Vassall Morton Part 21

Vinal, as men go, knew himself very well; and yet there were points of his character which escaped him, or which, rather, he misnamed. He knew perfectly that he was ambitious, selfish, unscrupulous: this he confessed in his own ear, pluming himself much on his philosophic candor. But he never would see that he was envious. In his mental map of himself, envy was laid down as pride and emulation. The wrestlings of human nature are not all of the sort figured in the Pilgrim's Progress and set forth in the Catechism. Vinal had an ideal; he had cherished it from boyhood, and battled ever since to realize it. He would fain make himself the finished man of the world, the unflinching, all-knowing, all-potential man of affairs, like a blade of steel, smooth and polished, but keen, searching, resistless. This was his aim; but nature was always balking him. He was the victim of a const.i.tutional timidity, his scourge from childhood. He had been known to swoon outright, on being run away with in a chaise, and he never could muster nerve enough to fire a gun. Against this defect his pride rose in revolt. It thwarted him at every turn, and conflicted with all his aspirations. In short, he could not endure its presence, and fought against it with an iron energy of will. Thus his life was a secret, unremitting struggle, whose mark was written on his pale, nervous, resolute features. It's an ill wind that blows no good. This painful warfare achieved a singular vigor and concentration of character, and would have led to still better issues, had the a.s.sailing force been marshalled under a better banner. A lofty purpose may turn timidity to heroism; but a purpose like Vinal's is by no means so efficacious, and the man remains, if not quite a coward, yet something very like one.

It would have been well for Vinal if, like Morton, he had been born to a fortune. In that case--for he had no apt.i.tude for pleasure hunting--his restless energies would probably have spurred him into some creditable field of effort, natural science, mathematics, or philology, to all of which he inclined. But Fate had not been so propitious; and to achieve the task which she had forgotten was the zenith of his aspirations.

There was one person who had always been an eyesore to him, and a stumbling block in his way. This was Va.s.sall Morton. Morton, at twenty-three, was, in feeling, still a boy; Vinal, at twenty-three, was a well-ripened man. But the man hated the boy; and the boy retorted with a dislike which was largely dashed with scorn. Vinal felt the scorn, and it cut him to the quick, the more so, that he could not hide from himself that he stood in awe of Morton. He hated him, too, because he had that which he, Vinal, lacked--fortune, good health, steady nerve. He hated him, because he thought that Morton understood him; because the frankness of the latter's nature rebuked the secrecy of his own; and, above all, because he saw in him his most formidable rival in the affections of Edith Leslie.

Vinal's nature, self-drilled as it was, could not be called a cold one. It had in it spots and veins of sensitiveness. When a child, this sensitiveness had often been morbidly awake, and had caused him much suffering; but as he grew towards manhood, it had been overlaid and hidden by very different qualities, not often found in connection with it. Of late, however, he had been in love,--with Edith Leslie, as well as with her money,--and the dormant susceptibilities of his childhood had been in some sort reawakened.

His mind, inharmonious and unhappy as nature and himself had jointly made it, had never yet felt a pang so sharp as when, arriving at Matherton, he learned privately from Colonel Leslie the engagement which had pa.s.sed between Morton and his daughter. Miss Leslie's twice rejected suitor compressed his thin lips in silence; it was his usual sign of strong emotion. Leslie pressed his favorite's hand,--he would fain have called him son-in-law,--and, turning away abruptly, Vinal left the house.

The man whom he envied and hated had triumphed; robbed him of fortune, and robbed him of happiness; happiness of which Morton had had already his full share, and a fortune which would but swell the ample bulk of his possessions. Vinal was frenzied with grief, rage, and jealousy.

CHAPTER XXIV.

_Clo_. That she should love this fellow and refuse me!

If it be sin to make a true election, she is d.a.m.ned.

_Cymbeline_.

Morton sat in the reading room of the National, the grand hotel of Matherton. It was by no means an elegant apartment. In the middle was a table covered with newspapers; at the sides were desks, likewise covered with newspapers, padlocked together in files. The walls and the ceiling glared a drear monotony of white, broken, however, by sundry ornaments, worthy the attention of the curious. Here, framed in birdseye maple, was the engraved likeness of "Old Hickory," with hat and cane in hand, a cloak to hide the gauntness of his figure, and hair bristling in electrified disorder. Here, too, was a colored print of the favorite steamboat "Queen of the Lake;" Niagara Falls, by a license of art, forming a blue curtain in the background. At its side was a lithograph of the Empire Hotel, New York, the sidewalk in front being embellished with groups of pedestrians, dressed with matchless elegance, after the fas.h.i.+on plates; and, over against this, an advertis.e.m.e.nt of Jessup's steel, encircled with a lithographed halo, composed of chisels, axes, hammers, saws, and ploughshares.

The apartment, thus furnished and thus adorned, had, besides Morton, but two occupants; the one a factory agent, who stood at a desk, absorbed in the New Orleans Picayune; the other a country tailor, who displayed the sign of the "Full-dressed Man" at the neighboring village of Mudfield, and was now seated at a window, busied in polis.h.i.+ng a huge garnet ring, which he wore, with a red silk handkerchief.

In a window recess, aloof from the tailor's, sat Morton, scarcely conscious of any presence but that of his own thoughts. He had found a philosopher's stone; and through the rest of his life, this comfortless reading room of the Matherton Hotel, this sanctuary of dry and weary Yankeedom, was linked in his memory with dreams of golden brightness.

A firm, quick step crossed the threshold, and paced the sanded floor.

Till this moment, Morton had remained absorbed, shut in from the outer world; but now an influence, which believers may call magnetism, made him look up and bend forward from the recess to see who the sudden stranger might be. The stranger turned also, and showed the pale, fixed face of Horace Vinal.

