The Knickerbocker Gallery/The Iron Man
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H. J. Brent
The Iron Man.
By Henry J. Brent.
PART I.
Part of the house, or hall, as it was called, was very old, and the other portion was comparatively new. Its newness would have been considered very old in this country; and the old part would have been thought almost eternal anywhere.
This hall was situated on a rising knoll of ground, and overlooked a meadow, through which ran a glittering stream, and the widest spreading beeches waved in the almost perpetual breeze that leisurely and happily came up the ravine. What the owner had built of fortifications in the time of Bothwell, and Murray, and Mary Stuart, could, with some aid of the feudal imagination, be traced from the eastern wing—that was the oldest—down to the river's bank. Ivy had crept, with its deep green family of leaves and tendrils, over the vague line of conflict wall, and it was not difficult to picture a rather hard fight along the barrier, between the old chief and some implacable clan whose remotest ancestor had had his toes trod upon by the remotest ancestor of the knight of the castle, in the remotest era of Scotch-hatred tradition.
This old hall was approachable from every point of the compass, by winding avenues, and all these avenues seemed to have been constructed with the leading thought that they were to show the enemy at all points of his approach.
The hall was of red granite, and had its turrets, whence some retainer, too lazy to work in the fields, could espy the banner of an advancing Highland foray, and could quickly, in most unmistakable Scotch, arouse the not unwilling chief and his vassals to a skull. cracking and throat-cutting difficulty.
When I was there, some few years past, peace reigned over this old Scotch residence, and beauty, throughout the year, hovered over the mingled colors of the time-stained walls, and over the most profuse and luxuriant combinations of foliage that I have ever seen.
The weather-tinted turrets rose in the still and beautiful gray air incident to the climate of that inspiring land, and a solemn repose pervaded the entire circuit of the scene.
I was an inmate of this dwelling for many years, and my hostess was one of a peculiarly distinguished name in Scotland. My hostess, for her husband had died a few weeks before my arrival, was far advanced in her pathway to the tomb, and grief had bowed the tenderest heart, the most noble head, that ever decked the divine form of woman.
Her apartments were in the old wing, and there she loved to sit. and muse over the legends that, in their traditionary popularity and close connection with general and more enlarged events, positively made the history of her family an adjunct to the history of the country.
I had been sitting by the bed-side of my venerable friend, one evening, and as the shadows came from the western sun we mutually sank into a state of listless repose.
She lay upon her bed, old and feeble, but full of wonderful memories. Her dark bright eye—so bright then, at eighty, and in her picture, painted when she was but eighteen, and which I fondly keep, bright as a star, and soft as the sweet air that floats it in the heavens—kept its gaze fixed steadily upon me, while her hand firmly held a bunch of antique keys, about whose history she had been all the evening talking.
The shades deepened with the hours, and the silence of the room was only broken by the occasional jingle of those queer old keys, held in the withered hand of the withering invalid. Now and then I turned from my gaze upon the purpling mountains that barriered toward the west the famous lake-region of Scotland, and glanced toward the bed. Those eyes, so dark, so wonderfully intelligent, met me with such a strange expression that I involuntarily rose from my seat and moved toward the deep window, to relieve myself of a growing sentiment of almost superstitious anxiety.
"Will you be so kind as to ring the bell for me?" I rang it, and soon after her maid entered the room: a prim, gaunt-looking woman, with long black hair, pressed upward from her temples, and crowded under a very white and close-fitting cap.
This maid, though almost speechless from respect, in that old dwelling, and in that solemn servitude, though apparently gentle and devoted to the singular mistress it had been her duty to serve for years, was an object always of peculiar aversion to me. Her quiet footfall, cat-like, through the long corridors, that I heard at night when all the rest of the domestics were a-bed, often sent a small shiver through my nervous system, and made me wish that she and the rest of the ghosts would go to sleep.
