Roxy Hastings

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Chapter I

IMPRISONED IN. THE VAULT.

At four o’clock on an autumnal afternoon, a few years ago, one of the banks of the city of New York was the scene of an event of extraordinary interest, and one which threw the frequent monetary excitements of those temples of Mammon quite into the shade.

Business hours were nearly over, and only a few clerks were lingering at their desks, when a beautiful girl, of about fourteen years, walked trippingly into the bank, and inquired for her father, the cashier.

‘ ‘ Gone, Carry, ” was the reply of the receiving teller, a slight young man, who was bending under the weight of a heavy tray of gold and silver coin, which he was in the' act of carrying to the vault, and whose large dark eyes grew brighter at the sight of the fair girl. “Gone, but he will return for a moment before starting for home. I expect him back every minute. ”

“ Oh, I am so glad that I am not too late,” replied Caroline, following with childish curiosity the young man to the door of the vault, and looking in, while he entered and deposited his specie in a safe which stood in one corner of the iron room.

“ What a dreadful place ! Is this where you keep all your money?”

“All our treasures of every kind. Won’t you walk in?”

A sudden thought seemed to strike the girl, who clapped her hands and said :

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“ Yes, yes ! lock me in, and when papa comes send him here on some pretext, and see how astonished he’ll be. Will you?”

“ Yes, step in. Shall I lock it ? It will be pitch dark inside. ”

“ Oh, I don’t care. Yes, lock it in the regular way, and then hand papa the key, and tell him there is a package in there for him to take home. ”

“ A baggage, did you say ?” asked Charley Lee, looking laughingly in at the merry maiden, and then closing the heavy iron door with a clangor which resounded through the building.

There was no talking through the two feet of solid iron, and if the thoughtless child regretted her rash request when the thick darkness environed her, and when she inhaled the odor of moldy and mildewed books and papers, it was too late to make her wishes known.

Charley Lee locked the door with that tripple combination lock, burglar-proof, and proof, alas ! against honest men, too, if their memory fails to retain aright the numbers upon which it is set, and the order in which those numbers occur.

The chance of regaining the clew when once lost was but one in many hundreds of thousands, and it is usual to keep the numbers written down upon a slip of paper for greater safety ; but the young man had intrusted this weighty secret to a memory thronged with pleasant thoughts about his fair prisoner, and about the surprise which was to be practiced upon the expected parent.

The porter, whose province it was to lock the vault, but who often delegated that duty to the tellers, had gone out, no one knew whither, and Lee, to whom he had communicated the mystic numbers for the current week, believed that he had remembered them aright, and that he had used them in locking up the vault.

But no sooner was his fair prize made sure than the terrible fear flashed across his mind that his memory might prove unfaithful to its great trust, and the appearance, at that instant, of Mr. Wilsey, the cashier, contributed farther to confuse his disturbed faculties. No further thought of his joke remained, but with trembling hand he applied the key to the lock, and tried in vain to remember even the first figure to which it was to be turned.

“ What is the matter, Lee ? Can’t you lock it?” asked the cashier, who observed the teller’s hurried, nervous movements.

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Charles arose, and wiping the perspiration from his forehead, exhibited a face on which agony was too plainly impressed to escape observation.

“I — fear — I have made a terrible mistake, sir,” he said ; “your daughter Carry came here — she went in there for a frolic — to hide from you — I locked her in — and I’ve forgotten the numbers !”

Wilsey trembled and turned pale as these words were spoken.

“Good heavens, Lee!” he said, “you must remember! She cannot live in there half an hour !”

“ I know it ! Not long !” replied Charles, whose confusion was worse confounded by this injudicious speech, and whose brain seemed on fire, “ but I used the porter’s numbers, I think, and I will run for him. ”

u Do you know where to go ? Does any one know where he has gone ?”

No one knew. The few employees of the institution, who had not gone home for the day were by this time crowding the door of the vault in a state of great excitement.

As nearly as could be ascertained from them the porter had gone in three or four different directions, and would return at five, at half-past five, and at six o’clock.

The cashier dispatched two of the clerks in pursuit of him, and sent a third in breathless haste to the office of the manufacturers of the vault, with a message requesting men and tools to be sent for the purpose of breaking it open.

While he waited in breathless suspense the return of these messengers he still tried to stimulate the memory of the baffled teller, whose bewilderment was only increased by the lapse of the precious moments.

“ I am sure the first number was twenty-three — or thirtytwo,” he said. “No, that was the second — the first was — I really cannot tell. It’s all gone from me.”

