Doctor Huguet; a novel

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Contents

Chapter.

I. — Myself . . . .

Page.

Chapter I. Myself

" There's one at the gate.

Ah, marry, what is he ? "

— Twelfth Night, i. v.

{HAVE made up my mind to tell the whole dreadful story, let the consequences be what they may. I know there are those, among my friends, who will consider it a species of degradation for me to make public the facts which will appear in these pages; while there are others who will urge that the world will never believe so improbable a story as that which I am about to tell. But it seems to me that I have been chosen, by some extra-mundane, superhuman intelligence, out of the multitude of mankind, and subjected to a terrible and unparalleled experience, in order that a great lesson may be taught to the world; and that it is a duty, therefore, which I owe to the world, and which I must not shrink from or avoid, to make known all the facts of that experience, at whatever cost of shame or agony to myself Blessed is the man who can feel that God' has singled him out from among his fellows, and that the divine hand has shaped his destiny; and yet such men usually bear on their hearts and mind's a burden of life-long woe. Those whom God so honors he agonizes.

My name is Doctor Anthony Huguet. I am a native of South Carolina, and have lived here, in this

city of C , ever since I was born, except during

the years I was abroad and in the North, perfecting my medical education. My ancestors were French, and among the first Huguenot settlers in this State; my grandfather was-a planter, and laid the foundation of the fortune which I now enjoy, by large cotton crops in the old slave-days, and judicious investments of the money so made in real estate. I am an aristocrat of the aristocrats. My education was as thorough as wealth, on the part of my parents, and great industry, on my own part, could make it. I have been, by inheritance, a leader in the best society in my State and city. My house and grounds are the admiration of all who behold them. I take my physical constitution and stature from my French ancestors. I have never exceeded one hundred and fifty pounds in weight, and I am five feet six inches in height. My complexion is fair. In disposition I am, by nature, somewhat reserved and exclusive, and with a certain degree of hauteur in manner. My tastes are refined and studious, with a strong love for music and poetry. I have but little personal ambition. My opinions, naturally enough, have taken color from my surroundings. I have been a Democrat in politics, and a strong supporter of the South on all national questions.

I mention these facts that the reader may form some conception of the person with whom these pages will largely deal. Let him bring before his mind's eye a small, spare, sinewy, French-looking, aristocratic gentleman, of thirty-fiveyearsof age, with gold spectacles and heavy mustache; and he will have a pretty fair picture of what I was when the misfortune befell me of which I am about to speak.

My house stands on one of the most beautiful

avenues in C ; it was built more than one hundred

years ago, and has been occupied for several generations by my ancestors. The furniture is a history in little, as it were, of the family: each article has a story of its own which renders it all the more dear to me; from the few plain, solid pieces brought over from France by the founder of the family, down through each generation, including the rich additions made to it by my dear mother. And this is as it should be. The dwellings of the " new rich " look like warehouses of furniture-dealers: all is spick and span new, until one is almost tempted, as he wanders through this resplendent grandeur, to look around for the salesman and inquire the price.

Broad verandas, shadowy and social, surround the house, in the Southern style, and the whole is framed in a semi-tropical garden, the finest, in the city, where the very trees are bowers of blossoms in their season, and every bush and shrub gives out to the warm air its gorgeous tribute of flowers and perfume.

lO DOCTOR HUGUET.

I am a bachelor, and my household consists simply of servants and of such friends as may from time to time do me the honor to visit me. My income is so large that I have pretty much withdrawn from the practice of my profession. I read a great deal, and lead a quiet, pleasant, happy life.

Little did I think that upon this placid existence would be suddenly obtruded the most extraordinar)' experience that ever fell to the lot of man.

Chapter II. Mary Ruddiman

" In maiden meditation, fancy free."

^Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. ^.

WHEN a citizen of the United States has plenty of money and nothing to do, he naturally drifts into politics. If he has not himself any predisposition in that direction, he will be sought out by the professional politicians and forced into such a career — not, it may be, from any admiration of his talents, for he may, perchance, possess none; but from a desire to get their nands into his " barrel," as it is called in the vernacular of the day, or into his " pocket," as our ancestors would have said. The advance of the world is shown in the fact that the " pocket " has grown into a "barrel. " Civilization enlarges everything, even corruption.

