Trumps

CHAPTER LXI. — GONE TO PROTEST.

There was an unnatural silence and order in the store of Boniface Newt, Son, & Co. The long linen covers were left upon the goods. The cases were closed. The boys sat listlessly and wonderingly about. The porter lay upon a bale reading a newspaper. There was a sombre regularity and repose, like that of a house in which a corpse lies, upon the morning of the funeral.

Boniface Newt sat in his office haggard and gray. His face, like his daughter Fanny’s, had grown sharp, and almost fierce. The blinds were closed, and the room was darkened. His port-folio lay before him upon the desk, open. The paper was smooth and white, and the newly-mended pens lay carefully by the inkstand. But the merchant did not write. He had not written that day. His white, bony hand rested upon the port-folio, and the long fingers drummed upon it at intervals, while his eyes half-vacantly wandered out into the store and saw the long shrouds drawn over the goods. Occasionally a slight sigh of weariness escaped him. But he did not seem to care to distract his mind from its gloomy intentness; for the morning paper lay beside him unopened, although it was afternoon.

In the outer office the book-keeper was still at work. He looked from book to book, holding the leaves and letting them fall carefully—comparing, computing, writing in the huge volumes, and filing various papers away. Sometimes, while he yet held the leaves in his hands and the pen in his mouth, with the appearance of the utmost abstraction in his task, his eyes wandered in to the inner office, and dimly saw his employer sitting silent and listless at his desk. For many years he had been Boniface Newt’s clerk; for many years he had been a still, faithful, hard-worked servant. He had two holidays, besides the Sundays—New Year’s Day and the Fourth of July. The rest of the year he was in the office by nine in the morning, and did not leave before six at night. During the time he had been quietly writing in those great red books he had married a wife and seen the roses fade in her cheeks—he had had children grow-up around him—fill his evening home and his Sunday hours with light—marry, one after another, until his home had become as it was before a child was born to him, and then gradually grow bright and musical again with the eyes and voices of another generation. Glad to earn his little salary, which was only enough for decency of living, free from envy and ambition, he was bound by a kind of feudal tenure to his employer.

As he looked at the merchant and observed his hopeless listlessness, he thought of his age, his family, and of the frightful secrets hidden in the huge books that were every night locked carefully into the iron safe, as if they were written all over with beautiful romances instead of terrible truths—and the eyes of the patient plodder were so blurred that he could not see, and turning his head that no one might observe him, he winked until he could see again.

A young man entered the store hastily. The porter dropped the paper and sprang up; the boys came expectantly forward. Even the book-keeper stopped to watch the new-comer as he came rapidly toward the office. Only the head of the house sat unconcernedly at his desk—his long, pale, bony fingers drumming on the port-folio—his hard eyes looking out at the messenger.

“This way,” said the book-keeper, suddenly, as he saw that he was going toward Mr. Newt’s room.

“I want Mr. Newt.”

“Which one?”

“The young one, Mr. Abel Newt.”

“He is not here.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

Before the book-keeper was aware the young man had opened the door that communicated with Mr. Newt’s room. The haggard face under the gray hair turned slowly toward the messenger. There was something in the sitting figure that made the youth lift his hand and remove his cap, and say, in a low, respectful voice,

“Can you tell me, Sir, where to find Mr. Abel Newt?”

The long, pale, bony fingers still listlessly drummed. The hard eyes rested upon the questioner for a few moments; then, without any evidence of interest, the old man answered simply, “No,” and looked away as if he had forgotten the stranger’s presence.

“Here’s a note for him from General Belch.”

The gray head beckoned mechanically toward the other room, as if all business were to be transacted there; and the young man bowing again, with a vague sense of awe, went in to the outer office and handed the note to the book-keeper.

It was very short and simple, as Abel found when he read it:

“MY DEAR SIR,—I have just heard of your misfortunes. Don’t be dismayed. In the shindy of life every body must have his head broken two or three times, and in our country ‘tis a man’s duty to fall on his feet. Such men as Abel Newt are not made to fail. I want to see you immediately.

“Yours very truly,

“ARCULARIUS BELCH.”

CHAPTER LXII. — THE CRASH, UP TOWN.

The moment Mrs. Dagon heard the dismal news of Boniface Newt’s failure she came running round to see his wife. The house was as solemnly still as the store and office down town. Mrs. Dagon looked in at the parlor, which was darkened by closed blinds and shades drawn over the windows, and in which all the furniture was set as for a funeral, except that the chilly chintz covers were not removed.

She found Mrs. Nancy Newt in her chamber with May.

“Well, well! What does this mean? It’s all nothing. Don’t you be alarmed. What’s failing? It doesn’t mean any thing; and I really hope, now that he has actually failed and done with it, Boniface will be a little more cheerful and liberal. Those parlor curtains are positively too bad! Boniface ought to have plenty of time to himself; and I hope he will give more of those little dinners, and cheer himself up! How is he?”

