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_ Thus excluded from everybody's confidence, and attaining no further,
by my most earnest study, than to an uncertain sense of something
hidden from me, it would appear reasonable that I should have flung
off all these alien perplexities. Obviously, my best course was to
betake myself to new scenes. Here I was only an intruder. Elsewhere
there might be circumstances in which I could establish a personal
interest, and people who would respond, with a portion of their
sympathies, for so much as I should bestow of mine.
Nevertheless, there occurred to me one other thing to be done.
Remembering old Moodie, and his relationship with Priscilla, I
determined to seek an interview, for the purpose of ascertaining
whether the knot of affairs was as inextricable on that side as I
found it on all others. Being tolerably well acquainted with the old
man's haunts, I went, the next day, to the saloon of a certain
establishment about which he often lurked. It was a reputable place
enough, affording good entertainment in the way of meat, drink, and
fumigation; and there, in my young and idle days and nights, when I
was neither nice nor wise, I had often amused myself with watching
the staid humors and sober jollities of the thirsty souls around me.
At my first entrance, old Moodie was not there. The more patiently
to await him, I lighted a cigar, and establishing myself in a corner,
took a quiet, and, by sympathy, a boozy kind of pleasure in the
customary life that was going forward. The saloon was fitted up with
a good deal of taste. There were pictures on the walls, and among
them an oil-painting of a beefsteak, with such an admirable show of
juicy tenderness, that the beholder sighed to think it merely
visionary, and incapable of ever being put upon a gridiron. Another
work of high art was the lifelike representation of a noble sirloin;
another, the hindquarters of a deer, retaining the hoofs and tawny
fur; another, the head and shoulders of a salmon; and, still more
exquisitely finished, a brace of canvasback ducks, in which the
mottled feathers were depicted with the accuracy of a daguerreotype.
Some very hungry painter, I suppose, had wrought these subjects of
still-life, heightening his imagination with his appetite, and
earning, it is to be hoped, the privilege of a daily dinner off
whichever of his pictorial viands he liked best. Then there was a
fine old cheese, in which you could almost discern the mites; and
some sardines, on a small plate, very richly done, and looking as if
oozy with the oil in which they had been smothered. All these things
were so perfectly imitated, that you seemed to have the genuine
article before you, and yet with an indescribable, ideal charm; it
took away the grossness from what was fleshiest and fattest, and thus
helped the life of man, even in its earthliest relations, to appear
rich and noble, as well as warm, cheerful, and substantial. There
were pictures, too, of gallant revellers, those of the old time,
Flemish, apparently, with doublets and slashed sleeves, drinking
their wine out of fantastic, long-stemmed glasses; quaffing joyously,
quaffing forever, with inaudible laughter and song; while the
champagne bubbled immortally against their moustaches, or the purple
tide of Burgundy ran inexhaustibly down their throats.
But, in an obscure corner of the saloon, there was a little Picture
excellently done, moreover of a ragged, bloated, New England toper,
stretched out on a bench, in the heavy, apoplectic sleep of
drunkenness. The death-in-life was too well portrayed. You smelt
the fumy liquor that had brought on this syncope. Your only comfort
lay in the forced reflection, that, real as he looked, the poor
caitiff was but imaginary, a bit of painted canvass, whom no delirium
tremens, nor so much as a retributive headache, awaited, on the
morrow.
By this time, it being past eleven o'clock, the two bar-keepers of
the saloon were in pretty constant activity. One of these young men
had a rare faculty in the concoction of gin-cocktails. It was a
spectacle to behold, how, with a tumbler in each hand, he tossed the
contents from one to the other. Never conveying it awry, nor
spilling the least drop, he compelled the frothy liquor, as it seemed
to me, to spout forth from one glass and descend into the other, in a
great parabolic curve, as well-defined and calculable as a planet's
orbit. He had a good forehead, with a particularly large development
just above the eyebrows; fine intellectual gifts, no doubt, which he
had educated to this profitable end; being famous for nothing but
gin-cocktails, and commanding a fair salary by his one accomplishment.