Upon the entrance of this servant the lady rose, supporting herself by both her arms, extended backward in her bed. Her long white hair fell from her sculptured head upon her shoulders, and as she lifted her hand, those old keys rattling, she said:
"Lift the carpet from the hearth-stone, and hold a light for Mr. ———." I was standing by the window, and the red light from distant iron furnaces gleamed over the gloomy landscape, and sent an unnatural color into the room, deepening the gloom, and bringing forward the rolls of the old damask curtains, that hung, as they had hung for years, in almost funereal majesty, around the bed of the invalid. The maid, after some moments of silent work, drew back the carpet, and then, lighting a candle, beckoned me to approach. The mistress placed herself in such a position that she could see me and also the hearth. I came near, without uttering a syllable of inquiry, to the spot that had been uncovered, and stood, with no little anxiety, waiting farther direction.
"Stoop down and see if you can not find, upon that part of the old hearth-stone nearest to the fire-place, the mark of a black ring." I examined the stone, and there was, in truth, the mark of a ring upon it. The ring was about as large as the bottom of an ordinary table-bowl, and was brown and distinct. After I had examined it for some short space of time, I rose and awaited some explanation of this demi-pantomime.
"I will ring when I want you," said the sick lady, and the maid, placing the candle upon an old brass-bound oaken box, that stood in a remote corner of the room behind a screen, withdrew.
"That is the sign of murder!" were the first words spoken by her after the door had been closed. She pointed at the brown stain upon the hearth.
"Yes, that is the stain upon the stone; but there is a deeper stain upon many hereabout than that. That stain was made when a young girl died, and that stain can never be washed out. They had better have burned this old wing to ashes than have burned that ring there; better have burned all their fortunes, and all their liveries, and coats of arms, and coronets, and coronation-robes, and themselves, than have burned that little ring upon that long-lasting piece of stone. It was many years ago when that ring was put there, I have only seen it once before to-night, and I wanted you to see it too. It shall never be uncovered after this until I die, and then I hope they will bury this stone near where the young girl is buried. She is forgotten long ago, but not so long that I do not remember her, as the sweetest and gentlest girl in all the broad fields of Scotland. She was the heiress, through her mother's right, to several of the finest estates in this section of the country. She was to be their owner when she should reach her sixteenth year. This property was to have been hers. Here she lived. She was to be the mistress of the great property of ———, where you have been." (I had spent some days there.) "Her mother was dead, but her father lived here with her, he not having any right to the property—not even a life-estate in it—but he managed it for her. She was the only child, and a rich one she was to be; the richest and the fairest of the land. But she stood in the path of others. Should she die, the vast wealth that was to be centered in her, at legal maturity, under the will, would revert to several poorer relations. The laws of Scotland with regard to property are strange, and bring about a great deal of trouble, and so it turned out in this case. I was not a young person by any means when this affair happened; and I remember well how much was feared always about this heiress. It seemed to be looked upon as a matter of course, that her life was surrounded with danger. Her father watched her life with the vigilance of a sentinel. He was a young man—young in years—but old in the calmness, and the apparent coldness of his disposition. He was like a sentinel. He knew, for he was Scotch, how deep the love of property is in the Scottish character, and he felt that his daughter was not safe.
