Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol IV. No. XX. January, 1852.

She forgot her first statement, that she wanted the money to go out of town. Without interrupting, I let her go on and degrade herself by a simulated passion of repentance, regret, and thankfulness to me, under which she hid her fear and her mortification at being detected. I at length put an end to a scene of admirable acting, by recommending her to go abroad immediately, to place herself out of reach of any sudden discovery; and then lay her case fully before her friends, who would, no doubt, feel bound to come forward with the full amount of the forged bills. “But,” she exclaimed, with an entreating air, “I have no money; I can not go without money!” To that observation I did not respond; although I am sure she expected that I should, check-book in hand, offer her a loan.

I do not say so without reason; for, the very next week, this honorable young lady came again; and, with sublime assurance and a number of very charming, winning speeches (which might have had their effect upon a younger man), asked me to lend her one hundred pounds, in order that she might take the advice I had so obligingly given her, and retire into private life for a certain time in the country.

I do meet with a great many impudent people in the course of my calling – I am not very deficient in assurance myself – but this actually took away my breath.

“Really, madam,” I answered, “you pay a very ill compliment to my gray hairs; and would fain make me a very ill return for the service I have done you, when you ask me to lend a hundred pounds to a young lady who owns to having forged to the extent of one thousand two hundred pounds, and to owing eight hundred pounds besides. I wished to save a personage of your years and position from a disgraceful career; but I am too good a trustee for my children to lend money to any body in such a dangerous position as yourself.”

“Oh!” she answered, quite unabashed, without a trace of the fearful, tender pleading of the previous week’s interview – quite as if I had been an accomplice, “I can give you excellent security.”

“That alters the case; I can lend any amount on good security.”

“Well, sir, I can get the acceptances of three friends of ample means.”

“Do you mean to tell me, Miss Snape, that you will write down the names of three parties who will accept a bill for one hundred pounds for you?”

Yes, she could, and did actually write down the names of three distinguished men. Now I knew for certain that not one of those noblemen would have put his name to a bill on any account whatever for his dearest friend; but, in her unabashed self-confidence, she thought of passing another forgery on me. I closed the conference by saying, “I can not assist you;” and she retired with the air of an injured person. In the course of a few days I heard from Mr. Axminster, that his liability had been duly honored.

In my active and exciting life, one day extinguishes the recollection of the events of the preceding day; and, for a time, I thought no more about the fashionable forger. I had taken it for granted that, heartily frightened, although not repenting, she had paused in her felonious pursuits.

My business, one day, led me to the establishment of one of the most wealthy and respectable legal firms in the city, where I am well known, and, I believe, valued; for at all times I am most politely, I may say most cordially received. Mutual profits create a wonderful freemasonry between those who have not any other sympathy or sentiment. Politics, religion, morality, difference of rank, are all equalized and republicanized by the division of an account. No sooner had I entered the sanctum, than the senior partner, Mr. Preceps, began to quiz his junior, Mr. Jones, with, “Well, Jones must never joke friend Discount any more about usury. Just imagine,” he continued, addressing me, “Jones has himself been discounting a bill for a lady; and a deuced pretty one, too. He sat next her at dinner in Grosvenor-square last week. Next day she gave him a call here, and he could not refuse her extraordinary request. Gad, it is hardly fair for Jones to be poaching on your domains of West-end paper!”

Mr. Jones smiled quietly, as he observed, “Why, you see, she is the niece of one of our best clients; and, really, I was so taken by surprise, that I did not know how to refuse.”

“Pray,” said I, interrupting his excuses, “does your young lady’s name begin with S? Has she not a very pale face, and cold gray eye?”

The partners stared.

“Ah! I see it is so; and can at once tell you that the bill is not worth a rush.”

“Why, you don’t mean – ?”

“I mean simply that the acceptance is, I’ll lay you a wager, a forgery.”

“A forgery!”

“A forgery,” I repeated, as distinctly as possible.

Mr. Jones hastily, and with broken ejaculations, called for the cash-box. With trembling hands he took out the bill, and followed my finger with eager, watchful eyes, as I pointed out the proofs of my assertion.

