The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859

"Our old minister, Parson Usher that was, used to say some of the Bible angels fell,—and I am sure, Sir, the human angels have a worse chance. They are about the only ones that run any risk at all."

"True, true enough, Ma'am, in one point of view. Too much care cannot be taken to select the society in which young people are to move. In the right society, such a girl as Laura would win homage on every side, and make herself happy by making everybody else so."

"I believe you are right there, Sir," said Mrs. Birch, quite charmed with such beautiful appreciation of what she felt to be Laura's excellence; "and I don't wonder sometimes that she should be discontented with the society she has here, poor girl!"

"When you see the sun begin to shine in the morning, you may be sure enough it will keep rising all the forenoon," said Chip, with the air of a great moral philosopher, conscious of having made a decided impression. And suddenly recollecting how valuable was his time in town, and that the train would be due in five minutes, he swallowed the last of his coffee, paid his bill, told the landlady how happy he was to have made her acquaintance and that of her interesting family, promised he would never stop in Waltham without calling, and strode away.

The lightning flashed from a good many eyes in the telegraph-office when the morning members of the associated press inquired why they had not been served with the latest news,—why, in fact, the only item of any significance was reserved for the evening papers of the day. Not a press of all the indignant complainants was ready to admit that it had locked up its forms and gone to bed before the wires had completed their task. Very bitter paragraphs testified, the next day, that, in the opinion of many sage and respectable editors, the wires had been tampered with by speculators. The poor little half-frozen telegraph-boy was closely catechized, first by the officers of the telegraph-company, and afterwards by certain shrewd detectives, but no clue could be got to the fine gentleman who so generously relieved him of his responsibility, and no result followed, except his dismissal and the employment of another lad of more ability and probably less innocence. Captain Grant was the man most likely to have come to a discovery in the matter, and most heartily did he curse his luck—his "usual luck"—of giving away a fortune by selling a cargo a day too soon. But being kept at home by uncomfortable toes, no suspicious mortal, such as abound in the lounging-rooms of insurance-offices and other resorts of business-men in town, happened ingeniously to put his suspicions on a scent, and he did not come within a league of the thought that Chip Dartmouth could have had anything to do with the strange and blamable conduct of the wires. As he made no proclamation of his loss, and no other case of sale during the abeyance of the news came to the knowledge of the parties interested, the matter, greatly to Chip's comfort, fell into entire oblivion before a fortnight had passed. The understanding was, that, though great mischief might have been done, none had been,—and that somebody had simply made waste-paper of the little yellow thunderbolt-scrawls.

For the first fortnight, Chip's nervousness, not to say conscience, very much abated the pleasure of the many congratulations he received from his friends, and from hundreds of people whom he had never before known as his friends. He couldn't get through the streets any day without meeting the solidest sort of men, with whom he had never exchanged a word in his life, but whose faces were as familiar as that of the Old-South clock, who took him by the hand quite warmly, and said,—

"Ah, Mr. Dartmouth, permit me to congratulate you on your good-fortune. You have well deserved it. I like to see a young man like you make such a ten-strike, especially when it comes in consequence of careful study of the market."

The truth was, Chip had been playing a pretty hazardous game in the cotton-market, chiefly at the risk of other parties; and the slice he had so feloniously carved out of poor Captain Grant was quite small compared with the gains he had managed to secure by thus venturing a little of his own and a great deal of other people's money. The shrewd minds in the secrets of the business world were not slow to see that he must have realized at least a hundred thousand units of commercial omnipotence by the operations of the first week after the rise. Everybody was glad of an opportunity to speak to such a man. Even Mr. Hopkins, immensely retired as he was, driving into State Street about noon one genial day to receive a bank dividend or two, stepped considerably out of his way, in walking from his low-hung turnout to the door of one of the banks, in order to catch Mr. Dartmouth's notice, and say to him, "Good-morning, Mr. Dartmouth! I hope you are very well, Sir!" Chip recognized the salutation with a superb nod, but without the accompaniment of any verbal rhetoric which was audible above the buzz of the pavement; and the retired millionnaire passed on about his business.

"Ah!" thought Chip, "I am getting to be a merchant of the right sort, I see,—and by the time he is ready to change that low-hung little chariot for the hard, angular ebony with raven plumes, I shall be ready to step into the other plump little vehicle, which is really so nice and cozy."

