Chapter X: MAHOGANY v. LAW

For some time after this event, Macfarisee was sullen as a Greenland bear, and we heard very little scripture quoted. Indeed, I am uncertain whether I did not hear him mutter a pretty distinct "d--n" on one or two occasions.

I saw Amy at intervals, though the wintry weather and ten miles of snow-covered country that lay between us were serious barriers to frequent meetings. Moreover, the colonel's residence at Applewood had changed the tenor of life and society there. Mr. Jedediah Pawkie and the godly elders of his synagogue were banished therefrom with very little ceremony, and the aspect of the colonel's Malay servant seemed, as the incarnation of sin, to suggest very unpleasant ideas to their minds. The country at this time was swarming with troops, as an invasion was expected from France. Horse, foot, artillery, line, fencibles, and militia (to say nothing of volunteers), were quartered everywhere, and, as a regiment of remarkably smart light infantry (the old 43rd, I think) occupied a temporary wooden barrack at the village of Applewood, the house and lawn became the daily resort and lounge of the officers, to whom the colonel's full-bodied old port and the billiard-room proved very acceptable.

I trembled for my influence over Amy; yet I never hinted, even in the most distant manner, as to whose mistake she was indebted for becoming the heiress of her aunt. Indeed, much as I boyishly loved this girl, and brilliant though her prospects, I had soon other things given me to think of.

About this time, I remember there occurred a terrible episode, which seriously affected the health of my mother, and of Lotty too. A travelling pedlar, one of those itinerant jewellers, who were much more numerous in those years than in the present, made his appearance at our cottage one day, and opening his pack or box on the sill of the window, at which my mother was seated, reading, insisted on displaying his store of gold and silver watches, rings, bracelets, baubles, and thimbles; and offered to buy old metals, to barter or exchange, with all that pertinacity peculiar to his craft. Though very pressing, he loudly repudiated the most remote idea of wishing for profit on any transaction. He had also some antiques, and little Indian curiosities, which my mother was examining with some interest, when suddenly her eyes dilated, and she uttered a cry, between a shriek and a moan,--a terrible cry, which seems yet, at times, to ring in my ears, and which made the startled pedlar spring nearly a yard high, and spill half his stock upon the parlour floor. Among the articles which he termed his curiosities, her eye had detected a little round plate of silver, to which a thin fragment of bone was attached, and on it was engraved, "Oliver Ellis, Captain, 21st Fusiliers."

It was the plate with which my father's head had been trepanned, after the storming of the fort at Skenesborough, and whereon, as I have mentioned elsewhere, he had fancifully had his name, rank, and the number of his regiment, engraved. On seeing this affecting and terrible memento, the poor old lady fainted, and the pedlar, in great alarm, bundled up his wares and departed with precipitation--for his dealings were not always on the side of honesty, and, not knowing what manner of scrape he had fallen into, he left the village, and long before my mother recovered was gone beyond recall.

With the knowledge that her husband was buried in his soldier's grave, far, far away, on the bank of the mighty Hudson, where the kind hands of dear comrades had heaped the green sods over him, she had learned to be content and resigned to her bereavement, as the fortune of war and the will of God; but now, with this new knowledge that his last resting-place had been violated,--when, or by whom, or under what circumstances, she could never learn,--made her wretched indeed! A high fever was the result, and a long illness, from which she was saved with the utmost difficulty. Of the devil of a pedlar who caused all this evil, we could never discover the slightest trace. He had come and gone like the "Sandman" of the German romance, or that unpleasantly ubiquitous personage, with whom our friend Dr. Twaddel, wrestled in the spirit, every Sunday.

While my mind was occupied by this affair, the thoughts of the worthy Mr. Macfarisee were ever running on the missing will. I know not whether he connected me with its disappearance, but he was now more exacting, more annoying, and more pettily tyrannical than ever, and his concealed wrath hovered over my devoted head, like the sword that erst hung by a horse's hair above the pericranium of Damocles. One day, I was alone in Macfarisee's business-room, when happening to open a book near to me, the following passage struck my eye:--

"Why should I wear out a dreary life in poverty and obscurity, while I loathe one and detest the other? There are, who talk of calm content, of gliding unnoticed through the road of life: let those who like such ignoble path follow it. Did I make myself? Did I wish to enter on this mortal struggle? Did I give myself feelings, ideas, or wishes? My future rests upon my belief, as if I could believe what I chose."

These questions filled me with strange thoughts, and I sank into one of my day-dreams, from which I was roused by the unwelcome entrance of Macfarisee. Perceiving that no other person was present, he began, in an unusually bland tone of voice, to refer to the scene that took place at Applewood on the day of the funeral, adding,--

"There is something very mysterious, Oliver Ellis, in the disappearance of that document!"

"So I have heard you say, sir, many times."

"Ay,--but there is something more than mysterious, and to that I have a clue," said he, impressively, while his stealthy eyes seemed to glare into mine, and I could not repress an emotion of discomfort and alarm.

"Indeed!" I exclaimed; "but in whatever way Mrs. Rose penned her will, she may have changed her mind before death."