A long pause was broken by my mocking laugh, for, at the moment, my sense of politeness could not restrain my satisfaction at the signal defeat which had attended the first experiment of these highly respectable gentlemen in the science of usury.

The partners did not have recourse to the police. They did not propose a consultation with either Mr. Forrester or Mr. Field: but they took certain steps, under my recommendation; the result of which was that at an early day, an aunt of the Honorable Miss Snape was driven, to save so near a connection from transportation, to sell out some fourteen hundred pounds of stock, and all the forgeries were taken up.

One would have thought that the lady who had thus so narrowly escaped, had had enough; but forgery, like opium-eating, is one of those charming vices which is never abandoned, when once adopted. The forger enjoys not only the pleasure of obtaining money so easily, but the triumph of be-fooling sharp men of the world. Dexterous penmanship is a source of the same sort of pride as that which animates the skillful rifleman, the practiced duelist, or well-trained billiard-player. With a clean Gillott he fetches down a capitalist, at three or six months, for a cool hundred or a round thousand; just as a Scrope drops over a stag at ten, or a Gordon Cumming a monstrous male elephant at a hundred paces.

As I before observed, my connection especially lies among the improvident – among those who will be ruined – who are being ruined – and who have been ruined. To the last class belongs Francis Fisherton, once a gentleman, now without a shilling or a principle; but rich in mother-wit – in fact a farceur, after Paul de Kock’s own heart. Having in by-gone days been one of my willing victims, he occasionally finds pleasure and profit in guiding others through the gate he frequented, as long as able to pay the tolls. In truth he is what is called a “discount agent.”

One day I received a note from him, to say that he would call on me at three o’clock the next day, to introduce a lady of family, who wanted a bill “done” for one hundred pounds. So ordinary a transaction merely needed a memorandum in my diary, “Tuesday, 3 p. m.; F.F., £100 Bill.” The hour came and passed; but no Frank, which was strange – because every one must have observed, that, however dilatory people are in paying, they are wonderfully punctual when they expect to receive money.

At five o’clock, in rushed my Jackal. His story, disentangled from oaths and ejaculations, amounted to this: – In answer to one of the advertisements he occasionally addresses “To the Embarrassed,” in the columns of the “Times,” he received a note from a lady, who said she was anxious to get a “bill done” – the acceptance of a well-known man of rank and fashion. A correspondence was opened, and an appointment made. At the hour fixed, neatly shaved, brushed, gloved, booted – the revival, in short, of that high-bred Frank Fisherton, who was so famous.

“In his hot youth, when Crockford’s was the thing,” glowing with only one glass of brandy “just to steady his nerves,” he met the lady at a West-end pastry-cook’s.

After a few words (for all the material questions had been settled by correspondence) she stepped into her brougham; and invited Frank to take a seat beside her. Elated with a compliment of late years so rare, he commenced planning the orgies which were to reward him for weeks of enforced fasting, when the coachman, reverentially touching his hat, looked down from his seat for orders.

“To ninety-nine, George-street, St. James,” cried Fisherton, in his loudest tones.

In an instant, the young lady’s pale face changed to scarlet, and then to ghastly green. In a whisper, rising to a scream, she exclaimed, “Good heavens! you do not mean to that man’s house” (meaning me). “Indeed, I can not go to him, on any account; he is a most horrid man, I am told, and charges most extravagantly.”

“Madam,” answered Frank, in great perturbation, “I beg your pardon, but you have been grossly misinformed. I have known that excellent man these twenty years, and have paid him hundreds on hundreds; but never so much by ten per cent, as you offered me for discounting your bill.”

“Sir, I can not have any thing to do with your friend.” Then, violently pulling the check-string, “Stop,” she gasped: “and will you have the goodness to get out?”

“And so I got out,” continued Fisherton, “and lost my time; and the heavy investment I made in getting myself up for the assignation; new primrose gloves, and a shilling to the hair-dresser – hang her! But, did you ever know any thing like the prejudices that must prevail against you? I am disgusted with human nature. Could you lend me half a sovereign till Saturday?”

I smiled; I sacrificed the half-sovereign and let him go, for he is not exactly the person to whom it was advisable to intrust all the secrets relating to the Honorable Miss Snape.

