CHAPTER XXIII.

IN WHICH THE SCENE OF OUR TALE IS CHANGED.

The events recorded in the foregoing chapters, as you are aware, good reader, happened principally among the poor and humble of life; and this was in accordance with the scope of our narrative, having no higher ambition than to chronicle the lowly annals of that numerous class of the community. _Nunc paulo majora._ Now we must introduce you into high life. We turn our eyes to one of those grand mansions of the rich,--one of those palaces of the "upper ten,"--where few of the humble are privileged to enter, much less to be introduced or admitted on terms of familiarity. It is our privilege to introduce you, friend of the blistered hand and dusty coat, but of the honest heart, into that palace of the merchant prince of the second city in the Union, in order that you may see and judge for yourselves whether or not more happiness dwells there than in your homely residence. See the imposing structure, with the neatly-mowed lawn in front. Observe the taste and artistic skill with which the walks, the little hedges, and the shrubberies are laid out. You can yet get but an imperfect view of the proud edifice itself, which seems as if a monarch, that looks down with dignity and authority on the countless array of ordinary buildings that extend as far as the eye can reach on every side. The gates, as you enter the enclosure, are of massive iron, painted green, and, by the help of machinery, yield to the gentlest pressure of the hand, as if some spirit of the ancient fabled Olympus kept guard at their hinges. It is a complete "_rus in urbi_," inside the outer wall. Here the luxuriant grape vine creeps along in graceful festoons, groaning under the pressure of her full paps; there the lofty and beauteous palm spreads his cooling and protecting branches.

On one side see the fruitful lemon and orange trees, bending under the weight of their golden and emerald productions; on the other the fragrant apple, the sweet pear, and mellow peach borrow support from the strong granite wall to bring their burdens to maturity. Behold there two fountains casting their crystal and refreshing contents aloft, as if making restitution to the thirsting atmosphere for what they stole from him under ground. The water falls back again, however, and is received by the marble basin at the base, to form a neat pond, where gold and silver fish sport and gambol. A little at a distance, to the rear, the fragrance of honey and the busy hum of the bee are perceived by your grateful senses. The place looks like an earthly paradise; every thing there seems to laugh without restraint, from the creeping rose fastened to the hedge to the tall, princely-looking mountain ash, with its bunches of red berries.

The only one living thing that seemed pensive and sad there was a lovely, delicate fawn, which rested, with her head drooping, at the foot of a rose bush, on the summit of the little green mound which was the centre of this delightful spot. Perhaps the lovely creature is after being weaned from the udder of its affectionate dam; or, perhaps, she grieves for the absence of some favorite in the palace of whom she is the pet. But that the creature grieves is evident, for you could see the two moist tracks furrowed on the smooth face, from the tears that have flowed there.

But the inside of the "great house," who can describe it? From the ground floor to the uppermost attic, the rooms presented that waste of furniture, in the shape of sofas, ottomans, easy chairs, couches, carpets, tapestries, curtains, paintings, pier glasses, plate, and a thousand other articles contributive of ease and luxury, which the most extravagant expenditure could procure or vanity suggest. In truth, the interior was the exact counterpart of the exterior, in the artistic arrangement and splendor of every thing. To the eye of an observer, on an ordinary occasion, every thing appeared gorgeous in the extreme; but on the occasion we describe, when preparation was making for a grand reception, all was joy, mirth, luxury, and happiness. Servants of every color and hue were seen moving through the labyrinths of the saloons and chambers of this great palace, uncovering the long-concealed splendors of valuable articles, and arranging every thing for the most advantageous show.

And

"Now through the palace chambers moving lights And busy shapes proclaim the toilet's rites; From room to room the ready handmaids hie, Some skilled to wreathe the headdress tastefully, Or hang the veil, in negligence of shade, O'er the warm blushes of the youthful maid."

Splendid services of gold and silver plate met the eye in every direction, on their way to the grand dining room; while, from the remotest part of the building, the sense of smelling was simultaneously assailed by several currents of delightful culinary exhalations, which, like the winds in the cave of Æolus, struggled for egress from their confined birthplace.