Being rich and with fair abilities, I was naturally sought out by the leaders of my party and urged to become a candidate for this or that public position. To all these suggestions I had invariably turned a deaf ear. As I said before, I have no ambition to shine, and I looked upon public life as discredited, if not dishonored, by the kind of men who ruled it. , It appeared to me as a sordid and debased struggle of little creatures for honors that faded from the memories of men almost as soon as they were won. Out of the thousands of public characters who have taken part in our national life, one can count upon the fingers of his two hands the list of those statesmen who have really left any impress on their age; while a still smaller number will be remembered beyond the termination of the century in which they lived. I turned, therefore, from the temptations of this shallow and barren life to the quiet of my own library, and communion with the mighty souls of the past —

" Those dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule Our spirits from their urns" —

as one might turn from the sprawling and contemptible contentions of dogs to a banquet of the gods.

But a change had come over me. For the first time in my life I was in love. I had experienced that " pull of the heart" which drew me toward a fair maiden; and a cold and critical analysis made by my mind confirmed the wisdom of my inherited passion. For love, after all, is simply a primal instinct imposed on humanity for the perpetuation of the race. We are all automata^ Civilized man submits love to t'he supervision of his judgment, and there can be no permanent love where the natural physical affinity is not supplemented by the approval of a trained and cultured intelligenceJ

Colonel 'Kuddiman lives ten miles from the town

of C . ^e is a planter, the last of a long line of

planters, old settlers in this section, a man of fine mind and education, who won wounds and honor in command of a South Carolina regiment in the War be-

DOCTOR HUGUET.

tween the States. The defeat of his section almost broke his heart, and he returned home, at the close of the war, to find his negroes free and his plantation laid waste and woefully dilapidated. He possesses none of the traits of a business man. He would much rather entertain his neighbors than make money off them. He has scarcely enough selfishness to protect his own interests. He is hospitable, generous, a good liver, and fond of joviality and conviviality. For some years after his return from the war he had all he could do to provide a bare living for his family. But he hunted and killed his own hogs, which had run wild into the adjacent forests during his absence, and raised corn enough for his own use.

He has three sons and one daughter. The sons are gallant, high-spirited, fast-riding gentlemen, like their father; fond of all sorts of field sports, and not much given to study; and yet, withal, honorable, intelligent men, on whose faithfulness one might at any time stake his life. ' Hot partisans of the South, and worshipers of the memory of Lee and Stonewall Jackson, they at the same time are men of just and kindly views toward the people of the North.

The philosophers tell us there is " a law of variation " in nature, whereby its sameness and uniformity are broken up, and new species or varieties are created. If it were not so, " like would produce like " to the end of the chapter, and the dead-level of commonplace would spread, like a stagnant ocean, everywhere. But by that " law of variation " freaks occur everywhere;

and people are born whose pedigrees will be searched in vain for any prelude or prophesy of their coining.

Mary Ruddiman was a freak. True, she had inherited all the courage, daring, high-spirit and honorable impulses of her parents and ancestors; it would be impossible for her to commit a debased or degrading act. But she was something that none of her predecessors had ever been. There were plenty of intelligent Ruddimans; but Mary was the first of her race that was intellectual. She had displayed, from childhood, a ravenous appetite for knowledge, and a memory that was abnormal. Tiie Colonel possessed a good-sized library, the result of the accumulations of several generations; and an odd conglomeration of books it was — romances, histories, narratives of travel, religious works and scientific treatises. The latter were a generation or two old, and of little practical value; for it is the peculiar and distinguishing characteristic of science tha-t every ten or twenty years its conclusions are all reversed and set aside, as ridiculous absurdities, and a new set, brand-new, adopted, to be in turn cast overboard, but to rule with pope-like infallibility while they are accepted. Mary devoured everything in this old library, even to the prosiest sermons of forgotten divines who had proved conclusively, to their delighted congregations, that all the human family, except a favored portion of their own little segment of a creed, were hul-rying, at railroad speed, to everlasting damnation.

In those days, before my own terrible experience, there was, to me, something dreadful about that old theology. Its advocates conceived of God as a cruel monster, waiting on the other side of the fence of life for the trembling and cowering soul of the dead man to pass through the rails, that He might pounce upon it and plunge it, howling and shrieking, into everlasting flame. It never seemed to have occurred to them to ask why Omnipotence had to stay on the other side of the fence — why He did not invade the domain of life and roast and burn the sinners before our very eyes. But they held rigidly to this horrible belief, in the face of a thousand facts which testify to the benevolence of the all-nierciful Father, and the adaptation of His creation, in a million details, to the comfort and happiness of His creatures.

