Chapter 6

_Ned Comes Back, with an Interesting Tale of a Fortunate Irishman._

Before any of us knew what to say, a soft tread in the library announced the approach of Mr. Cornelius. He entered unaware of the scene that had just terminated, and with the stormy character of which on Margaret's part, nothing could have been in greater contrast than the quiescent atmosphere that ever accompanied the shy, low-speaking pedagogue. His presence diffused peace and quietude; and more than formerly was this the case of late, since he had resumed an intention of entering the Presbyterian ministry.

He had qualified himself for this profession at Princeton. But after his full preparations, a conscientious scruple had arisen from a sense of his diffidence, which he despaired of conquering, and by which he believed his attempts at pulpit eloquence were sure to be defeated. Though he could compass the hardihood to discourse to an assemblage of distracting schoolboys several hours every week-day, he could not summon the courage to address an audience of somnolent adults two hours on Sunday.

But latterly he had awakened to a new inward call, and resolved upon a new trial of his powers. By way of preliminary training, he had set about practising upon the sailors and wharfmen who ordinarily spent their Sundays in gaming or boozing in low taverns along the water-front. To as many of these as would gather in some open space, at the sound of his voice raised tremulously in a hymn, he would preach as a layman, thus borrowing from the Methodists a device by which he hoped not only his present hearers, but also his own future Presbyterian congregations, should benefit. It was from one of these informal meetings, broken up by the news from Massachusetts, that he was but now returned.

The stupefaction in which we all sat, did not prevent our noting the excitement in which Cornelius came; and Mr. Faringfield looked a mute inquiry.

"Your pardon, friends," said the pedagogue to the company; and then to Mr. Faringfield: "If I might speak with you alone a moment, sir--"

Mr. Faringfield went with him into the library, leaving us all under new apprehension.

"Dear bless me!" quoth Mrs. Faringfield, looking distressed. "More calamity, I vow."

In a moment we heard Mr. Faringfield's voice raised in a vehement "No, sir!" Then the library door was reopened, and he returned to us, followed by Cornelius, who was saying in his mildest voice: "But I protest, sir--I entreat--he is a changed man, I assure you."

"Changed for the worse, I make no doubt," returned the angry merchant. "Let him not darken my door. If it weren't Sunday, I should send for a constable this moment."

"What is it?" cried Mrs. Faringfield. "Sure it can't be--that boy again!"

"Mr. Edward, madam," said the tutor.

"Dear, dear, what a day! What a terrible day! And Sunday, too!" moaned the lady, lying back in her chair, completely crushed, as if the last blow of fate had fallen.

"He arrived in the _Sarah_ brig, which anchored yesterday evening," explained Mr. Cornelius, "but he didn't come ashore till this morning."

"He thought Sunday safer," said Mr. Faringfield, with scornful derision.

"I was returning from my service, when I met him," continued the tutor. "He was at the Faringfield wharf, inquiring after the health of the family, of Meadows the watchman. I--er--persuaded him to come home with me."

"You mean, sir, he persuaded you to come and intercede for him," said Mr. Faringfield.

"He is now waiting in the garden. I have been telling Mr. Faringfield, ma'am, that the young man is greatly altered. Upon my word, he shows the truest signs of penitence. I believe he is entirely reformed; he says so."

"You'd best let him come in, William," counselled Mrs. Faringfield. "If you don't, goodness knows what he may do."

"Madam, I resolved long ago to let the law do its utmost upon him, if he should ever return."

"Oh, but think what scandal! What will all my relations say? Besides, if he is reformed--"

"If he is reformed, let him show it by his conduct on my refusing to take him back; and by suffering the penalty of his crime."

"Oh!--penalty! Don't speak such words! A jailbird in the family! I never could endure it! I shouldn't dare go to church, or be seen anywhere in public!"

"The same old discussion!" said Mr. Faringfield, with a wearied frown.

"Papa, you won't send him to jail, will you?" ventured Fanny, with eyes rapidly moistening, and lips turning to a pout in spite of herself.

"Really, sir," put in Cornelius, trembling at his own temerity, "if you could but see him--take my word, sir, if ever there was a case where forgiveness--"

After much more of this sort of talk, and being shaken in will by the day's previous excitements, Mr. Faringfield at length gave in so far as to consent to an interview with the penitent, to whom thereupon Cornelius hastened with the news.