He never left his home—scarcely ever left her. A head-ache, some little malady, she had, and it went on for a few days, and turned to fever. The approach of the disorder, its consummation in fever, the father watched. He sent for the surgeon from H———; he came; felt her pulse, and went away. Next day, he returned; still the same symptoms of fever; but she was not ill. Again he came. She had passed a pleasant night, free from pain, with a regular pulse. She was better, and she and her father were brighter and more cheerful. The father had watched her all the time. The news of her indisposition had got abroad; the people talked of it. When her fever was at its height, property changed hands, and the poor but titled relations clutched the big money-bags, and rode over the broad acres, and had their land laid out for now tenants, and built up the decayed turrets of their thriftless castles. That evening, when the surgeon came, she was better, but there was a dread of a return of fever. Some warm and soothing draught had better be administered. He felt her pulse. Would that she could have felt his! He took a common bowl from the table, and made the servant pour some hot water into it. He stirred his soothing draft in the boiling water. The father looked on, and then tasted the medicine. The surgeon watched him in his mind, but looked away and felt the pulse of the sweet girl, who sat in her easy chair, looking out at those woods through that window. He gave the cup to the father, and the father gave it to the daughter, and the surgeon took the cup from his hand. In drinking it, a portion had run over the brim, and down the sides of the vessel. Upon that hearth-stone the surgeon placed the cup, and left. He was not heard of for some time afterward, but it is strange what happened to him. That night, as he rode home, his horse, it seemed, had stumbled in a hole that had been made by a fallen tree, and he had been pitched over the precipice, where the yew-tree is—your favorite seatvand his body was swept away by the river. It was picked up a month afterward at the Broomielaw, in Glasgow. That cup was a cup of poison; but though all the force of law was brought to bear upon the investigation; though there existed no doubt as to the parties who had paid, or had promised to pay, the murderous surgeon, still they avoided a conviction. Whether it was wealth, the vast wealth, at stake, and that could only go to them, that prevented detection, or staid the avenging arm of Justice, I do not know; but her death was called a death produced by the malady under which it was known she had been for some days suffering. I never saw her father afterward, for he left the country, and it was said that he removed to America. I think it very likely. I heard that he never spoke to any one of his plans, but kept all his sorrow, and his agony, and his intentions, locked in his own breast. I heard, also, that he married again in the New World. He was never liked in the neighborhood, although no one knew why he was unpopular. I always thought him a very intense man where his daughter's interest was concerned; but otherwise he was cold and secluded, almost forbidding. Whether it was that none of the succeeders to her property liked to live here or not, I can not say, but so it was. This estate was offered for sale, and my mother bought it. It was beautiful then, and you know how much we have improved it. But, my dear H———, while we have made the roses bloom all around the house, and built additions to it, and have made the fields green, and got the trees in the park to be finer than any in Scotland, we have never been able to wash away the poison-mark of murder from our favorite room. Good night! I will try and sleep."
I took her hand and kissed her saintly forehead. She gave me the bunch of keys, to put away in her desk, and having rung the bell for her maid, I left her.
PART II.
"He is a rich man, but he is a cold man; he is cold as marble. He never smiles. He does nothing but sit in his library, they say and look out upon the sky. His son is at sea, and his wife is dead; and he might as well be dead as alive, for all the good he does. He never attends public meetings, never votes, never was seen at a public dinner or at a private one; and all that he does do is to sit in his room and look at the sky."
Thus spoke one of a small circle of gossips in the sitting-room of an inn in one of the Canadian cities.
"They tell me," said another gossip, "that he is a queer man, but that he does something else beside sit in his room and look at the sky. They say he goes round among prisoners in jail, from curiosity, I suppose, and that he reads to men condemned to die for murder. His face looks as dark and as grim as if he had bagged with Burke, in his native Edinboro'."
"How do you know that he came from Edinboro' in particular?" inquired another of the group.
"Because his servant-man says he told him yesterday that he was going back to Edinboro' in a few days, and that he was going to break up here, for good; and that's news that won't grieve any body but the jail-birds."
Up and down the room, up and down another room, back and forth, now looking at the sky, through the windows, now on the floor, never stopping for a moment, restless, anxious, sorrowful, sorrowful, with tears upon his cheek, tears in old channels, worn when the night was down, dug when he was alone, all alone, poor fellow!
How white his face, how white his hands, and how his hair is getting white, too! Up and down, with ceaseless step, all alone! How perfectly all alone! He mutters to himself, he prays, and now at last he stops and looks at his watch. It seems to be the moment for some expected guest to arrive. Yes, it must be so, for he goes to the door and opens it, and looks out into the passage.
The hall-door is opened, and the expected guest approaches the room, and enters. The eyes of the restless host are no longer wet with tears: they are dry and hard and cold.
"Have you brought me that trinket, Captain, and the hat and walking-stick, you spoke about yesterday?"
"I have, and they must have reached here before this, as I sent them up by one of the sailors before I left the ship."
The master of the house rang the bell. A servant entered, to whom he gave orders to have whatever things had been brought from the vessel carried up stairs, to his son's apartment. The servant looked for a moment at his master's face, and then withdrew.
