Chapter XXIII: Will You Walk Into My Parlor?

“Sing again the song you sung
When we were together young;
When there were but you and I
Underneath the summer sky.
Sing the song, and o’er and o’er,
Though I know that nevermore
Will it seem the song you sung
When we were together young.”
_George William Curtis._

Vance passed on through the streets, wondering what could be the mystery which had driven his new acquaintance forth into the wide world without a protector. Should he speak of her to Miss Tremaine? Perhaps. But not unless he could do it without betrayal of confidence.

There was something in Perdita that reminded him of Estelle. Had a pressure of similar circumstances wrought the peculiarity which awakened the association? Yet he missed in Perdita that diaphanous simplicity, that uncalculating candor, which seemed to lead Estelle to unveil her whole nature before him. But Perdita had not wholly failed in frankness. Had she not glorified the old flag in her music? And had she not been outspoken on the one forbidden theme?

As these thoughts flitted through his mind, excluding for the moment those graver interests, involving a people’s doom, he heard the shouts of a crowd, and saw a man, pale and bloody, standing on a table under a tree, from a branch of which a rope was dangling. Vance comprehended the meaning of it all in an instant. He darted toward the spot, gliding swift, agile, and flexuous through the compacted crowd. Yes! The victim was the same man to whom he had given the gold-piece, some days before. Vance put a summary stop to Judge Lynch’s proceedings, breaking up the court precisely as Bernard had related. The wounded man was conveyed to the hospital. Here Vance saw his wound dressed, hired an extra attendant to nurse him, and then, in tones of warmest sympathy, asked the sufferer what more he could do for him.

The man opened his eyes. A swarthy, filthy, uncombed, unshaven wretch. He had been so blinded by blood that he had not recognized Vance. But now, seeing him, he started, and strove to raise himself on his elbow.

Vance and the surgeon prevented the movement. The patient stared, and said: “You’ve done it agin, have yer? What’s yer name?”

“This is Mr. Vance,” replied the surgeon.

“Vance! Vance!” said the patient, as if trying to force his memory to some particular point. Then he added: “Can’t do it! And yit I’ve seen him afore somewhar.”

“Well, my poor fellow, I must leave you. Good by.”

“Why, this hand is small and white as a woman’s!” said the patient, touching Vance’s fingers carefully as he might have touched some fragile flower. “Yer’ll come agin to see me,—woan’t yer?”

“Yes, I’ll not forget it.”—“Call to-morrow, will yer?”—“Yes, if I’m alive I’ll call.”—“Thahnk yer, strannger. Good by.”

Giving a few dollars to the surgeon for the patient’s benefit, Vance quitted the hospital. An hour afterwards, in his room at the St. Charles, he penned and sent this note:—

“TO PERDITA: I shall not be able to see you again to-day. Content
yourself as well as you can in the company of Mozart and Beethoven,
Bellini and Donizetti, Irving and Dickens, Tennyson and Longfellow.
The company is not large, but you will find it select. Unless some
very serious engagement should prevent, I will see you to-morrow.

VANCE.”

This little note was read and re-read by Clara, till the darkness of night came on. She studied the forms of the letters, the curves and flourishes, all the peculiarities of the chirography, as if she could derive from them some new hints for her incipient hero-worship. Then, lighting the gas, she acted on the advice of the letter, by devoting herself to the performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

Vance meanwhile, after a frugal dinner, eliminated from luxurious viands, rang the bell, and sent his card to Miss Tremaine. Laura’s mother was an invalid, and Laura herself, relieved from maternal restraint, had been lately in the habit of receiving and entertaining company, much to her own satisfaction, as she now had an enlarged field for indulging a propensity not uncommon among young women who have been much admired and much indulged.

Laura was a predestined flirt. Had she been brought up between the walls of a nunnery, where the profane presence of a man had never been known, she would instinctively have launched into coquetry the first time the bishop or the gardener made his appearance.