It was indeed a changed and chastened Ned, to all outward appearance, that entered meekly with the pedagogue a few minutes later. His tread was so soft, his demeanour so tame, that one would scarce have known him but for a second look at his shapely face and burly figure. The face was now somewhat hollowed out, darkened, lined, and blotched; and elongated with meek resignation. His clothes--claret-coloured cloth coat and breeches, flowered waistcoat, silk stockings, lace ruffles, and all--were shabby and stained. He bowed to the company, and then stood, furtively watching for some manifestation from the rest before he dared proceed to warmer greetings.

Fanny stepped softly forward and kissed him, in a shy, perfunctory manner; and then good-natured Tom shook his hand, and Philip followed suit; after which Mrs. Faringfield embraced him somewhat stiffly, and I gingerly held his fingers a moment, and my mother hoped he found himself well.

"Quite well, I thank you, considering," said he; and then gazed in a half-scared way at his father. All the old defiance had disappeared under the blows of adversity.

"Well, sir," said his father, coldly, "we had scarce looked for you back among us."

"No, sir," said Ned, still standing. "I had no right to be looked for, sir--no more than the prodigal son had. I'm a bit like him, sir."

"Don't count upon the fatted calf, however."

"No, sir; not me. Very plain fare will do for me. I--I ask your pardon, sir, for that--that business about Mr. Palmer."

"The world has put you into a humble mood," said Mr. Faringfield, with sarcastic indifference.

"Yes, sir; the way of transgressors is hard, sir."

"Why don't you sit down?" put in Mrs. Faringfield, who was made uncomfortable by the sight of others being so.

"Thank you, mother," said Ned, availing himself of the implied permission.

"I hear you've undergone a reformation," said his father.

"I hope so, sir. They tell me I've got religion."

"Who tells you?"

"The Methodists. I went to their meetings in London. I--I thought I needed a little of that kind of thing. That's how I happened to--to save my soul."

"And how do you conceive you will provide for your body?"

"I don't know yet--exactly. If I might stay here till I could find some employment--"

Mr. Faringfield met the pleading look of Fanny, and the prudent one of his wife. The latter reflected, as plainly as words, what had manifestly entered his own mind: that immunity from future trouble on Ned's account might indeed be had without recourse to a step entailing public disgrace upon the family. So he said:

"My intention was, if you should ever show your face in New York again, to see you punished for that matter of the money and Mr. Palmer. I don't give up that intention; I shall only postpone carrying it out, during your good behaviour."

"Thank you, sir; I dare say it's better than I deserve."

And so was Mr. Ned established home again, to be provided for by his father until he should obtain some means of self-support. In this task his father offered no assistance, being cautious against vouching for a person hitherto so untrustworthy; and it soon became evident that Ned was not very vigorously prosecuting the task himself. He had the excuse that it was a bad time for the purpose, the country being so unsettled in the expectation of continued war. And he was content to remain an idle charge upon his father's bounty, a somewhat neglected inmate of the house, his comings and goings not watched or inquired into. His father rarely had a word for him but of curt and formal greeting. His mother found little more to say to him, and that in a shy reserved manner. Margaret gave him no speeches, but sometimes a look of careless derision and contempt, which must have caused him often to grind his teeth behind his mask of humility. Philip's courtesy to him was distinctly chilly; while Tom treated him rather with the indifferent amiability of a new and not very close acquaintance, than with any revival of old brotherly familiarity. I shared Phil's doubts upon Ned's spiritual regeneration, and many people in the town were equally skeptical. But there were enough of those credulous folk that delight in the miraculous, who believed fully in this marvellous conversion, and never tired of discussing the wonder. And so Ned went about, posing as a brand snatched from the burning, to the amusement of one-half the town, the admiration of the other half, and the curiosity of both.

"'Tis all fudge, says I," quoth lean old Bill Meadows, the watchman at the Faringfield wharves. "His story and his face don't hitch. He declares he was convarted by the Methodies, and he talks their talk about salvation and redemption and the like. But if he really had religion their way, he'd wear the face o' joy and gladness. Whereas he goes about looking as sober as a covenanter that expected the day of judgment to-morrow and knew he was predestinated for one O' the goats. Methodie convarts don't wear Presbyterian faces. Ecod, sir" (this he said to Phil, with whom he was on terms of confidence), "he's got it in his head that religion and a glum face goes together; and he thereby gives the lie to his Methodie convarsion."