These cocktails, and other artificial combinations of liquor, (of
which there were at least a score, though mostly, I suspect,
fantastic in their differences,) were much in favor with the younger
class of customers, who, at farthest, had only reached the second
stage of potatory life. The staunch, old soakers, on the other hand
men who, if put on tap, would have yielded a red alcoholic liquor, by
way of blood usually confined themselves to plain brandy-and-water,
gin, or West India rum; and, oftentimes, they prefaced their dram
with some medicinal remark as to the wholesomeness and stomachic
qualities of that particular drink. Two or three appeared to have
bottles of their own behind the counter; and, winking one red eye to
the bar-keeper, he forthwith produced these choicest and peculiar
cordials, which it was a matter of great interest and favor, among
their acquaintances, to obtain a sip of.
Agreeably to the Yankee habit, under whatever circumstances, the
deportment of all these good fellows, old or young, was decorous and
thoroughly correct. They grew only the more sober in their cups;
there was no confused babble nor boisterous laughter. They sucked in
the joyous fire of the decanters and kept it smouldering in their
inmost recesses, with a bliss known only to the heart which it warmed
and comforted. Their eyes twinkled a little, to be sure; they hemmed
vigorously after each glass, and laid a hand upon the pit of the
stomach, as if the pleasant titillation there was what constituted
the tangible part of their enjoyment. In that spot, unquestionably,
and not in the brain, was the acme of the whole affair. But the true
purpose of their drinking--and one that will induce men to drink, or
do something equivalent, as long as this weary world shall
endure--was the renewed youth and vigor, the brisk, cheerful sense of
things present and to come, with which, for about a quarter of an
hour, the dram permeated their systems. And when such quarters of an
hour can be obtained in some mode less baneful to the great sum of a
man's life,--but, nevertheless, with a little spice of impropriety,
to give it a wild flavor,--we temperance people may ring out our
bells for victory!
The prettiest object in the saloon was a tiny fountain, which threw
up its feathery jet through the counter, and sparkled down again into
an oval basin, or lakelet, containing several goldfishes. There was
a bed of bright sand at the bottom, strewn with coral and rock-work;
and the fishes went gleaming about, now turning up the sheen of a
golden side, and now vanishing into the shadows of the water, like
the fanciful thoughts that coquet with a poet in his dream. Never
before, I imagine, did a company of water-drinkers remain so entirely
uncontaminated by the bad example around them; nor could I help
wondering that it had not occurred to any freakish inebriate to empty
a glass of liquor into their lakelet. What a delightful idea! Who
would not be a fish, if he could inhale jollity with the essential
element of his existence!
I had begun to despair of meeting old Moodie, when, all at once, I
recognized his hand and arm protruding from behind a screen that was
set up for the accommodation of bashful topers. As a matter of
course, he had one of Priscilla's little purses, and was quietly
insinuating it under the notice of a person who stood near. This was
always old Moodie's way. You hardly ever saw him advancing towards
you, but became aware of his proximity without being able to guess
how he had come thither. He glided about like a spirit, assuming
visibility close to your elbow, offering his petty trifles of
merchandise, remaining long enough for you to purchase, if so
disposed, and then taking himself off, between two breaths, while you
happened to be thinking of something else.
By a sort of sympathetic impulse that often controlled me in those
more impressible days of my life, I was induced to approach this old
man in a mode as undemonstrative as his own. Thus, when, according
to his custom, he was probably just about to vanish, he found me at
his elbow.
"Ah!" said he, with more emphasis than was usual with him. "It is Mr.
Coverdale!"
"Yes, Mr. Moodie, your old acquaintance," answered I. "It is some
time now since we ate luncheon together at Blithedale, and a good
deal longer since our little talk together at the street corner."
"That was a good while ago," said the old man.