Mrs. Newt was dissolved in tears. She shook her head weakly, and rubbed her hands.

“Oh! Aunt Dagon, it’s dreadful to see him. He don’t seem himself. He does nothing but sit at the table and drum with his fingers; and in the night he lies awake, thinking. And, oh dear!” she said, giving way to a sudden burst of grief, “he doesn’t scold at any thing.”

Mrs. Dagon listened and reflected.

“My dear,” she asked, “has he settled any thing upon you?”

“Nothing,” replied Mrs. Newt.

“Aunt Dagon,” said May, who sat by, looking at the old lady, “we are now poor people. We shall sell this house, and go and live in a small way out of sight.”

“Fiddle, diddle! my dear,” returned Mrs. Dagon, warmly; “you’ll do no such thing. Poor people, indeed! Why, May, you know nothing about these things. Failing, failing; why, my dear, that’s nothing. A New York merchant expects to fail, just as an English lord expects to have the gout. It isn’t exactly a pleasant thing, but it’s extremely respectable. Every body fails. It’s understood.”

“What’s understood?” asked May.

“Why, that business is a kind of game, and that every body runs for luck. Oh, I know all about it, my dear! It’s all a string of cards—as Colonel Burr used to say; and I think if any body knew the world he did—it’s all a string of blocks. B trusts A, C trusts B, D trusts C, and so on. A tumbles over, and down go B, and C, and D. That’s the whole of it, my dear. Colonel Burr used to say that his rule was to keep himself just out of reach of any other block. If they knock me over, my dear Miss Bunley, he once said to me—ah! May, what a voice he said it in, what an eye!—if they knock me over, I shall be so busy picking myself up that I shall be forced to be selfish, and can’t help them, so I had better keep away, and then I can be of some service. That was Colonel Burr’s principle. He declared it was the only way in which you could be sure of helping others. People talk about Colonel Burr. My dear, Colonel Burr was a man who minded his own business.”

May Newt held her tongue. She felt instinctively that a woman of sixty-five, who had been trained by Colonel Burr, was not very likely to accept the opinions of a girl of her years. Mrs. Newt was feebly rocking herself during the conversation between her daughter and aunt; and when they had finished said, despairingly,

“Dear me! what will people say? Oh! I can’t go and live poor. I’m not used to it. I don’t know how.”

“Live poor!” sniffed Mrs. Dagon; “of course you won’t live poor. I’ve heard Boniface say often enough that it was too bad, but it was a world of good-for-nothing people; and you don’t think he’s going to let good-for-nothing people drive him from a becoming style of living? Fiddle! I’d like to see him undertake to live poor.”

“Do you think people will come to see us?” gasped Mrs. Newt.

“Come? Of course they will. They’ll all rush, the first thing, to see how you take it. Why, such a thing as this is a godsend to ‘em. They’ll have something to talk about for a week. And they’ll all try to discover if you mean to sell out at auction. Oh, they will be so sorry!” said the old lady, imitating imaginary callers; “‘and, my dear Mrs. Newt, what are you going to do? And to think of your being obliged to leave this lovely house!’ Come?—did you ever know the vultures not to come to a carcass?”

Mrs. Nancy Newt looked appalled; and so energetic was Mrs. Dagon in her allusion to vultures and carcass, that her niece unconsciously put to her nose the smelling-bottle she held in her hand.

“Oh, it’s dreadful!” she sighed, rocking and smelling, and with the tears oozing from her eyes.

“Fiddle! I won’t hear of it. ‘Tain’t dreadful. It’s nothing at all. You must go out with me and make calls this very morning. It’s none of your business. If your husband chooses to fail, let him fail. He can’t expect you to take to making shirts, and to give up society. I shall call at twelve in the carriage; and, mind, don’t you look red and mopy. Remember. So, good-morning! And, May, I want to speak to you.”

They left Mrs. Newt rocking and weeping, with the smelling-bottle at her nose, and descended to the solemn parlor.

“What brought this about?” asked Mrs. Dagon, as she closed the door. “Your mother is in such a state that it does no good to talk to her. Where’s Abel?”

“Aunt Dagon, I have my own opinion, but I know nothing. I suppose Abel is down town.”

“What’s your opinion?”

May paused for a moment, and then said:

“From what I have heard drop from father during the last few years since Abel has been in the business, I don’t believe that Abel has helped him—”

“Exactly,” interrupted Mrs. Dagon, as if soliloquizing; “and why on earth didn’t the fellow marry Hope Wayne, or that Southern girl, Grace Plumer?”

“Abel marry Hope Wayne?” asked May, with an air and tone of such utter amazement and incredulity that Aunt Dagon immediately recovered from her abstraction, and half smiled.

“Why, why not?” said she, with equal simplicity.

May Newt knew Hope Wayne personally, and she had also heard of her from Gabriel Bennet. Indeed, Gabriel had no secrets from May. The whole school story of his love had been told to her, and she shared the young man’s feeling for the woman who, as a girl, had so utterly enthralled his imagination. But Gabriel’s story of school life also included her brother Abel, and what she heard of the boy agreed with what she knew and felt of the man.

