Rob was talking one evening, as usual, about the time when he should come to be somebody. But Henrietta said: "O Rob, things are nice enough as they are; I don't believe we'd be any happier in a house as fine as Cousin John's. Let's have a good time as we go along, and not mind about being somebody. But, Rob, I wish somebody'd buy this picture, and then we could have something to set off this room a little. Don't you think a sofa would be nice?" And then she looked at him, and said, "You dear, good old Rob, you!" though why she should call him old, or what connection this remark had with the previous conversation, I do not know.

THE CHRISTMAS CLUB.

A GHOST STORY.

"The d.i.c.kens!"

That was just what Charley Vanderhuyn said that Christmas Eve, and as a faithful historian I give the exact words. It sounded like swearing, though why we should regard it profane to make free with the devil's name, or even his nickname, I never could see. Can you? Besides, there was some ambiguity about Charley's use of the word under the circ.u.mstances, and he himself couldn't tell whether his exclamation had reference to the Author of Evils or only to the Author of Novels. The circ.u.mstances were calculated to suggest equally thoughts of the Great Teller of Stories and of the Great Story-teller, and I have a mind to amuse you at this Christmas season by telling you the circ.u.mstances, and letting you decide, if you can, which d.i.c.kens it was that Charles Vanderhuyn intended.

Charley Vanderhuyn was one of those young men that could grow nowhere on this continent except in New York. He had none of the severe dignity that belongs to a young man of wealth who has pa.s.sed his life in sight of long rows of red brick houses with clean doorsteps and white wooden shutters. Something of the venerableness of Independence Hall, the dignity of Girard College, and the air of financial importance that belongs to the Mint gets into the blood of a Philadelphian. Charley had none of that. Neither did he have that air of profound thought, that Adams-Hanc.o.c.k-Quincy-Webster-Emerson-Sumner look that is the inevitable mark of Beacon Street. When you see such a young man you know that he has grown part of Faneuil Hall, and the Common, and the Pond, and the historic elm. He has lived where the very trees are learned and carry their Latin names about with them. Charley had none of the "vim" and dash that belongs to a Westerner. He was of the metropolis--metropolitan.

He had good blood in him, else he could never have founded the Christmas Club, for you can not get more out of a man than there is in his blood. Charley Vanderhuyn bore a good old Dutch name--I have heard that the Van der Huyns were a famous and n.o.ble family; his Dutch blood was mingled with other good strains, and the whole was mellowed into generousness and geniality in generations of prosperous ancestors; for the richest and choicest fruit (and the rankest weeds as well!) can be produced only in the sunlight. And a very choice fruit of a very choice stock was and is our Charley Vanderhuyn. That everybody knows who knows him now, and that we all felt who knew him earlier in the days of the Hasheesh Club.

You remember the Hasheesh Club, doubtless. In its day it numbered the choicest spirits in New York, and the very center of all of them was this same Charley Vanderhuyn, whose face, the boys used to say, was like the British Empire--for on it the sun never set. His unflagging spirits, his keen love for society, his quick sympathy with everybody, his fine appreciation of every man's good points, whatever they might be, made Charley a prince wherever he went. I said he was the center of the circle of young men about the Hasheesh Club ten years ago; and so he was, though, to tell the truth, he was then but about twenty-one years of age. They had a great time at the club, I remember, when he came of age and came into possession of his patrimony--a trifle of half a million, I believe. He gave a dinner, and there was such a time as the Hasheesh Club never saw before nor since. I fear there was overmuch wine-drinking, and I am sure there was a fearful amount of punch drunk.

Charley never drank to excess, never lost his self-control for a moment under any temptation. But there was many another young man, of different temperament, to whom the rooms of the club were what candles are to moths. One poor fellow, who always burned his wings, was a blue-eyed, golden-haired young magazine writer of that day. We all thought of his ability and promise--his name was John Perdue, but you will doubtless remember him by his _nom de plume_ of "Baron Bertram."

Poor fellow! he loved Charley pa.s.sionately, and always drank himself drunk at the club. He wasted all he had and all he made; his clothes grew shabby, he borrowed of Charley, who was always open-handed, until his pride would allow him to borrow no more. He had just married, too, and he was so ashamed of his own wreck that he completed his ruin by drinking to forget it.

I am not writing a story with a temperance moral; temperance tales are always stupid and always useless. The world is brimful of walking morals on that subject, and if one will not read the lesson of the life of his next-door neighbor, what use of bringing Lazarus from the dead to warn him of a perdition that glares at him out of the eyes of so many men?

I mentioned John Perdue--poor golden-haired "Baron Bertram"--only because he had something to do with the circ.u.mstances which led Charley Vanderhuyn to use that ambiguous interjection about "the d.i.c.kens!"