"No, I do not think so; she was a woman who walked in the way of the Lord, and now dwells in peace for ever. She meant that all she possessed should become the inheritance of His servants, for His glory and their _comfort_," said he; and while canting thus, he ground his sharp teeth at the thought of all that had escaped him. "No, no,--she knew who was her light and her salvation."

"Do you mean the Reverend Mr. Pawkie?" I asked, innocently.

"Listen to me," said he; "you have been at Applewood frequently and unknown to _me_,--unknown for a time, at least. You have seen Miss Amy Lee in the woods and in the park----"

"I have been watched--followed!" I began, with a sudden glow of rage and just indignation, as I instantly saw some of the meaner clerks of the firm having been guilty of this act of espionage.

"_How_ I came to know this, matters not--you do not deny the fact?"

"Most certainly I do not," said I; "and what then?"

"Simply this, my dear, deluded boy," he replied, pressing my arm with his long, lean, ugly fingers, while his sharp visage was lighted by such a smile as sin might wear on the threshold of hell; "I know that Miss Amy burned her aunt's will, lest overmuch of her earthly inheritance might go to the faithful servants of the Lord, and those who twice yearly serve at His tabernacle. I _know_ that she _burned_ the will, and that _you_ were present when she did so. We have pretty ample proofs of the place, time, and circumstances; and if you will give me a holograph statement to this effect--a statement supposed to be written under emotions of remorse--I will give you a present of fifty guineas just now, and one hundred more after. I know, my dear young friend, that you are not like those of whom Paul wrote to Timothy, as 'given to wine, a striker, or greedy of filthy lucre, but patient and not covetous;' and through you I would seek the means of punishing this girl, to lead her, by chastisement, from the snares of the devil, who hath taken her captive--and from the life of sin and pleasure she leads, being, as the blessed scripture truly saith, really dead while she liveth. Do you understand me, my dear young man?"

I stood for a full minute in silence; for this ill-judged and barefaced combination of hypocrisy and temptation to crime filled me with such rage and confusion, that I knew not what to reply.

"Sir!" I stammered.

"Reflect on all my good friend has urged, Mr. Ellis," said Quirky, appearing suddenly behind me.

"I _have_ reflected," said I, in a breathless voice, while playing nervously with a mahogany ruler--a pretty heavy one too.

"Then pen us the required statement--that you saw the girl, Amy Lee, burn her aunt's will?"

"But I never witnessed any such act," I replied. While panting with rage, I spoke slowly to gather time for thought and action. "I repeat, sir, that I never beheld any such deed!"

"But you _might_ have seen it," said Macfarisee, suavely, and with a grimace which he meant to be excessively conciliating; "you might, my dear boy, and such a statement from you is necessary to complete a plan we have in view, to enforce the ends of justice and law, which are the same; for as the holy apostle saith, 'Law is good, if a man use it _lawfully_,' First Timothy, chapter first, hey-ho-hum!"

"What motive have you in view?"

"What the deuce have you, or such as you, to do with the motives or morals of those who employ you?" demanded Quirky, whose natural insolence for the moment got entirely the better of his prudence.

"Sir, sir,--I am a gentleman!"

"A _gentleman_--God help us! a fine gentleman, to whom we pay thirty pounds per annum."

"If I am not, my father was at least a gentleman," said I, almost choking with the conflict of suppressed emotions; "he was an officer, who died in action----"

"If he had been a thief who died on the gallows, it were all the same to me," replied the legal bully; "I want neither gentlemen, nor their sons, in my office. I want only my orders obeyed; my work, my business done. I want----"

"Stay, Mr. Quirky; do stop, pray," interposed Macfarisee, with an air of solemnity and alarm. "This outbreak is useless; if one hundred and fifty guineas----"

"Will not tempt me, the hard words and gratuitous insolence of an underbred villain are less likely to do so," I exclaimed; and by one blow of the ponderous ruler stretched Mr. Quirky bleeding and senseless at my feet. Then a flame seemed to pass before my eyes, a shock like electricity ran over every fibre, and feeling my heart grow wild with rage and excitement, I sprang upon the excited Macfarisee just as he was rushing to the bellrope. Grasping his white neckcloth by one hand, I showered my blows upon his bald caput and shoulders with the other, until, in reeling backward, he stumbled over Quirky, and falling heavily against a writing-table, lay still as if dead. A wilder spirit of mischief and destruction was now added to my long-pent-up hatred; and with the mischief of a boy, or of an enraged monkey, I snatched sundry bundles of papers, tore some to pieces, heaped others on the fire, spilled the contents of a large inkbottle over everything, threw down the tables and chairs, and with an _io pæan_ of triumph, rushed from the the field of battle, flourishing my ruler like the truncheon of a conqueror.

Just as I sprang down stairs into the street, taking three steps at a time, a window was opened overhead, and I heard the shrill voice of Macfarisee shouting,--

"The guard! the guard!"

There were no police, and this was the usual cry when the soldiers of the city watch were required. The evening was dusk now, and I ran through the thoroughfares bare-headed and grasping tightly my weapon--for my blood was yet up, and I would without shrinking have faced all the charged bayonets of the city guard; but I ran on--on--I knew not, and cared not whither.