David Poindexter\'s Disappearance and Other Tales by Julian Hawthorne

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In this way he went over the entire house with us. His loud, jolly
voice, his resounding laugh, his bustling manner, his heedless, boy-
like self-confidence, and his deafness, made it impossible to get in a
word of explanation, and, after a few efforts, I gave up the attempt.

"Let him suppose what he likes," I said aside to Ethel, "it can make no
difference; he is going away, and you will never see him again. After
all these years, it can do no great harm for us to play at being Mr.
and Mrs. Campbell for an hour!"

"It is a very beautiful house," she said, tacitly accepting what I had
proposed. "It is such a house as I have always dreamed of living in. I
shall not care to look at any others. Will you tell him that we--that I
will take it just as it stands. You have made this a very pleasant day
for me--a very happy day," she added, in a lower tone. "Every room here
will be associated with you. You will come here often and see me, will
you not? Perhaps, after all, you might use the studio to paint my--or
Susie's portrait in."

"I shall inflict myself upon you very often, I have no doubt," was all
I ventured to reply. I could not tell her, at that moment, that we must
never see each other again. She--after the manner of women--probably
supposes that a man's strength is limitless; that he may do with
himself and make of himself what he chooses; and she supposes that I
could visit her and converse with her day after day, and yet keep my
thoughts and my acts within such bounds as would enable me to take
Courtney honestly by the hand. But I know too well my own weakness, and
I shall leave her while yet I have power to do so. Tomorrow--or soon--I
will write to her one last letter, telling her why I go.

Sudden and strange indeed has been this passionate episode in a life
which, methought, had done with passion. It has lasted hardly so many
hours as I have lived years; and yet, were I to live on into the next
century, it would never cease to influence me in all I think and do. I
can not solve to my satisfaction this problem--why two lives should be
wasted as ours have been. Courtney could have been happy with another
wife, or with no wife at all, perhaps; but, for Ethel and me, there
could be no happiness save in each other. But were she free to-day, the
separation that has already existed--long though it has been--would
only serve to render our future union more blissful and complete. We
have learned, by sad experience, the value of a love like ours, and we
should know how to give it its fullest and widest expression. But oh!
what a blank and chilly road lies before us now!

I drove her back to her hotel; we hardly spoke all the way; my heart
was too full, and hers also, I think; though she did not know, as I
did, that it was our last interview. It must be our last! Heaven help
me to keep that resolution!

Susie was not at all impressed by the pathos of the situation; she
babbled all the time, and thus, at all events, afforded us an excuse
for our silence. At parting, one incident occurred that may as well be
recorded. I had shaken hands with Ethel, speaking a few words of
farewell, and allowing her to infer that we might meet again on the
morrow; then I turned to Susie, and gave her the kiss which I would
have given the world to have had the right to press on her mother's
lips. Ethel saw, and, I think, understood. She stooped quickly down,
and laid her mouth where mine had been. Through the innocent medium of
the child, our hearts met; and then I saw her no more.

_May 3d_.--Of course, it may not be true, probably it is not;
mistakes are so easily made in the first moments of such horror and
confusion; the dead come to life, and the living die. Or, at the worst,
he may be only wounded or disabled. At all events, I decline to
believe, save upon certain evidence, that the poor fellow has actually
been killed. Were it to turn out so, I should feel almost like a
murderer; for was not I writing, in this very journal, and perhaps at
the very moment the accident occurred, that if my wish could send him
to another world, I would not spare him?

_Later_.--I have read all the accounts in the newspapers this
morning, and all agree in putting Courtney's name among the killed.
There can be no doubt about it any longer; he is dead. When the
collision occurred, the car in which he vas riding was thrown across
the track, and the other train crashed through it. Judging by the
condition of the body when discovered, death must have been nearly
instantaneous. Poor Courtney! My conscience is not at ease. Of course,
I am not really responsible; that is only imagination. But I begin to
suspect that my imagination has been playing me more than one trick
lately.

And now, with this new state of affairs so suddenly and terribly
brought about, what is to be done? I am as yet scarcely in a condition
to reflect calmly; but a voice within me seems to say that something
else besides my conscience has been awakened by Courtney's death. Can
it be that imagination, dallying with what it took for impossibilities,
could so far mislead a man? Well, I shall start at once for the scene
of the disaster, and relieve the poor fellow's widow of whatever pain I
can. Ethel Courtney a widow! Ah, Ethel! Death sheds a ghastly light
upon the idle vagaries of the human heart.