Perdue, as I said, dropped away from the Hasheesh Club, lost his employment as literary editor of the Luminary, fell out of good society, and at last earned barely enough to keep him and his wife and his child in bread, and to supply himself with whisky, by writing sensation stories for the "penny dreadfuls." We all suspected that he would not have received half so much for his articles had they been paid for on their merits or at the standard price for hack writing. But Charley Vanderhuyn had something to do with it. He sent Henry Vail--he always sent Henry Vail on his missions of mercy--to find out where Perdue sold his articles, and I have no doubt the price of each article was doubled, at Vanderhuyn's expense.

And that mention of Henry Vail reminds me that I can not tell this story rightly unless I let you know who he was. A distant relation of Charley's, I believe. He was a studious fellow from the country, and quite awkward in company. The contrast between him and Charley was marked. Vanderhuyn was absolutely _au fait_ in all the usages of society; he knew by instinct how a thing ought to be done, and his example was law. He had a genius for it, everybody said. Vail was afraid of his shadow; did not know just what was proper to do in any new circ.u.mstances. His manners hung about him loosely; Vanderhuyn's were part of himself. When Vail came to the Hasheesh Club for the first time it was on the occasion of Charley's majority dinner. Vail consulted Vanderhuyn about his costume, and was told that he must wear evening dress; and, never having seen anything but provincial society, he went with perfect a.s.surance to a tailor's and ordered a new frock coat and a white vest. When he saw that the other gentlemen present wore dress coats, and that most of them had black vests, he was in some consternation. He even debated whether he should not go out and hire a dress coat for the evening. He drew Charley aside, and asked him why he did not tell him that those sparrow-tail things had come into fashion again!

But he never took kindly to the club life; he soon saw that however harmless it might be to some men, it was destruction to others. After attending a few times, Henry Vail, who was something of a Puritan and much of a philanthropist, declared his opposition to what he called an English dissipation.

Henry Vail was a scholarly fellow, of real genius, and had studied for the ministry; but he had original notions, and about the time he was to have taken deacon's orders in the Episcopal Church he drew back. He said that orders would do for some men, but he did not intend to build a wall between himself and his fellows. He could do more by remaining a man of like pa.s.sions with other men than he could by casing himself in a clerical "strait-jacket," as he called it. Having a little income of his own, he set up on his own account in the dingiest part of that dingy street called Huckleberry Street--the name, with all its suggestions of fresh fields and pure air and liberty, is a dreary mockery. Just where Greenfield Court--the dirtiest of New York alleys--runs out of Huckleberry Street, he set up shop, to use his own expression, He was a kind of independent lay clergyman, ministering to the physical and spiritual wants of his neighbors, climbing to garrets and penetrating to cellars, now talking to a woman who owned a candy and gingerbread stall, and now helping to bury a drunken sailor. Such a life for a scholar! But he always declared that digging out Greek and Hebrew roots was not half so fascinating a work as digging out human souls from the filth of Huckleberry Street.

Of course he did not want for money to carry on his operations. Charley Vanderhuyn's investments brought large returns, and Charley knew how to give. When Vail would begin a pathetic story, Vanderhuyn would draw out his check book, and say: "How much shall it be, Harry?--never mind the story. It's handy to have you to give away my money for me. I should never take the trouble to see that it went to the people that need. One dollar given by you is worth ten that I bestow on Tom, d.i.c.k, and Harry; so I prefer to let Tom and d.i.c.k go without, and give it all to Harry."

In fact Vanderhuyn had been the prey of so many impostors that he adopted the plan of sending all of his applicants to Vail, with a note to him, which generally ran thus, "Please investigate." The tramps soon ceased to trouble him, and then he took to intrusting to Vail each month a sum equal to what he had been in the habit of giving away loosely.

It was about the first of December, four years ago, that Harry Vail, grown younger and fresher in two years of toil among the poor--glorified he seemed by the tenderness of his sympathies and the n.o.bleness of his aims--it was four years ago that Harry came into Charley Vanderhuyn's rooms for his regular monthly allotment. Vail generally came in the evening, and Charley generally managed to be disengaged for that evening. The two old friends whose paths diverged so widely were fond of each other's company, and Vail declared that he needed one evening in the month with Vanderhuyn; he liked to carry away some of Charley's sunshine to the darkness of Huckleberry Street and Greenfield Court. And Charley said that Harry brought more sunlight than he took. I believe he was right. Charley, like all men who live without a purpose, was growing less refined and charming than he had been, his cheeks were just a trifle graver than those of the young Charley had been. But he talked magnificently as ever. Vail said that he himself was an explorer in a barbarous desert, and that Charles Vanderhuyn was the one civilized man he could meet.