“I presume,” said May Newt, loftily, “that Hope Wayne would be as likely to marry Aaron Burr as Abel Newt.”

Mrs. Dagon looked at her kindly, and with amused admiration.

“Well, May, at any rate I congratulate Gabriel Bennet.”

May’s lofty look drooped.

“And if”—continued Mrs. Dagon—“if it was so wonderfully impossible that Abel should marry Hope Wayne, why might he not have married Grace Plumer, or some other rich girl? I’m sure I don’t care who. It was evidently the only thing for him, whatever it may be for other people. When you are of my age, May, you will rate things differently. Well-bred men and women in society ought to be able to marry any body. Society isn’t heaven, and it’s silly to behave as if it were. Your romance is very pretty, dear; we all have it when we are young, as we have the measles and the whooping-cough. But we get robust constitutions, my dear,” said the old lady, smiling kindly, “when we have been through all that business. When you and Gabriel have half a dozen children, and your girls grow up to be married, you’ll understand all about it. I suppose you know about Mellish Whitloe and Laura Magot, don’t you, dear?”

May shook her head negatively.

“Well, they are people who were wise early. Just after they were married he said to her, ‘Laura, I see that you are fond of this new dance which is coming in; you like to waltz.’ ‘Yes, I do,’ said she. ‘Well, I don’t like it, and I don’t want you to waltz.’ She pouted and cried, and called him a tyrant. He hummed Yankee Doodle. ‘I will waltz,’ said she at length. ‘Very well, my dear,’ he answered. ‘I’ll make a bargain with you. If you waltz, I’ll get drunk.’ You see it works perfectly. They respect each other, and each does as the other wishes. I hope you’ll be as wise with Gabriel, my dear.”

“Aunt, I hope I shall never be as old as you are,” said May, quietly. “I’d rather die.”

Mrs. Dagon laughed her laugh. “That’s right, dear, stand by your colors. You’re all safe. Gabriel is Lawrence’s partner. You can afford to be romantic, dear.”

As she spoke the door opened, and Abel entered. His dress was disordered, his face was flushed, and his manner excited. He ran up to May and kissed her. She recoiled from the unaccustomed caress, and both she and Mrs. Dagon perceived in his appearance and manner, as well as in the odor which presently filled the room, that Abel was intoxicated.

“May, darling,” he began in a maudlin tone, “how’s our dear mother?”

“She’s pretty well,” replied May, “but you had better not go up and see her.”

“No, darling, I won’t go if you say not.”

His eyes then fell uncertainly upon Mrs. Dagon, and he added, thickly,

“That’s only Aunt Dagon. How do, Aunt Dagon?”

He smiled at her and at May, and continued,

“I don’t mind Aunt Dagon. Do you mind her, May?”

“What do you want, Abel?” asked May, with the old expression sliding into her eyes that used to be there when she sat alone—a fairy princess in her tower, and thought of many things.

Abel had seated himself upon the sofa, with his hat still on his head. There was perhaps something in May’s tone that alarmed him, for he began to shed tears.

“Oh! May, don’t you love your poor Abel?”

She looked at him without speaking. At length she said, “Where have you been?”

“I’ve been to General Belch’s,” he sobbed, in reply; “and I don’t mind Aunt Dagon, if you don’t.”

“What do you mean by that, you silly fool?” asked Mrs. Dagon, sharply.

Abel stopped and looked half angry, for a moment, but immediately fell into the old strain.

“I mean I’d just as lieve say it before her.”

“Then say it,” said May.

“Well, May, darling, couldn’t you now just coax Gabriel—good fellow, Gabriel—used to know him and love him at school—couldn’t you coax him to get Uncle Lawrence to do something?”

May shook her head. Abel began to snivel.

“I don’t mean for the house. D——n it, that’s gone to smash. I mean for myself. May, for your poor brother Abel. You might just try.”

He lay back and looked at her ruefully.

“Aunt Dagon,” she said, quietly, “we had better go out of the room. Abel, don’t you come up stairs while you are in this state. I know all that Uncle Lawrence has done for father and you, and he will do nothing more. Do you expect him to pay your gambling debts?” she asked, indignantly.

Abel raised himself fiercely, while the bad blackness filled his eyes.

“D——d old hunks!” he shouted.

But nobody heard. Mrs. Dagon and May Newt had closed the door, and Abel was left alone.

“It’s no use,” he said, moodily and aloud, but still thickly. “I can’t help it. I shall have to do just as Belch wishes. But he must help me. If he expects me to serve him, he must serve me. He says he can—buy off—Bodley—and then—why, then—devil take it!” he said, vacantly, with heavy eyes, “then—then—oh yes!” He smiled a maudlin smile. “Oh yes! I shall be a great—a great—great—man—I’ll be—rep—rep—sentive—ofs—ofs—dear pe—pe.”