Having heard Madame Brugière, the fashionable widow, speak of Mr. Vance as the handsomest man in New Orleans, Laura was possessed with the desire of bringing him into her circle of admirers. So, one day after dinner, she begged her father to stroll with her through a certain corridor of the hotel. She calculated that Vance would pass there on his way to his room. She was right. “Is that Mr. Vance, papa?”—“Yes, my dear.”—“O, do introduce him. They say he’s such a superb musician. We must have him to try our new piano.”—“I’m but slightly acquainted with him.”—“No matter. He goes into the best society, you know.” (The father didn’t know it,—neither did the daughter,—but he took it for granted she spoke by authority.) “He’s very rich, too,” added Laura. This was enough to satisfy the paternal conscience. “Good evening, Mr. Vance! Lively times these! Let me make you acquainted with my daughter, Miss Laura. We shall be happy to see you in our parlor, Mr. Vance.” Vance bowed, and complimented the lady on a tea-rose she held in her hand. “Did you ever see anything more beautiful?” she asked.—“Never till now,” he replied.—“Ah! The rose is yours. You’ve fairly won it, Mr. Vance; but there’s a condition attached: you must promise to call and try my new piano.”—“Agreed. I’ll call at an early day.” He bowed, and passed on. “A very charming person,” said Laura.—“Yes, a gentleman evidently,” said the father.—“And he isn’t redolent of cigar-smoke and whiskey, as nine tenths of you ill-smelling men are,” added Laura.—“Tut! Don’t abuse your future husband, my dear.”—“How old should you take Mr. Vance to be?”—“About thirty-five.”—“O no! Not a year over thirty.”—“He’s too old to be caught by any chaff of yours, my dear!”—“Now, papa! I’ll not walk with you another minute!”

A few evenings afterwards, as Laura sat lonely in her private parlor, a waiter put into her hand a card on which was simply written in pencil, “MR. VANCE.” She did not try to check the start of exultation with which she said, “Show him in.”

Laura was now verging on her eighteenth year. A little above the Medicean height, her well-rounded shoulders and bust prefigured for her womanhood a voluptuous fulness. Nine men out of ten would have pronounced her beautiful. Had she been put up at a slave-vendue, the auctioneer, if a connoisseur, would have expatiated thus: “Let me call your attention, gentlemen, to this _very_ superior article. Faultless, you see, every way. In limb and action perfect. Too showy, perhaps, for a field-hand, but excellent for the parlor. Look at that profile. The Grecian type in its perfection! Nose a little _retroussé_, but what piquancy in the expression! Hair dark, glossy, abundant. Cheeks,—do you notice that little dimple when she smiles? Teeth sound and white: open the mouth of the article and look, gentlemen. Just feel of those arms, gentlemen. Complexion smooth, brilliant, perfect. Did you ever see a head and neck more neatly set on the shoulders?—and such shoulders! What are you prepared to bid, gentlemen, for this very, very superior article?”

Laura was attired in a light checked foulard silk, trimmed with cherry-colored ribbons. Running to the mirror, she adjusted here and there a curl, and lowered the gauze over her shoulders. Then, resuming her seat, she took Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” from the table, and became intensely absorbed in the perusal.

As Vance entered, Laura said to herself, “I know I’m right as to his age!” Nor was her estimate surprising. During the last two lustrums of his nomadic life, he had rather reinvigorated than impaired his physical frame. He never counteracted the hygienic benefits of his Arab habits by vices of eating and drinking. Abjuring all liquids but water, sleeping often on the bare ground under the open sky, he so hardened and purified his constitution that those constantly recurring local inflammations which, under the name of “colds” of some sort, beset men in their ordinary lives in cities, were to him almost unknown. And so he was what the Creoles called _bien conservé_.

Laura, with a pretty affectation of surprise, threw down her book, and, with extended hand, rose to greet her visitor. To him the art he had first studied on the stage had become a second nature. Every movement was proportioned, graceful, harmonious. He fell into no inelegant posture. He did not sit down in a chair without naturally falling into the attitude that an artist would have thought right. That consummate ease and grace which play-goers used to admire in James Wallack were remarkable in Vance, whether in motion or in repose.

Taking Laura’s proffered hand, he led her to the sofa, where they sat down. After some commonplaces in regard to the news of the day, he remarked: “By the way, do you know of any good school in the city for a young girl, say of fourteen?”