Morton was disposed to be on good terms with all the world, and more especially with his defeated rival.

"Good morning, Vinal," he said, holding out his hand, which Vinal took, his cold, thin fingers trembling in the warm grasp of Morton. He had had no thought of finding him there; the encounter was unlooked for as it was unwelcome; and, as he muttered a few pa.s.sing words of commonplace, his features grew haggard with the violence of struggling emotion. He turned away, went to a desk, pretended to read a newspaper for a few moments, and then left the room.

Morton looked after him. He had no doubt that Vinal had heard of his misfortune; and the first sense of pain which, since the evening before last, the successful lover had felt, now crossed his mind.

"It's devilish hard for him, poor fellow," he thought, as, measuring Vinal's pa.s.sion by his own, a vivid image of the latter's suffering rose upon him.

Vinal strode along a corridor of the hotel. There was no one to see him. His forehead was knit, his nostrils distended, his jaws clinched.

A man, whom he knew, came from a side pa.s.sage. Instantly Vinal's face was calm again, and as the other pa.s.sed he greeted him with a smile.

He went out into the main street of the town, along which he walked for a few rods with his usual air of alert composure; then turned down a narrow and unfrequented by-way. Here his whole bearing changed. He trod the gravelled sidewalk with a fierce, nervous motion; and with hands clinched and eyes fixed on the ground, muttered through his set teeth,--

"Fair or foul, by G--, I'll be even with him."

CHAPTER XXV.

O, quha is this has done this deed, This ill deed done to me?

To send me out this time o' the zeir, To sail upon the sea.--_Percy Reliques_.

A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint.

_Troilus and Cressida_.

"Your proposal flatters me, Mr. Morton; and, in many points of view, the connection you offer would be a desirable one,--a very desirable one. But I must say to you plainly, that if my wishes alone were consulted, my daughter would bestow her hand elsewhere. Perhaps I need not tell you that Horace Vinal, who was my ward, and my late wife's relation, and who has been my partner in business for a year or more, is a young man whom I have looked upon as my son, and whom it was my very earnest hope to have seen such in reality. You who have had an opportunity of knowing him can hardly be surprised that, after so long an intimacy, I should prefer this connection to any other. I have seen him in all the relations of life, and the more I have seen the more I have learned to esteem him."

"You speak with a good deal of emphasis of his character. May I ask if any part of your objection to me rests on that score."

"In a matter like this, I am bound to be frank with you. In many quarters, I hear you very highly spoken of,--so highly, in fact, that I am disposed to take with every qualification what I have heard to your disadvantage."

"Pray, what is that?"

"I was a soldier once, and don't incline to inquire too closely into the way young men may see fit to amuse themselves. But on a point where my daughter's happiness might be involved----"

"Upon my word, sir, I don't understand you."

"Well, Mr. Morton, I hear--that is, I have learned--that, like other young men of leisure, you have had your _bonnes fortunes_, and winged other game than partridges and woodc.o.c.k."

Morton looked at him in surprise. The truth was, that, some time before, the discreet and far-sighted Vinal had contrived to inoculate his patron with this calumny, which he thought the species most likely to take readily. And such had been his tact, that Leslie, though well imbued with the idea, would have been puzzled to say whence he had received it. A man of shallow-brained uprightness like his, if he yields too easy a belief to falsehood, has the advantage of yielding also an easy belief to truth. A few words from Morton sufficed to carry conviction to the frank-hearted auditor, who, feeling that, at least as regarded its worst features, his charge must be groundless, hastened to make the _amende_.

"Your word is enough, Mr. Morton, and I owe you an apology for imagining that you could be false or heartless in any connection whatever. I think, however, that you can see how, without disparagement to you, I should still regret that Horace Vinal, who is personally so near to me, so devoted to my interests, and so strongly attached to my daughter, should be disappointed. I advised him, yesterday, to go to Europe, to recruit his health. I am told that you had yourself some plan of the kind."

"A very indefinite one, sir; in fact, amounting to none at all."

"Go this autumn; be absent a year,--that is not too long for seeing Europe,--and if at the end of that time you and my daughter should remain as earnest in this matter as you are now, why, I am not the man to persist in opposing her inclination."

The sentence was hard; but there was no appeal. Leslie had told Vinal the day before that he would despatch Morton on his travels, intimating a hope that a long separation might bring about a change in his daughter's feelings. Morton saw nothing for it but acquiescence; to which, indeed, Miss Leslie urged him, confiding in the strength of his attachment, and happy to reconcile adverse duties and inclinations at any price.

Meanwhile, he had not the smallest suspicion of the subtle trick which his rival had played him. "This is a charitable world!" he thought; "one must keep the beaten track, look demure, and talk virtue, or, in one shape or another, it will be the worse for him."

CHAPTER XXVI.

Then loathed he in his native land to dwell.--_Childe Harold_.

_Slend_. A gentleman born, Master Parson, who writes himself _Armigero_; in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation, _Armigero_!

_Shal_. Ay, that I do; and have done any time these three hundred years.--_Merry Wives of Windsor_.

The engagement of Miss Leslie and Morton was to be kept secret till the latter's return. None knew it but Leslie and Vinal. Vinal, within a few weeks, sailed for Europe, meaning, however, to be absent only three or four months. Other motives apart, he felt, and Leslie saw, that his health, always s.h.i.+vering in the wind, demanded the change.

Meanwhile, Morton made the best of a six weeks' reprieve; and hampered as he was by the injunction of secrecy, and the precautions which it demanded, he crowded the short interval with half a lifetime of mixed pleasure and pain, expectation and anxiety.