His head fell like a lump upon the cushion of the sofa, and he breathed heavily, until the solemn, dark, formal parlor smelled like a bar-room.

CHAPTER LXIII. — ENDYMION.

Lawrence Newt had told Aunt Martha that he preferred to hear from a young woman’s own lips that she loved him. Was he suspicious of the truth of Aunt Martha’s assertion?

When the Burt will was read, and Fanny Dinks had hissed her envy and chagrin, she had done more than she would willingly have done: she had said that all the world knew he was in love with Hope Wayne. If all the world knew it, then surely Amy Waring did; “and if she did, was it so strange,” he thought, “that she should have said what she did to me?”

He thought often of these things. But one of the days when he sat in his office, and the junior partner was engaged in writing the letters which formerly Lawrence wrote, the question slid into his mind as brightly, but as softly and benignantly, as daylight into the sky.

“Does it follow that she does not love me? If she did love me, but thought that I loved Hope Wayne, would she not hide it from me in every way—not only to save her own pride, but in order not to give me pain?”

So secret and reticent was he, that as he thought this he was nervously anxious lest the junior partner should happen to look up and read it all in his eyes.

Lawrence Newt rose and stood at the window, with his back to Gabriel, for his thoughts grew many and strange.

As he came down that morning he had stopped at Hope Wayne’s, and they had talked for a long time. Gabriel had told his partner of his visit to Mrs. Fanny Dinks, and Lawrence had mentioned it to Hope Wayne. The young woman listened intently.

“You don’t think I ought to increase the allowance?” she asked.

“Why should you?” he replied. “Alfred’s father still allows him the six hundred, and Alfred has promised solemnly that he will never mention to his wife the thousand you allow him. I don’t think he will, because he is afraid she would stop it in some way. As it is, she knows nothing more than that six hundred dollars seems to go a very great way. Your income is large; but I think a thousand dollars for the support of two utterly useless people is quite as much as you are called upon to pay, although one of them is your cousin, and the other my niece.”

They went on to talk of many things. In all she showed the same calm candor and tenderness. In all he showed the same humorous quaintness and good sense. Lawrence Newt observed that these interviews were becoming longer and longer, although the affairs to arrange really became fewer. He could not discover that there was any particular reason for it; and yet he became uncomfortable in the degree that he was conscious of it.

When the Round Table met, it was evident from the conversation between Hope Wayne and Lawrence Newt that he was very often at her house; and sometimes, whenever they all appeared to be conscious that each one was thinking of that fact, the cloud of constraint settled more heavily, but just as impalpably as before, over the little circle. It was not removed by the conviction which Amy Waring and Arthur Merlin entertained, that at all such times Hope Wayne was trying not to show that she was peculiarly excited by this consciousness.

And she was excited by it. She knew that the interviews were longer and longer, and that there was less reason than ever for any interviews whatsoever. But when Lawrence Newt was talking to her—when he was looking at her—when he was moving about the room—she was happier than she had ever been—happier than she had supposed she could ever be. When he went, that day was done. Nor did another dawn until he came again.

Perhaps Hope Wayne understood the meaning of that mysterious constraint which now so often enveloped the Round Table.

As for Arthur Merlin, the poor fellow did what all poor fellows do. So long as it was uncertain whether she loved him or not, he was willing to say nothing. But when he was perfectly sure that there was no hope for him, he resolved to speak.

In vain his Aunt Winnifred had tried to cheer him. Ever since the morning when he had told her in his studio the lovely legend of Latmos he could not persuade himself that he had not unwittingly told his own story. Aunt Winnifred showered the choicest tracts about his room. She said with a sigh that she was sure he had experienced no change of heart; and Arthur replied, with a melancholy smile, “Not the slightest.”

The kind old lady was sorely puzzled. It did not occur to her that her Arthur could be the victim of an unfortunate attachment, like the love-lorn heroes of whom she had read in the evil days when she read novels. It did not occur to her, because she could as easily have supposed a rose-tree to resist June as any woman her splendid Arthur.

If some gossip to whom she sighed and shook her head, and wondered what could possibly ail Arthur—who still ate his dinner heartily, and had as many orders for portraits as he cared to fulfill—suggested that there was a woman in the case, good Aunt Winnifred smiled bland incredulity.

“Dear Mrs. Toxer, I should like to see that woman!”

Then she plied her knitting-needles nimbly, sighed, scratched her head with a needle, counted her stitches, and said,

“Sometimes I can’t but hope that it is concern of mind, without his knowing it.”

Mrs. Toxer also knitted, and scratched, and counted.

“No, ma’am; much more likely concern of heart with a full consciousness of it. One, two, three—bless my soul! I’m always dropping a stitch.”

Aunt Winnifred, who never dropped stitches, smiled pleasantly, and answered,

“Yes, indeed, and this time you have dropped a very great one.”