Vainly the distracted father sought to hold some communication with his imprisoned child. No voice could pierce that massive wall of iron, but when he held his ear close against it he was conscious of a dull, heavy sound, as of something beating against the inner surface of the door. Doubtless the wretched girl, after exhausting her voice in fruitless screams, had groped about in the darkness until she had found some book or other hard substance, with which she was knocking to attract attention.

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“Thank Heaven! she lives yet !” said the father, “but‘ ah ! how long ?”

“ It is not ten minutes yet,” replied the young man, “and I think one might breathe there for an hour ; don’t — don’t you think so ?”

“I cannot tell, but I think not, Mr. Lee. I have read of some experiments showing how fearfully soon animal life becomes extinct in a perfectly air-tight room, even larger than that. Oh, it is too horrible !”

Charles remembered how nearly stifling was the air of the vault to him, even when he entered it for a few minutes, with the door open, and his heart sank with new terror.

They replied from time to time to the signal of the immured girl by striking with a hammer upon the door, hoping thus to keep up her courage ; nor did they cease to try the lock on various combinations of numbers, though in a feeble, hopeless way.

While thus engaged one of the clerks returned, accompanied by an agent of the manufacturers, to whom Wilsey turned with great eagerness.

“You have come alone, and without tools,” he said, angrily, “ when I want this vault broken open instantly, to save my daughter’s life.”

“Sir,” replied the man, solemnly, “we have not force enough in our establishment to open that door, or to effect any entrance into that room in less than twelve or fifteen hours. ”

Wilsey groaned.

“ And the combinations ?” he asked. “ How many are there ? How long will it take to try them all ? What are the chances?”

“ There is no hope in that direction,” replied the man — “ at least none worth counting on ; though you can keep trying, of course. If Mr. Lee really locked the door with the porter’s figures, and you can find him in time, all will be right. But this is your only hope. ”

“Let me go for him !” said Lee, wildly. “Let us all go in different directions. Let us sound the alarm through the city. Surely we can find him somewhere !”

The painful tidings were indeed already fast spreading ; the bank was filling up with curious and anxious spectators, and volunteer messengers were constantly starting off in search of the man on the discovery of whom such momentous results depended.

At this moment a book-keeper entered, who had been

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out to dine or lunch, and had returned to finish his uncompleted day’s work.

Entering the bank with the impression that it had been robbed or was on fire, he soon learned the cause of the alarm.

“ I can tell you where the porter has gone, ” he said to the eager crowd which closed around him, “ for he knew that I was to stay late this afternoon, and asked me to wait for him until seven o’clock.”

“Where, where?”

“To his sister’s, who lives in Washington avenue, in Brooklyn. I don’t know the number, but the name is Mason, and it is near Myrtle avenue. ”

An uncertain address — and a distance which would require a full hour and a half to traverse to and fro.

But three willing messengers started, and among them Lee, who outstripped his companions, reaching the Wall street ferry just in time to gain, by a long leap, a parting boat, for which his competitors were a moment too late. Never had steamboat seemed so slow as that which bore him now, and never he thought had he known so many vessels to obstruct the river, requiring such deviations from the direct route of the ferry-boat.

But he is across at last ; he is the first man ashore, and, as on the wings of the wind, he speeds up the hill, and through Montague street, attracting all eyes, but heeding nothing, thinking of nothing, save his thrilling mission. Should he find Hart? Should he get back in time? And last and most fearful question of all, would the porter’s numbers prove to be those on which he had locked those awful portals (portals, perhaps, of the grave now), and which would guide him to an easy reversal of the ponderous bolts.

On a Myrtle avenue car he took his stand beside the conductor, and proclaiming the urgency of his errand, he purchased an increased rate of speed — yet fifty minutes passed since he left the bank before he stood at the door of Mis. Mason’s house, furiously ringing the bell.

Yes, Hart was there. What a relief to see him — the magician at whose touch that iron door was wont daily to fly open ! He was in his slippers, cozily awaiting tea, and playing with his sister’s children, and not for an hour yet would he have thought of starting on his return.

“ The numbers ! Give me the numbers !” said Lee, breathlessly. “ I have locked Miss Wilsey in the vault, and cannot get it open again.”

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The affrighted porter took out his pocket-book, and produced the cabalistic figures, written on a slip of paper, which he handed to Lee, whose face took an added look of pain as he gazed on them, and repeated them several times.

“ Are you sure these are the same you told me ?” he asked.