And he seemed inclined to say not a word more. His existence looked
so colorless and torpid,--so very faintly shadowed on the canvas of
reality,--that I was half afraid lest he should altogether disappear,
even while my eyes were fixed full upon his figure. He was certainly
the wretchedest old ghost in the world, with his crazy hat, the dingy
handkerchief about his throat, his suit of threadbare gray, and
especially that patch over his right eye, behind which he always
seemed to be hiding himself. There was one method, however, of
bringing him out into somewhat stronger relief. A glass of brandy
would effect it. Perhaps the gentler influence of a bottle of claret
might do the same. Nor could I think it a matter for the recording
angel to write down against me, if--with my painful consciousness of
the frost in this old man's blood, and the positive ice that had
congealed about his heart--I should thaw him out, were it only for an
hour, with the summer warmth of a little wine. What else could
possibly be done for him? How else could he be imbued with energy
enough to hope for a happier state hereafter? How else be inspired
to say his prayers? For there are states of our spiritual system
when the throb of the soul's life is too faint and weak to render us
capable of religious aspiration.
"Mr. Moodie," said I, "shall we lunch together? And would you like
to drink a glass of wine?"
His one eye gleamed. He bowed; and it impressed me that he grew to
be more of a man at once, either in anticipation of the wine, or as a
grateful response to my good fellowship in offering it.
"With pleasure," he replied.
The bar-keeper, at my request, showed us into a private room, and
soon afterwards set some fried oysters and a bottle of claret on the
table; and I saw the old man glance curiously at the label of the
bottle, as if to learn the brand.
"It should be good wine," I remarked, "if it have any right to its
label."
"You cannot suppose, sir," said Moodie, with a sigh, "that a poor old
fellow like me knows any difference in wines."
And yet, in his way of handling the glass, in his preliminary snuff
at the aroma, in his first cautious sip of the wine, and the
gustatory skill with which he gave his palate the full advantage of
it, it was impossible not to recognize the connoisseur.
"I fancy, Mr. Moodie," said I, "you are a much better judge of wines
than I have yet learned to be. Tell me fairly,--did you never drink
it where the grape grows?"
"How should that have been, Mr. Coverdale?" answered old Moodie shyly;
but then he took courage, as it were, and uttered a feeble little
laugh. "The flavor of this wine," added he, "and its perfume still
more than its taste, makes me remember that I was once a young man."
"I wish, Mr. Moodie," suggested I,--not that I greatly cared about it,
however, but was only anxious to draw him into some talk about
Priscilla and Zenobia,--"I wish, while we sit over our wine, you
would favor me with a few of those youthful reminiscences."
"Ah," said he, shaking his head, "they might interest you more than
you suppose. But I had better be silent, Mr. Coverdale. If this
good wine,--though claret, I suppose, is not apt to play such a trick,--
but if it should make my tongue run too freely, I could never look
you in the face again."
"You never did look me in the face, Mr. Moodie," I replied, "until
this very moment."
"Ah!" sighed old Moodie.
It was wonderful, however, what an effect the mild grape-juice
wrought upon him. It was not in the wine, but in the associations
which it seemed to bring up. Instead of the mean, slouching, furtive,
painfully depressed air of an old city vagabond, more like a gray
kennel-rat than any other living thing, he began to take the aspect
of a decayed gentleman. Even his garments--especially after I had
myself quaffed a glass or two--looked less shabby than when we first
sat down. There was, by and by, a certain exuberance and
elaborateness of gesture and manner, oddly in contrast with all that
I had hitherto seen of him. Anon, with hardly any impulse from me,
old Moodie began to talk. His communications referred exclusively to
a long-past and more fortunate period of his life, with only a few
unavoidable allusions to the circumstances that had reduced him to
his present state. But, having once got the clew, my subsequent
researches acquainted me with the main facts of the following
narrative; although, in writing it out, my pen has perhaps allowed
itself a trifle of romantic and legendary license, worthier of a
small poet than of a grave biographer. _
Read next: CHAPTER XXII - FAUNTLEROY
Read previous: CHAPTER XX - THEY VANISH
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