_May 15th_.--_Denver_, _Colorado_.--Magnificent weather
and scenery; very different from my own mental scenery and mood at this
moment. I am sorely out of spirits; and no wonder, after the reckless
and insane emotion of the first days of this month. One pays for such
indulgences at my age.

I have been re-reading the foregoing pages of this journal. Was I a
fool or a coward, or was I merely intoxicated for eight-and-forty
hours? At all events, Courtney's tragic end sobered me, and put what I
had been doing in a true light. I am glad my insanity was not permitted
to proceed farther than it did; but I have quite enough to reproach
myself with as it is. So far as I hare been able to explain the matter
to myself, my prime error lay in attributing, in a world subject to
constant change, too much permanence to a given state of affairs. The
fact that Ethel was the wife of another man seemed to me so fixed and
unalterable that I allowed my imagination to play with the picture of
what might happen if that unalterable fact were altered. Secure in this
fallacy, I worked myself up to the pitch of believing that I was
actually and passionately in love with a woman whose inaccessibility
was, after all, her most winning attraction. Moreover, by writing down,
in this journal, the events and words of the hours we spent together, I
confirmed myself in my false persuasion, and probably imported into the
record of what we said and did an amount of color and hidden
significance that never, as I am now convinced, belonged to it in
reality. Deluded by the notion that I was playing with a fancy, I was
suddenly aroused to find myself imbrued in facts. The whole episode has
profoundly humiliated me, and degraded me in my own esteem.

But I am not at the bottom of the mystery yet. Was I not in love with
Ethel? Surely I was, if love be anything. Then why did I not ask her to
marry me? Would she have refused me? No. That last look she gave me
from under her black veil, when I told her I was going away.... Ah, no,
she would not have refused me. Then why did I hesitate? Was not such a
marriage precisely what I have always longed for? During all these
seven years have I not been bewailing my bachelorhood, and wishing for
an Ethel to cheer my solitary fireside with her gracious presence, to
be interested in my work and hopes, to interest me in her wifely and
maternal ways and aspirations? And when at last all these things were
offered me, why did I shrink back and reject them?

Honestly, I can not explain it. Perhaps, if I had never loved her
before, I might have loved her this time enough to unite my fate with
hers. Or, perhaps--for I may as well speak plainly, since I am speaking
to myself--perhaps, by force of habit, I had grown to love, better than
love itself, those self-same forlorn conditions and dreary solitudes
which I was continually lamenting and praying to be delivered from.
What a dismal solution of the problem this would be were it the true
one! It amounts to saying that I prefer an empty room, a silent hearth,
an old pair of slippers, and a dressing-gown to the love and
companionship of a refined and beautiful woman!--that I love even my
own discomforts more than the comfort she would give me! It sounds
absurd, scandalous, impossible; and yet, if it be not the literal
truth, I know not what the truth is. It is amazing that an educated and
intelligent man can live to be forty years old and still have come to
no better an understanding of himself than I had. Verily, as my old
author said, thought is free, but nature is captive, and loveth her
chain. Yes, my old author was right.

MY FRIEND PATON.

Mathew Morriss, my father, was a cotton merchant in Liverpool twenty-
five years ago--a steady, laborious, clear-headed man, very
affectionate and genial in his private intercourse. He was wealthy, and
we lived in a sumptuous house in the upper part of the city. This was
when I was about ten years old. My father was twice married; I was the
child of the first wife, who died when I was very young; my stepmother
came five years later. She was the elder of two sisters, both beautiful
women. The sister often came to visit us. I remember I liked her better
than I liked my stepmother; in fact, I regarded her with that sort of
romantic attachment that often is developed in lads of my age. She had
golden brown hair and a remarkably sweet voice, and she sang and played
in a manner that transported me with delight; for I was already devoted
to music. She was of a gentle yet impulsive temperament, easily moved
to smiles and tears; she seemed to me the perfection of womankind, and
I made no secret of my determination to marry her when I grew up. She
used to caress me, and look at me in a dreamy way, and tell me I was
the nicest and handsomest boy in the world. "And as soon as you are a
year older than I am, John," she would say, "you shall marry me, if you
like."