This is one of those occasions on which the Dives of this sumptuous palace, Mr. Goldrich, intends to celebrate his birthday; and as he can't tell where he was born, nor can he show any genuine images of his ancestry, (except that he came down a scion from the great "Anglo-Saxon race,") he is determined to make amends for this calamity he could not help, and the want of taste in his father, whoever he was, by spending an ordinary fortune in the present celebration, and thus combine the splendors of all the possible past anniversaries of his birth in one grand, unrivalled celebration to-day.

"And here, at once, the glittering saloon Bursts on the sight, boundless and bright as noon."

The select music of splendid bands now announced the movements of guests towards the grand banquet room. In pairs they enter, and singular; the short procession is now at an end, and the places are filled up with the scanty number of twoscore guests, male and female.

You would have supposed, from the preparation, that the inhabitants of the entire city were invited; but no, the exact number was forty, besides the members of the rich man's family. And this happened not by accident, or because of the penury or avarice of Mr. Goldrich, but because in the whole city there were no more than twenty families who ranked in the sphere of the "upper ten" in which "mine host" moved. These shining figures, that you can scarcely look at without risk to your eyes from their jewelry, are the ladies who leave us in doubt which they love most to exhibit--their charms, or the richness of their ornaments. Among that bright array of female beauty there is missed the fair form of one who was, heretofore, an ordinary occupant of an honorable place at the family table. It was the chair of the rosy-cheeked Alia that was unoccupied at this splendid circle. The presiding queen of the feast, Madam Goldrich, apologized for the absence of "poor Alia," by representing her indisposed; and at the announcement of this dispiriting intelligence, disappointment marked the countenances of the guests, for Alia was the brightest star that shone in that brilliant galaxy of fashion.

Being the oldest among the children of Mr. Goldrich, Alia possessed all that graceful and dignified superiority over those whom she regarded as her younger sisters, which are the acknowledged privileges of age in every well-regulated family, and which her superior talent seemed naturally to enforce.

Years rolled on, and the dear child lived in blissful ignorance of her origin and desolate condition, till the jealousy of her younger sisters excited her suspicions, and she began to mistrust the genuineness, as she felt the coldness, of that parental affection which the pretended authors of her existence so long counterfeited. During many months, if not years, these suspicions preyed on the poor girl's mind; and though she never dared to mention them to any save old Judy, the negro woman, she felt satisfied that her sisters and herself could not belong to the same stock or the same race. The transparent delicacy of her complexion, the rosy tint on her cheek, unrivalled by the costly paint of her sisters, the shining blackness of her splendid hair,--all these circumstances pointed her out and proclaimed her as of a different race to those whom she hitherto regarded as her kindred. Long had she mused on the cause of this disparity, and much had she suffered, in the depth of her soul, from the representations and suggestions of her active imagination in reference to her origin, and many were the tears shed by her while oppressed with these doubts. But the events of this day, added to the late insolent conduct of her sisters, which provoked the reprimand of her peevish mother guardian, who told her to curb her "Irish temper,"--these cleared up all her doubts; and, filled with a melancholy joy at a revelation she owed to the jealousy and vanity of a proud mother and her daughters, Alia retired to her room to give vent to her feelings in sobs and tears.

"Thank God," she cried, "I know what I am, or ought to be. Thank God I am Irish, too, for I often wished I belonged to that much-abused and persecuted people. But O, where shall I find my parents? or how came my lot to be cast in this proud palace, which, alas! I too long regarded as my home? O, who, who will restore this poor 'exile of Erin,' to the home of her unknown parents? How gladly would I exchange all the splendor of this place for the homeliest cot in that land of the shamrock and the cross; ay, the poorest 'cabin, fast by the wild-wood,' in the land of St. Patrick, and my unknown ancestors."

Such were the soliloquies of poor, despised Alia, in her room on the third floor, where old aunt Judy, the negro, having missed her favorite from the grand company, after having sought her in vain in the lower saloons of the house, just entered her room.

"Dere, now, Miss Ali', am poor aunt Judy half kilt from sarching for you all over. What make you be here, and all the gran' gem'men asking for you?"