“Yes. Mrs. Gentry’s school, which I’ve just left, is one of the most select in the city. Here’s her card.”—“But are her pupils all from the best families?”—“I believe so. Indeed, I know the families of all except one.”—“And who is _she_?”—“Her name is Ellen Murray, but I call her Darling. I think she must be preparing either for the opera or the ballet; for in music, singing, and dancing she’s far beyond the rest of us.”—“And behind you in the other branches, I suppose.”—“I’m afraid not. She won’t be kept back. She must have given twice the time to study that any of the rest of us gave.”—“Does she seem to be of gentle blood?”—“Yes; though Mrs. Gentry tells us she is low-born. For all that, she’s quite pretty, and knows more than Madame Groux herself about dress. And so Darling and I, in spite of Mrs. Gentry, were getting to be quite intimate, when we quarrelled on the slavery question, and separated.”—“What! the little miss is a politician, is she?”—“Oh! she’s a downright Abolitionist!—talks like a little fury against the wrongs of slavery. I couldn’t endure it, and so cast her off.”—“Bring her to me. I’ll convert her in five minutes.”—“O you vain man! But I wish you could hear her sing. Such a voice!”—“Couldn’t you give me an opportunity? You shouldn’t have quarrelled with her, Miss Tremaine! It rather amuses me that she should talk treason. Why not arrange a little musical party? I’ll come and play for you a whole evening, if you’ll have Darling to sing.”—“O, that would be so charming! But then Darling and I have separated. We don’t speak.”—“Nonsense! Miss Laura Tremaine can afford to offer the olive-branch to a poor little outcast.”—“To be sure I can, Mr. Vance! And I’ll have her here, if I have to bring her by stratagem.”—“Admirable! Just send for me as soon as you secure the bird. And keep her strictly caged till I can hear her sing.”—“I’ll do it, Mr. Vance. Even the dragon Gentry shall not prevent it.”—“Shall I try the new piano?”—“O, I’ve been so longing to hear you!”

And Vance, seating himself at the instrument, exerted himself as he had rarely done to fascinate an audience. Laura, who had taste, if not diligence, in music, was charmed and bewildered. “How delightful! How very delightful!” she exclaimed. Vance was growing dangerous.

At that moment the servant entered with two cards.

“Did you tell them I’m in?”—“Yes, Mahmzel.”

“Well, then,” said Laura, with an air of disappointment, “show them up.” And handing the cards to Vance, she asked, “Shall I introduce them?”

“Mr. Robert Onslow,—Charles Kenrick. Certainly.”

The young men entered, and were introduced.

Kenrick drew near, and said: “Mr. Vance, allow me the honor of taking you by the hand. I’ve heard of the poor fellow you rescued from the halter of Judge Lynch. In the name of humanity, I thank you. That poor ragged declaimer merely spoke my own sentiments.”

“Indeed! What did he say?”

“He said, according to the Delta’s report, that this was the rich man’s war; that the laboring man who should lift his arm in defence of slavery was a fool. All which I hold to be true.”

“Pshaw, Charles! A truce to politics!” said Onslow. “Why will you thrust it into faces that frown on your wild notions?”

“Miss Tremaine reigns absolute in this room,” rejoined Vance; “and from the slavery she imposes we have no desire, I presume, to be free.”

“And her order is,” cried Laura, “that you sink the shop. Thank you, Mr. Vance, for vindicating my authority.”

There was no further jarring. Both the young men were personally fine specimens of the Southern chivalric race. Onslow was the larger and handsomer. He seemed to unite with a feminine gentleness the traits that make a man popular and beloved among men; a charming companion, sunny-tempered, amiable, social, ever finding a soul of goodness in things evil, and making even trivialities surrender enjoyments, where to other men all was barren. Life was to him a sort of grand picnic, and a man’s true business was to make himself as agreeable as possible, first to himself, and then to others.

Far different seemed Kenrick. To him the important world was that of ideas. All else was unsubstantial. The thought that was uppermost must be uttered. Not to conciliate, not to please, even in the drawing-room, would he be an assentator, a flatterer. To him truth was the one thing needful, and therefore, in season and out of season, must error be combated whenever met. The times were of a character to intensify in him all his idiosyncrasies. He could not smile, and sing, and utter small-talk while his country was being weighed in the balance of the All-just,—and her institutions purged as by fire.

And so to Laura he dwindled into insignificance.

Vance rose to go.

“One song. Indeed, I must have one,” said Laura.

Vance complied with her request, singing a favorite song of Estelle’s, Reichardt’s

“Du liebes Aug’, du lieber Stern,
Du bist mir nah’, und doch so fern!”[26]

Then, pressing Laura’s proffered hand, and bowing, he left.

“What a voice! what a touch!” said Onslow.

“It was enchanting!” cried Laura.

“I thought he was a different sort of man,” sighed Kenrick.