“Perfectly. I know them like my A, B, C. I never look at the paper.”

“ Probably I used them, then. If not all is lost. But they do not look familiar to me. ”

“ You are too frightened to tell ; but when you locked the door you were calm, and your memory was good. Do not look so aghast. You will find them right.”

Hart was hurriedly getting ready to go with him as he spoke, and they went forth together.

All speed was made, and at twelve minutes past six they rushed into the bank, where an excited crowd parted and made way for them.

The distracted father was pacing the directors’ room ; a band of workmen, a few, indeed, but all that could -be crowded into the upper compartment or second story of the vault, were busy in trying to force an opening through into the lower part — large enough, at least, for the admission of air — and two physicians were in attendance, ready to bestow upon the young lady the benefit of their professional skill, if she should be taken out alive. The knocking from within had ceased nearly an hour, and little hope was entertained by any one that the unfortunate girl still lived.

Hart was quickly at the door of the vault, and every voice was hushed during the few moments of agonizing suspense in which the result yet remained uncertain.

Wilsey leaned over him with ghost-like visage, and a score of scarcely less pallid faces closed around him as the last of the tripartite numbers was tried, and a vigorous pull was made upon the ponderous door to test the result.

It moves ! and a buzz which multiplies and grows into a shout of “ open ! open !” spreads through the bank, extends into the street, and is echoed along the crowd which blocks the great thoroughfare for many rods on each side of the building, and which is still augmenting, while rampant policemen are momentarily charging through it to make way for the vehicles stopped on either side.

Charley Lee, forcing his way beneath the porter’s arm, is first in the iron room, where, groping, he grasps the prostrate form of the young lady and drags it out. “Fallback! fallback!” said the authoritative voice of

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the physician. “ Give her air ! throw open the windows, and let the room be cleared. ”

It was a mournful spectacle which presented itself to view.

There were no signs of life, and on the purple face, upturned to the few beholders, lingered a look of agony and terror, which had been imprinted there while consciousness yet remained.

They laid her tenderly upon the directors’ table, while another and a sadder word went forth from pale lips, gathering volume as it proceeded, and reverberating to the outermost edges of the street crowd, “ Dead ! Quite dead !”

Some turned away in sadness, and not a few strong men wept.

But the vital spark was not quite extinct. A slight pulsation was detected. The lungs played faintly, just stirring the feathery fibers that were held beneath the nostrils, and again the swaying multitude were thrilled with the words, shouted from the windows and door, and caught up and repeated by a hundred voices outside, while upraised arms and waving hats telegraphed the glad news to those who could not hear it spoken :

“ She is alive ! she is alive !”

Ah ! there is much that is good in poor, weak human nature after all. How heart answers to heart when thus some isolated case of distress appeals directly to the sympathies, which would perhaps- remain unmoved at the tidings of whole battalions swept down in battle.

Miss Wilsey slowly recovered, and in an hour or so was assisted to a carriage and taken home by her overjoyed father. Yet even in that moment of bliss Mr. Cashier Wilsey found it in his heart coldly to repulse the offered services of young Lee, whose delight at the rescue of Caroline had surpassed expression, and who at any moment of her recent peril would unhesitatingly have laid down his life to save that which he had so thoughtlessly endangered.

“ It is unnecessary, Mr. Lee, we shall do very well, and I think she will get over the shock sooner for not seeing you. Of course it was unintentional, and all that, but I still shudder to think what might have been the result of your folly.”

Charley turned indignantly away from the cold-hearted man, yet with a saddened air.

“Oh, father! it was all my fault, not his,” said the daughter, eagerly, but faintly. “ I asked him to lock me

in.”

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11 He ought to have known better, ” was all the reply that the young man heard as the father and daughter went out together ; but there was a radiant look of kindness thrown back to him from the fair child, which more than compensated for the churlishness of her parent.

Chapter II. A Despairing Household

Charley Lee’s position in the bank was one of small pecuniary value, yet it was nearly the whole support of a family of four persons.

His father had been a merchant in good standing, who had emerged from the crisis of ’57 without failing, but with such heavy losses as ought to have induced him to wind up his business at once and save something from its debris.

Unfortunately he struggled on about three years, maintaining his credit, but not regaining his lost ground, and when at last he resolved to stop, although he paid his debts, he saved nothing but his good name, his household furniture — his house was mortgaged too deeply to save anything from that — and a Pennslyvania farm of a couple of hundred acres, which no creditor could be coaxed to take.