Since that day I look each morning in the police reports, with considerable interest; but, up to the present hour, the Honorable Miss Snape has lived and thrived in the best society.

TO BE READ AT DUSK

BY CHARLES DICKENS

One, two, three, four, five. There were five of them.

Five couriers, sitting on a bench outside the convent on the summit of the Great St. Bernard in Switzerland, looking at the remote heights, stained by the setting sun, as if a mighty quantity of red wine had been broached upon the mountain top, and had not yet had time to sink into the snow.

This is not my simile. It was made for the occasion by the stoutest courier, who was a German. None of the others took any more notice of it than they took of me, sitting on another bench on the other side of the convent door, smoking my cigar, like them, and – also like them – looking at the reddened snow, and at the lonely shed hard by, where the bodies of belated travelers, dug out of it, slowly wither away, knowing no corruption in that cold region.

The wine upon the mountain top soaked in as we looked; the mountain became white; the sky, a very dark blue; the wind rose; and the air turned piercing cold. The five couriers buttoned their rough coats. There being no safer man to imitate in all such proceedings than a courier, I buttoned mine.

The mountain in the sunset had stopped the five couriers in a conversation. It is a sublime sight, likely to stop conversation. The mountain being now out of the sunset, they resumed. Not that I had heard any part of their previous discourse; for, indeed, I had not then broken away from the American gentleman, in the travelers’ parlor of the convent, who, sitting with his face to the fire, had undertaken to realize to me the whole progress of events which had led to the accumulation by the Honorable Ananias Dodger of one of the largest acquisitions of dollars ever made in our country.

“My God!” said the Swiss courier, speaking in French, which I do not hold (as some authors appear to do) to be such an all-sufficient excuse for a naughty word, that I have only to write it in that language to make it innocent; “if you talk of ghosts – ”

“But I don’t talk of ghosts,” said the German.

“Of what then?” asked the Swiss.

“If I knew of what then,” said the German, “I should probably know a great deal more.”

It was a good answer, I thought, and it made me curious. So, I moved my position to that corner of my bench which was nearest to them and leaning my back against the convent-wall, heard perfectly, without appearing to attend.

“Thunder and lightning!” said the German, warming, “when a certain man is coming to see you, unexpectedly; and, without his own knowledge, sends some invisible messenger, to put the idea of him in your head all day, what do you call that? When you walk along a crowded street – at Frankfort, Milan, London, Paris – and think that a passing stranger is like your friend Heinrich, and then that another passing stranger is like your friend Heinrich, and so begin to have a strange foreknowledge that presently you’ll meet your friend Heinrich – which you do, though you believed him at Trieste – what do you call that?”

“It’s not uncommon either,” murmured the Swiss and the other three.

“Uncommon!” said the German. “It’s as common as cherries in the Black Forest. It’s as common as maccaroni at Naples. And Naples reminds me! When the old Marchesa Senzanima shrieks at a card party on the Chiaja – as I heard and saw her, for it happened in a Bavarian family of mine, and I was overlooking the service that evening – I say, when the old Marchesa starts up at the card-table, white through her rouge, and cries, ‘My sister in Spain is dead! I felt her cold touch on my back!’ – and when that sister is dead at the moment – what do you call that?”

“Or when the blood of San Gennaro liquefies at the request of the clergy – as all the world knows that it does regularly once a year, in my native city,” said the Neapolitan courier, after a pause, with a comical look, “what do you call that?”

“That!” cried the German. “Well! I think I know a name for that.”

“Miracle?” said the Neapolitan, with the same sly face.

The German merely smoked and laughed; and they all smoked and laughed.

“Bah!” said the German, presently. “I speak of things that really do happen. When I want to see the conjurer, I pay to see a professed one, and have my money’s worth. Very strange things do happen without ghosts. Ghosts! Giovanni Baptista, tell your story of the English bride. There’s no ghost in that, but something full as strange. Will any man tell me what?”

As there was a silence among them, I glanced around. He whom I took to be Baptista was lighting a fresh cigar. He presently went on to speak. He was a Genoese, as I judged.