"Is it necessary for you to remain long in port?"
"Not over two days; and then I sail for Liverpool. My cargo is nearly all stored, and I wait but your orders to name the day when we shall leave."
"Then in two days we will sail. I will send for you to-morrow, as I shall have to make arrangements with you regarding some private matters. Good evening!"
The visitor bowed himself from the room, and closed the door.
In an instant, all was changed in the manner of the man whom he had left alone in the chamber. The cold and frigid muscles relaxed. The step, a few moments before so formal, became quick and nervous. The eyes that had so suddenly dried, were wet again. The brows were no longer knit together in forbidding gloom, but expressed the wrinkled workings of some great internal agony. Up and down the apartment he paced for a few moments, with that same tread, whose sound seemed to syllable the sentiment of grief. Only for a few moments, for he quitted the room, and mounted the stairway. How slowly now he mounts the stairs: how slowly he places his foot upon the landing; and how wearily, as if weak, exhausted totally, he approaches a door that fronts him on his right! His hand is upon the knob. He turns it and enters. Could that marble face have been seen then, what a spectacle would it have presented!
"Utterly, hopelessly liveth that man," we would have said. "Keep from him laudanum, the loaded pistol, and the razor! Keep him from himself, for the love of God and his angels!" He is in the room; a trimly-finished room, with a single bed in it, and many comforts; a small library, foils hung upon the walls, old boxing-gloves placed carefully upon the table, an ink-stand, with a pen lying by its side, a book of travels open upon the desk, that stood by the favorite window, the chains and collars of dogs, a portrait of the man who had just entered the room, and a female portrait, too, both hung so that the owner of the room could see them when he first wakened in the morning. On the dressing-table was a golden locket, a plain straw hat, with a broad black ribbon round it; and, leaning against a chair, was a fragile cane, capped with some fancy head. Down into that chair this gloomy man threw himself. He reached out his hand, and grasped the hat, and then he held it to his lips; and while the tears fell rapidly, he kissed it over and over again. The cane he kissed, and then he sat moodily, with his eyes fixed upon the wall, where hung the boxing-gloves and the foils. No one entered that room after him, but there he sat until the sun, bathing the whole west, sent its farewell glory into the apartment, and seemed, as it were, to summon him. He rose and knelt by the bed, and then, with features fixed as the everlasting granite, he left the room and descended the steps.
PART III.
"When I took him those things, he was just as cold as a piece of ice. I wonder if he has any feeling. I wonder what he is going to do with those things. Most men would have asked me some further questions about that affair. God knows he can't blame me, though I believe he hates me, and I am afraid to be left alone with him. I don't understand him. He does not deal as other men would in such matters; but whenever I see him, he talks about his business matters; what the cargo will bring him; when his other vessels will reach port; what the price of goods is in every section of the world, as if he was going to send his ships to the Arctic ocean, to trade in icebergs."
Thus spoke one of two sea-faring men, in a small back-parlor in an inn in the Canadian city which I have alluded to before. The speaker was a man of rough exterior, blunt, and in all points a complete old sea-dog. The tempests had tanned his cheeks like sheets of parchment, or something more tough, and there were evident indications, throughout the whole man, that marked him as a stern and unflinching performer of his peculiar range of duties. His companion was the captain of another ship, owned by the individual with whom the former had just held the short interview, already described.
"Well, he is the strangest man," said the second, "that ever crossed my bows. Not one word of inquiry after the health of the crews, or how they are fed and treated, but down he must go himself to the ship, and in and through every place about he dives; and, though he does not seem to notice any thing, I am sure nothing escapes him. He is close-fisted, but, I will say, just; and if there is wrong anywhere, he will correct it if he can, and with his own property he generally can and does. But you promised to tell me about that affair of your last cruise. Go on with your yarn, and let's have another glass of whisky hot."