It is a curious thing that Vail had never urged Charley to a different life from the self-indulgent one that he led, but it was a peculiarity of Henry's that he was slow to attack a man directly. I have heard that it was one great secret of his success among the poor, that he would meet an intemperate man twenty times, perhaps, before he attacked his vice. Then, when the man had ceased to stand guard, Vail would suddenly find an entrance to him by an unwatched gate. It was remarkable, too, that when he did seize on a man he never for an instant relaxed his grasp. I have often looked at his aquiline nose, and wondered if it were not an index to this eagle-like swoop at the right moment, and this unwavering firmness of hold.

On this evening, about the first of December, four years ago, he sat in Charley's cozy bedroom and listened to Vanderhuyn's stories of a life antipodal to the life he was accustomed to see--for the antipodes do not live round the world, but round the first street corner; he listened and laughed at the graphic and eloquent and grotesque pictures that Charley drew for him till nearly midnight, and then got ready to go back to his home, among the noisy saloons of Huckleberry Street.

Charley drew out his check book and wrote and tore off the check, and handed it to Vail.

"I want more, Charley, this time," said Vail in his quiet, earnest way, with gray eyes fixed on his friend's blue ones.

"Got more widows without coal than usual, eh, old fellow? How much shall it be? Double? Ask anything. I can't refuse the half of my fortune to such a good angel as you are, Vail. I don't spend any money that pays so well as what I give you. I go to the clubs and to parties.

I sit at the opera and listen to Signora Scracchioli, and say to myself, 'Well, there's Vail using my money to help some poor devil in trouble.' I tell you I get a comfortable conscience by an easy system of commutation. Here, exchange with me; this is for double the amount, and I am glad you mentioned it."

"But I want more than that this time," and Vail fixed his eyes on Charley in a way that made the latter feel just a little ill at ease, a sensation very new to him.

"Well, how much, Harry? Don't be afraid to ask. I told you you should have half my kingdom, old fellow!" And Vanderhuyn took his pen and began to date another check.

"But, Charley, I am almost afraid to ask. I want more than half you have--I want something worth more than all you have."

"Why, you make me curious. Never saw you in that vein before, Vail,"

and Charley twisted a piece of paper, lighted it in the gas jet, and held it gracefully in his fingers while he set his cigar going, hoping to hide his restlessness under the wistful gaze of his friend by this occupation of his attention.

But however nervous Henry Vail might be in the performance of little acts that were mere matters of convention, there was no lack of quiet self-possession in matters that called out his earnestness of spirit.

And now he sat gazing steadily at Charley until the cigar had been gracefully lighted, the bit of paper tossed on the grate, and until Charley had watched his cigar a moment. When the latter reluctantly brought his eyes back into range with the dead-earnest ones that had never ceased to look on him with that strange wistful expression, then Henry Vail proceeded:

"I want _you_, Charley."

Charley laughed heartily now. "Me? What a missionary _I_ would make!

Kid-glove gospeller I'd be called in the first three days. What a superb Sunday-school teacher I'd make! Why, Henry Vail, you know better. There's just one thing in this world I have a talent for, and that's society. I'm a man of the world in my very fiber. But as for following in your ill.u.s.trious footsteps--I wish I could be so good a man, but you see I'm not built in that way. I'm a man of the world."

"That's just what I want," said Henry Vail, looking with the same tender wistfulness into his friend's eyes. "If I'd wanted a missionary I shouldn't have come to you. If I'd wanted a Sunday-school teacher I could have found twenty better; and as for tract distributing and Bible reading, you couldn't do either if you'd try. What I want for Huckleberry Street more than I want anything else is a man of the world. You are a man of the world--of the whole world. I have seen a restaurant waiter stop and gape and listen to your talk. I have seen a coal-heaver delighted with your manners when you paid him. Charley, you're the most magnificent man of the world I ever saw. Must a man of the world be useless? I tell you I want you for G.o.d and Huckleberry Street, and I mean to have you some day, old fellow." And the perfect a.s.surance with which he said this, and the settled conviction of final success that was visible in his quiet gray eyes, fascinated Charley Vanderhuyn, and he felt spellbound, like the wedding guest held by the "Ancient Mariner."

"I tell you what, Henry," he said presently, "I've got no call. I'm an Epicurean. I say to you, in the words of an American poet:

'Take the current of your nature, make it stagnant if you will: Dam it up to drudge forever at the service of your will.

Mine the rapture and the freedom of the torrent on the hill!

I shall wander o'er the meadows where the fairest blossoms call: Though the ledges seize and fling me headlong from the rocky wall, I shall leave a rainbow hanging o'er the ruins of my fall.'"