“The story of the English bride?” said he. “Basta! one ought not to call so slight a thing a story. Well, it’s all one. But it’s true. Observe me well, gentlemen, it’s true. That which glitters is not always gold; but what I am going to tell is true.”

He repeated this more than once.

Ten years ago, I took my credentials to an English gentleman at Long’s Hotel, in Bond-street, London, who was about to travel – it might be for one year, it might be for two. He approved of them; likewise of me. He was pleased to make inquiry. The testimony that he received was favorable. He engaged me by the six months, and my entertainment was generous.

He was young, handsome, very happy. He was enamored of a fair young English lady, with a sufficient fortune, and they were going to be married. It was the wedding trip, in short, that we were going to take. For three months’ rest in the hot weather (it was early summer then) he had hired an old palace on the Riviera, at an easy distance from my city, Genoa, on the road to Nice. Did I know that palace? Yes; I told him I knew it well. It was an old palace, with great gardens. It was a little bare, and it was a little dark and gloomy, being close surrounded by trees; but it was spacious, ancient, grand, and on the sea shore. He said it had been so described to him exactly, and he was well pleased that I knew it. For its being a little bare of furniture, all such places were. For its being a little gloomy, he had hired it principally for the gardens, and he and my mistress would pass the summer weather in their shade.

“So all goes well, Baptista?” said he.

“Indubitably, signor; very well.”

We had a traveling chariot for our journey, newly built for us, and in all respects complete. All we had was complete; we wanted for nothing. The marriage took place. They were happy. I was happy, seeing all so bright, being so well situated, going to my own city, teaching my language in the rumble to the maid, la bella Carolina, whose heart was gay with laughter: who was young and rosy.

The time flew. But I observed – listen to this, I pray! – (and here the courier dropped his voice) – I observed my mistress sometimes brooding in a manner very strange; in a frightened manner; in an unhappy manner; with a cloudy, uncertain alarm upon her. I think that I began to notice this when I was walking up hills by the carriage side, and master had gone on in front. At any rate, I remember that it impressed itself upon my mind one evening in the south of France, when she called to me to call master back; and when he came back, and walked for a long way, talking encouragingly and affectionately to her, with his hand upon the open window, and hers in it. Now and then, he laughed in a merry way, as if he were bantering her out of something. By-and-by, she laughed, and then all went well again.

It was curious. I asked la bella Carolina, the pretty little one, Was mistress unwell? No. Out of spirits? No. Fearful of bad roads, or brigands? No. And what made it more mysterious was, the pretty little one would not look at me in giving answer, but would look at the view.

But, one day she told me the secret.

“If you must know,” said Carolina, “I find, from what I have overheard, that mistress is haunted.”

“How haunted?”

“By a dream.”

“What dream?”

“By a dream of a face. For three nights before her marriage, she saw a face in a dream – always the same face, and only One.”

“A terrible face?”

“No. The face of a dark, remarkable-looking man, in black, with black hair and a gray mustache – a handsome man, except for a reserved and secret air. Not a face she ever saw, or at all like a face she ever saw. Doing nothing in the dream but looking at her fixedly, out of darkness.”

“Does the dream come back?”

“Never. The recollection of it, is all her trouble.”

“And why does it trouble her?”

Carolina shook her head.

“That’s master’s question,” said la bella. “She don’t know. She wonders why, herself. But I heard her tell him, only last night, that if she was to find a picture of that face in our Italian house (which she is afraid she will), she did not know how she could ever bear it.”

Upon my word I was fearful after this (said the Genoese courier), of our coming to the old palazzo, lest some such ill-starred picture should happen to be there. I knew there were many there; and, as we got nearer and nearer to the place, I wished the whole gallery in the crater of Vesuvius. To mend the matter, it was a stormy dismal evening when we, at last, approached that part of the Riviera. It thundered; and the thunder of my city and its environs, rolling among the high hills, is very loud. The lizards ran in and out of the chinks in the broken stone wall of the garden, as if they were frightened; the frogs bubbled and croaked their loudest; the sea-wind moaned, and the wet trees dripped; and the lightning – body of San Lorenzo, how it lightened!