Another frequent visitor at our house at this time was not nearly so
much a favorite of mine. This was a German, Adolf Körner by name, who
had been a clerk in my father's concern for a number of years, and had
just been admitted junior partner. My father placed every confidence in
him, and often declared that he had the best idea of business he had
ever met with. This may very likely have been the fact; but to me he
appeared simply a tall, grave, taciturn man, of cold manners, speaking
with a slight German accent, which I disliked. I suppose he was about
thirty-seven years of age, but I always thought of him as older than my
father, who was fifty. Another and more valid reason for my disliking
Körner was that he was in the habit of paying a great deal of attention
to my ladylove, Miss Juliet Tretherne. I used to upbraid Juliet about
encouraging his advances, and I expressed my opinion of him in the
plainest language, at which she would smile in a preoccupied wav, and
would sometimes draw me to her and kiss me on the forehead. Once she
said, "Mr. Körner is a very noble gentleman; you must not dislike him."
This had the effect of making me hate him all the more.

One day I noticed an unusual commotion in the house, and Juliet came
down-stairs attired in a lovely white dress, with a long veil, and
fragrant flowers in her hair. She got into a carriage with my father
and stepmother, and drove away. I did not understand what it meant, and
no one told me. After they were gone I went into the drawing-room, and,
greatly to my surprise, saw there a long table covered with a white
cloth and laid out with a profusion of good things to eat and drink in
sparkling dishes and decanters. In the middle of the table was a great
cake covered with white frosting; the butler was arranging some flowers
round it.

"What is that cake for, Curtis?" I asked.

"For the bride, to be sure," said Curtis, without looking up.

"The bride! who is she?" I demanded in astonishment.

"Your aunt Juliet, to be sure!" said Curtis, composedly, stepping back
and contemplating his floral arrangement with his head on one side.

I asked no more, but betook myself with all speed to my room, locked
the door, flung myself on the bed, and cried to heartbreaking with
grief, indignation, and mortification. After a very long time some one
tried the door, and a voice--the voice of Juliet--called to me. I made
no answer. She began to plead with me; I resisted as long as I could,
but finally my affection got the better of my resentment, and I arose
and opened the door, hiding my tear-stained face behind my arm. Juliet
caught me in her arms and kissed me; tears were running down her own
cheeks. How lovely she looked! My heart melted, and I was just on the
point of forgiving her when the voice of Körner became audible from
below, calling out "Mrs. Körner!" I tore myself away from her, and
cried passionately, "You don't love me! you love him! go to him!" She
looked at me for a moment with a pained expression; then she put her
hand in the pocket of her dress and drew out something done up in white
paper. "See what I have brought you, you unkind boy," said she. "What
is it?" I demanded. "A piece of my wedding-cake," she replied. "Give it
me!" said I. She put it in my hand; I ran forward to the head of the
stairs, which Körner was just ascending, dashed the cake in his face,
and then rushed back to my own room, whence neither threats nor coaxing
availed to draw me forth for the rest of the day.

I never saw Juliet again. She and her husband departed on their
wedding-trip that afternoon; it was to take them as far as Germany, for
Körner said that he wished to visit his father and mother, who were
still alive, before settling down permanently in Liverpool. Whether
they really did so was never discovered. But, about a fortnight later,
a dreadful fact came to light. Körner--the grave and reticent Körner,
whom everybody trusted and thought so highly of--was a thief, and he
had gone off with more than half my father's property in his pocket.
The blow almost destroyed my father, and my stepmother, too, for that
matter, for at first it seemed as though Juliet must have been privy to
the crime. This, however, turned out not to have been the case. Her
fate must have been all the more terrible on that account; but no news
of either of them ever came back to us, and my father would never take
any measures to bring Körner to justice. It was several months before
he recovered from the shock sufficiently to take up business again; and
then the American Civil War came and completed his ruin. He died, a
poor and broken-down man, a year later. My stepmother, who was really
an admirable woman, realized whatever property remained to us, took a
small house, and sent me to an excellent school, where I was educated
for Cambridge. Meanwhile I had been devoting all possible time to
music; for I had determined to become a composer, and I was looking
forward, after taking my degree, to completing my musical education
abroad; but my mother's health was precarious, and, when the time came,
she found herself unequal to making the journey, and the change of
habits and surroundings that it implied. We lived very quietly in
Liverpool for three or four years; then she died, and, after I had
settled our affairs, I found myself in possession of a small income and
alone in the world. Without loss of time I set out for the Continent.