But we must leave Chip to the easy task of ballooning upward in public estimation, with his well-inflated bank-account. He was, in fact, reformed by his great commercial success to this extent, that his vices had become of the most distinguished and unvulgar grade. He was now courted by the highest artists in iniquity, and had the means of accomplishing results that none but men who are known to be really rich can command. He, therefore, now quitted all vulgar associations, and determined not to outrage any of the virtues, except under varnish, gilding, and polish that would keep everything perfectly respectable. Let him trust to that as long as he can.

Don't talk of the solitude of a night in the primeval forests, however far from the abodes of man;—the squirrels and the partridges may be asleep then and there, but the katydids are awake, and, with the support of contralto and barytone tree-toads, manage to keep up a concert which cannot fail to impress on you a sense of familiar and friendly company. Don't talk of the loneliness of a deserted and ruinous castle;—the crickets have not left it, and, if you don't have a merry time with their shrill jokes, it will be your own fault. But if you would have a sense of being terribly alone, come from long residence in some quiet country-home on the border of a quiet country-village, into the hurry-skurry of a strange city, just after nightfall. Here is an infinite brick-and-stone forest, stern, angular, almost leafless. Here is a vast, indistinguishable wilderness of flitting human shapes, not one of which takes half so much notice of you as a wild bush would. Speak to one; it answers without the slightest emotion, and passes on. Your presence is absolutely no more to any soul of them, provided they have souls, than if you were so much perfectly familiar granite. You feel, that, with such attention as you receive, such curiosity as you excite, you must be there hundreds of years to be either recognized or missed.

Had you been a stranger in Boston, one moist and rather showery summer-evening, not a year after the events we have narrated, you might have been recovered from the sense of loneliness we have described by observing one pretty female figure hurrying along the crowded sidewalk with a very large and replete satchel, and without any of the sang-froid which characterizes city pedestrianism. You might have noticed that this one human being, like yourself, was evidently not at home. Every glare of gas-light revealed a deeply-flushed face, eyes that had been weeping and which were now flashing with a wild earnestness and an altogether preternatural resolution. A gazelle, started by the huntsman's pack, could not have thrown more piercing glances at every avenue of escape than this excited girl did at every cross street, and indeed at everything but the human faces that passed her. All of them she shunned, with a look that seemed equally anxious to avoid the known and the unknown. She should seem to have narrowly escaped some peril, and was carrying with her a secret not to be confided to friend or stranger, certainly not to either without due consideration. Had you watched her, as the crowds of people, returning from the various evening amusements, died away in the streets, you would have seen the deep color of her cheeks die away also to deadly paleness; had you been sufficiently clairvoyant, you might have seen how two charming rows of pearls bit the blanched lips till the runaway blood came back into the sad gashes, how the tears welled up again, and with them came relief and fresh strength just as she was about to faint and drop in the street. Then returned again the throb of indignant resolution, as her mind recurred to the attempted ruin of her paradise by a disguised foe; then succeeded shame and dread lest the friends she had left in her childhood's rural home should know how differently from her fond anticipations had turned out the first week of her sojourn in the great city. She was most thoroughly resolved, that, if possible, they should not know anything of the wreck of her long-cherished hopes till she had found some foothold for new ones. She felt that she was a Yankee girl in the metropolis of New England, with wit, skill, and endurance equal to any employment that ever falls to the lot of Yankee women; but having given up the only chance which had ever opened to her, how could she find another? Were she of the other sex, or only disguised in the outer integuments of it, with the trifling sum in her purse, she would get lodgings at the next hotel, and seek suitable employment without suspicion. In the wide wilderness of a city there was not an acquaintance she did not dread to meet, in her present circumstances, even worse than death itself, or, what is next door to it, a police-station.

The streets had emptied themselves of their rushing throngs, the patter of feet and the murmur of voices had given place to measured individual marches here and there, the dripping of cave-spouts and the flapping of awnings could be heard tattling of showers past and future, and the last organ-grinder had left the ungrateful city to its slumbers, when the poor girl first became conscious that she had been lugging hither and thither her entire outfit of wardrobe, valuables, and keepsakes. Aggravated by fatigue, her indecision as to how she should dispose of herself was gradually sinking into despair, and the official guardians of the night, who had doubtless noticed her as she passed and repassed through their beats, were beginning to make up their official minds, generally and severally, that the case might by-and-by require their benevolent interference, when she was startled by a female voice from behind.