But an old library is, indeed, a sad object to contemplate. It represents so much of abandoned errors and disappointed ambitions, that to examine its shelves is very much like walking through an old church-yard. And what can be sadder than to look upon the graves of the dead and consider that houses, lands, furniture, goods, gold, silver, horses, cattle, books, grief, merriment, love, hate, are all taken away from the departed, and they are all brought down to a little, ghastly, erect stone, and a mamory that grows fainter and fainter every day, and at last disappears utterly in the awful abyss of universal oblivion.

Thus an old library is a sort of intellectual grave-yard: we find in it hundreds of forgotten books by forgotten men, who sought to drag a fragment of remembrance out of the black waters of Lethe, and fondly hoped that their works would live and occupy the minds of mankind for many generations. How marvelously the living creature shrinks from annihilation!

And yet Time will obliterate the memory even of

Homer. That universal maw spares nothing that is or

was.

" Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion; A great-sized monster of ingratitudes: Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done."

But, as the bee finds its honey in almost every flower, so the eager mind of Mary Ruddiman extracted nourishment from all the dead and dusty tomes of her father's library. While her brothers were hunting and fishing or horse-racing, she was seated on the porch, or in a window recess of the library, in the ancient stone house, poring, with bent head, diligently, over her precious volumes. She grew up a tall, angular, shy girl, with fine dark eyes, and an awkward and constrained manner. As such I remembered meeting her some years before the date of this story; and I remember, too, that I scarcely gave her a second glance.

But the negroes had come back to work — they had to work or starve; and, like white men, they would rather work than starve; and, like the average white man, nothing could make them work but the fear that they would starve. And the Colonel received a share of the crop; and the store-keeper and the usurer got nearly all that was left, except enough hog and hominy to keep the ebony machine in operation, and enough cheap goods to cover its nakedness. And so the Colonel prospered again, to some extent, and Mary

Was sent to an academy in C . there to be finished

off and polished up, after the manner of all eligible young ladies of good families.

Now, it so happened that Miss McGlynn's academy occupied the next house to my own; and I knew her very well, and she stood very high in my estimation. She was a tall, spare, spectacled maiden, of fifty-odd summers; an intelligent, kindly-hearted, good woman. She had three sisters, all unmarried, like herself, who had charge of different studies in the academy, while Miss McGlynn looked after the business management of that flourishing institution. Her sisters were shorter and stouter than herself; cheerful, dapper, kindly little women. It has always seemed to me a reflection on the good sense of the male sex that so many of the very best of the other division of mankind, of each generation, are left unwedded, while a weak and silly creature may be encumbered with suitors and bury three or four ..husbands. I suppose the average man is not willing to marry a ^yoman he " must look up to." He would rather sit on the pedestal himself, and be worshiped by shallowness, than to kneel at the feet of the noblest creature God ever made. And thus the best of the race cease to be mothers, and humanity is so much the worse off thereby.

One day Miss McGlynn came in to see me, and, with many apologies and hesitations, said she had a strange request to prefer. She had a pupil who was an exceedingly bright young lady, and a great reader. She had gone through every book in the limited library of the academy, and was now ranging up and down, seeking something to devour. The poor girl was really unhappy for want of mental food; and it had occurred to one of her (Miss McGlynh's) sisters, that if I would be kind enough to lend her some works out of my large library, it would be a kindness to them and a real charity to the pupil. I, of course, replied that I would be very glad to do so, and I asked the young lady's name. Miss McGlynn replied that it was Mary Ruddiman.

" What," I said, "the daughter of my old friend. Colonel Ruddiman?"

" The same," she replied.

" Why," said I, "I am really obhged to you for preferring the request. I have met Miss Ruddiman. I did not know she was in your academy, or I should have called and paid my respects to her ere this. I will lose no time in doing so now."

I escorted Miss McGlynn back to her own house. In a few moments Miss Ruddiman made her appearance in the reception-room. I was surprised to find her greatly changed. Instead of the angular, awkward girl I had seen at her father's house, there came to me a tall, graceful, beautiful woman, with all those rounded outlines and subtle charms which cunning Nature confers upon the other sex for the entrancement of man. Her manner, while self-possessed, was modest and retiring; but intelligence beamed from every line of her fine face; and her eyes had the bright glow of youth and the strength of energy in them.

