by T. S. Arthur
“A thing which I failed to mention in its place, I might as well allude to here. On recovery from that state of physical exhaustion in which the humane captain of the Dutch East Indiaman had found me, my hand rested accidentally upon the pocket of my father’s coat, which hung up in the state-room that had been assigned to them. His pocket-book was there. It instantly occurred to me to examine it, and see how much money it contained, for I knew that, unless we had money, before getting back, we would be subjected to inconvenience, annoyance, and great privation; and as my father seemed to be so weak in mind, all the care of providing for our comfort, I saw, would devolve upon me. I instantly removed the pocket-book, which was large. I found a purse in the same pocket, and took that also. With these I retired into my own state-room, and fastening the door inside, commenced an examination of their contents. The purse contained twenty eagles; and in the apartments of the pocket-book were ten eagles more, making three hundred dollars in gold. In bank bills there were five of one thousand dollars each, ten of one hundred dollars, and about two hundred dollars in smaller amounts, all of New York city banks. These I took and carefully sewed up in one of my under garments, and also did the same with the gold. I mention this, as it bears with importance upon our subsequent history.
“A temporary shelter was erected; a large pole with a white flag fastened to it, as a signal to any passing vessel, was set up; and the captain, with two of his men, set out to explore the island. They were gone for two days. On returning, they reported no inhabitants, but plenty of good game, if any way could be devised to take it. No vessel appearing, after the lapse of some twelve or fifteen days, the men set about building for us a more comfortable place of shelter. One of these men had been a carpenter, and as an axe and saw, and some few tools, had come ashore on pieces of the wreck, and in chests, he was enabled to put up a very comfortable tenement, with an apartment for me partitioned off from the main room.
“Here we remained for I can scarcely tell how long. It was, I believe, for about a year and a half; during which time two of the men died, and our party was reduced to four. About this period, when all of us began to feel sick from hope deferred, and almost to wish that we might die, a heavy storm came up, with wind from the north-west, and blew heavily for three or four days. On the morning of the fourth day, when the wind had subsided, a vessel, driven out of her course, was seen within a few leagues of the land. Signals were instantly made, and our eyes gladdened by the sight of a boat which was put off from the ship. In this we soon embarked, and, with a sensation of wild delight, found ourselves once more treading the deck of a good vessel. She was an English merchantman, bound for Canton. We made a quick passage to that port, where we found a vessel just ready to sail for Liverpool. In this I embarked, with my father, who still remained in the same sad state of mental derangement. No incident, worthy of referring to now, occurred on our passage to Liverpool, whence we embarked for New Orleans, at which place we arrived, after having been absent from our native land for the long space of nearly three years! How different were my feelings, my hopes, my heart, on the day I returned to that city eight years from the time I left it as a gay child, with the world all new and bright and beautiful before me! I need not draw the contrast. Your own thoughts can do that vividly enough.
“You can scarcely imagine the eagerness with which I looked forward to an arrival in my native city. We had friends there, and a fortune, and I fed my heart with the pleasing hope that skillful physicians would awaken my father’s slumbering reason into renewed and healthy activity. Arrived there at last, we took lodgings at a hotel, where I wrote a brief note to my father’s partner, in whose hands all the business had been, of course, during our absence, stating a few facts as to our long absence and asking him to attend upon us immediately. After dispatching this note, I waited in almost breathless expectation, looking every moment to see Mr. Paralette enter. But hour after hour passed, and no one came. Then I sent notes to two or three of my father’s friends, whom I recollected, but met with no response during the day. All this strange indifference was incomprehensible to me. It was, in part, explained to my mind on the next morning, when one of the persons to whom I had written called, and was shown up into our parlor by request. There was a coldness and reserve about him, combined with a too evident suspicion that it was not all as I had said. That my father was not Mr. Ballantine, nor I his daughter—but both, in fact, impostors! And certain it is that the white-headed imbecile old man bore but little resemblance to the fine, manly, robust form, which my father presented three years before. The visitor questioned and cross-questioned me; and failed not to hint at what seemed to him discrepancies, and even impossibilities in my story. I felt indignant at this; at the same time my heart sank at the suddenly flashing conviction that, after all our sufferings and long weary exile from our home, we should find ourselves but strangers in the land of our birth—be even repulsed from our own homestead.
“Our visitor retired after an interview of about half an hour, giving me to understand pretty plainly that he thought both my father and myself impostors. His departure left me faint and sick at heart. But from this state I aroused myself, after a while, and determined to go and see Mr. Paralette at once. A servant called a carriage, and I ordered the driver to take me to the store of Ballantine & Paralette.
“‘There is no such firm now, madam,’ he said; ‘Mr. Ballantine was lost at sea some years ago. It is Paralette & Co. now.’
“‘Drive me there, then,’ I said, in a choking voice.