"Arrah, stop there, ye rinaway jade! I know ye by yer big bag, ye big thafe, that ye are!"

Glad at any voice addressed to her, and gladder at this than if it had been more familiar or more friendly, our forlorn maiden turned and said, in the sweetest voice imaginable,—

"Oh, no, my friend, I am not a thief."

"Och, I beg your pardon, honey! I thought sure it was Bridget, that's jist rin away wid a bagful of her misthress's clo'es and a hape o' mine, and it's me that's bin all the way down to Pat Mahoney's in North Street to git him to hunt her up; and the Blessed Mother forgive me, whin I seen you in the dark, stalin' along like, wi' that bag, I thought it was herself it was, sure. Och, ye're a swate lass, I see, now; but what makes ye out this time o' night, dear?"

"Well, I'm too late for the train, you see, and I really don't know what to do or where to go," said the Yankee girl, putting on the air natural to such circumstances, with the readiness of her race.

"Och, I see, that's the mailing o' the bag, thin. Poor thing! ye jist come along wid me. I'll lift the bag for ye, me darlint, an' I'll pit clane sheets on Bridget's bed, and ye're welcome to slape there as long as ye like; for the Blessed Mother knows it's powerful tired ye're lookin', it is. I'm cook for more nor twinty years for the Hopkinses in Bacon Street, and I can make ye jist as welcome in my quarthers as if it was nobody but meself that owned it at all at all."

"Oh, my dear woman, I thank you kindly! That bag was beginning to grow heavy," replied the overjoyed outcast; and presently, with a ready eye to business, she added, "And since Bridget is gone, who knows but I can take her place? I came to the city on purpose to find something to do, and I can do anything that is not dishonest."

"Och! the likes o' ye take her place? Niver a bit of it! Why! I see by the gas-light ye're a leddy as iver was at all at all; and ye could niver come in the shoes of sich a thafe as Bridget Maloney, as is gone, and the Divil catch her!"

"No, no, not in her shoes to steal anything, I hope; but I can do housework, sweep, make beds, sew, and make myself useful,—as I will show, if I can have a trial."

"An' ye may well say that's a hape more nor she iver could. But if it's a thrial ye want, it's me that'll give't ye as soon as ye plase. I'll answer for ye's to Misthress Millicent,—and that's what I niver did for Bridget, and it's right glad I am of that. Now niver fear, me darlint, it's a powerful good place, it is too, to thim as kapes the right side o' Misthress Millicent; for she's the only daughter, and the mother is dead and gone, poor soul!"

They were now approaching the opulent mansion over the cuisine of which our special police-woman had so long had the honor of presiding. Almost delighted enough with her capture to forget, if not forgive, her fugitive fellow-servant Bridget, the florid and fat Aunt Peggy Muldoony hurried along as if the bag were a feather, her words flowing like a spring flood, and introduced her charge at a postern-door into her own house, as she called it. This was, in fact, a very comfortable and somewhat spacious dwelling, which stood almost distinct in the rear of the mansion in which the Hopkins family proper resided, so that there should be ample accommodations for servants, and the steam of cooking could not annoy the grand parlors. Here we might leave the beautiful waif, so strangely picked up in the dark street, to the working of her own genius. She had fallen into a place which had control of all the chamber-work of a modern palace, with ample assistance. Aunt Peggy, her guardian angel, at once instructed her in the routine of the duties, and she very soon had occasion to wonder how the care of so many beautiful flowers, vases, statues, pictures, and objects of splendor and taste, not to speak of beds that the Queen of Sheba might have envied, could have been committed to a domestic who could be tempted to run away with a few hundred dollars' worth of silks and laces. The legal owner himself could hardly enjoy his well-appointed paradise better than she did, in keeping every leaf up to its highest beauty. It must require a pretty strong dose of tyranny to drive her away, she thought.

But tyranny, if it were there, did not show itself. After a number of serious, but vain attempts, on the part of Miss Millicent, to gratify her curiosity by unravelling the mystery of her new servant, whose industry, skill, and taste produced visible and very satisfactory effects in every part of the mansion, she settled down to the conclusion, that, finally, a treasure had fallen to her lot which it was best for her to keep as carefully as possible and make the most of. She could now smile and assume airs of great condescension when her worthy female friends complained of careless, incompetent, and unfaithful domestics, and have the pleasure of being teased in vain to know what she did to be so well served.