He sold his furniture, excepting so much of it as was necessary to furnish a few rooms at a boarding-house, and a few months later, while diligently struggling to find some way of beginning life anew, he was saved further trouble on that score by a brain fever, which terminated his existence, and left his little family whelmed in a deeper grief than any which mere poverty could produce.

A life insurance tantalized the afflicted family for a while with the prospect of pecuniary relief, but the company which had issued it kept a very sharp attorney employed to pick flaws in its policies, and evade the payment of them when possible ; and some irregularity was discovered which vitiated this solemn contract with the dead.

Mrs. Lee was not a lady of resources, and she quailed beneath these successive blows, and looked hopelessly forward to the future of herself, her three children and her father — a destitute old gentleman of more than seventyseven years, who for more than a decade had been a member of her husband’s family, and had never for a moment

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in all that time been allowed to feel that his presence was a burden. The widow’s oldest son, Alfred, who was a couple of years the senior of Charles, was in the army, having volunteered soon after his father’s death, under circumstances which will appear more fully hereafter. Like Charles, he had been thoroughly educated, and for a short time before his father’s retirement from business, he had been a partner in the house. Alfred was a little taller and stouter than his brother, and having curling chestnut hair, fine gray eyes, and an ample forehead, might be considered a fair specimen of manly beauty.

Charles was at this time nearly twenty years old, and had returned from Yale only about three months before the death of his father, who would not let his altered fortunes interfere with the completion of his son’s education.

He had been designed for a profession, but the emergency which was now so close upon his family no longer permitted him to entertain such aspirations ; and he was too happy to be able to add a little to his widowed mother’s means by entering a bank on a small salary.

From this position he had soon risen to the better one in which the opening of our narrative finds him ; but during this period the Lees had fallen from one depth of poverty to another, until all their scant means being exhausted, they had no dependence beyond the earnings of Charles, and some trifling avails of the needle of both mother and daughter.

The respectable boarding-house in which the reduced merchant had taken rooms had been exchanged for an obscure home on the east side of the city, where, in a hired half house, which they had scantily furnished, they ceased to make any claims to their former gentility.

Into this obscurity their more prosperous friends permitted them to subside without much inquiry after them, a circumstance which the charitable widow considered quite a proof of their good nature.

“ They do not want to annoy us by finding us in such a place as this, Laura,” she would say to her daughter ; “and it is really quite considerate of them.”

Laura Lee deserves some description at our hands, not so much because she possessed unusual personal attractions, being a slight, graceful, black-eyed girl — such soft, large, lustrous eyes they were, too — as for her filial and sisterly love, for the contented spirit with which she accepted her new position, and for her earnest, cheerful discharge of the onerous duties which it devolved upon her.

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Laura’s descent in the social scale had cost her a lover — if he deserved the name — a young man of some fashion, ana of a good family, who had all but proposed before her father’s misfortunes, and whom she was trying very hard to like, in compliance with the advice of her parents.

But she did not mourn for Mr. Perth, of whose selfishness and insincerity, which she had before suspected, she now had such convincing proof.

He was in truth a shalloAv coxcomb, though a prosperous business man, who spent money freely on himself in dress and personal decoration, but who, in all other respects was parsimonious, nay, almost miserly.

It might not be too much to say that Laura’s escape from such a man more than compensated her for all the evils of her new lot.

Old Mr. Todd, the remaining member of this little household, was a perfect gentleman in all respects but one ; he was willing to work. He was anxious to work — at anything whatever that could assist the family, which, while in affluence, had supported him in ease and never allowed him to feel his dependence.

He had been a man of some note in his day, as a country editor and politician ; had held some responsible public offices, and had come out of the political arena with unsullied reputation.

He was now a white-haired, stoutish, slightly bent old man, with the mildest and most benevolent of faces, with mental powers scarcely impaired ; intelligent, witty, and altogether a niost lively and agreeable companion.

“He would be an ornament to any family,” his generous son-in-law used to say of him. “ I do not consider him beholden to me. The obligation is quite on the other side. ”

Mrs. Lee adored her father, and loved her husband more for his generous treatment of one so dear to her.

“ I have been thinking what I can do,” said the old gentleman one morning, soon after they had moved into their new home ; “ I can keep a little news stand here on the corner, and sell the morning and evening papers. ”

“Father! You! You never shall do that. I will sew all my fingers off first. ”

“No, grandpa, I’m going to give music lessons,” said Laura, “ and then we shall do very well. ”

“Yes, this is such a capital neighborhood to get pupils in,” said the old man, ironically, “and you have so much leisure.”