“In a few minutes the carriage stopped at the place I had designated, and I entered the store formerly kept by my father. Though I had been absent for eight years, yet every thing looked familiar, and nothing more familiar than the face of Mr. Paralette, my father’s partner. I advanced to meet him with a quick step; but his look of unrecognition, and the instant remembrance that he had not attended to my note, and moreover that it had been plainly hinted to me that I was an impostor, made me hesitate, and my whole manner to become confused.
“‘Eugenia Ballantine is my name,’ said I, in a quivering voice. ‘I dropped you a note yesterday, informing you that my father and I had returned to the city.’
“He looked at me a moment with a calm, severe, scrutinizing gaze, and then said—
“‘Yes, I received your note, and have this moment seen Mr.—, who called upon you. And he corroborates the instant suspicion I had that your story could not be correct. He tells me that the man whom you call your father resembles Moses a great deal more than he does the late Mr. Ballantine. So you see, madam, that your story won’t go for any thing here.’
“There was something cold and sneering in the tone, manner, and expression of Mr. Paralette that completely broke me down. I saw, in an instant, that my case was hopeless, at least for the time. I was a lone, weak woman, and during an absence of eight years from my native city, I had grown up from a slender girl into a tall woman, and had, from suffering and privation, been greatly changed, and my countenance marred even since I had attained the age of womanhood. Under these circumstances, with my father changed so that no one could recognize him, I felt that to make my strange story believed would be impossible. From the presence of Mr. Paralette I retired, and went back to the hotel, feeling as if my heart would break. Oh, it was dreadful to be thus repulsed, and at home, too I tried only twice more to make my story believed; failing in these efforts, I turned all my thoughts toward the restoration of my father to mental health, believing that, when this was done, he, as a man, could resume his own place and his true position. I had over six thousand dollars of the money I had taken from my father’s pocket-book, and which I had always kept so completely concealed about my person, that no one had the least suspicion of it. Five thousand of this I deposited on interest, and with the residue took a small house in the suburbs of the city, which I furnished plainly, and removed into it with my father. I then employed two of the most skillful physicians in the city, and placed him in their han
ds, studiously concealing from them our real names and history. For eighteen months he was under medical treatment, and for at least six months of that time in a private insane hospital. But all to no effect. Severe or lenient treatment all ended in the same result. He continued a simple, harmless old man, fond of me as a child is of his mother, and looking up to and confiding in me for every thing.
“At the end of the period I have indicated, I found my means had become reduced to about three thousand dollars. This awoke in my bosom a new cause of anxiety. If my father should not recover his reason in two or three years, I would have nothing upon which to support him, and be compelled to see him taken to some public institution for the insane, there to be treated without that tenderness and regard which a daughter can exercise toward her parent. This fear haunted me terribly.
“It was near the end of the period I have named, that I met with an account of the Massachusetts Insane Hospital, situated in Charlestown in this State. I was pleased with the manner in which patients were represented to be treated, and found that, by investing in Boston the balance of my little property, the income would be sufficient to pay for my father’s maintenance there. As for myself, I had no fear but that with my needle, or in some other way, I could easily earn enough to supply my own limited wants. A long conference with one of the physicians who had attended my father, raised my hopes greatly as to the benefits which might result from his being placed in an institution so well conducted.
“As soon as this idea had become fully formed in my mind, I sold off all our little stock of furniture, and with the meager supply of clothing to which I had limited myself, ventured once more to try the perils of the sea. After a quick passage, we arrived in Boston. My father I at once had placed in the asylum, after having invested nearly every dollar I had in bank stock, the dividends from which were guaranteed to the institution for his support, so long as he remained one of its inmates. This was early in the last fall. I had then but a few dollars left, and no income. I was in a strange city, dependent entirely upon my own resources. And what were they? ‘What am I to do? Where am I to go for employment?’ were questions I found hard indeed to answer. Twenty dollars were all I possessed in the world; and this sum, at a hotel, would not last me, I knew, over two or three weeks. I therefore sought out a private boarding-house, where, under an assumed name, I got a room and my board for two dollars a week. The woman who kept the boarding-house, and to whom I communicated my wish to get sewing, gave me half a dozen plain shirts to make for her husband, for which I received fifty cents each. This was all the work I obtained during the first two weeks I was in the house, and it yielded me only three dollars, when my boarding cost me four. I felt a good deal discouraged after that. I knew no one to whom I could go for work—and the woman with whom I boarded could not recommend me to any place, except to the clothing-stores: but they, she said, paid so badly that she would not advise me to go there, for I could not earn much over half what it would cost me for my board. Still, she added, ‘half a loaf is better than no bread.’ I felt that there was truth in this last remark, and, therefore, after getting the direction of a clothing-store, I went there and got a few pairs of coarse trowsers. This kind of work was new to me. In my ignorance, I made some portion of them wrong, for which I received abuse from the owner of the shop, and no money. He was not going, he said, to pay me for having his work spoiled.