When the whisky was brought in, the sea-captain lit a segar, and between his smoking and his sipping, told a story in effect like this:
"We had as good a ship as ever floated on the sea, and we had as good a cargo as ever was borne over the sea by a ship. Part of the cargo was a large supply of flour, about which I had particular directions. I was to deliver it to a certain house at Greenock, and I was to tell the head partner of the house that this flour was not for sale; that was all I knew about it, though I think now, as I thought then, it was intended to be distributed among the suffering poor of some district of the Highlands. He has never said a word to me about the cargo.
"Well, we sailed out of Quebec, and had fair winds for three days, when, all at once, the sky lowered down with heavy clouds, and every thing seemed to indicate an approaching and a severe blow: and it did come, and for two days we bore up against it, though almost every hour found us in a worse condition to fight out the next.
"I had several passengers with me, and among them was the son of the owner. He was a tall, handsome youth, nothing in him like his father, except some slight resemblance of manner. I loved the boy, and the boy loved me, and every body seemed to take to him. He mixed freely among the men; most of them he had known a long time, as sailors, sailing his father's ship, and whom he had met on the wharves whenever the vessels returned to port.
"His father had intrusted him to me, with special instructions to be careful of him, and to see that he was safely left at one of the universities in England. He was going abroad to finish his education.
"Well, the storm kept on, and, instead of diminishing, it increased. Squall after squall struck her, and though every thing was done to relieve the ship, I found that things were getting worse, and finally a leak was discovered away down in the hold. The water poured in faster than we could pump it out, and indeed we could with difficulty work the pumps at all, owing to the constant pitching of the almost ungovernable vessel. To make a long yarn short, we were floundering away, with the pumps going, the winds blowing big guns, and the waves pitching like mountains of solid granite put into motion, when the helmsman was washed from the wheel; and before another could take his place, the vessel fell into the trough of the sea, and all was wild confusion and horror.
"I maintained sufficient command, at that terrible moment, to have some of my orders obeyed. The boats were ordered to be lowered, and when one had touched the water, the crazy sailors and passengers rushed to it, and for an instant, when it was filled, it floated on the back of a huge billow, and then was swept away into the foam, and was seen no more. It had filled with water, and down it went, with its cargo of screaming and blaspheming souls.
"The next boat fared better, and I had only time to get the remainder of the passengers, two only beside the boy, and some of the sailors, into it, when the ship went down into the deep sea, with a plunge like a wild horse when he is shot.
"We escaped the pool made by the ship's going down, and, with the greatest difficulty, we got the boat properly trimmed, and though surrounded by a perfect seething of broken waves, we managed to keep upon the surface.
"We had not a mouthful of any thing to eat on board, for we had no time to secure a morsel from the stores, so sudden was the necessity to take to the boats, and so short the time to accomplish our rescue.
"Two days and two nights wore away, and we drifted about the ocean without a compass and without a sail. Another day passed over our heads and we began to be afraid to look at one another. Thirst and hunger were turning us into tigers. The owner's son sat up my side at the helm, and leaned his head upon my knee. He slept most of the time, except at intervals, when he would waken up and look, with a bright eager eye, far over the waste of the inhospitable sea, and then he would gaze upon the miniature of his father that he wore around his neck. I saw what was coming. We were dying of thirst and hunger, and there was no hope. A few hours might delay the catastrophe; and a few hours only did delay it. It began with low whisperings and mutterings among the sailors, and then it broke out into loud oaths and fierce gestures. Each man seized what was nearest to him as a means of defense. The oars were raised from the water, and held in the air like war-clubs, and the boat drifted about, heedless of the helm, which I still held in my almost powerless hand. I had placed a couple of loaded pistols in my coat-pocket before we left the ship, and when I feared that I would have to prevent some mutinous spirit at a moment when disobedience would have been destruction to all; and these I guarded with a feverish care, lest they might be seized upon by some wretch in his extreme despair, and used as the means by which food could be obtained in that awful hour of our starvation. I saw that a crisis in our lives was at hand, for the low murmurs had grown into unmistakable expressions, and at last a demand was made for human flesh. One must be killed to feed the rest.
"The skeletons were going to do murder for food, and yet one human feeling beside that of hunger remained within them, that I did not know of, positively, then; but subsequent events, speedily following, revealed it to me.
