CHAPTER III.
Nearly a year after Felden"s disappearance, I was surprised by the following letter from him:
"Dear old Jamison:
I know you thought and think me a scape grace, but when you read what I shall write, you will forgive me as a simple madcap. To get you into a proper state of mind, I will at once proceed a tale to unfold.
The day of my departure from Cincinnati, I went to the Burnett to discuss a business venture with a guest of the house. He was in the dining-room at 5 o"clock dinner. I sat by his side discussing our business, when I was startled by the tones of a voice near by.
I sought it. There just opposite to me the "brown shawl" was being seated. An elderly lady accompanied her.
My vis-a-vis was a young girl, not over eighteen, but in every respect the woman I met in "50, at the flower-show in Regent"s Park. There was one difference it is true--in her coiffure; as I took it, the result of change of fashion. So vividly was the photograph of years ago impressed on my memory, and so exactly was it copied, that the incongruity of time and added years never crossed my brain. I was dazed by the sudden apparition of my dream. No thought entered my mind that it was contrary to the laws of nature, that a woman of 18 in "50 was still only 18 now; nor did the idea occur to me that I was laboring under an hallucination, or was the victim of mistaken ident.i.ty. The woman I had worshipped for long years was there before me, in every feature the same as memory pictured her. She was no older, and was altered only as change of fashion had altered her. I did not reason on the subject.
I overheard that the two ladies were on their way to Boston; and were to leave on the 7:30 train, going East. They examined a time table, and speculated as to their stops for meals before reaching their destination. The elder was addressed as "Auntie," the younger one as "Rita."
In an hour I was at the station with my luggage. I saw them enter the cars, and knew whenever they left it at eating stations. At Boston I made my cab driver follow their carriage and took the number of the dwelling and the name of the street. The next day I watched the house. At noon Rita with a lady, both in calling costume took a carriage at the door, and Rita, for so I already called her in my thoughts threw a kiss to a child who had followed them from the house.
I determined this was her home, and felt no longer any necessity for constant watching. Towards sundown I was walking in the Common, where she and I met face to face. She looked at me, but as one to her an indifferent stranger. A girl, probably of five years was her companion. While the latter sailed a toy boat on the pond, the young lady sat on a seat not far away.
The little girl dropped her hat in the water, and called out, "Oh, Aunt Rita! I"ve lost my hat." They tried to reach it with her parasol. I ran to a man raking gra.s.s, took his rake and rescued the hat. When I put it on the child"s head, the aunt thanked me, with a smile that was a ray of sunshine. Her voice, modulated to express thanks, was simply music.
Resolved to take advantage of any and every opportunity to make her acquaintance, I took off my hat saying, "Pardon me, but we have met before. It was in London, in 1850."
She replied, with a smile, "Your memory must be wonderful, for at that time, I was--let me see--" and she counted the years on her fingers, "I was then nine years old, and very small for my age." I was dumbfounded, for as yet I had not thought of the anachronism I had been guilty of. I said, "it is strange"--my voice sounded hollow to myself--"but a young lady, your very image, I met a dozen times, and what is stranger still, she wore the self same brown shawl which covered your shoulders at the Burnett house, a few days since." She did not notice my allusion to the Burnett house but burst out in a hearty laugh and clapped her hands so loudly, that the little girl ran to her.
"I see it all," she cried; "Minnie, my sister, was in London that year, and wore that shawl. Her picture was taken in it about the same time, and when I grew up I was so wonderfully like her, that she gave it to me; when I fix my hair as hers was, and put on that wrap, every one declares the picture to be the very image of myself."
I had broken the ice rather unconventionally, and was determined not to recede. I said "But she was with her father and a little boy." I felt I was treading on thin ice, but if it were not her father, I would manage in some way to get out of my mistake.
"Yes!" she replied. "Yes! my poor dear father and dear little Ralph were with her. I was at school at home. Poor papa--poor Ralph." Her eyes became suffused. "Papa and Minnie went abroad for brother Ralph"s health. Poor boy, he did not live to get home, and papa died the next year."
It was not right, but I could not resist it. I knew that grief admits a friend more readily than gaiety, so I said: "Yes! Ralph looked very frail, but your father was the picture of health. I was abroad after that for several years and lost sight of them."
She paused a while, and then continued, "dear papa was never sick, but his troubles broke his heart and killed him. You know it was a terrible thing to be cheated of all he possessed by the man he thought his best friend."
I saw she had an idea, I had known her father and of his affairs.
I was villain enough not to undeceive her. What is more, I felt I had a right to be free with this girl. I had worshipped her sister for years, and in every land. She and her sister were now become as one, and that one was designed by nature for me.
The child ran up and pulled her hand. "Lets go home, aunt Rita, I am hungry."