Meanwhile Arthur’s great picture advanced rapidly. Diana, who had looked only like a portrait of Hope Wayne looking out of a cloud, was now more fully completed. She was still bending from the clouds indeed, but there was more and more human softness in the face every time he touched it. And lo! he had found at last Endymion. He lay upon a grassy knoll. Long whispering tufts sighed around his head, which rested upon the very summit of the mountain. There were no trees, no rocks. There was nothing but the sleeping figure with the shepherd’s crook by his side upon the mountain top, all lying bare to the sky and to the eyes that looked from the cloud, and from which all the moonlight of the picture fell.

When Lawrence Newt came into the studio one morning, Arthur, who worked in secret upon his picture and never showed it, asked him if he would like to look at it. The merchant said yes, and seated himself comfortably in a large chair, while the artist brought the canvas from an inner room and placed it before him. As he did so, Arthur stepped a little aside, and watched him closely.

Lawrence Newt gazed for a long time and silently at the picture. As he did so, his face rapidly donned its armor of inscrutability, and Arthur’s eyes attacked it in vain. Diana was clearly Hope Wayne. That he had seen from the beginning. But Endymion was as clearly Lawrence Newt! He looked steadily without turning his eyes, and after many minutes he said, quietly,

“It is beautiful. It is triumphant. Endymion is a trifle too old, perhaps. But Diana’s face is so noble, and her glance so tenderly earnest, that it would surely rouse him if he were not dead.”

“Dead!” returned Arthur; “why you know he is only sleeping.”

“No, no,” said Lawrence, gently, “dead; utterly dead—to her. If he were not, it would be simply impossible not to awake and love her. Who’s that old gentleman on the wall over there?”

Lawrence Newt asked the same question of all the portraits so persistently that Arthur could not return to his Diana. When he had satisfied his curiosity—a curiosity which he had never shown before—the merchant rose and said good-by.

“Stop, stop!”

Lawrence Newt turned, with his hand upon the door.

“You like my picture—”

“Immensely. But if she looks forever she’ll never waken him. Poor Endymion! he’s dead to all that heavenly splendor.”

He was about closing the door.

“Hallo!” cried Arthur.

Lawrence Newt put his head into the room.

“It’s fortunate that he’s dead!” said the painter.

“Why so?”

“Because goddesses never marry.”

Lawrence Newt’s head disappeared.

CHAPTER LXIV. — DIANA.

“Good-morning, Miss Hope.”

“Good-morning, Mr. Merlin.”

He bowed and seated himself, and the conversation seemed to have terminated. Hope Wayne was embroidering. The moment she perceived that there was silence she found it very hard to break it.

“Are you busy now?” said she.

“Very busy.”

“As long as men and women are vain, so long your profession will flourish, I suppose,” she replied, lifting her eyes and smiling.

“I like it because it tells the truth,” replied Arthur, crushing his hat.

“It omitted Alexander’s wry neck,” said Hope.

“It put in Cromwell’s pimple,” answered Arthur.

They both smiled.

“However, that is not the kind of truth I mean—I mean poetic truth. Michael Angelo’s Last Judgment shows the whole Catholic Church.”

Hope Wayne felt relieved, and looked interested. She did not feel so much afraid of the silence, now that Arthur seemed entering upon a disquisition. But he stopped and said,

“I’ve painted a picture.”

“Full of poetic truth, I suppose,” rejoined Hope, still smiling.

“I’ve come to ask you to go and see that for yourself.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

She laid aside her embroidery, and in a little while they had reached his studio. As Hope Wayne entered she was impressed by the spaciousness of the room, the chastened light, and the coruscations of rich color hanging upon the walls.

“It’s like the garden of the Hesperides,” she said, gayly—“such mellow shadows, and such gorgeous colors, like those of celestial fruits. I don’t wonder you paint poetic truth.”

Arthur Merlin smiled.

“Now you shall judge,” said he.

Hope Wayne seated herself in the chair where Lawrence Newt had been sitting not two hours before, and settled herself to enjoy the spectacle she anticipated; for she had a secret faith in Arthur’s genius, and she meant to purchase this great work of poetic truth at her own valuation. Arthur placed the picture upon the easel and drew the curtain from it, stepping aside as before to watch her face.

The airy smile upon Hope Wayne’s face faded instantly. The blood rushed to her hair. But she did not turn her eyes, nor say a word. The moment she felt she could trust her voice, she asked, gravely, without looking at Arthur,

“What is it?”

“It is Diana and Endymion,” replied the painter.

She looked at it for a long time, half-closing her eyes, which clung to the face of Endymion.

“I have not made Diana tender enough,” thought Arthur, mournfully, as he watched her.

“How soundly he sleeps!” said Hope Wayne, at length, as if she had been really trying to wake him.

“You think he merely sleeps?” asked Arthur.

“Certainly; why not?”

“Oh! I thought so too. But Lawrence Newt, who sat two hours ago just where you are sitting, said, as he looked at the picture, that Endymion was dead.”

Hope Wayne put her finger to her lip, and looked inquiringly at her companion.