"It was inevitable! one man among the gaunt and starving crew must die; but who was to be that man? That was a question which might possibly be determined on the instant where one man was stronger than the other, and only two were in our lorn condition; but when there were many, and none stronger than the rest, the matter became one of terrible difficulty.
"I determined to act on this hideous emergency, knowing full well that sailors are subject to the spirit of authority from long subjection to its practical exercise, and seeing that there was no escape from the result, for I swept the horizon in vain for some signal of approaching succor, I prepared to draw lots. Then arose the other startling and thrilling question, Who shall arrange the lots? There was not much time for argument, and so they agreed, after a moment's pause, that I, their captain, should hold the fates in my hand. I tore a piece of paper into as many strips as there were men to draw, and held them in my hand. All drew, and the owner's son drew the fatal lot. He was perfectly calm, although the youngest and the brightest-hoped of the whole party, and seemed to yield at once, without a murmur, to the horrid fate that in an instant awaited him. Then there sprang up a discussion among the starving crew, and they declared that the lots should be drawn over again: they would not have their favorite slaughtered. I arranged the pieces again, and to my horror and surprise, the youth again drew the fatal slip. Once more the crew, now doubly excited, with their grim, famished faces staring at me, swore in perfect madness that the youth should not die, and ordered me, with savage gestures of insane fury, to draw again. I saw that I was to do a duty beyond their wishes. I felt the terrific responsibility that rested upon me, and it required but a few seconds to make up my mind what course to pursue. All was despair around me; all was hopeless, utterly, and, I thought, eternally hopeless; and I felt that I would not die with the crime of human partiality and injustice upon my soul.
"I agreed to hold the lots again; and when I had arranged them, I said that the youth must be excluded from the drawing, and for that purpose told him to step forward to the bow. He rose to obey me. I remember his thin figure standing between me and the bright line left by the departed sun against the horizon of the heaving sea. One instant, and one instant only, did he stand thus elevated like a living cross, with his arms outstretched to balance his tottering steps, when he fell forward into the arms of the excited sailors, I had shot him, as he stood thus, determined to end the conflict for blood that was raging around me, and satisfy the generous and noble-hearted sailors, whose lives were not dearer to them, in that hour of supernatural honor and supernatural horror, than the gentle sentiments of love toward the boy they had known so long.
A few days afterward, a vessel picked out of the trough of the sea a boat with three men, lying, half-drowned, upon its bottom. I was one of the three who had survived the bloody feats by which several were killed, and only we had survived.
"I had taken the miniature from the neck of the boy, and the cane, his father's parting-gifts, and his straw-hat I also preserved, for I felt they would be dear to the unhappy man at home. When I took them to him, he ordered them to be carried to his son's room; and not even then, or before, when I first arrived, did he say one word to me of censure or approval. I do not feel that I have done wrong, for God knows it was a hard and unheard-of condition we were all in."
After the captain had finished his story, he rose from his chair and left the room. We may be sure there was no more whisky-punch drank by the other captain, who was left, half-bewildered, standing alone in the apartment.
PART IV.
Several years had passed away. My relative had died, and I had been living some time in Paris, when business-letters reached me from the lawyer in Edinburgh who had charge of her estate, that compelled me to relinquish my studies, and hasten over to Scotland.
When I reached Edinburgh I went directly to Mr. ———'s office, and after going through some necessary forms of law, placed the affairs of the property, so far as I was concerned, in a way of settlement. As I was rising to return to my hotel, Mr. ——— begged me, instead of taking my dinner at the solitary little table in the coffee-room of the inn, to come and dine with him at six o'clock. I readily accepted his invitation.
I was sitting in the public-room of the Royal Hotel, gazing with untiring admiration at the various points of view from the window; the old Castle of Edinburgh, upon its rocky eyrie, overlooking a glorious panorama of mountain, ocean, frith, and far-extended fields, waving up toward the regions of the lakes. Like a gallant soldier, wounded in battle, his head crowned with laurels, his limbs shattered, lay this beautiful and wonderful city before me; for part of it is fresh and new, and the rest ruined and withered by time and the elements. I could linger in description, forgetful of my story, but I did not undertake to describe the outward characteristics of Scotch scenery, but to delineate the not uncommon qualities of the people of that country.