The satisfaction of Miss Millicent at having found and attached to her service a young woman of such superlative domestic genius and taste, who seemed to be so thoroughly contented with her situation, was especially enhanced by the fact, that her own marriage was approaching, an occasion which any bride of good sense would wish to have free from the annoyance of slack and untrustworthy Bridgets.

A few months after the period of which we have been speaking, the long-expected event of the last paragraph was evidently on the eve of accomplishment. There was sitting in the distinguished parlor of Mr. Hopkins, himself, occupying an easy-chair of the most elaborate design and costly materials. It had all manner of extensibilities,—conveniences for reclining the trunk or any given limb at any possible angle,—conveniences for sleeping, for writing, for reading, for taking snuff,—and was, withal, a marvel of upholstery-workmanship and substantial strength. Another still more exquisite combination of rosewood, velvet, spiral springs, and cunning floral carving, presenting a striking resemblance to that great ornament of the English alphabet, the letter S, held Miss Millicent Hopkins, in one curve, face to face with Mr. Chipworth Dartmouth, already known to the reader, in the other. Near by the half-recumbent millionnaire, at a little gem of a lady's writing-desk, sat Mr. Frank Sterling, the junior partner of the distinguished law-firm of Trevor and Sterling, engaged in reading to all the parties aforesaid a very ingenious and interesting document, which he had drawn up, according to the general dictation of Mr. Hopkins aforesaid. It was, in fact, a marriage-settlement, of which the three beautifully engrossed copies were to be signed and sealed by all the parties in interest, and each was to possess a copy. Frank Sterling read over the paragraphs which settled enormous masses of funds around the sacred altar where Hymen was so soon to apply his torch, with great professional coolness, as well as commendable rapidity; but when he came to the conclusion, and, looking at both father and daughter, said, that all that remained, if the draught now met their approbation, was, to have witnesses called in and add the signatures, he betrayed a little personal feeling, which it behooves the reader to understand.

Frank Sterling, though one of the best fellows in the world, with a joyous face, a bright eye, a hearty laugh, and the keenest possible relish for everything beautiful and good, was a bachelor, because a mate quite to his judgment and taste had never fallen in his way. With Mr. Hopkins, he had been, for a year or two, a favorite lawyer. Professional business had often brought him to the house, and at Miss Millicent's parties he had often been a specially licensed guest. There had been a time, he felt quite sure, when, if he had pushed a suit, he could have put his name where that of Dartmouth stood in the marriage-settlement, and, as he glanced at Miss Millicent, as she sat in the mellow light of the purplish plate-glass of that superb parlor, she seemed so beautiful and queenly that he almost wished he had done it. Was it quite fit that such a woman should be thrown away upon one of the mere beasts of the stock-market? The air with which Chip took his victory was so exactly like that matter-of-course chuckle with which he would have tossed over the proceeds of a shrewd bargain into his bank-account, that the young lawyer's soul was shocked at it, and he almost wished he had prevented such a shame. However, his discretion came to the rescue, and told him he had done right in not linking his fortunes to a woman who, however beautiful, was too passive in her character to make any man positively happy. Had it been his ambition to spend his life in burning incense to an exquisitely chiselled goddess, here was a chance, to be sure, where he could have done it on a salary that would have satisfied a pontifex maximus; but, with a fair share of the regard for money which characterizes his profession, Mr. Sterling never could make up his mind to become a suitor for the hand of Miss Millicent, nor get rid of the notion that he was to bless and be blessed by some woman of positive character and a taste for working out her own salvation in her own way,—some woman who, not being made by her wealth, could not be unmade by the loss of it. It was, therefore, only a momentary sense of choking he experienced, as he laid the manuscripts on the leaf of Mr. Hopkins's chair, and said,—

"Shall I ring the bell, Sir?"

"If you please, Mr. Sterling. Now, Millicent, dear, whose name shall have the honor of standing as witness on this document? There is Aunt Peggy,—is good at using pothooks, but not so good at making them. Her mark won't exactly do."