We all know what an old palazzo in or near Genoa is – how time and the sea air have blotted it – how the drapery painted on the outer walls has peeled off in great flakes of plaster – how the lower windows are darkened with rusty bars of iron – how the courtyard is overgrown with grass – how the outer buildings are dilapidated – how the whole pile seems devoted to ruin. Our palazzo was one of the true kind. It had been shut up close for months. Months? – years! It had an earthy smell, like a tomb. The scent of the orange-trees on the broad back terrace, and of the lemons ripening on the wall, and of some shrubs that grew around a broken fountain, had got into the house somehow, and had never been able to get out again. There it was, in every room, an aged smell, grown faint with confinement. It pined in all the cupboards and drawers. In the little rooms of communication between great rooms, it was stifling. If you turned a picture – to come back to the pictures – there it still was, clinging to the wall behind the frame, like a sort of bat.

The lattice-blinds were close shut, all over the house. There were two ugly, gray old women in the house, to take care of it; one of them with a spindle, who stood winding and mumbling in the doorway, and who would as soon have let in the devil as the air. Master, mistress, la bella Carolina, and I, went all through the palazzo. I went first, though I have named myself last, opening the windows and the lattice-blinds, and shaking down on myself splashes of rain, and scraps of mortar, and now and then a dozing musquito, or a monstrous, fat, blotchy, Genoese spider.

When I had let the evening light into a room, master, mistress, and la bella Carolina entered. Then, we looked round at all the pictures, and I went forward again into another room. Mistress secretly had great fear of meeting with the likeness of that face – we all had; but there was no such thing. The Madonna and Bambino, San Francisco, San Sebastiano, Venus, Santa Caterina, Angels, Brigands, Friars, Temples at Sunset, Battles, White Horses, Forests, Apostles, Doges, all my old acquaintance many times repeated? yes. Dark, handsome man in black, reserved and secret, with black hair and gray mustache, looking fixedly at mistress out of darkness? no.

At last we got through all the rooms and all the pictures, and came out into the gardens. They were pretty well kept, being rented by a gardener, and were large and shady. In one place, there was a rustic theatre, open to the sky; the stage a green slope: the coulisses, three entrances upon a side, sweet-smelling leafy screens. Mistress moved her bright eyes, even there, as if she looked to see the face come in upon the scene: but all was well.

“Now, Clara,” master said, in a low voice, “you see that it is nothing? You are happy.”

Mistress was much encouraged. She soon accustomed herself to that grim palazzo, and would sing, and play the harp, and copy the old pictures, and stroll with master under the green trees and vines, all day. She was beautiful. He was happy. He would laugh and say to me, mounting his horse for his morning ride before the heat:

“All goes well, Baptista!”

“Yes, signore, thank God; very well!”

We kept no company. I took la bella to the Duomo and Annunciata, to the Café, to the Opera, to the village Festa, to the Public Garden, to the Day Theatre, to the Marionetti. The pretty little one was charmed with all she saw. She learnt Italian – heavens! miraculously! Was mistress quite forgetful of that dream? I asked Carolina sometimes. Nearly, said la bella – almost. It was wearing out.

One day master received a letter, and called me.

“Baptista!”

“Signore.”

“A gentleman who is presented to me will dine here to-day. He is called the Signor Dellombra. Let me dine like a prince.”

It was an odd name. I did not know that name. But, there had been many noblemen and gentlemen pursued by Austria on political suspicions, lately, and some names had changed. Perhaps this was one. Altro! Dellombra was as good a name to me as another.

When the Signor Dellombra came to dinner (said the Genoese courier in the low voice, into which he had subsided once before), I showed him into the reception-room, the great sala of the old palazzo. Master received him with cordiality, and presented him to mistress. As she rose, her face changed, she gave a cry, and fell upon the marble floor.

Then, I turned my head to the Signor Dellombra, and saw that he was dressed in black, and had a reserved and secret air, and was a dark remarkable-looking man, with black hair and a gray mustache.

Master raised mistress in his arms, and carried her to her own room, where I sent la bella Carolina straight. La bella told me afterward that mistress was nearly terrified to death, and that she wandered in her mind about her dream, all night.