Cecil Dreeme

by Theodore Winthrop

  These men’s voices also proclaimed natures at war.

  In wild beasts the cry reveals the character. So it does in man,—a cross between a beast and a soul. If beast is keeping soul under, he lets the world know it in every word his man speaks. The snarl, the yelp, and the howl are all there for him that has ears to hear. If the soul in the man has good hope and good courage, through all his tones sound the song of hope and the pæan of assured victory.

  Churm’s voice was bold and sweet, with a sharp edge. He was outspoken and incisive. Any mind, not muffled by moss or thicket, would hear itself echo when he spoke. His laugh, if it made free to leap out for a holiday, was a boy’s laugh, frank, merry, and irrepressible. There was, however, underneath all his cheerful, inspiring, and forgiving tones, a stern Rhadamanthine quality, as of one to whom profound experience has given that rare, costly, and sorrowful right,—the right to judge and condemn.

  Densdeth spoke with a delicate lisp, or rather Spanish softness. There was a snarl, however, beneath these mild, measured notes. He soothed you; but you felt that there was a claw curled under the velvet. As to his laugh, it was jackal,—a cruel, traitorous laugh, without sympathy or humor,—a sneer given voice. But this ugly sound it was impossible to be much with Densdeth and not first echo and then adopt.

  The same general contrast of nature was visible in the costumes of these gentlemen. Even a coat may be one of the outward signs by which we betray the grace or disgrace that is in us.

  Churm was in fatigue dress. He looked water-proof, sun-proof, frost-proof. No tenderness for his clothes would ever check him from wading a gutter or storming a slum, if there were man to be aided or woman to be saved. He dressed as if life were a battle, and he were appointed to the thick of the fight, too well known a generalissimo to need a uniform.

  Densdeth was a little too carefully dressed. His clothes had a conscious air. His trousers hung as if they felt his eye on them, and dreaded a beating if they bagged. His costume was generally quiet, so severely quiet that it was evident he desired to be flagrant, and obeyed tact rather than taste. In fact, taste always hung out a protest of a diamond stud, or an elaborate chain or eye-glass. Still these were not glaring errors, and Densdeth’s distinguished air and marked Orientalism of face made a touch of splendor tolerable.

  I sketch a few of the external traits of these two. I might continue the contrast at length. Even at that period of my acquaintance they had become representative personages to me. And now, as I look back upon that time, I find that I divined them justly. They in some measure personified to me the two opposing forces that war for every soul.

  As they bowed coldly to each other in the hall of the Chuzzlewit, and turned to me, I seemed at once to become conscious of their rival influences. My dual nature felt the dual attraction.

  “Glad to see you again, Byng,” said Densdeth, offering his hand. “Will you walk into my parlor? I am quartered here for a day or two. Come; I can give you an honest cigar and a thimbleful of Chartreuse.”

  “Thank you,” I replied. “Another time, if you please. Just now I am off with Mr. Churm.”

  “Au revoir!” said Densdeth. “But let me not forget to mention that I have seen our friends, Mr. and Miss Denman. They hope for a call from you, for old friendship’s sake. If I had known of your former intimacy there, we should have had another tie on board the steamer.”

  His yellow eyes came and went as he spoke, exploring my face to discover, “What has Churm told him of me and Clara Denman? What has he heard of that tragedy? Something, but how much?”

  “Miss Denman will be at home to-morrow, at one,” he continued. “I took the liberty to promise that you would accept my guidance, and pay your respects at that hour.”

  “You are very kind,” I of course said. “I will go with pleasure.”

  “I will call for you, then, at Chrysalis. I heard here at the hotel-office that you had moved into Harry Stillfleet’s grand den. I felicitate you.”

  “You have a den adjoining,” said I, my tone no doubt betraying some curiosity.

  “O, my lumber-room,” he replied, carelessly. “I find it quite a convenience. A nomad bachelor like myself needs some place to store what traps he cannot carry in his portmanteau.”

