Fashion and Famine Part 14

"See what, Robert?"

"Why, that starting poor I am only the more likely to be kept in poverty. I remember now one of our clerks, no older than I am, was promoted only last week. His father was a rich man, and it was whispered that he would sometime be a junior partner in the concern."

"You see, then, what money can do."

"Well, after all, my good old aunt has money, more than people imagine, I dare say!" cried the boy, brightening up.

"What, the old lady in the market? Take my advice, Robert, and never mention her."

"And why not?" questioned the boy.

"Because selling turnips and cabbage sprouts might not be considered the most aristocratic way of making money among your fellow clerks."

The boy changed countenance; his eye kindled and his lip began to curve.

"I shall never be ashamed of my aunt, sir. She is a good, generous woman----"

"No doubt, no doubt. Go and proclaim her good qualities among your companions, and see the result. For my part, I think the state of society which makes any honest occupation a cause of reproach, is to be condemned by all honorable men. But you and I, Robert, cannot hope to change the present order of things, and without the power to remedy we have only to submit. So take my advice and never talk of that fine old huckster-woman among your fellow clerks."

Robert was silent. He stood gazing upon the floor, his cheeks hot with wounded feeling, and his eyes half full of tears. When he spoke again there was trouble in his voice.

"Thank you for the advice, Mr. Leicester, though I must say it seems rather cold-hearted. I will go now; excuse me for keeping you up so late."

"You need not go on that account," said Leicester, "I am not certain of going to sleep at all before morning!"

"And I," said Robert, with a faint smile, "somehow this conversation makes me restless. That sweet dream from which you aroused me, will not be likely to come back again to-night!"

Robert glanced at the miniature as he spoke, and a glow of admiration kindled the mist still hanging about his eyes.

"Perhaps," said Leicester, quietly, and with his keen glance fixed upon the boy, "perhaps I may introduce you to her some day."

"To her," cried the youth. "Alive! is there any being like that alive?"

His face was in a glow, and a bright smile flashed over it. Nothing could have been more beautiful than the boy that moment.

Leicester regarded him with a faint smile. Like a chemist, he was experimenting upon the beautiful nature before him, and like a chemist he watched the slow, subtle poison that he had administered.

"Alive and breathing, Robert; the picture does not quite equal her in some things. It is a little too sad. The quick sparkle of her more joyous look no artist can embody. But you shall see her."

"I shall see her," muttered Robert, turning his eyes from the miniature.

"What if my dream were to prove correct?"

"What--the lone island, the flowers, the magical fruit!" said Leicester with a soft laugh that had a mocking tone in it.

"That was not all my dream. It seemed to me that she was in trouble, and in all her beauty and her grief, became my guardian angel."

"You could not select anything more lovely for the office, I a.s.sure you," answered Leicester.

"She must be good as she is beautiful," answered the boy, turning an earnest glance on his companion; for without knowing it, his sensitive nature had been stung by the sarcasm lurking beneath the soft tones in which Leicester had spoken.

"At your age, all women are angels," was the rejoinder.

"And at yours, what are they then?" questioned the lad.

"Women!" answered Leicester with a scornful curve of the lip, and a depth of sarcasm in his voice, that made the youth shrink.

The arch hypocrite saw the impression his unguarded bitterness had made, and added, "but this one really is an angel. I may not admire her as much as you would, Robert, but she is an exquisite creature, timid as a young fawn, delicate as a flower!"

"I was sure of it!" exclaimed Robert with enthusiasm, for this frank praise had obliterated all impression made by the sarcasm in Leicester's voice.

"And now," said Leicester taking his hat from the table, "as you seem quite awake, and as I positively cannot sleep, what if we take a stroll?"

"Where could we go at this time of night?" said Robert, surprised by the proposition.

"I have a great fancy to let you see the inside of a gambling house for once," was the quiet reply.

"A gambling house? Oh, Mr. Leicester!"

"I have often thought," said Leicester, as if speaking to himself, "that the best way of curing that ardent curiosity with which youth always regards the unseen, is to expose evil at once, in all its glare and iniquity. The gambling house is sometimes a fine moral school. Robert, have you never heard grave men a.s.sert as much?"

Robert did not answer, but a cloud settled on his white forehead, and taking his cap from Leicester, who held it toward him, he began to crush it nervously with his hand.

"The storm is over, I believe," observed Leicester, without seeming to observe his agitation. "Come, we shall be in time for the excitement when it is most revolting."

Robert grew pale and shrunk back.

"Not with me?" cried Leicester, turning his eyes full upon the boy with a look of overwhelming reproach, "are you afraid to go with _me_, Robert?"

"No. I will go anywhere with you!" answered the youth, almost with a sob, for that look of reproach from his benefactor wounded him to the heart. "I will go anywhere with you!"

And he went.

CHAPTER VII.

THE OLD HOMESTEAD.

There was not about her birth-place, A thicket, or a flower, But childish game, or friendly face, Had given it a power To haunt her in her after life, And be to her again, A sweet and bitter memory Of mingled joy and pain.

It was a wild and lovely spot in the heart of Maine, a state where the rural and the picturesque are more beautifully blended than can be found elsewhere upon the face of the earth. The portion we speak of is broken, and torn up, as it were, by undulating ridges of the White Mountains, that seem to cast their huge shadows half over the state. The valleys are bright with a wealth of foliage, which, in the brief summer time, is of a deeper and richer green than ever was found elsewhere on this side the Atlantic. Hills, some of them bold and black with naked rocks, others clothed down the side with soft waving ridges of cultivation, loomed over fields of Indian corn, with buckwheat, all in a sea of snowy blossoms. Patches of earth newly ploughed for the next year's crop, blended their brown tints with mountain slopes, rich with rye and oats.

Wild, deep lakes, sleeping in their green basins among the hills; mountain streams plunging downward, and threading the dark rocks together as with a thousand diamond chains closely entangled and struggling to get free, shed brightness and music among these hills; and the Androscoggin, gliding calmly on, winding through the hills, and rolling softly beneath the willows that here and there give its banks a park-like beauty, and a thousand broken hollows--sheltered and secluded nooks of cultivated ground, sometimes containing a single farm, sometimes a small village; such is the country, and such are the scenes to which our story tends.

In one spot the mountainous banks loomed close and dark over the river; but there was a considerable depth of rich soil among the rocks, and thrifty trees crowded the poverty-stricken yellow pine up to the very summit of each beautiful acclivity; for half a mile the shadows of this rough bank fell nearly across the river, but all at once it parted as if some earthquake had torn it, centuries before, and there lay a little valley opening upon the stream, walled on one hand by an abrupt precipice, and on the other by a steep and broken hill, its crevices choked up by wild grape-vines, mosses, and every species of forest tree that can be found among the high grounds of Maine. This little valley was perhaps half a mile in width, and cut back into the mountains twice that distance. From thence the highway wound up the broken bank, and was lost sight of among the pine trees bristling along the horizon.

The river was broad at this point, as a rich flat of groves and meadow land lay on the opposite side. This was threaded by a turnpike, connected with the road we have mentioned by a ferry-boat, or rather ancient scow, in which two old men of the neighborhood picked up a tolerable subsistence.