-----

Footnote 1:

Having slept under Toussaint’s roof, and seen him often, the writer
can testify to the accuracy of this sketch of one of the most thorough
gentlemen in bearing and in heart that he ever knew.

Footnote 2:

A fact. The incident, which occurred literally as related (on Bob
Myers’s plantation in Alabama), was communicated to the writer by an
eye-witness, a respectable citizen of Boston, once resident at the
South. The murder, of course, passed not only unpunished, but
unnoticed.

Footnote 3:

See James Sterling’s “Letters from the Slave States.”

Footnote 4:

This last paragraph embodies the actual words of Mr. Sterling,
published in 1856.

Footnote 5:

Similar occurrences are related by Cotton Mather to have taken place
in Boston in 1693. Six witnesses, whose affidavits he gives, namely,
Samuel Aves, Robert Earle, John Wilkins, Dan Williams, Thomas
Thornton, and William Hudson, testify to having repeatedly seen
Margaret Rule lifted from her bed up near to the ceiling by an
invisible force. It is a cheap way of getting rid of such testimony to
say that the witnesses were false or incompetent. The present writer
could name at least six witnesses of his own acquaintance now living,
gentlemen of character, intelligence, sound senses and sound judgment,
who will testify to having seen similar occurrences. The other
phenomena, related as witnessed by Peek, are such as hundreds of
intelligent men and women in the United States will confirm by their
testimony. Indeed, the number of believers in these phenomena may be
now fairly reckoned at more than three million.

Footnote 6:

There are thousands of intelligent persons in the United States who
will testify to the fact of spirit touch. The writer has on several
occasions _felt_, though he has not _seen_, a live hand, guided by
intelligence, that he was fully convinced belonged to no mortal person
present. The conditions were such as to debar trick or deception.
There are several trustworthy witnesses, whom the writer could name,
who have both _seen_ and _felt_ the phenomenon, and tested it as
thoroughly as Peek is represented to have done.

Footnote 7:

The phenomenon of _stigmata_ appearing on the flesh of impressible
mediums is one of the most common of the manifestations of modern
Spiritualism. Sometimes written words and sometimes outline
representations of objects appear, under circumstances that make
deception impossible. The writer has often witnessed them. St.
Francis, and many other saints of the Catholic Church, were the
subjects of similar phenomena. The late Earl of Shrewsbury, a Catholic
nobleman, has published a long account of their occurrence during the
present century. The Catholic Church has been always true to the
doctrine of the miraculous.

Footnote 8:

Author of “The Uprising of a Great People,” “America before Europe,”
&c.; also of two large volumes on Modern Spiritualism.

Footnote 9:

See Alexander Humboldt’s Letters to Varnhagen.

Footnote 10:

See Edouard Laboulaye, “De la Personnalité Divine.”

Footnote 11:

Tertullian, a devout Christian, when he wrote the following, would
seem to have believed there could be no spirit independent of
substance and form: “Nihil enim, si non corpus. Omne quod est, corpus
est sui generis; nihil est incorporale, nisi quod non est. Quis enim
negabit Deum corpus esse, etsi Deus spiritus est? Spiritus enim corpus
sui generis, sua effigie;”—“For there is nothing, if not body. All
that is, is body after its kind; nothing is incorporeal except what is
_not_. For who will deny God to be body, albeit God is spirit? For
spirit is body of its proper kind, in its proper effigy.” These views
are not inconsistent with those entertained by many modern
Spiritualists.

Footnote 12:

In a work published in London by De Foe, in 1722, one of his
characters speaks of the Virginia immigration as being composed either
of “first, such as were brought over by masters of ships, to be sold
as servants; or, second, such as are transported, after having been
found guilty of crimes punishable with death.”

Footnote 13:

These passages are from a speech of President Davis at Jackson, Miss.,
December, 1862. When he gets in a passion, Mr. Davis repudiates the
truth even as he would State debts. Notorious facts of history are set
aside in his blind wrath. The colonists of New England, he well knows,
were the friends and compatriots of Cromwell and his Parliament; and
the few prisoners of war Cromwell sent over from Ireland and England
as slaves did not constitute an appreciable part of the then resident
population of the North. It is a well-known fact, which no genealogist
will dispute, that not Virginia, nor any other American State, can
show such a purely English ancestry as Massachusetts. The writer of a
paper in the New York Continental Monthly for July, 1863, under the
title of “The Cavalier Theory Refuted,” proves this statistically.
“Let it be avowed,” he says, “that Puritanic New England could always
display a greater array of _gentlemen by birth_ than Virginia, or even
the entire South. This is said deliberately, because we know whereof
we speak.” He gives figures and names. And yet even so judicious a
writer as John Stuart Mill has fallen into the error of supposing that
the South had the advantage of the North in this respect. The anxious
and persistent clamor of the Secessionists on this point, in the hope
to enlist the sympathy of the British aristocracy, has not been wholly
without effect. We would only remark, in conclusion, that Davis and
his brethren, in their over-anxiety to prove that _their_ ancestors
were gentlemen, and _ours_ clodhoppers, show the genuine spirit of the
upstart and the _parvenu_. The true gentleman is content to have his
gentility appear in his acts.

Mr. Clay of the Confederate Congress has introduced a resolution
proposing that the coat of arms of the Slave Confederacy shall be _the
figure of a cavalier_! Would not a beggar on horseback, riding in a
certain familiar direction, be more appropriate?

Footnote 14:

It afterwards appeared that the Vicksburg “gentlemen,” impatient at
their want of success, selected a man who came nearest to the
description of Gashface, shot him, and then marked his body in a way
to satisfy the expectations of those who had formed an imaginative
idea of the personal peculiarities that would identify the celebrated
liberator, so long the terror of masters on the Mississippi.

Footnote 15:

Afterwards the notorious proslavery guerilla leader in Virginia.

Footnote 16:

The dishonesty of Mr. John Slidell’s attempt to expunge from Davis’s
history the reproach of repudiation is thoroughly and irrefutably
exposed by Mr. Robert J. Walker in the Continental Monthly, 1863.

Footnote 17:

This prediction was merely one among many hundred such which every
reader of newspapers will remember.

Footnote 18:

We subjoin one of the various translations:—

“Yes, it comes at last!
And from a troubled dream awaking,
Death will soon be past,
And brighter day around me breaking!
Hark! methinks I hear celestial voices say,
Soon thou shalt be free, child of misery,—
Rest and perfect joy in heaven are waiting thee;
Spirit, plume thy wings and flee!

“Yes! the strife is o’er,
With all its pangs, with all its sorrow;
Hope shall droop no more,
For heavenly day will dawn to-morrow!
Proud Oppression, vain thy utmost tyranny!
Come and thou shalt see, I can smile at thee!
Mine shall be the triumph, mine the victory,—
Death but sets the captive free!”

Footnote 19:

The line is from the following prayer, attributed to Mary, Queen of
Scots:—

“O domine Deus, speravi in Te;
Carissime Jesu, nunc libera me!
In dura catena, in misera pœna,
Desidero Te!
Languendo, gemendo, et genuflectendo,
Adoro, imploro, ut liberes me.”

Footnote 20:

Some of these note-books have been brought to light by the civil war,
and a quotation from one of them will be found on another page of this
work.

Footnote 21:

Should any person question the probability of the incidents in Vance’s
narrative, we would refer him to the “Letter to Thomas Carlyle” in the
Atlantic Monthly for October, 1863. On page 501, we find the
following: “Within the past year, a document has come into my hands.
It is the private diary of a most eminent and respectable slaveholder,
recently deceased. The chances of war threw it into the hands of our
troops.... One item I must have the courage to suggest more
definitely. Having bidden a young slave-girl (whose name, age, color,
&c., with the shameless precision that marks the entire document, are
given) to attend upon his brutal pleasure, and she silently remaining
away, he writes, ‘Next morning ordered her a dozen lashes for
disobedience.’” In a foot-note to the above we are assured by Messrs.
Ticknor and Fields that the author of the letter is “one whose word is
not and cannot be called in question; and he pledges his word that the
above is exact and _proven_ fact.”

Footnote 22:

“O no, madam, for then I shall be too black.” A Life of Toussaint, by
Mrs. George Lee, was published in Boston some years since.

Footnote 23:

By Dsheladeddin, a famous Mahometan mystic.

Footnote 24:

On the contrary, Mrs. Kemble says they are cruelly treated, and that
the forms of suffering are “manifold and terrible” in consequence.

Footnote 25:

The Savannah River Baptist Association of Ministers decreed (1836)
that the slave, sold at a distance from his home, was not to be
countenanced by the church in resisting his master’s will that he
should take a new wife.

Footnote 26:

“Beloved eye, beloved star,
Thou art so near, and yet so far!”