  “Well, Mr. Churm,” said I, as we walked off together, “you see I cannot evade Densdeth. He is my first acquaintance at home, my next-door neighbor in Chrysalis, and now he takes the superintendence of my re-introduction to old friends. Fate seems determined that I shall clash against him. I am not sure whether my self is elastic enough to throw him off, even if I desire to.”

  “No self gets a vigorous repelling power until it is condensed by suffering.”

  “Then I would rather stay soft and yielding,” said I, lightly. “But, Mr. Churm, before I call upon the Denmans, you must tell me the whole story of their tragedy, otherwise I may wound them ignorantly.”

  “I desire to do so, my dear boy, for many reasons. We will have a session presently at your rooms, and talk that history through.”

  He walked on down Broadway, silent and moody.

  “Observe where I lead you,” said he, turning to the east through several mean, narrow streets.

  “Seems to me,” said I, “you have fouler slums here than Europe tolerates.”

  “If you could see the person I am going to visit, you would understand why. If men here must skulk because they are base, or guilty, or imbecile, they strive to get more completely out of sight, and shelter themselves behind more stenches than people do in countries where the social system partially justifies degradation. But here we are, Byng. I have brought you along with a purpose.”

  Churm stopped in front of a mean, frowzy row of brick buildings. He led the way through a most unsavory alley into a court, or rather space, serving as a well to light the rear range of a tenement-house. In a guilty-looking entry of this back building Churm left me, while he entered a wretched room.

  It is no part of my purpose to describe this dismal place, or to moralize over it. Perhaps at that time in my life I had too little pity for poverty, and only a healthy disgust for filth. I remained outside, smoking and listening to the jackal-voices of the young barbarians crying for supper from cellar to garret of the building.

  “You will remember this spot,” said Churm, issuing after a few moments, and leading the way out again.

  “My poor victimized nose will have hard work to forget it.”

  “And the name Towner,” my friend continued.

  “Also Towner,” I rejoined. And probably my tone expressed the query, “Who is he?”

  “Towner is the tarnished reverse of that burnished medal Densdeth,—Densdeth without gilding.”

  “Did Densdeth fling him away into this hole?”

  “He is lying perdu here, hid from Densdeth and the world. He has been a clerk, agent, tool, slave, of the Great Densdeth. The poor wretch has a little shrivelled bit of conscience left. It twinges him sometimes, like a dying nerve in a rotten tooth. He sent for me the other day, by Locksley, saying that he was sick, poor, and penitent for a villany he had done against me, and wanted to confess before he died, and before Densdeth could find him again. This is my third visit. He cannot make up his impotent mind to confession. He must speak soon, or concealment will kill him. I am to come down to-night at eleven and watch with him.”

  “Till when you will watch with me in Chrysalis.”

  “Yes; and now I suppose you wonder why I brought you here.”

  “To teach me that republics are unsavory?”

  “Perhaps I want you to take an interest in this poor devil, in case I should be absent; perhaps I wish you to see the result of the Densdeth experiment, when it does not succeed; perhaps—well, Byng, you will promise me to expend a little of your superabundant vitality on my patient, if he needs it?”

  “Certainly; but understood, that you pay to have me deodorized and disinfected after each visit.”

  I could not give a cheerful turn to the t
alk. Churm walked on, silent and out of spirits.

  6

  Churm as Cassandra

  We turned from Broadway down Cornwallis Place, parallel to Mannering Place, and entered Chrysalis by the side door upon that street.

  “I have a word to say to the janitor,” said Churm.

  Pretty Dora Locksley admitted us to the snuggery. Lighted up, it was even more cheerful than when I saw it with Stillfleet. The table was set for supper. The bright teapot, the bright plates, the bright knives and forks, had each its own bright reflection of the gas-light to contribute to the general illumination.