She arose, and nodding me a polite good evening, said:
"I suppose you will come to see Minnie. Her house is No. ----. My aunt and I are visiting her."
I promised to do so, and pa.s.sed a sleepless night, racking my brain to discover some way of getting into No. ---- without taking advantage of this sweet girl"s unconventional innocence. Could I tell a lie? Would it be a lie to excuse myself on the plea of having a slight acquaintance with the dead father? I lived a lie; was indeed a living lie, but I had as yet to my recollection never uttered a direct one.
On the next day I called, asking for the ladies. I sent in a card with an a.s.sumed name and wrote under it, "An acquaintance of years ago." Rita and Mrs. Wilton, her sister, came in together. I stood for several minutes speechless. There were the two sisters.
Apparently there was ten years difference in their ages, and the disparity was patent. Yet I looked from one to the other, and for a while was hardly able to determine that it was the elder I had previously met. I hid my confusion. They seemed never to question my having been a friend of their father. Neither evinced the slightest emotion when our eyes met. I had while abroad, the entre of many n.o.ble houses. I used this fact as a sort of credential and succeeded so well that Mr. Wilton called at my hotel and invited me to dine with his family.
The visit was repeated; and I was well received. I honored the wife--but loved the young sister. It seemed to me it was she I had been carrying all of these years in my heart; and I did not stop to think what all this might lead to. When I changed my skin in India I became the man I pretended to be. I was the homeless Jack Felden. I was madly infatuated, and what may seem strange, while I trembled when I looked at or touched the younger sister, I felt not a single tremor, when the elder walked to a concert at night with her hand on my arm; not an emotion, when she looked me in the face. I loved her years ago, I loved her sister now because she and her sister had become one, and that one was the younger.
I watched Rita and could not find that I aroused one single feeling of reciprocation in her breast. I grew mad at the thought, and at night cried aloud in agony. Was it true--could it be true, that after all, I was nothing to this woman who, I believed, was made for me?
I spoke one day of the episode at the flower show, intimating nothing which could connect them with it. Minnie told how she, too, once had fallen in love the same way; suddenly she started and fixed her eyes on my black hair and olive hue. The look seemed to recall her; she had no suspicion.
I pondered on the thing. Years ago my glance sent the blood crimson to her brow. The sister now affected me as she had formerly done, but I seemed to be nothing to her. I spent sleepless nights trying to account for this. I reached the conclusion at last that love--pa.s.sionate love, was a physical as well as a spiritual emotion; that I was wearing a mask covering my true self, and to win Rita I must unmask.
I have told you I could remove and replace my scar in a day, but to change the color of my hair or complexion requires from four to six months. I learned that Rita, with her aunt, whom I did not meet, would return to their home in Tennessee within a month, and she would then be a village fixture for perhaps a year. I grew madly jealous lest some one should love and win her before I could appear properly before her.
I swore to have her, and when won, I felt sure she would never change, but would wait and wait until she could be mine. I bade the sisters goodbye with a heavy heart--all the heavier, because on their part leave-taking was only kindly.
I hurried to Cincinnati; avoided places where I could meet you; gathered together my guns and fishing-tackle, my cosmetics and wardrobe sufficient for several months absence; arranged my bank account and went to Chicago, where I thought the Ethiopian might change his skin without observation. Jim being able to read my writing when in plain characters, was directed to pack up all my valuables and to hold himself in readiness to come to me at once on receipt of a letter.
He and his wife finally joined me. I sent him to Tennessee to learn the lay of the land in the town in which Rita"s aunt resided. To escape any difficulties a Northern negro might encounter in a small Southern town, he went as a boat hand on a steamer running from St. Louis; managed to get sick when ---- was reached, and was necessarily put ash.o.r.e. In a month he returned full of the information I desired.
I learned that the father of the two sisters, Mr. Dixon, had been a wealthy merchant in one of the large southern cities. He was an Englishman by birth and had lost his wife, a high-born Spanish lady, when Rita was a small child. They had no relations in America, except the aunt, under whose care the youngest daughter was living and upon whom she was dependent. When the family was in England for Ralph"s health in "50, the partner of Mr. Dixon contrived to raise a very large sum of money and decamped. Mr.
Dixon reached home to find himself an absolute pauper. The blow prostrated him, and in a few months he was laid beside his wife.
Rita had only a village education, but was a great reader and a good musician. Her aunt, Mrs. Allen, had been governess in a n.o.bleman"s house in England, was literary and decidedly uppish and withal intensely avaricious.
Mr. Wilton was the Boston correspondent of the ruined firm, and in the course of settling with it met and won Minnie. Rita"s aunt, or rather, aunt-in-law, the widow of her father"s only brother, took charge of her and made her home an unhappy one, not by direct unkindness, but by her querulous, carping and sarcastic disposition and manner. She would long since have gone to her sister but for a dislike of Wilton, who, though most kind to his wife, was a selfish man, and had given his young sister-in-law some great offense for which the Spanish blood, so hot in her veins, forbade forgiveness.