I went to a German city, where the best musical training was to be had,
and made my arrangements to pass several years there. At the banker's,
when I went to provide for the regular receipt of my remittances, I met
a young American, by name Paton Jeffries. He was from New England, and,
I think, a native of the State of Connecticut; his father, he told me,
was a distinguished inventor, who had made and lost a considerable
fortune in devising a means of promoting sleep by electricity. Paton
was studying to be an architect, which, he said, was the coming
profession in his country; and it was evident, on a short acquaintance,
that he was a fellow of unusual talents--one of those men of whom you
say that, come what may, they are always sure to fall on their feet.
For my part, I have certainly never met with so active and versatile a
spirit. He was a year or so older than I, rather tall than short,
lightly but strongly built, with a keen, smiling, subtle face, a
finely-developed forehead, light wavy hair, and gray eyes, very
penetrating and bright. There was a pleasing kind of eagerness and
volubility in his manner of talking, and a slight imperfection, not
amounting to a lisp, in his utterance, which imparted a naive charm to
his speech. He used expressive and rapid gestures with his hands and
arms, and there was a magnetism, a fascination, about the whole man
that strongly impressed me. I was at that period much more susceptible
of impressions, and prone to yield to them, than I am now. Paton's
rattling vivacity, his knowledge of the world, his entertaining talk
and stories, his curiosity, enterprise, and audacity, took me by storm;
he was my opposite in temperament and character, and it seemed to me
that he had most of the advantages on his side. Nevertheless, he
professed, and I still believe he felt, a great liking for me, and we
speedily came to an agreement to seek a lodging together. On the second
day of our search, we found just what we wanted.

It was an old house, on the outskirts of the town, standing by itself,
with a small garden behind it. It had formerly been occupied by an
Austrian baron, and it was probably not less than two hundred years
old. The baron's family had died out, or been dispersed, and now the
venerable edifice was let, in the German fashion, in separate floors or
_étages_, communicating with a central staircase. Some alterations
rendered necessary by this modification had been made, but
substantially the house was unchanged. Our apartment comprised four or
five rooms on the left of the landing and at the top of the house,
which consisted of three stories. The chief room was the parlor, which
looked down through a square bow-window on the street. This room was of
irregular shape, one end being narrower than the other, and nearly
fitting the space at this end was a kind of projecting shelf or
mantelpiece (only, of course, there was no fireplace under it, open
fireplaces being unknown in Germany), upon which rested an old cracked
looking-glass, made in two compartments, the frame of which, black with
age and fly-spots, was fastened against the wall. The shelf was
supported by two pilasters; but the object of the whole structure was a
mystery; so far as appeared, it served no purpose but to support the
looking-glass, which might just as well have been suspended from a nail
in the wall. Paton, I remember, betrayed a great deal of curiosity
about it; and since the consideration of the problem was more in his
line of business than in mine, I left it to him. At the opposite end of
the room stood a tall earthenware stove. The walls were wainscoted five
feet up from the dark polished floor, and were hung with several smoky
old paintings, of no great artistic value. The chairs and tables were
plain, but very heavy and solid, and of a dark hue like the room. The
window was nearly as wide as it was high, and opened laterally from the
center on hinges. The other rooms were of the same general appearance,
but smaller. We both liked the place, and soon made ourselves very
comfortable in it. I hired a piano, and had it conveyed upstairs to the
parlor; while Paton disposed his architectural paraphernalia on and in
the massive writing-table near the window. Our cooking and other
household duties were done for us by the wife of the _portier_,
the official corresponding to the French _concierge_, who, in all
German houses, attends at the common door, and who, in this case, lived
in a couple of musty little closets opening into the lower hall, and
eked out his official salary by cobbling shoes. He was an odd,
grotesque humorist, of most ungainly exterior, black haired and
bearded, with a squint, a squab nose, and a short but very powerful
figure. Dirty he was beyond belief, and he was abominably fragrant of
vile tobacco. For my part, I could not endure this fellow; but Paton,
who had much more of what he called human nature in him than I had,
established friendly relations with him at once, and reported that he
found him very amusing. It was characteristic of Paton that, though he
knew much less about the German language than I did, he could
understand and make himself understood in it much better; and, when we
were in company, it was always he who did the talking.