“Dead! Did he say dead?” she asked.

“Dead,” repeated Arthur Merlin.

“I thought Endymion only slept,” continued Hope Wayne; “but Mr. Newt is a judge of pictures—he knows.”

“He certainly spoke as if he knew,” persisted the painter, recklessly, as he saw and felt the usual calmness return to his companion. “He said that if Endymion were not dead he couldn’t resist such splendor of beauty.”

As Arthur Merlin spoke he looked directly into Hope Wayne’s face, as if he were speaking of her.

“Mr. Newt’s judgment seems to be better than his memory,” said she, pleasantly.

“How?”

“He forgets that Endymion did awake. He has not allowed time enough for the effect of Diana’s eyes. Now I am sure,” she said, shaking her finger at the picture, “I am sure that that silly shepherd will not sleep there forever. Never fear, he will wake up. Diana never looks or loves for nothing.”

“It will do no good if he does,” insisted Arthur, ruefully, as if he were sure that Hope Wayne understood that he was speaking in parables.

“Why?” she asked, as she rose, still looking at the picture.

“Because goddesses never marry.”

He looked into her eyes with so much meaning, and the “do they?” which he did not utter, was so perfectly expressed by his tone, that Hope Wayne, as she moved slowly toward the door, looking at the pictures on the wall as she passed, said, with her eyes upon the pictures, and not upon the painter,

“Do you know the moral of that remark of yours?”

“Moral? Heaven forbid! I don’t make moral remarks,” replied Arthur.

“This time you have done it,” she said, smiling; “you have made a remark with a moral. I’m going, and I leave it with you as a legacy. The moral is, If goddesses never marry, don’t fall in love with a goddess.”

She put out her hand to him as she spoke. He involuntarily took it, and they shook hands warmly.

“Good-morning, Mr. Merlin,” she said. “Remember the Round Table to-morrow evening.”

She was gone, and Arthur Merlin sank into the chair she had just left.

“Oh Heavens!” said he, “did she understand or not?”

CHAPTER LXV. — THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE.

General Belch’s office was in the lower part of Nassau Street. At the outer door there was a modest slip of a tin sign, “Arcularius Belch, Attorney and Counselor.” The room itself was dingy and forlorn. There was no carpet on the floor; the windows were very dirty, and slats were broken out of the blinds—the chairs did not match—there was a wooden book-case, with a few fat law-books lounging upon the shelves; the table was a chaos of pamphlets, printed forms, newspapers, and files of letters, with a huge inkstand, inky pens, and a great wooden sand-box. Upon each side of the chimney, the grate in which was piled with crushed pieces of waste paper, and the bars of which were discolored with tobacco juice, stood two large spittoons, the only unsoiled articles in the office.

This was the place in which General Belch did business. It had the atmosphere of Law. But, above all, it was the spot where, with one leg swinging over the edge of the table and one hand waving in earnest gesticulation, General Belch could say to every body who came, and especially to his poorer fellow-citizens, “I ask no office; I am content with my moderate practice. It is enough for me, in this glorious country, to be a friend of the people.”

As he said this—or only implied it in saying something else—the broken slats, the dirty windows, the uncarpeted floor, the universal untidiness, whispered in the mind of the hearer, “Amen!”

His residence, however, somewhat atoned for the discomfort of his office. Not unfrequently he entertained his friends sumptuously; and whenever any of the representatives of his party, who acted in Congress as his private agents, had succeeded—as on one occasion, already commemorated, the Hon. Mr. Ele had—in putting a finer edge upon a favorite axe, General Belch entertained a select circle who agreed with him in his political philosophy, and were particular friends of the people and of the popular institutions of their country.

Abel Newt, in response to the General’s note, had already called at that gentleman’s office, and had received overtures from him, who offered him Mr. Bodley’s seat in Congress, upon condition that he was able to see things from particular points of view.

“Mr. Watkins Bodley, it seems,” said General Belch, “and I regret to say it, is in straitened pecuniary circumstances. I understand he will feel that he owes it to his family to resign before the next session. There will be a vacancy; and I am glad to say that the party is just now in a happy state of harmony, and that my influence will secure your nomination. But come up to-night and talk it over. I have asked Ele and Slugby, and a few others—friends of course—and I hope Mr. Bat will drop in. You know Aquila Bat?”

“By reputation,” replied Abel.

“He is a very quiet man, but very shrewd. He gives great dignity and weight to the party. A tremendous lawyer Bat is. I suppose he is at the very head of the profession in this country. You’ll come?”

Abel was most happy to accept. He was happy to go any where for distraction. For the rooms in Grand Street had become inconceivably gloomy. There were no more little parties there: the last one was given in honor of Mrs. Sligo Moultrie—before her marriage. The elegant youth of the town gradually fell off from frequenting Abel’s rooms, for he always proposed cards, and the stakes were enormous; which was a depressing circumstance to young gentlemen who mainly depended upon the paternal purse. Such young gentlemen as Zephyr Wetherley, who was for a long time devoted to young Mrs. Mellish Whitloe, and sent her the loveliest fans, and buttons, and little trinkets, which he selected at Marquand’s. But when the year came round the bill was inclosed to Mr. Wetherley, senior, who, after a short and warm interview with his son Zephyr, inclosed it in turn to Whitloe himself; who smiled, and paid it, and advised his wife to buy her own jewelry in future.