My attention was somewhat distracted by the entrance of a man into the room. He threw himself into a chair; and it struck me, though at the moment I was not observing him strictly, that he sighed as he took his seat. I was not so hardened by the usages of the world, or so indifferent to the phenomena of human idiosyncrasy, as to let such a thing escape my reflection, and I turned more fully to observe the stranger. He was, I should think, about sixty years of age, tall and meagre. I felt no farther curiosity to examine his person or his dress, after I had once seen his face. There, stamped indelibly, were marks that time had had nothing to do with. Age has its wrinkles by right; its furrows are made as if it were to let the streams of life have passage to the great ocean of eternal rest. Youth has its furrows too, by wrong; planted there by premature crime, by premature suffering, by unhappy love, or morbid hope. The face before me had doubtless been, in its youth, eminently beautiful; but of that description of beauty to be found in the bust of Brutus the Tribune, and seldom seen on Scotch shoulders. The hair was black, but thickly sprinkled with gray. There was an undying look of valor in the whole expression of the countenance. It was not the look of the bully, or such as we would suppose belonged to the soldier; but it expressed a moral courage, such as martyrs wear when they die for truth, or suffer for the right.
While I was engaged looking at him, he took a letter from his pocket, and, after hastily reading it, he rose and advanced to the window through which I had been looking prior to his entrance. I could well imagine how that earnest soul might be affected by such a scene as met his view. He stood for several minutes at the window, and I could observe, by that intuitive faculty common to all men, but not always recognized at the moment, that a deep gloom constituted the chief element of his meditations, as he looked out upon the scene. Looking at my watch, and finding it approaching the time that I should be at Mr. ———'s, I ascended to my room to dress for dinner, as I had some distance to go to reach my friend's house, he living in the country. I told the waiter to have a carriage at the door when I should get through with my toilette. When I descended, the stranger was standing at the front door. I simply gave directions to the waiter to tell the coachman where to take me. The stranger turned upon me abruptly upon hearing the name of my friend, and I thought he was upon the point of addressing me. If that had been his intention, he relinquished it upon the instant, and without farther delay I entered the carriage and drove off. After I had been seated with my friend some moments in his parlor, and the usual inquiries and answers had passed between us, he smiled and said, "I have something curious to show you to-day—an old friend; not that old friends are curious; but really, a man whose history and whose character will amuse and puzzle you. I want you to see him before I tell you who he is, and what he is. You are a little in advance of the dinner-hour, like all your countrymen, but he will be here exactly to the moment, for all Scotchmen and Scotch watches are wound up to go and stop at the same moment."
As my friend had predicted, the door-bell rang at the instant, and the stranger of the coffee-room entered. There was a mutual look of recognition between us, and a positive sensation passed through my mind—a dim and mysterious thought which informed me that I had heard the whole history of this man before. So much so that I arose, upon the gestures of introduction, with warm and growing sympathies at my heart for him.
My friend's family consisted of his wife, a daughter, some sixteen or seventeen years of age, and a son, who was just down from one of the universities to spend the vacation at home. It is not necessary to enter into the details of the dinner, which came on and went off with the usual incidents of such gastronomic events. The conversation turned, and was continued throughout the repast, upon the very recent revolution in Paris, which I, a foreigner, had had the singular good fortune to witness. Though my recitals of the daily scenes of that chronic phase of French polities, seemed to interest my host and his family, they appeared to have little effect upon the other guest. Interested as I was in the circumstances I was relating, I was mysteriously, and, despite myself, more interested in that consolidated embodiment of moral and physical revolution that sat directly opposite me. There seemed to be a tacit understanding with all the parties present, myself included, though I knew not why, that nothing should be said that was not general in its character. Though I knew, from a slight incidental remark, that my host and his friend had only met that day after a separation of years, I was not surprised at their making me and my experiences topics of unflagging conversation.