It would never have occurred to me to wonder, much less to inquire, who
might be the occupants of the other _étages_; but Paton was more
enterprising, and before we had been settled three days in our new
quarters, he had gathered from his friend the portier, and from other
sources, all the obtainable information on the subject. The information
was of no particular interest, however, except as regarded the persons
who dwelt on the floor immediately below us. They were two--an old man
and a young woman, supposed to be his daughter. They had been living
here several years--from before the time, indeed, that the portier had
occupied his present position. In all these years the old man was known
to have been out of his room only twice. He was certainly an eccentric
person, and was said to be a miser and extremely wealthy. The portier
further averred that his property--except such small portion of it as
was invested and on the income of which he lived--was realized in the
form of diamonds and other precious stones, which, for greater
security, he always carried, waking or sleeping, in a small leathern
bag, fastened round his neck by a fine steel chain. His daughter was
scarcely less a mystery than he, for, though she went out as often as
twice or thrice a week, she was always closely veiled, and her figure
was so disguised by the long cloak she wore that it was impossible to
say whether she were graceful or deformed, beautiful or ugly. The
balance of belief, however, was against her being attractive in any
respect. The name by which the old miser was known was Kragendorf; but,
as the portier sagaciously remarked, there was no knowing, in such
cases, whether the name a man bore was his own or somebody's else.

This Kragendorf mystery was another source of apparently inexhaustible
interest to Paton, who was fertile in suggestions as to how it might be
explained or penetrated. I believe he and the portier talked it over at
great length, but, so far as I am aware, without arriving at any
solution. I took little heed of the matter, being now fully absorbed in
my studies; and it is to be hoped that Herr Kragendorf was not of a
nervous temperament, otherwise he must have inveighed profanely against
the constant piano-practice that went on over his head. I also had a
violin, on which I flattered myself I could perform with a good deal of
expression, and by and by, in the long, still evenings--it was
November, but the temperature was still mild--I got into the habit of
strolling along the less frequented streets, with my violin under my
shoulder, drawing from it whatever music my heart desired. Occasionally
I would pause at some convenient spot, lean against a wall, and give
myself up to improvisation. At such times a little cluster of auditors
would gradually collect in front of me, listening for the most part
silently, or occasionally giving vent to low grunts and interjections
of approval. One evening, I remember, a young woman joined the group,
though keeping somewhat in the background; she listened intently, and
after a time gradually turned her face toward me, unconsciously as it
were; and the light of a street-lamp at a little distance revealed a
countenance youthful, pale, sad, and exquisitely beautiful. It
impressed me as with a vague reminiscence of something I had seen or
imagined--some pictured face, perhaps, caught in a glance and never to
be identified. Her eyes finally met mine; I stopped playing. She
started, gave me an alarmed look, and, gliding swiftly away,
disappeared. I could not forget this incident; it haunted me strangely
and persistently. Many a time thereafter I revisited the same spot, and
drew together other audiences, but the delicate girl with the dark-blue
eyes and the tender, sensitive mouth, was never again among them.

It was at this epoch, I think, that the inexhaustible Paton made a
discovery. From my point of view it was not a discovery of any moment;
but, as usual, he took interest in it enough for both of us. It
appeared that, in attempting to doctor the crack in the old looking-
glass, a large piece of the plate had got loose, and come away in his
hands; and in the space behind he had detected a paper, carefully
folded and tied up with a piece of faded ribbon. Paton was never in the
habit of hampering himself with fine-drawn scruples, and he had no
hesitation in opening the folded paper and spreading it out on the
table. Judging from the glance I gave it, it seemed to be a confused
and abstruse mixture of irregular geometrical figures and cramped
German chirography. But Paton set to work upon it with as much
concentration as if it had been a recipe for the Philosopher's Stone;
he reproduced the lines and angles on fresh paper, and labored over the
writing with a magnifying-glass and a dictionary. At times he would
mutter indistinctly to himself, lift his eyebrows, nod or shake his
head, bite his lips, and rub his forehead, and anon fall to work again
with fresh vigor. At last he leaned back in his chair, thumped his hand
on the table, and laughed.

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