Chapter XXI: Bentham to the Rescue

European travellers in this country--especially if one economical condition of their coming hither has not been the composition of works of imagination on America, sufficiently contemptuous to pay all the expenses of the trip--have, occasionally--and particularly if they have been invited to write for New York magazines, take professorships in native colleges, or lecture on the encouraging Continental progress of scientific atheism before Boston audiences;--such travellers, we say, convinced that they shall lose no money by it, but, on the contrary, rather sanguine of making a little thereby in the long run, have occasionally remarked, that, in the United States, women journeying alone are treated with a chivalric courtesy and deference not so habitually practiced in any other second-class new nation on the face of the earth.[1]

What, oh, what can be more true than this? A lady well stricken in years, and of adequate protraction of nose and rectilinear undeviation of figure, can travel alone from Maine to Florida with as perfect immunity from offensive masculine intrusion as though she were guarded by a regiment; while a somewhat younger girl, with curls and an innocent look, can not appear unaccompanied by an escort in an American omnibus, car, ferry-boat, or hotel, without appealing at once to the finest fatherly feelings of every manly middle-aged observer whose wife is not watching him, and exciting as general a desire to make her trip socially delightful as though each gentlemanly eye seeking hers were indeed that of a tender sire.

Thus, although Miss POTTS'S lonely stay in her hotel had been so brief, the mysterious American instinct of chivalry had discovered it very early on the first morning after her arrival, and she arose from her delicious sleep to find at least half a dozen written offers of hospitality from generous strangers, sticking under her door. Understanding that she was sojourning without natural protectors in a strange city, the thoughtful writers, who appeared to be chiefly Western men of implied immense fortunes, begged her (by the delicate name of "Fair Unknown") to take comfort in the thought that they were stopping at the same hotel and would protect her from all harm with their lives. In proof of this unselfish disposition on their parts, several of them were respectively ready to take her to a circus-matinee, or to drive in Central Park, on that very day: and her prompt acceptance of these signal evidences of a disinterested friendship for womanhood without a natural protector could not be more simply indicated to those who now freely offered such friendship, than by her dropping her fork _twice_ at the public breakfast table, or sending the waiter back _three_ times with the boiled eggs to have them cooked rightly.

FLORA had completed her chemical toilet, put all the bottles, jars, and small round boxes back into her satchel again, and sat down to a second reading of these gratifying intimations that a prepossessing female orphan is not necessarily without assiduous paternal guardianship at her command wherever there are Western fathers, when Mr. DIBBLE appeared, as he had promised, accompanied by Gospeler SIMPSON.

"Miss CAROWTHERS was so excited by your sudden flight, Miss POTTS," said the latter, "that she came at once to me and OLDY with your farewell note, and would not stop saying 'Did you ever!' until, to restrain my aggravated mother from fits, I promised to follow you to your guardian's and ascertain what your good-bye note would have meant if it had actually been punctuated."

"Our reverend friend reached me about an hour ago," added Mr. DIBBLE, "saying, that a farewell note without a comma, colon, semi-colon, or period in it, and with every other word beginning with a capital, and underscored, was calculated to drive friends to distraction. I took the liberty of reminding him, my dear, that young girls from boarding-school should hardly be expected to have advanced as far as English composition in their French and musical studies; and I also related to him what you had told me of Mr. BUMSTEAD."

"And I don't know that, under the circumstances, you could do a better thing than you have done," continued the Gospeler. "Mr. BUMSTEAD, himself, explains your flight upon the supposition that you were possibly engaged with myself, my mother, Mr. DIBBLE, and the PENDRAGONS, in killing poor Mr. DROOD."

"Oh, oughtn't he to be ashamed of himself, when he knows that I never did kill any absurd creature!" cried the Flowerpot, in earnest deprecation. "And just think of darling MAGNOLIA, too, with her poor, ridiculous brother! You're a lawyer, Mr. DIBBLE and I should think you could get them a _habeas corpus_, or a divorce, or some other perfectly absurd thing about courts, that would make the judges tell the juries to bring them in Not Guilty."

Fixing upon the lovely young reasoner a look expressive of his affectionate wonder at her inspired perception of legal possibilities, the old lawyer said, that the first thing in order was a meeting between herself and Miss PENDRAGON; which, as it could scarcely take place (all things considered,) with propriety in the private room of that lady's brother, nor without publicity in his own office, or in a hotel, he hardly knew how to bring about.

And here we have an example of that difference between novels and real life which has been illustrated more than once before in this conscientious American Adaptation of what all our profoundly critical native journals pronounce the "most elaborately artistic work" of the grandest of English novelists. In an equivalent situation of real life, Mr. DIBBLE'S quandary would not have been easily relieved; but, by the magic of artistic fiction, the particular kind of extemporized character absolutely necessary to help him and the novel continuously along was at that moment coming up the stairs of the hotel.[2]

At the critical instant, a servant knocked, to say, that there was a gentleman below, "with a face as long me arrum, sir, who axed me was there a man here av the name av SIMPSON, Miss?"