  Mrs. Locksley, the bright cause of all this brilliancy, was making the first cut into a pumpkin-pie of her own confection, as we entered. It was the ideal pumpkin-pie. Its varnished surface shone with a rich, mellow glow, and all about its marge a ruffle of paste of fairest complexion lifted, like the rim of delighted hills about a happy valley. As Mrs. Locksley’s knife cleft the soil of this sweet vale, fragrant incense steamed up into the air. What nose would not sniff away all remembrance of the mephitic odors it had inhaled, to entertain this fresh, wholesome emanation? Mine did at once. I felt myself deodorized from the sour souvenirs of Towner’s slum. The moral atmosphere, too, of this honest, cheerful, simple home-scene acted as a moral disinfectant. The healthy picture hung itself up in a good light in my mental gallery. It was well it should be there. Chrysalis owed me this, as a contrast to the serious pictures awaiting me along its dusky halls, as a foil to a sombre tableau hid behind the curtain at the vista’s end.

  Mrs. Locksley offered a quadrant of her pie to Churm.

  “I resign in Mr. Byng’s favor,” said he.

  “Hail Columbia!” cried I, accepting the resignation; and as I ate I felt my Americanism revive.

  “I’ve just seen Towner again,” Churm said, “and am to sit up with him.”

  “Poor fellow!” said Locksley. “Has he any chance?”

  “Poor fellow, indeed!” cried Mrs. Locksley, in wrath, evidently sham. “Don’t waste ‘poors’ on him, William. Didn’t he as much as kill my poor sister, and ruin us?”

  “You don’t look very ruinous, Molly. No; you’re built up fresh by losing money, and not having an Irish Biddy to feed you on mud-pies. We must not bear malice, wife!”

  “We don’t, William. And the proof is this jelly I’ve made for him.”

  “Right!” says Locksley. “But, Mr. Churm,” he continued, and here his bristly aspect intensified, as if a foe were at hand, “Mr. Densdeth is back in the steamer. He’s been here today, asking for Towner. But he got nothing out of me.”

  “The sight of Densdeth would kill the man. He shivers at the mere thought of his old master. We must keep him hid until he dies or gets some life into him. Good night.”

  “A trusty fellow, the janitor,” said I, as we walked up stairs.

  “Trusty as a steel bolt on an oak door.”

  “He will keep my secrets, if I have any, as one of his collegians? He won’t stand on the corner and button-hole everybody with the news that I never go to bed, and hardly ever get up? He won’t put my deeds or misdeeds in the newspapers?”

  “No. If you should say to him, ‘Locksley, I’ve got a maggot in my head. I am going to lock myself up in Rubbish Palace and train it. I want to hibernate for three months and not see a soul, except you with my meals. Let me be forgotten!’ Locksley would reply, ‘Very well, sir!’ And you would be as secluded as if you had gone to Kamtschatka.”

  “You speak as if such things happened in Chrysalis.”

  “They might, under Locksley.”

  “How refreshing,” said I, “to find such a place and such a person plump in the middle of New York! But tell me, what is Locksley to Towner?”

  “Towner married our janitor’s wife’s sister. Locksley is a very clever machinist. He was a prosperous locksmith, manufacturing locks of a patent of his own, until Towner persuaded him to indorse his paper. Towner had some fine scheme by which he meant to make himself independent of Densdeth, and so escape from his service. His old master had become hateful to him. But Densdeth did not propose to let his serf go free. He made it his business, so both the men think, to spoil the speculation, and ruin the two, financially. Locksley lost everything. I got him this place, until he could look about and take a fresh start.”

  I opened my door. From the back of the sombre apartment, the great black stove, with its isinglass door, like a red Cyclops eye, stared at the strangers. The gas-light from the street shone faint through the narrow windows.

  “Ghostly scenery!” said I, glancing about.

  The casts and busts stood white and ghostly in the corners, and by the door of the lumber-room a suit of armor, holding a spiked mace in its fingerless gauntlets, reflected the dull glow of the fire-light.

  “Those great carved arm-chairs,” said Churm, “stand as if the shadows of so many black-robed inquisitors had just quitted them.”

  “What a chamber this would have been,” I said, “for the sittings of a secret tribunal, a Vehmgericht! Imagine yourself and me enthroned, with crapes over our faces, and Locksley, armed with one of these halberds of Stillfleet’s, leading in the culprit.”