I took her hand and welcomed her to C ; I spoke

of her father and family, and concluded by assuring her

DOCTOR HUG VET. ig

that every book in my house, and the owner of them, for that matter, was at her service, and I begged her to make my Hbrary her own ; that she would find it a quieter place to read and study than the noisy academy, with its drumming pianos and turbulent voices.

She thanked me cordially and promised to accept my invitation. After some further conversation I took my departure, pleased at having been able to render a civility to the daughter of my old friend Colonel Ruddiman.

Chapter III. " Sejanus."

" I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated To closeness and the bettering of my mind."

— Tempest, i. z.

BUSINESS of importance called me out of town for a day or two. On my return I went straight to my library. Ben — my negro " boy," a man of twentyfive, grandson of one of my father's former slaves, very black physically and quite bright mentally — met me at the door. He pointed significantly with his thumb over his shoulder, and whispered:

" Miss Mary dar. Bin here most of the time since you's gone."

It took me a few seconds to remember who " Miss Mary" was. I looked, and there, in an easy chair, near a window, with her back to the light, and her head bent over a book, I s^w a slim, graceful figure, utterly absorbed in her occupation, and unconscious of the presence of Ben or myself. I stepped forward.

" Miss Ruddiman," I said, " I am delighted to see that you have availed yourself of my invitation. You are most welcome — for your father's sake as well as your own."

She blushed and said something about her " intrusion," and explained that she was afraid to take val-

DOCTOR HUGUET. 2 I

uable books into the academy, lest they should be injured by her careless fellow-students.

I assured her that there was no " intrusion" whatever; that I was only too glad to have her visit me; that she must make herself perfectly at home, and that we would not interfere with each other's pursuits in the least. I begged her to go on with her reading, and that, if she would excuse me for a few moments, I would write a letter to a friend upon a matter of some urgency.

I took my seat at the table to write, and Miss Mary was soon again buried in her book.

There is something peculiar in the sensations which are experienced by a bachelor when he finds himself, for the first time, under the same roof — his own roof — with a beautiful young girK And so my pen stopped its monotonous scratching, and, as I looked over at the shapely, stooped head, I fell into meditation.

What a strange fancy for one so young and fair to be such a book-worm? Was it an affectation? No, for I had heard that, even as a child, she had been a diligent reader. But did her reading profit her any? As a physician I knew there were diseased conditions of the system when the patient consumed very large quantities of food, and remained thin and sickly in spite of it all, or perhaps because of it all. The appetite was insatiable, but there was no assimilation of that which was absorbed. So there were minds that read, and read, and read, and profited nothing. A mass of information swept over the surface of the brain, but nothing stuck. There are novel-readers of this kind, who can remember not one thing of or about the romance they read a month ago; who can scarcely keep in their recollection the names of the characters of the novels which they are perusing. WasMissMary one of these? Indeed, as a bachelor, — coming in contact with so many shallow creatures in every-day life, chattering, giggling ninnies, — I held the female mind in a kind of contempt. I looked upon the whole sex as pleasant creatures, whose function it was, in the economy of Nature, to keep the male part of humanity from dying out — a kind of agreeable, necessary evil for the maintenance of a race of men. And so I said to myself, I will have some amusement sounding the shallow depths of this young girl's mind.

" Pardon me for interrupting you, Miss Mary," I said, " but you seem to be very fond of reading."

" Yes," she replied, " I am, indeed, very fond of books. Indeed it is a passion with me."

" Why, may I ask?" I inquired.

" A good library," she answered, " seems to me to be a collection of the great personages of all ages, — that is, of their minds, — and the mind is, after all, the better part, the only enduring part, of the individual."

I was struck with astonishment at this reply, uttered, seemingly, without any consciousness of its pith or point. She continued:

" In every generation there are, it seems to me, but a few great souls, and one may go through life without meeting with a single one of them. It has never been my good fortune to encounter any person who stood much above his fellows. But here, in this library, are all the great souls of Greece and Rome, and modern Europe and America, down to the present day. It is as if they sat around this table, ready to talk to me; ready to give me their choicest and most select thoughts — the distilled wisdom of their lives. I can't help but think how many millions of boobies and envious detractors time has swept away into Oblivion, while it has left this galaxy of greatness undisturbed. It is the privilege of genius to survive whole generations of maligners. The conflagration of time, which consumes the mean, illumines the great."