It was not pleasant for young Wetherley, and his friends in a similar situation, to sit down to a night at cards with such a desperate player as Abel Newt. Besides, his rooms had lost that air of voluptuous elegance which was formerly so unique. The furniture was worn out, and not replaced. The decanters and bottles were no longer kept in a pretty side-board, but stood boldly out, ready for instant service; and whenever one of the old set of men happened in, he was very likely to find a gentleman—whose toilet was suspiciously fine, whose gold looked like gilt—who made himself entirely at home with Abel and his rooms, and whose conversation indicated that his familiar haunts were race-courses, bar-rooms, and gambling-houses.

It was unanimously decreed that Abel Newt had lost tone. His dress was gradually becoming flashy. Younger sisters, who had heard their elders—who were married now—speak of the fascinating Mr. Newt, perceived that the fascinating Mr. Newt was a little too familiar when he flirted, and that his breath was offensive with spirituous fumes. He was noisy in the gentlemen’s dressing-room. The stories he told there were of such a character, and he told them so loudly, that more than once some husband, whose wife was in the neighboring room, had remonstrated with him. Sligo Moultrie, during one of the winters that he passed in the city after his marriage, had a fierce quarrel with Abel for that very reason. They would have come to blows but that their friends parted them. Mr. Moultrie sent a friend with a note the following morning, and Mr. Newt acknowledged that he had been rude.

In the evening, at General Belch’s, Abel was presented to all the guests. Mr. Ele was happy to remember a previous occasion upon which he had had the honor, etc. Mr. Enos Slugby (Chairman of our Ward Committee, whispered Belch, audibly, as he introduced him) was very glad to know a gentleman who bore so distinguished a name. Every body had a little compliment, to which Abel bowed and smiled politely, while he observed that the residence was much more comfortable than the office of General Belch.

They went into the dining-room and sat down to what Mr. Slugby called “a Champagne supper.” They ate birds and oysters, and drank wine. Then they ate jellies, blanc mange, and ice-cream. Then they ate nuts and fruit, and drank coffee. Then every thing was removed, and fresh decanters, fresh glasses, and a box of cigars were placed upon the table, and the servants were told that they need not come until summoned.

At this point a dry, grave, thin, little old man opened the door. General Belch rose and rushed forward.

“My dear Mr. Bat, I am very happy. Sit here, Sir. Gentlemen, you all know Mr. Bat.”

The company was silent for a moment, and bowed. Abel looked up and saw a man who seemed to be made of parchment, and his complexion, of the hue of dried apples, suggested that he was usually kept in a warm green satchel.

After a little more murmuring of talk around the table, General Belch said, in a louder voice,

“Gentlemen, we have a new friend among us, and a little business to settle to-night. Suppose we talk it over.”

There was a general filling of glasses and a hum of assent.

“I learn,” said the General, whiffing the smoke from his mouth, “that our worthy friend and able representative, Watkins Bodley, is about resigning, in consequence of private embarrassments. Of course he must have a successor.”

Every body poured out smoke and looked at the speaker, except Mr. Bat, who seemed to be undergoing a little more drying up, and looked at a picture of General Jackson, which hung upon the wall.

“That successor, I need not say, of course,” continued General Belch, “must be a good man and a faithful adherent of the party. He must be the consistent enemy of a purse-proud aristocracy.”

“He must, indeed,” said Mr. Enos Slugby, whisking a little of the ash from his cigar off an embroidered shirt-bosom, in doing which the flash from a diamond ring upon his finger dazzled Abel, who had turned as he spoke.

“He must espouse the immortal cause of popular rights, and be willing to spend and be spent for the people.”

“That’s it,” said Mr. William Condor, whose sinecure under government was not worth less than twenty thousand a year.

“He must always uphold the honor of the glorious flag of our country.”

“Excuse me, General Belch, but I can not control my feelings; I must propose three cheers,” interrupted Alderman MacDennis O’Rourke; and the three cheers were heartily given.

“And this candidate must be equally the foe of class legislation and the friend of State rights.”

Here Mr. Bat moved his head, as if he were assenting to a remark of his friend General Jackson.

“And I surely need not add that it would be the first and most sacred point of honor with this candidate to serve his party in every thing, to be the unswerving advocate of all its measures, and implicitly obedient to all its behests,” said General Belch.

“Which behests are to be learned by him from the authorized leaders of the party,” said Mr. Enos Slugby.

“Certainly,” said half of the gentlemen.

“Of course,” said the other half.