“Well, I’m going to try, and Charley is expecting pro-

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motion next year, and, at any rate, you are not going to sell newspapers.”

“If it is really so distasteful to you and your mother, Laura, I won’t do that, of course, but I must do something. ”

“ Do nothing, father, more than you have been accustomed to,” said the widow. “Read the papers ; read your books ; smoke your pipe ; take your nap and be comfortable. You are too old to work.”

“ And it is for us to bear the burden and heat of the day, now,” added Laura, patting him on the shoulder.

The major, as the old gentleman had been called for forty years, having once held that militia rank, did not reply to these persuasions, but the next day he was missing early from home, to which he did not return until late in the afternoon, when he came back much fatigued, and on being questioned as to where he had been, he would only reply, with a smile, that he had been “looking around.”

A second and third day he was absent in like manner, and after being long importuned to tell his secret, he said :

“You know that I was a printer when I was quite a young man. I have not forgotten my trade. I am employed at the Herald office setting type, and you’ll see at the end of the week that I have earned something. ”

He seemed much pleased, and his daughter did not further dissuade him, except by exacting from him a promise that he would not go out on rainy days, or when he felt unwell.

That evening Charley Lee returned home the very picture of woe, and the effect upon the little familv was as if a storm-cloud had suddenly descended from the sky and enveloped the house in its murky folds. A reflected gloom gathered upon every face.

“What is the matter, Charles?” asked the frightened mother.

“Discharged!” said the young man, dropping into a chair, and turning his face away from his questioners. It was some minutes before he could say more, or before any had the heart to question him further.

But his mother asked at last, with a choking voice and impeded utterance :

“ For what cause, Charles ?”

“ I took another hundred dollar counterfeit bill yesterday, in some scoundrel’s deposits, and the bank has to lose it. We did not find it out till to-day, but this is the second time, you know, that I have done it. ”

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“Blit — but don’t you know whom you took it from?”

“ Oh, no, mother. It is utterly impossible to tell. The rascals choose the dark days, like yesterday, to slip them in mixed up in great piles of good money, bringing them in just before three o’clock, when we are most hurried.”

“But — but if we should pay it; there's my watch will bring nearly that sum. It must go sooner or later, and — ” “No, mother, it’s no use. The deed is done, and my successor is already appointed. They say I am not safe, and I am tabooed now, so that I can’t get into any other bank. That’s the worst of it.”

“What heartless conduct !”

“You may well say that. A great deal worse mistakes than mine have been overlooked, but I think the cashier has never forgiven me that affair of Carry’s. He’s been very cool toward me ever since. ”

“ He must be very unjust then, and most ungrateful, too, for you really saved his daughter's life at last.”

“ He professes to have nothing to do with my removal, and lays it all to the directors ; but everybody knows he could have prevented it if he had wished. ”

The “affair of Carry’s” had really a great deal to do with the young man’s dismissal. Not that Mr. Wilsey retained any anger against young Lee for his agency in that accident. He was not unreasonable enough for that. But Caroline, who Avas a somewhat romantic girl, had manifested quite too much interest in the handsome teller e\ r er since her rescue from her threatened tomb, and she was fond of talking about him as her preserver, etc.

She was but a child, but she was approaching an age at which some young misses form or fancy very strong attachments, and how terrible would it be, thought Mr. Wilsey, if his only daughter should fall in love Avith this penniless fellow. He designed her for something so much higher, and he even had hopes of her catching young Telemachus Smith, Avho Avas his near neighbor, and Avhose father had made a million in the Avhisky line, and Avas fast drinking himself to death. True, young Smith was a “saphead,” and, like most of his species, was as conceited as he was homely and shallow, but there was the money. And Avas not Mr. Wilsey a janitor in the temple of Mammon ? Did not he fall doAvn daily before his idol in groveling abasement ? Did not he value all men and all women in exact proportion to the amount of their gilding ? He was called rich himself, but he was poor compared with his longings and aspirations, and he looked forward to the whisky alliance as one of the means of advancement.

It was better to have the handsome young Lee out of the way, for at the bank Miss Wilsey must sometimes see him, and although it would have been an easy matter to forbid her coming there, this, as the cashier very well knew, would increase the danger which he sought to avert.

Once separated from the institution, he might never see Caroline again, for surely he would not have the temerity to visit her at her father’s house. So the excuse was found, and the decapitation took place, and the result was what we have seen, a despairing household.