I listened with increasing astonishment. This was no dyspeptic of the mind; \ki\?, vi2A 2, thinker . So young, so fair, and yet so wise! Where did this mind come from? Colonel Ruddiman and his ancestors never thought such thoughts as these. How did this young philosopher spring out of such a generation of foxhunters and warriors? Like does not, then, always produce like. If it did, there would be absolute uniformity among all human beings; and there is absolute nonuniformity. Neither were these sentences uttered in a pretentious or pedantic manner. Though oracular in their nature, they came from her lips modestly and hesitatingly, as if she feared to put her thoughts into words; as if she did not realize their merit.

I grew interested. I stopped my letter.

I drew my chair nearer to her.

" May I ask," I said, " what work you are reading?"

" Certainly," she replied; " I am reading, for the third time, Ben Jonson's Sejanus. "

" Indeed," I said, " that is rather an out-of-the-way and neglected book, nowadays. The world goes wild over Jonson's great contemporary, Shakespeare, — in fact, he is the rage and the fashion, — but it gives little attention to ' rare Ben,' his fellow actor and playwright. "

" True," she replied, " and yet there are many passages in his poetry that sound as if they had been written by the pen of Shakespeare himself, while, on the other hand, in his prose writings, especially his Discoveries, there are sentences that have all the depth and profoundness, the pith and point, and even the very color, of Bacon's compositions."

" Indeed," I said, more and more astonished with this school-girl. " Have you read Bacon's works? "

" Oh, yes," she said, and she smiled with enthusiasm; " they have been my daily study for years. I found an old edition in my father's library and devoured it years ago. I brought it with me to the school. I have made more than a hundred pages of annotations upon it."

" To publish? " I inquired.

" Oh, no," she said, with a slight blush; " I never thought of anything of that kind. I made them simply for my own instruction and pleasure."

No wonder, I said to myself, that the great philosopher of Verulam said that his thoughts would fall, like seeds, in the minds of those, of future generations, who were fitted to receive them! Here was this American girl, brought up upon a solitary plantation, who eagerly sought out that which generations of her

DOCTOR HUGUET.

ancestors had neglected to notice; which they had been, indeed, incapable of understanding.

" I had not supposed," I said, wishing to draw her out still farther, " that there was any resemblance between Ben Jonson's prose and Lord Bacon's writings."

" Oh, yes," she said, eagerly, " listen to this:

" 'Language most shows a man. Speak that T may see thee. It springs out of the most retired and inward parts of us, and is the image of the mind. No glass renders a man's form or likeness so true as his speech.'

" And this," she continued:

" ' A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks. ... It is easier to do many things and continue, than to do one thing long. . , . As when a man is weary of writing, to read; and then again of reading, to write. . . . Though ambition itself be a vice, it is often the cause of great virtue. . . Let them look over all the great and monstrous wickedness; they shall never find those in poor families. They are the issue of the wealthy giants and the mighty hunters: whereas no great zvork, or worthy of praise or memory, but came out of poor cradles. ... I have considered our whole life is like a play: wherein every man, forgetful of himself, is in travail with expression of another. . . . Placed high on the top of all virtue, they looked down on the Stage of the World, and contemned the Play of Fortune. For, though the most be players, some must be spectators.' "

" Really," said I, " you astonish me. Are you reading from Ben Jonson? Why, the sentences have all the pith, condensation and wisdom of Bacon. And bow curiously that last sentence agrees with the rhymes that have come down to us by tradition; where Shakespeare was asked, in reference to the expression, 'AH the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players,'

" ' If but stage acting all the world displays, Where shall we find spectators for our plays ? '

" And the answer given:

" ' But little of the much we see we do; We are both actors and spectators too.'

" That," said I, " is the very thought you have just read; 'the stage of the world, — the play of fortune, — for, though the most be players, some must be spectators.' It is all very strange. You give me a new interest in Ben Jonson's writings."

"Indeed!" she replied; "I am astonished that an intelligent age has paid so little attention to them. The Discoveries alone is a mine of profound and original thought."

" You have spoken of passages that have reminded you of the pen of Shakespeare. Can you give me any instances? I have supposed Jonson to be rather a tame and prosy poet, distinguished more by learning than genius; that, at least, is the common verdict of our modern critics."

" It is altogether an error," she replied;'" take these verses, for instance, from Every Man out of his Humor, the very opening of the play:

" ' Who is so patient of this impious world That he can check his spirit, or rein his tongue ? Or who hath such a dead, unfeeling sense, That heaven's horrid thunders cannot wake ?