"Charley, I don't want to preach," said Vail; "but you know that this doctrine of mere selfish floating on the current of impulse which your traveler poet teaches is devilish laziness, and devilish laziness always tends to something worse. You may live such a life, and quote such poetry, but you don't believe that a man should flow on like a purposeless river. The lines you quoted bear the mark of a restless desire to apologize to conscience for a fearful waste of power and possibility. No," he said, rising, "I don't want that check. This one will do; but you won't forget that G.o.d and Huckleberry Street want you, and they will have you, too, n.o.ble-hearted fellow! Good night! G.o.d bless you!" and he shook Charley's hand and went out into the night to seek his home in Huckleberry Street. And the genial Charley never saw his brave friend again. Yes, he did, too. Or did he?

II.

The month of December, four years ago, was a month of much festivity in the metropolis. Charley was wanted nearly every night to grace some gathering or other, and Charley was too obliging to refuse to go where he was wanted--that is, when he was wanted in Fifth Avenue or Thirty-fourth Street[3]. As for Huckleberry Street and Greenfield Court, they were fast fading out of Charley's mind. He knew that Henry Vail would introduce the subject when he came for his January check, and he expected some annoyance from the discussion of the question--annoyance, because there was something in his own breast that answered to Vail's appeal. Charley was more than an Epicurean. To eat and drink, to laugh and talk, and die, was not enough for such a soul.

He mentally compared himself to Felix, and said that Vail wouldn't let him forget his duty, anyhow. But for the present it was too delightful to him to honor the entertainment given by the Honorable Mr. So-and-so and Mrs. So-and-so; it was pleasant to be a.s.sured by Mrs.

Forty-Millions that her party would fail but for his presence. And then he had just achieved the end of his ambition. He was president of the Hasheesh Club. He took his seat at the head of the table on Christmas Eve.

[3] The reader will remember that this was written in 1872. I do not know how far the uptown centers of fashion will be in twenty years more.

Now, patient reader, we draw near to the time when Charley uttered the exclamation set down at the head of this story. Bear a little longer with my roundabout way of telling. It is Christmastide anyway; why should we hurry ourselves through this happy season?

Just as Charley went into the door of the clubhouse--you remember the Hasheesh clubhouse was in Madison Avenue then--just as Charley entered he met the burly form and genial face of the eminent Dr. Van Doser, who said, "Well, Vanderhuyn, how's your cousin Vail?"

"Is he sick?" asked Charley, struck with a foreboding that made him tremble.

"Sick? Didn't you know? Well, that's just like Vail. He was taken with smallpox two weeks ago, and I wanted to take the risk of penalties and not report his case, but he said if I didn't he would do it himself; that sanitary regulations requiring smallpox patients to go to a hospital were necessary, and that it became one in his position to set a good example to Huckleberry Street. So I was compelled to report him and let him go to the island. And he hasn't let you know?--for fear you would try to communicate with him probably, and thus expose yourself to infection. Extraordinary man, that Vail. I never saw his like," and with that the doctor turned to speak to some gentlemen who had just come in.

And so Charley's Christmas Eve dinner at the Hasheesh Club was spoiled.

There are two inconvenient things in this world, a conscience and a tender heart, and Charley Vanderhuyn was plagued with both. While going through with the toasts, his mind was busy with poor Henry Vail suffering in a smallpox hospital. In his graceful response to the sentiment, "The President of the Hasheesh Club," he alluded to the retiring president, and made some witty remark--I forget what--about his being a denizen of Lexington Avenue; but in saying Lexington Avenue he came near slipping into Huckleberry Street, and in fact he did get the first syllable out before he checked himself. He was horrified afterward to think how near he had come, later in the evening, to addressing the company as "Gentlemen of the Smallpox Hospital."

Charley drank more wine and punch than usual. Those who sat near him looked at one another significantly, in a way that implied their belief that Vanderhuyn was too much elated over his election. Little did they know that at that moment the presidency of the famous Hasheesh Club appeared to Charley the veriest bawble in the world. If he had not known how futile would be any attempt to gain an entrance to the smallpox hospital, he would have excused himself and started for the island on the instant.

But it was one o'clock before Charley got away. Out of the brilliantly lighted rooms he walked, stunned with grief, and a little heavy with the wine and punch he had drunk, for in his preoccupation of mind he had forgotten to be as cautious as usual. Following an impulse, he took a car and went directly downtown, and then made his way to Huckleberry Street. He stopped at a saloon door and asked if they could tell him where Mr. Vail's rooms were.

"The blissed man as wint about like a saint? Sh.o.r.e and I can," said the boozy Irishman. "It's right ferninst where yer afther stan'in, up the stairs on the corner of Granefield Coort--over there, bedad."