“Dreadfully disheartened, I returned to my lodgings, and set myself to ponder over some other means of support. I had been, while at school, one of the best French and Spanish scholars in the seminary. I had also given great attention to music, and could have taught it as skillfully as our musical professor. But five years had passed since I touched the keys of a piano or harp, and I had not, during that time, spoken a dozen words in any language except my native tongue. And, even if I had retained all my former skill and proficiency, my appearance was not such as to guarantee me, as a perfect stranger, any favorable reception either from private families or schools. So anxious had I been to make the remnant of my father’s property, which a kind Providence had spared to us, meet our extreme need, that I denied myself every thing that I could possibly do without. Having no occasion to go into society, for no one would recognize me as Eugenia Ballantine, I had paid little regard to my external appearance, so far as elegant and fashionable apparel was concerned. I bought sparingly, and chose only plain and cheap articles. My clothes were, therefore, not of a kind, as you may yourself see, to give me, so far as they were concerned, a passport to consideration.
“As two dollars a week would, I knew, in a very short time, exhaust my little stock of money, I determined to try and rent a room somewhere, at the lowest possible rate, and buy my own food. I eat but a little, and felt sure that, by making this arrangement, I could subsist on one dollar a week instead of two, and this much it seemed as if I must be able to earn at something or other. On the day after I formed this resolution I met, in my walks about the city for the purpose, with the room where you found me, for which I paid seventy-five cents a week. There I removed, and managed to live on about one dollar and a quarter a week, which sum, or, at the worst, seventy-five cents or a dollar a week, I have since earned at making fine shirts for Mr. Berlaps at twenty-five cents each. I could have done better than that, but every day I visit my father, and this occupies from two to three hours.”
“And how is your father?” asked Mrs. Gaston, wiping her tearful eyes, as Eugenia paused, on ending her narrative.
“He seems calmer, and much more serious and apparently thoughtful since he has been in this institution,” Eugenia replied, with something of cheerfulness in her tone. “He does not greet my coming, as he did at first, with childish pleasure, but looks at me gravely, yet with tenderness, when I enter; and, when I go away, he always asks if I will ‘come again to-morrow.’ He did not do this at first.”
“But have you not written to Mr. Perkins since your return?” asked Mrs. Gaston.
Eugenia became instantly pale and agitated. But recovering herself with an effort, she simply replied—
“How could I? To him I had, years before, been lost in the sea. I could not exist in his mind, except as one in the world of spirits. And how did when I came back, or how do I know now, that he has not found another to fill that place in his heart which I once occupied? On this subject I dared make no inquiry. And, even if this were not the case, I am not as I was. I had fortune and social standing when he wooed and won me. Now I am in comparative indigence, and branded as an impostor in my native city. If none recognized and received us in our own home, how could I expect him to do so? And to have been spurned as a mere pretender by him would have broken my heart at once.”
Eugenia was greatly moved by this allusion to her former lover and affianced husband. The subject was one upon which she had never allowed herself to thinks except compulsorily, and but for a few moments at a time. She could not bear it. After a silence of some moments, Mrs. Gaston said—
“I have not met with or heard of Mr. Perkins for some years. He remained in Troy about six months after you went away, and, during that period, I saw him very frequently. Your loss seemed, for a time, as if it would destroy his reason. I never saw any one suffer such keen mental distress as he did. The fearful uncertainty that hung around your fate racked his mind with the intensest anguish. At the end of the time I have mentioned, he went to New York, and, I was told, left that city a year afterward; but, whether it is so or not, I never learned. Indeed, I am entirely ignorant as to whether he is now alive or dead. For years I have neither heard of him nor seen him.”
Eugenia wept bitterly when Mrs. Gaston ceased speaking. She did not reply, but sat for a long time with her hand partly concealing her face, her whole body trembling nervously, and the tears falling fast from her eyes. From this excitement and agitation, consequent upon a reference to the past, she gradually recovered, and then Mrs. Gaston related, in turn, her trials and afflictions since their separation so many years before.
These we will not now record for the reader, but hurry on to the conclusion of our narrative.
By a union of their efforts, Mrs. Gaston and Eugenia were enabled, though to do so required them to toil with unremitting diligence, to secure more comforts—to say nothing of the mutual strength and consolation they received from each other—than either could have possibly obtained alone. The rent of a room, and the expense of an extra light, were saved, and this was important where every cent had to be laid out with the most thoughtful economy. Eugenia no longer went out, except to visit her father. Mrs. Gaston brought home as much work from the shop as both of them could do, and received the money for it when it was done, which all went into a common fund. Thus the time wore on, Eugenia feeling happier than she had felt for many weary years. Mrs. Gaston had been a mother to her while she lived in Troy, and Eugenia entertained for her a deep affection. Their changed lot, hard and painful though it was, drew them closer together, and united them in a bond of mutual tenderness.
