CHAPTER VI.
THE NEW “SAVING GRACE.”
A year, in the life of man, is a long time. Alas! what changes may it not bring about to any, the strongest of us, the most secure—those weary, dragging twelve months! Such a period has elapsed in the chronology of our narrative, since the scenes described as occurring at the Graham House.
It is late, on a dark stormy evening, and we will look into the well-stocked half library and half office of a handsome private residence in Beekman Street, New York.
The cushioned appliances of the most fastidious luxury of repose were strewed about the room in the strangest disorder of heaped cushions, fallen chairs, and out-of-place lounges; while books, surgical instruments, vials, dusty, crusty, broken, and corkless, all mingled in the desolate confusion which seemed to have usurped the place.
A shaded lamp stood upon the table in the centre of this chaos, and threw its light upon a large decanter of brandy and a glass beneath. A deep-drawn moaning sigh disturbs the deathlike silence of the room; and a broad, stout figure, which had leaned back within the shadow of a huge cushioned chair beside the table, reached suddenly forward and clutched the brandy-bottle convulsively. He dashed a great gulp into the glass, and then, with trembling hand, attempted to carry it to his lips. After two or three efforts, which proved unavailing from his excessive nervousness, he replaced the glass, muttering, “Curse this nervousness! It will not even let me drink my poison any more!” He shuddered as he turned his head away. “No wonder! how horribly the hell-broth smells!” He fell back into the deep chair again and was silent for some time, when, uttering from the depths of his chest that strange moan, he sprang to his feet.
“I must drink!” he gnashed, as, seizing the decanter again, he filled the tumbler to overflowing, splashing the dark fluid over everything on the table. “I shall die if I do not drink! I shall go crazy! I will not be baffled!”
Without attempting to raise it again to his lips, he bowed them to the brimming glass, and as the beast drinks, so drank he. Oh, fearful degradation! Where now is the strong man? that powerful frame would speak. After leaning the tumbler with his lips and trembling hands in a long, deep draught, he straightened himself with an expression of loathing that distorted his face hideously.
“Paugh! Hell should mix more nectar with its chiefest physic! This stuff is loathsome, and my revolting nerves seem with a separate life to shudder as the new babe does to hear the asp hiss amidst the flowers where it sports! Paugh! infernal! that it should come to me in this short time, even as a second nature, to learn to feed on poisons! It was not so once; nature was sufficient, aye, sufficient, when the skies rained glory out of day, and the stars came down in beamy strength through night! But then! but then! Ah, yes! it had not become necessary then, that I should be s-a-v-e-d by human love!” and his features writhed as he prolonged the word.—“S-a-v-e-d! no! no! no heavenly guise of horrid lust to s-a-v-e me! The chaste and blushing spring came to the early winter of my sterile life that bloomed beneath its radiant warmth, and gladdened to grow green and odor-breathed and soft, and then! oh, horror! horror! I am strong enough to drink again. My nerves are numbed now; they dare not tremble.”
He seized the decanter once more, and then, with unshaking hand, conveyed the brimming glass to his lips, and after a deep draught threw himself upon the chair again, and drawing at the same time a glittering object from his breast, he leaned forward within the circle of the lamp-light to regard it as it lay open upon the table before him. This is the first time we have seen that face clearly—that haggard, pallid face. Ha! can it be? Those sunken, bloated cheeks! Those dimmed, hollow eyes, with leaden, drooping lids! O, can it be? Have we known that face before? God help us! The good Doctor! and only one year!
But see the change! His eye has rested upon that face before him. A miniature, beautifully executed. In it a charmed art has presided at a miracle! an arch seraphic brow all “sunnied o’er” by the golden reflex from its tangled curls, broken in beam and shadow, gracefully glanced a gay defiance in his eyes, from eyes—so lustrous innocent! You dare not say they could be less than all divine, but that the sweet mouth spoke of earth, and every weakness of it, “earthy.”
See how the face of that sad and broken man is changing! those shrunk and heavy features are re-lit with life, as some dead waste with sunshine, suddenly. The bright, the tender past; the mellowed, mournful past, have mounted to the eyes and flushed those massive features once again. He seems as one transfigured for a moment, while he gazes. The glory of old innocence has compassed him about, alas! but for a moment! The tears pour flooding from his eyes, and blot the face whereon he gazes. A sob—that wild and piteous moan again—and the palsied wreck of the strong man falls back once more into his cushioned chair. A horrid, stertorous breathing, most like that of a dying man, fills the gloomy air of that dim room, and with ashy lips and fallen jaw, he sleeps! Ah, that seems a fearful sleep, with the tears, warm tears, still pouring, pouring down the rigid cheek!
The shaded lamp burns on, and fitfully the chaos of that room, here and there, is touched by its faint light. A slight sound, a rustling tread is heard, and in a moment, a woman, dressed in black, with a black veil about her face, and the umbrella which had protected her from the storm in her hand, stood beside the sleeper. She evidently had a pass-key, for she walked forward as one accustomed to use it at all hours and confidently.
“The beast! Drunk, dead drunk again!” she muttered. “I shan’t get the money I wanted to-night, that is plain! Curse his obstinacy! After all my trouble to save him, this is my reward! Worse and worse!”
She sprang forward eagerly as her eye fell upon the jewelled miniature that lay before him on the table, and snatched it up. “Ha! this will save me some trouble!” She turned it eagerly over in her hands, throwing back her veil at the same time, to examine the valuable case with vivid glistening eyes, that did not seem to notice in the least degree the exquisite painting within.
“Ah, yes, this is great! Wonder the fool never let me know of it before! I should have had it in Chatham Street before this! Never mind, ‘never too late,’ I see! It saves me the trouble of exploring his pockets and table-drawers to-night, for what is getting to be a scarce commodity. Bah! what silly school-girl face is this? He is falling back to whine about the past. O, that’s all right. I’ll fill his decanter for him! He has done enough. He has fed me for a year. I’ll let the poor wretch off! Yes, I’ve saved him! I have feasted on him!” And she drew herself erect with a triumphant swelling of the whole frame, which seemed to emit, for the moment, from its outline, a keen quick exhalation most like the heat-lightning of a sultry summer sky.
She fills the decanter rapidly from a demijohn she drags from a closet in the room, and places it by his side. She pushes the water-pitcher far beyond his reach, and then steps forward for a moment into the light.
Have we ever seen that face before? No! no! It might have been—there is some resemblance—but this form and face are too full of arrogant abounding strength to be the same faint bleeding victim of ruthless persecution that we saw at first! No! no! It cannot be she! Ha! as she thrusts that jewelled miniature into her bosom and turns to glide away, I can detect that infernal obliquity of the left eye! O, dainty Etherial!