"Why, father! I shall, of course, have my little favorite, Lucy Green; her signature will be perfectly beautiful. And by the way, Mr. Dartmouth, here is a thing I haven't thought of before. With this Lucy of mine for an attendant, I am worth about twice as much as I should have been without her, and yet no mention has been made of this in the bargain."

"Ha! ha!" said Chip. "Thought of in good time. Let Mr. Sterling add the item at once. I am content."

"First, however, you shall see the good girl herself, Mr. Dartmouth, and then we can have a postscript—or should I say a codicil?—on her account. John, please say to Lucy, I wish her to come to me. After all the stocks and bonds in the world, Mr. Dartmouth, our lives are what our servants please to make them."

"True, indeed, my love; but the comfort is, if we are well stocked with bonds of the right sort, servants that don't suit can be changed for those that do."

"And the more changes, the worse, commonly;—an exception is so rare, I dread nothing like change. The chance of improving a bad one is even better, I think."

"I don't believe there is anything good in the flunkey line that money won't buy. I have always found I could have anything I wanted, if I saw fit to pay its price. Money, no matter what simpletons preach, money, my dear, is"–

"Why, Lucy, what is the matter?" exclaimed Miss Millicent, with some surprise and anxiety, as she saw the girl, who had just entered, instead of advancing, awkwardly shrink on one side into a chair behind the door, with a shudder, as if she had trod on a reptile. The next moment she was at her side, earnestly whispering something in her ear, evidently an explanation of the circumstances of the case, to which Lucy had hitherto been an entire stranger.

"Pray, excuse me, Ma'am," was the girl's scarce audible response to some request.

"It is only to write your name, Lucy."

"Not to such a paper, for the world!"

"Not to oblige me?"

"I would do anything, Ma'am, to oblige you, but that would not. Never! never!" said the excited girl, catching another glimpse of Chip, who was now looking obliquely at the whispering couple, and drumming with his fingers on the rosewood of that part of the letter S from which his intended had just risen, as if he were hurriedly beating a reveille to rally his faltering impudence. "No, Ma'am;—it is too bad, it is too bad, it is too"–Here her utterance became choked, her cheeks pallid as death, and her form wilted and fell like a flower before the mower's scythe. Millicent prevented the fall, while Sterling rang for water, and Chip, peering about with more agitation than any one else, finally remarked,—

"The girl must be sick;—better take her out."

The young lawyer, with the aid of a servant, did bear her to another apartment, where, after the usual time and restoratives, she recovered her consciousness, and the maiden blood again revealed tints that the queen of flowers might envy. Chip and the millionnaire remained in the parlor, while the others were taking care of the proposed witness, and great was the anxiety of the former that their absence should not be prolonged. Suddenly he recollected a forgotten engagement of great importance, pulled out his watch, fidgeted, suggested that the lawyer and Miss Millicent should be recalled, that the papers might be signed before he went. Mr. Hopkins was of that opinion, and sent a servant to call them. Miss Millicent came, but could not think of completing the contract without the signature of her favorite domestic. Argument enough was ready, but she was fortified by a sentiment that was more than a match for it. Mr. Hopkins was all ready, and would have the matter closed as soon as the lawyer arrived, affirming that his daughter would have too much sense, at last, to stand out on such a trifle.

In the mean time, the supposed Miss Lucy having had time to collect her scattered senses, there occurred the following dialogue between her and Frank Sterling, whose curiosity, not to speak of any other interest, had been thoroughly roused by the strange patient for whom he had just been acting in a medical, rather than legal capacity.

Frank. "We are all right, now, I think, Miss Lucy,—and they are waiting for us in the parlor, you know."

Lucy. "That paper must not be signed, Sir. If Miss Millicent knew what I do about that man, he would be the last man in the world she would think of for a husband."

Frank. "But he is one of the merchant princes,—respectable, of course. What harm can you know of him?"

Lucy. "If he is not so great a villain as he might be, let him thank my escape from Mrs. Farmthroy's the night I came here. If he is to be at home here, I shall not be; but before I leave, I wish to restore him what belongs to him. Excuse me a moment, Sir, and I will fetch it."

"A regular previous love-affair," thought Frank, and expected her to return, bringing a small lot of erotic jewelry to be returned to Chipworth, as the false-hearted donor thereof. Great was his surprise, when, instead of that, she brought a small parcel or wad of yellowish paper, variegated with certain scrawls of rapid writing, of the manifold sort.