been invisible from where she sat.
"Obeyed the magic word, and vanished. Never doubt again the power of magnetism. Now you may see that the claptrap of the charlatans about the mutual influence of congenial spheres is not quite such trash as one might think. Vinal and I, being congenial spheres, put each other, the one into a passion, the other into a fright. But I have a request to you. Whoever knows you, knows, in spite of the libellers, a woman who can keep counsel; and as I am modest in respect to my magnetic gifts, I shall beg it of you, that you will not mention these experiments to any one. Good evening. I have revived to-night an old and valued friendship. If I can help it, it shall not die again."
He took leave of his hostess, wrapped his cloak about him, and walked out into the drizzling night.