  “Have you selected your culprit?”

  “Well, Densdeth is convenient. He might be brought in from that dark room of his, next door. The scene becomes real to me. Come, Mr. Churm, you shall pronounce sentence. Put on the black cap, and speak!”

  “I condemn him to bless as many lives as he has cursed.”

  “A gentle penalty!” said I. “But it may take time. Who knows but you are making a Wandering Jew of our handsome Absalomitish friend? Fiat lux!” I continued, striking a match, and lighting my chandelier. “Vanish the Vehm and the halberd! Appear the nineteenth century and the cigar! Take one!”

  Churm smoked for some time in grave silence. At last he began.

  “I loved your father, Robert, like a brother. For his sake and your own, I wish to be your friend.”

  His benignant manner, even more than the words, touched me. I felt my eyes fill with tears.

  “Thank you,” said I, “for my father’s sake and my own. I yearn, as only a fatherless man can, for such a friend as you may be. I hoped I might count upon you.”

  “We have met but those few times in Europe since your boyhood. I think I know something of you. Still I may as well have more facts. What do you think of yourself? Person and character, now, in a paragraph.”

  “Person you see!” said I, standing up, straight as an exclamation-point. “Harry Stillfleet made me parade this morning, and pronounced me reasonably fit for service, legs, lungs, and looks. Character,—as to my character, it is not yet compacted enough for inspection. My soul grows slow as a century-plant. You can hardly look for blossoms at the end of the first twenty-five years. I am a fellow of good intentions,—that is the top of my claim. But whether I am to be a pavior of hell or a promenader of heaven, is as hell or heaven pleases. It seems to me that my allotted method of forming myself is by passing out of myself into others. I am dramatic. I adopt the natures of my companions, and act as if I were they. When I have become, in my proper person, a long list of dramatis personæ, I shall be ready to live my life, be it tragedy, comedy, or romance. And there you have me, Mr. Churm, in a rather lengthy paragraph!”

  “I understand. And now you have come home, a working-man, who wishes ‘se ranger’?”

  “I should like to find my place.”

  “Your place to live you have found already. Your place to labor will not be hard to find. Capable men of your trade are in demand. I have no doubt I can settle you to-morrow.”

  “You are a friend indeed,” said I.

  “Home and handicraft disposed of;—and now this young absentee, with his place to live and his place to labor arranged, is beginning to think of the other want, namely, somebody to love. How is that, Byng?”

  “ ‘Hoc erat in votis!’ ” said I, bashfully.

  “It was in mine, when I was, like
you, impressible, affectionate, trustful, and in my twenties. My forties have a confidence and a special warning to offer you, Robert, if you will accept it.”

  “No mature man has ever given me the benefit of his experience. Yours will be most precious.”

  “I strip off the battens, and slide back the hatches, and show you a cell in my heart which I thought never to uncover. But there comes a time, after a man’s grief has become historical to himself, when he owes the lesson of his own tragedy to some other man. You are the man to whom my story belongs.”

  “Why am I the one?”

  “That you must discover for yourself. I tell you my tale. You must adapt it to your own circumstances. You must put in your own set of characters from the people you meet. I point a moral for you; I have no right to impale others upon it.”

  “You might misunderstand and wrong them?”

  “I might. This bit of personal history I am about to give you explains my connection with the Denmans.”

  “It will lead you then to the mystery of Clara’s death?”

  “Yes.”

  7

  Churm’s Story

  Churm took refuge with his cigar for a moment.

  “Twenty-four years ago,” he began, jerking his short sentences away as if each was an arrow in his heart,—“twenty-four years ago I was a young man about New York. There came a beautiful girl from the country. Poor! She had rich friends in town. They wanted a flower for their parlors. They took her. Emma—Emma Page was her name.”

  He repeated the name, as if it was barbed, and would not come from him without an agonized effort.

  “She charmed all,” he continued. “She fascinated me. Strangely, strangely. I will not analyze her power. You will see what knowledge it implied. I was a simple, eager fellow. Eager to love, as you are.”