Ned was at first in rather sore straits for a companion, none of his old associates taking well to his reformation. He had to fall back upon poor Cornelius, who was always the most obliging of men and could never refuse his company or aught else to any tolerable person that sought it. But in a week or so Ned had won back Fanny to her old allegiance, and she, in the kindness of her heart, and in her pity that the poor repentant fellow should be so misunderstood, his amendment so doubted, gave him as much of her time as he asked for. She walked with him, rode with him, and boated with him. This was all greatly to my cost and annoyance; for, ever since she had so gently commiserated my loss of Margaret, I had learned more and more to value her sweet consolation, rely upon her sympathy in all matters, and find serenity and happiness in her society. It had come to be that two were company, three were none--particularly when the third was Ned. So, if she _would_ go about with him, I left her to go with him alone; and I suffered, and pined, and raged inwardly, in consequence. 'Twas this deprivation that taught me how necessary she was to me; and how her presence gave my days half their brightness, my nights half their beauty, my taste of everything in life half its sweetness. Philip was unreservedly welcome to Madge now; I wondered I had been so late in discovering the charms of Fanny.

But one day I noticed that a coolness had arisen between her and Ned; a scarce evident repulsion on her part, a cessation of interest on his. This was, I must confess, as greatly to my satisfaction as to my curiosity. But Fanny was no more a talebearer than if she had been of our sex; and Ned was little like to disclose the cause intentionally: so I did not learn it until by inference from a passage that occurred one night at the King's Arms' Tavern.

Poor Philip, avoided and ignored by Madge, who had not yet relented, was taking an evening stroll with me, in the soothing company of the pedagogue; when we were hailed by Ned with an invitation to a mug of ale in the tavern. Struck with the man's apparent wistfulness for company, and moved by a fellow feeling of forlornness, Philip accepted; and Cornelius, always acquiescent, had not the ill grace to refuse. So the four of us sat down together at a table.

"I wish I might offer you madeira, gentlemen; or punch, at least," said Ned regretfully, "but you know how it is. I'm reaping what I sowed. Things might be worse. I knew 'em worse in London--before I turned over a new leaf."

The mugs being emptied, and the rest of us playing host in turn, they were several times replenished. Ned had been drinking before he met us; but this was not apparent until he began to show the effect of his potations while the heads of us his companions were still perfectly clear. It was evident that he had not allowed his conversion to wean him from this kind of indulgence. The conversation reverted to his time of destitution in London.

"Such experiences," observed Cornelius, "have their good fruits. They incline men to repentance who might else continue in their evil ways all their lives."

"Yes, sir; that's the truth!" cried Ned. "If I'd had some people's luck--but it's better to be saved than to make a fortune--although, to be sure, there are fellows, rascals, too, that the Lord seems to take far better care of than he does of his own!"

Mr. Cornelius looked a little startled at this. But the truth was, I make no doubt, that the pretence of virtue, adopted for the purpose of regaining the comforts of his father's house, wore heavily upon Ned; that he chafed terribly under it sometimes; and that this was one of the hours when, his wits and tongue loosened by drink, he became reckless and allowed himself relief. He knew that Philip, Cornelius, and I, never tattled. And so he cast the muzzle of sham reformation from his mouth.

He was silent for a while, recollections of past experience rising vividly in his mind, as they will when a man comes to a certain stage of drink.

"Sure, luck is an idiot," he burst out presently, wrathful from his memories. "It reminds me of a fool of a wench that passes over a gentleman and flings herself at a lout. For, lookye, there was two of us in London, a rascal Irishman and me, that lived in the same lodgings. We did that to save cost, after we'd both had dogs' fortune at the cards and the faro-table. If it hadn't been for a good-natured woman or two--I spoke ill of the breed just now, but they have their merits--we'd have had no lodgings at all then, except the Fleet, maybe, or Newgate, if it had come to that. Well, as I was saying, we were both as near starvation as ever _I_ wish to be, the Irishman and me. There we were, poverty-stricken as rats, both tarred with the same stick, no difference between us except he was an ugly brute, and a scoundrel, and a man of no family. Now if either of us deserved good fortune, it certainly was me; there can't be any question of that. And yet, here I am, driven to the damnedest tedious time of it for bare food and shelter, and compelled to drink ale when I'm--oh, curse it, gentlemen, was ever such rotten luck?"

Cornelius, whom disillusion had stricken into speechlessness at this revelation of the old Ned under the masquerade, sighed heavily and looked pained. But Philip, always curious upon matters of human experience, asked:

"What of the Irishman?"