"Ah, aunt Judy, why have you all along denied of me all knowledge of my extraction, parentage, and race? Did you not know that I was Irish? and yet you always denied that I was, though I have suspected I was, and you must have known it, having lived so long in the family. This is not what I expected from you, aunt Judy," she said, casting a look of gentle reproach at the old negro.

"O, dear, miss--O, dear," cried the poor affectionate creature, bursting into tears; "don't blame dis ole nigger, but massa and missus, and Miss Sillerman, sister to the missus who died last year. They forbid aunt Jude to tell who rosy-faced Ali' was. I was bound to swear not to tell. If they knowed I did hab a _parle_ vit you on de subject, they would turn poor ole Jude out de door to die in the poor _maison_."

This poor negro woman was a native of St. Domingo, and, at the time of the revolution there, came to New Orleans, in care of a child belonging to one of the white planters who was murdered--which child, by the way, has since become a pious and eminent clergyman. By some accident or other she fell in with the Goldriches, in their commercial visits to New Orleans, and, though brought up a Catholic, the poor thing forgot all practice of her religion, and this accounts for her evasions and denials to the repeated questions of Alia regarding her parentage and birth.

"'Pon my fait, miss," she ever said, "I know nothing about you, 'cept that you are the rose-cheeked Ali', the _fleur de lis_ of the flock."

Promises, and flattering presents, and all other persuasive arts of Alia to get the secret out of Judy proved useless. She had promised to keep it, and no human authority, she thought, could ever cause her to violate that promise. Although Judy had, through fear of displeasing her patrons, given up all public practice of her religion, she nevertheless never denied that she was a "Catholique," and never omitted to recite full five decades of the beads after going to bed. She declared she could not fall asleep till she complied with this rather lazy effort of prayer. Besides these rather faint evidences of her faith, she often told her loved Ali' that she intended calling in the priest at the hour of her death; and she confided to the honor of the young lady this secret desire of hers, and elicited many promises from her Ali' to send for his reverence when she would perceive her end approach. "This is rather a singular notion of yours," Alia used to say. "If you are a Catholic, and believe your faith the best, or the only true one, why do you not practise its teachings, and fulfil all the requirements of your church? I am sure neither father nor mother would blame you."

"O miss, I feard, I feard," the poor, timid soul would answer. "But tink of vat I tol' you; when I go to die, send for the _bon_ priest, who know how to do the '_parle Française_,' and I pray for you when I go to heaven."

"I shall do that for you, poor aunt Judy, or even attend you now, while you are in health, to the Catholic church, where you can go to the sacraments, and become a member again of that church which you have so long neglected, but which yet seems still to retain a strong hold of your affections and heart. Won't this be the best course, aunt Judy? I will attend you to the church of that zealous young Irish priest whom I see so often hurrying along here to his sick calls up town; and as I suspect I am 'Irish' myself, I hope he will not be displeased at my call."

"O, you no Irish, miss, at all, but good Yankee. But tish better not go for de priest till he come to me when I go to die. Now I have religion here in _mon coeur_; ven I die, I profess her open."

"Well, Judy, act as you wish; but it appears to me your conduct is singular. I shall do my part, however; and if there is a priest to be had in the city when you take to your death bed, you must have him to attend you."

It was by such communings and conversations as the foregoing, during the leisure hours of aunt Judy and her loved Ali', that mutual confidence and disinterested friendship grew into maturity between them--the childish and helpless simplicity of the one, and kind and good-natured condescension of the other, producing the like effects in the hearts of both respectively--that is, disinterested friendship. Yet strong as this friendship was, and enthusiastic as was the love of Judy for her "rosy-cheeked" favorite, they were not sufficient to cause her to reveal the secret of her birth and adoption, even at this hour of Alia's deepest grief and affliction.

There were two causes for this her unaccountable silence. Firstly, she had promised not to mention the slightest circumstance connected with the adopted child, and she feared punishment from the anger of her proud massa, whose disgrace might be the consequence. And again, having been in the habit of hearing all sorts of reflections on the "Irish," whom some mad abolitionists would gladly enslave in place of the blacks, poor Judy thought to save Alia from the mortification of finding herself "Irish," by her equivocation and falsehood.