"It is JOHN--it is Mr. BUMSTEAD!" shrieked FLORA, hastening involuntarily towards a mirror,--"and just see how my dress is wrinkled!"

"My name is BENTHAM--JEREMY BENTHAM," said a deep voice in the doorway; and there entered a gloomy figure, with smoky, light hair, a curiously long countenance, and black worsted gloves. "SIMPSON!--old OCTAVIUS!--did you never, never see me before?"

"If I am not greatly mistaken," returned the Gospeler, sternly. "I saw you standing in the bar-room of the hotel, just now, as we came up."

"Yes," sighed the stranger, "I was there--waiting for a Western friend--when you passed in. And has sorrow, then, so changed me, that you do not know me? Alas! alack! woe's me!"

"BENTHAM, you say?" cried the Ritualistic clergyman, with a start, and sudden change of countenance. "Surely you're not the rollicking fellow-student who saved my life at Yale?"

"I am! I am!" sobbed the other, smiting his bosom. "While studying theology, you'd gone to sleep in bed reading the Decameron. I, in the next room, suddenly smelt a smell of wood burning. Breaking into your apartment, I saw your candle fallen upon your pillow and your head on fire. Believing that, if neglected, the flames would spread to some vital part, I seized a water-pitcher and dashed the contents upon you. Up you instantly sprang, with a theological expression on your lips, and engaged me in violent single combat. "Madman!" roared I, "is it thus you treat one who has saved your life?" Falling upon the floor, with a black eye, you at once consented to be reconciled; and, from that hour forth, we were both members of the same secret society."

Leaping forward, the Reverend OCTAVIUS wrung both the black worsted gloves of Mr. BENTHAM, and introduced the latter to the old lawyer and his ward.

"He did indeed save all but my head from the conflagration, and extinguished that, even, before it was much charred," cried the grateful Ritualist, with marked emotion.--"But, JEREMY, why this aspect of depression?"

"OCTAVIUS, old friend," said BENTHAM, his hollow voice quivering, "let no man boast himself upon the gaiety of his youth, and fondly dream--poor self-deceiver!--that his maturity may be one of revelry. You know what I once was. Now I am conducting a first-class American Comic Paper."

Commiseration, earnest and unaffected, appeared upon every countenance, and Mr. DIBBLE was the first to break the ensuing deep silence.

"If I am not mistaken, then," observed the good lawyer, quietly, "the scene of your daily loss of spirits is in the same building with our young friend, Mr. PENDRAGON, whom you may know."

"I do know him, sir; and that his sister has lately come unto him. His room, by means of outside shutters, was once a refuge to me from the Man"--Here Mr. BENTHAM'S face flamed with inconceivable hatred--"who came to tell me just how an American first-class Comic Paper _should_ be conducted."

"At what time does your rush of subscribers cease?"

"As soon as I begin to charge anything for my paper."

"And the newsmen, who take it by the week,--what is their usual time for swarming in your office?"

"On the day appointed for the return of unsold copies."

"Then I _have_ an idea," said Mr. DIBBLE. "It appears to me, Mr. BENTHAM, that your office, besides being so near Mr. PENDRAGON'S quarters, furnishes all the conditions for a perfectly private confidential interview between this young lady here, and her friend, Miss PENDRAGON. Mr. SIMPSON, if you approve, be kind enough to acquaint Mr. BENTHAM with Miss POTTS'S history, without mentioning names; and explain to him, also, why the ladies' interview should take place in a spot whither that singular young man, Mr. BUMSTEAD, would not be likely to prowl, if in town, in his inspection of umbrellas."

The Gospeler hurriedly related the material points of FLORA'S history to his recovered friend, who moaned with all the more cheerful parts, and seemed to think that the serious ones might be worked-up in comic miss-spelling for his paper.--"For there is nothing more humorous in human life," said he, gloomily, "than the defective orthography of a fashionable young girl's education for the solemnity of matrimony."

Finally, they all set off for the appointed place of retirement, upon nearing which Mr. DIBBLE volunteered to remain outside as a guard against any possible interruption. The Gospeler led the way up the dark stairs of the building, when they had gained it; and the Flowerpot, following, on JEREMY BENTHAM'S arm, could not help glancing shyly up into the melancholy face of her escort, occasionally. "Do you _never_ smile?" she could not help asking.

"Yes," he said, mournfully, "sometimes: when I clean my teeth."

No more was said; for they were entering the room of which the tone and atmosphere were those of a receiving-vault.

[Footnote 1: Shades of QUINTILIAN and Dr. JOHNSON, what a sentence!]

[Footnote 2: Quite independently of any specific design to that end by the Adapter, this Adaptation, carefully following the original English narrative as it does, can not avoid acting as a kind of practical--and, of course, somewhat exaggerative--commentary upon what is strained, forced, or out of the line of average probabilities, in the work Adapted.]