During the remarks that General Belch had been making his eyes were fixed upon Abel Newt, who understood that this was a political examination, in which the questions asked included the answers that were to be given. When the General had ended, the company sat intently smoking for some time, and filling and emptying their glasses.

“Mr. Bat,” said General Belch, “what is your view?”

Mr. Bat removed his eyes from General Jackson’s portrait, and cleared his throat.

“I think,” he said, closing his eyes, and rubbing his fingers along his eyebrows, “that the party holding to the only constitutional policy is to be supported at all hazards, and I think the great party to which we belong is that party. Our principles are all true, and our measures are all just. Speculative persons and dreamers talk about independent political action. But politics always beget parties. Governments are always managed by parties, and parties are always managed by—”

The dried-apple complexion at this point assumed an ashy hue, as if something very indiscreet had been almost uttered. Mr. Bat’s eyes opened and saw Abel’s fixed upon him with a peculiar intelligence. The whole party looked a little alarmed at Mr. Bat, and apprehensively at the new-comer. Mr. Ele frowned at General Belch,

“What does he mean?”

But Abel relieved the embarrassment by quietly completing Mr. Bat’s sentence—

—“by the managers.”

His black eyes glittered around the table, and Mr. Ele remembered a remark of General Belch’s about Mr. Newt’s riding upon the shoulders of his fellow-laborers.

“Exactly, by the managers,” said every body.

“And now,” said General Belch, cheerfully, “whom had we better propose to our fellow-citizens as a proper candidate for their suffrages to succeed the Honorable Mr. Bodley?”

He leaned back and puffed. Mr. Ele, who had had a little previous conversation with the host, here rose and said, that, if he might venture, he would say, although it was an entirely unpremeditated thing, which had, in fact, only struck him while he had been sitting at that hospitable board, but had impressed him so forcibly that he could not resist speaking—if he might venture, he would say that he knew a most able and highly accomplished gentleman—in fact, it had occurred to him that there was then present a gentleman who would be precisely the man whom they might present to the people as a candidate suitable in every way.

General Belch looked at Abel, and said, “Mr. Ele, whom do you mean?”

“I refer to Mr. Abel Newt,” responded the Honorable Mr. Ele.

The company looked as companies which have been prepared for a surprise always look when the surprise comes.

“Is Mr. Newt sound in the faith?” asked Mr. William Condor, smiling.

“I answer for him,” replied Mr. Ele.

“For instance, Mr. Newt,” said Mr. Enos Slugby, who was interested in General Belch’s little plans, “you have no doubt that Congress ought to pass the grant to purchase the land for Fort Arnold, which has been offered to it by the company of which our friend General Belch is counsel?”

“None at all,” replied Abel. “I should work for it as hard as I could.”

This was not unnatural, because General Belch had promised him an interest in the sale.

“Really, then,” said Mr. William Condor, who was also a proprietor, “I do not see that a better candidate could possibly be offered to our fellow-citizens. The General Committee meet to-morrow night. They will call the primaries, and the Convention will meet next week. I think we all understand each other. We know the best men in our districts to go to the Convention. The thing seems to me to be very plain.”

“Very,” said the others, smoking.

“Shall it be Abel Newt?” said Mr. Condor.

“Ay!” answered the chorus.

“I propose the health of the Honorable Abel Newt, whom I cordially welcome as a colleague,” said Mr. Ele.

Bumpers were drained. It was past midnight, and the gentlemen rose. They came to Abel and shook his hand; then they swarmed into the hall and put on their hats and coats.

“Stay, Newt,” whispered Belch, and Abel lingered.

The Honorable B.J. Ele also lingered, as if he would like to be the last out of the house; for although this distinguished statesman did not care to do otherwise than as General Belch commanded, he was anxious to be the General’s chief butler, while the remark about riding on his companions’ shoulders and the personal impression Abel had made upon him, had seriously alarmed him.

While he was busily looking at the portrait of General Jackson, General Belch stepped up to him and put out his hand.

“Good-night, my dear Ele! Thank you! thank you! These things will not be forgotten. Good-night! good-night!” And he backed the Honorable B. Jawley Ele out of the room into the hall.

“This is your coat, I think,” said he, taking up a garment and helping Mr. Ele to get it on. “Ah, you luxurious dog! you’re a pretty friend of the people, with such a splendid coat as this. Good-night! good-night!” he added, helping his guest toward the door.

“Hallo, Condor!” he shouted up the street. “Here’s Ele—don’t leave him behind; wait for him!”

He put him put of the door. “There, my dear fellow, Condor’s waiting for you! Good-night! Ten thousand thanks! A pretty friend of the people, hey? Oh, you cunning dog! Good-night!”

General Belch closed the door and returned to the drawing-room. Abel Newt was sitting with one leg over the back of the chair, and a tumbler of brandy before him, smoking.

“God!” said Abel, laughing, as the General returned, “I wouldn’t treat a dog as you do that man.”

“My dear Mr. Representative,” returned Belch, “you, as a legislator and public man, ought to know that Order is Heaven’s first law.”