"Driving in his chariot, the dog! Swaggering in Pall Mall; eating and drinking at taverns that it makes my mouth water to think of; laying his hundred guineas a throw, if he likes. Oh, the devil! The fat of London for that fellow; and me cast off here in New York to the most hellish dull life! 'Tisn't a fair dispensation; upon my soul it isn't!"

"And what made him so fortunate?" inquired Philip.

"Ay, that's the worst of it! What good are a man's relations? What good are mine, at least? For that knave had only one relation, but she was of some use, Lord knows! When it came to the worst with him, he walked to Bristol, and begged or stole passage to Ireland, and hunted up his sister, who had a few pounds a year of her own. He had thought of borrowing a guinea or two, to try his fortune with again. But when he saw his sister, he found she'd grown up into a beauty--no more of a beauty than my sisters, though; but she was a girl of enterprise and spirit. I don't say Madge isn't that; but she's married and done for. But Fanny--well, I don't see anything brilliant in store for Fanny."

"What has she to do with the affairs of your Irishman?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing. She's a different kind from this Irish lady. For what did that girl do, after her brother had seen her and got the idea, than pack up and come to London with him. And he showed her around so well, and her fine looks made such an impression, that within three months he had her married to a lord's son--the heir to Lord Ilverton's estates and title. And now she's a made woman, and he's a made man, and what do you think of that for a lucky brother and a clever sister? And yet, compared with Fanny--"

"Do you mean to say," interrupted Philip, in a low voice, "that you have ever thought of Fanny as a partner in such a plan?"

"Little use to think of her," replied Ned, contemptuously. "She hasn't the spirit. I'm afraid there ain't many sisters like Mullaney's. Poor Fan wouldn't even listen--"

"Did you dare propose it to her?" said Phil. My own feelings were too strong for speech.

"Dare!" repeated Ned. "Why not? 'Twould have made her fortune--"

"Upon my word," put in Mr. Cornelius, no longer able to contain his opinions, "I never heard of such rascality!"

Something in the pedagogue's tone, I suppose, or in Ned's stage of tipsiness at the moment, gave the speech an inflammatory effect. Ned stared a moment at the speaker, in amazement. Then he said, with aroused insolence:

"What's this, Mr. Parson? What have _you_ to say here? My sister is _my_ sister, let me tell you--"

"If she knew you as well as I do now," retorted Cornelius, quietly, "she wouldn't boast of the relationship."

"What the devil!" cried Ned, in an elevated voice, thus drawing the attention of the four or five other people in the room. "Who is this, talks of relationships? You cursed parson-pedagogue--!"

"Be quiet, Ned," warned Philip. "Everybody hears you."

"I don't care," replied Ned, rising, and again addressing Cornelius. "Does anybody boast of relationships to you, you tow-headed bumpkin? Do you think you can call me to account, as you can the scum you preach to on the wharves? I'll teach you!"

Whereat, Cornelius being opposite him, Ned violently pushed forward the table so as to carry the tutor over backward in his chair. His head and back struck the floor heavily, and he lay supine beneath the upset table.

An excited crowd instantly surrounded our group. Philip and I immediately removed the table, and helped Cornelius to his feet. The pedagogue's face was afire; his fists were clenched; his chest swelled; and one could judge from his wrists what sturdy arms his sleeves encased. As he advanced upon Ned, he was all at once become so formidable a figure that no one thought to interpose. Ned himself, appalled at the approaching embodiment of anger and strength, retreated a foot or two from the expected blow. Everybody looked to see him stretched flat in a moment; when Cornelius suddenly stopped, relaxed his muscles, unclosed his fists, and said to his insulter, in a quiet but virile voice quite different from that of his usual speech:

"By the grace of God, I put my hands behind my back; for I've spoiled handsomer faces than yours, Edward Faringfield!"

There was a moment's pause.

"The grace of God has no such effect upon me!" said I, rapping Ned over the mouth with the back of my hand. Before the matter could go any further, Philip caught my arm, and Cornelius's, and hurried us out of the tavern.

I now knew what had broken the friendship between Fanny and her worthless brother. I feared a catastrophe when Mr. Faringfield should learn of the occurrence at the tavern. But, thanks to the silence of us who were concerned, and to the character of the few gentlemen with whom he deigned to converse, it never came to his ears. Ned, restored to his senses, and fearing for his maintenance, made no attempt to retaliate my blow; and resumed his weary pretence of reformation. But years afterward we were to recall his story of the Irishman's sister.