In due season the dishes and the dessert were removed, and then, the ladies retiring, left us to our wine and ourselves. There was an uneasy pause after the ladies had left us—an almost embarrassing silence. My topics were exhausted. It seemed as if they mutually agreed that I could no longer, by any miscellaneous gossip, keep them from some positive allusion to the past. Our host filled his glass with claret and passed the decanter to me.
After I had filled my glass, I naturally pushed the wine across the table to the stranger, when the attention of my host and my own was riveted upon him. His head was bent upon the table. We could not see his face, but we saw that his muscular hands were clenched together, and his shoulders heaved up and down with convulsive motion. Where his temple was exposed to our view, I saw a rapid movement as of blood coursing to his brain. This lasted but a moment. The face of the host, too, had undergone a change as suddenly; tears stood in his hitherto happy and jovial eyes; his lips quivered, and be arose from his sent, and, approaching his friend, placed his hand upon his head. There sat that stern, apparently unsympathizing man, his whole system heaving with some long-suppressed and all-overmastering emotion; and over him the lawyer, accustomed in chamber and in court-room to scenes of suffering arising from outraged justice, or terror from detected guilt, now quivering, weeping, at his own table, at the mere spectacle of a depressed head and a convulsed frame! I have described the features of the stranger, when in their calm; but when he raised his head from the table, a change the most singular had taken place. That undying valor, almost stubborn in its expression before, had died away; the beauty of his youth had returned to him, with almost feminine loveliness. Looking up at his friend, he said:
"I can endure it no longer: for years and years, James, I have kept this to myself, but now I must yield. To-day has brought back to me scenes that I have only remembered at midnight in tears. I could not bear to make my sorrows common. I could have borne it to-day, if I had not come here to this house. I bore it when I first met you, my oldest and my dearest friend. I bore it when the world cried murder, and she perished unavenged; when her assassins took possession of their blood-stained gains; when I left the land of my birth, and the home of my youth, and went among strangers to live and toil, toil for my boy, to give him wealth and station such as his sister would have had. I bore it, and took a pride in keeping my sacred agony to myself, when I heard that to appease the famine of some of my shipwrecked sailors, my son was shot. I bore it when I looked again upon the land I had so long left, but never had forgotten; but I could not bear it longer when I saw your wife sitting happily by your side, as my wife used to sit by mine—your daughter smiling, as my poor child used to smile, and your son, just from the college to which mine was going—all there were too much. I have been called an iron man—a man almost dead to human feeling; but you, who have known me, must have known it would come to this at last."
He finished speaking, and after a short interval, we returned to the parlor. The iron armor, once thrown aside, seemed as it never could be resumed, in the presence of his old friend's family. Long-smothered emotions of his heart appeared to well up from him as if his nature had received an invocation. Although that remarkable countenance still wore the traces of long suffering, there beamed over it a pervading recognition of long-sought but just-discovered sympathy. I will not attempt to analyze in the exact crucible of philosophical chemistry the various dispositions that characterized this man. There are few persons who have not met with similar individuals, whose conduct in their human out-door walks has been at total variance with their human in-door feelings. The only thing that I esteem strange in all that I have related, is the singular train of coincidental events, beginning with the small ring upon the hearth-stone of my relation's bed-room, that had expanded into larger circumferences, embracing years and distant countries; and then, after having encircled, by so many extraordinary events, the destinies of people differing so totally in pursuits and purposes, finding its concluding movement near the same spot where it had commenced. It is ill-becoming in us, with our limited knowledge, to set ourselves up as judges of human character; for here, in an especial manner, was a man entirely misjudged, since it was not long before I was informed by my friend the lawyer, that he had been the agent of the most bounteous charities imposed upon him by this Iron Man.
The ignorant traveller, entirely uninstructed in the truths of natural history, upon first beholding the peaks of the Alps, shrouded in their everlasting mantles of snow, would little dream that in the vales beneath ran musical streams of summer water, and emerald meadows spread their velvet cloaks, dappled with the clustering rose-bush, and the sun-loving flowers of the gardens of the tropics.