I do not remember ever to have told you that Jim Madison, the obedient servant and devoted slave of his once master, is a man of great native intellect. When a boy, I taught him to read a little and in Cincinnati spent much time trying to educate him. He was wonderfully apt and occasionally with strangers uses good English, but with me and my intimates prefers to be the negro servant and to use plantation language. He is intensely loving, absolutely honest, and at times startles me by an almost savage dignity inherited through a short line from his African forefathers.
Reared among a thousand negroes, for Clifton and Brandon people mingled almost as if of one plantation--jolly and light in his heart, he courted popularity among his kind and became one of the most astute diplomats. I love him as my servant and honor him as a true and honest man; respect, and if he were not my friend, would almost fear him as a shrewd, self poised, ever alert diplomatist.
I had known his qualities before, yet the thoroughness of his information brought me from ---- amazed me. He managed to get a job of sawing a load of fire-wood and packing it in the aunt"s yard, and from that he became domiciled in a room over the kitchen. With his open but shrewd honesty, he became almost a confident of Miss Rita.
You who have never lived in the South cannot understand how closely drawn together are kind masters and mistresses and humble but faithful servants.
The cunning Hindoo who gave me my raven locks and olive complexion, gave me also ingredients to restore my original appearance more rapidly than nature, una.s.sisted, would do, and at the same time, cosmetics, which would enable me to conceal the change while going on. The effects of the cosmetics were entirely temporary, and easily removable.
When Jim returned, I was ready to rea.s.sume my skin. When emerging from my bath one morning, I was no longer Jack Felden, but John ---- of Clifton, ----. Jim and Dinah shed tears of joy, crying together "Bress de Lord! oh bress de Lord--its Mars John--its hisself shuah"; and they hugged me again and again.
Dinah sat down in a rocking chair and said, "Come to Mammy, honey; jes let Mammy nuss her baby boy one more time, and I"se ready to go to glory."
I lay my head on the loving creature"s lap, while she combed out my hair and tried to curl it around her fingers. The curls of my youth, however, were gone forever.
When I looked into the gla.s.s, and saw my changed appearance, a sudden revulsion of feeling came over me. I was John ----: I was the unhappy husband of my cold cousin. A gulf arose between Rita and myself. How dare I think of winning the love of that pure girl! I, who was bound by the law of man to another, even though my reason and my heart told me, I was free. So thoroughly had I identified myself with the character of Jack Felden, while wearing his hair and complexion, that the recollection of my real name and position was blurred. It is true, my unfortunate marriage was never entirely forgotten, but I felt myself a new man, with new lights and different possibilities. The husband of Belle had become an unreal shadow--the figment of a disordered imagination.
The life I had been living for years began in the Bengalee village, when the cunning Hindoo made me a stranger to my servant--all before that was a dream. Now having laid aside my mask, I was the dead man come back to life, with all his memories and his hated ties.
I took long walks at night out into the open country. I fought the demon of memory; I fought the commands of conscience. But conscience would not down. The blood spot would not out. Despair filled me.
Aided by my temporary cosmetics, I again became Jack Felden, but the change was only partial. My gla.s.s told me I was he, my conscience whispered, I was John ----. Mine was a dual being. The hopes of the masquerader were depressed by the fears of the real man. I decided to send Jim to Clifton to learn something of Belle, resolved if she were still clinging to her pride, to speculate boldly--to win a fortune and give it to Rita as a rest.i.tution coming from her father"s swindler.
You know something of my success in Cincinnati. Jim had been my lucky stone; his rheumatic limbs were my barometer, telling me what the season would be from week to week, and though I did not believe in it, I had speculated on what his joints foretold and was now the possessor of a fair competency--I would risk my all, court fortune"s smile to make or break. If fortune should favor me, all would be Rita"s; I would avoid her forever; if the fickle jade failed me, Jim and I could gain a livelihood in new endeavors.
While shedding my skin, I had made several small successful ventures in corn and wheat. Jim and I put our heads together (or rather, I put my head to his shins) and we arrived at conclusions, which should lead to wealth, or to poverty. I put aside a couple of thousands for Jim and Dinah, staking all the rest of my fortune in margins. I won from the first. I pushed my luck with reckless daring, turning my profits into margins and new ventures. At the end of two weeks, my means were doubled.
I was eating my dinner--one of the best Dinah ever prepared--when Akbor and Queen watching me close by my chair, suddenly sprang up, and rushed to the door whining and uttering low barks. Jim entered, to be overthrown by the delighted animals. Gathering himself up quickly, he held out his hand to me, an unusual familiarity, for Jim is my friend, yet my slavish servant, and rarely loses the demeanor of the servant.