The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866

These infernal words were not spoken in vain. Griffith's features were horribly distorted, his eyes rolled fearfully, and he fell to the ground, grinding his teeth, and foaming at the mouth. An epileptic fit!

An epileptic fit is a terrible sight: the simple description of one in our medical books is appalling.

And in this case it was all the more fearful, the subject being so strong and active.

Caroline Ryder shrieked with terror, but no one heard her; at all events, no one came; to be sure the place had a bad name for ghosts, etc.

She tried to hold his head, but could not, for his body kept bounding from the earth with inconceivable elasticity and fury, and his arms flew in every direction; and presently Ryder received a violent blow that almost stunned her.

She lay groaning and trembling beside the victim of her poisonous tongue and of his own passions.

When she recovered herself he was snorting rather than breathing, but lying still and pale enough, with his eyes set and glassy.

She got up, and went with uneven steps to a little rill hard by, and plunged her face in it: then filled her beaver hat, and came and dashed water repeatedly in his face.

He came to his senses by degrees; but was weak as an infant. Then Ryder wiped the foam from his lips, and, kneeling on her knees, laid a soft hand upon his heavy head, shedding tears of pity and remorse, and sick at heart herself.

For what had she gained by blackening her rival? The sight of his bodily agony, and his ineradicable love.

Mrs. Gaunt sat out of shot, cold, calm, superior.

Yet, in the desperation of her passion, it was something to nurse his weak head an instant, and shed hot tears upon his brow; it was a positive joy, and soon proved a fresh and inevitable temptation.

"My poor master," said she, tenderly, "I never will say a word to you again. It is better to be blind. My God! how you cling to her that feigns a broken back to be rid of you, when there are others as well to look at, and ever so much younger, that adore every hair on your dear head, and would follow you round the world for one kind look."

"Let no one love me like that," said Griffith feebly, "to love so is to be miserable."

"Pity her then, at least," murmured Ryder; and, feeling she had quite committed herself now, her bosom panted under Griffith's ear, and told him the secret she had kept till now.

My female readers will sneer at this temptation: they cannot put themselves in a man's place. My male readers know that scarcely one man out of a dozen, sick, sore, and hating her he loved, would have turned away from the illicit consolation thus offered to him in his hour of weakness with soft, seducing tones, warm tears, and heart that panted at his ear.

CHAPTER XXV

How did poor, faulty Griffith receive it?

He raised his head, and turned his brown eye gentle but full upon her. "My poor girl," said he, "I see what you are driving at. But that will not do. I have nothing to give you in exchange. I hate my wife that I loved so dear: d—n her! d—n her! But I hate all womankind for her sake. Keep you clear of me. I would ruin no poor girl for heartless sport, I shall have blood on my hands erelong, and that is enough."

And, with these alarming words, he seemed suddenly to recover all his vigor; for he rose and stalked away at once, and never looked behind him.

Ryder made no further attempt. She sat down and shed bitter tears of sorrow and mortification.

After this cruel rebuff she must hate somebody; and, with the justice of her sex, she pitched on Mrs. Gaunt, and hated her like a demon, and watched to do her a mischief by hook or by crook.

Griffith's appearance and manner caused Mrs. Gaunt very serious anxiety. His clothes hung loose on his wasting frame; his face was of one uniform sallow tint, like a maniac's; and he sat silent for hours beside his wife, eying her askant from time to time like a surly mastiff guarding some treasure.

She divined what was passing in his mind, and tried to soothe him; but almost in vain. He was sometimes softened for the moment; but hæret lateri lethalis arundo; he still hovered about, watching her and tormenting himself; gnawed mad by three vultures of the mind,—doubt, jealousy, and suspense.

Mrs. Gaunt wrote letters to Father Leonard: hitherto she had only sent him short messages.

Betty Gough carried these letters, and brought the answers.

Griffith, thanks to the hint Ryder had given him, suspected this, and waylaid the old woman, and roughly demanded to see the letter she was carrying. She stoutly protested she had none. He seized her, turned her pockets inside out, and found a bunch of keys; item, a printed dialogue between Peter and Herod, omitted in the canonical books, but described by the modern discoverer as an infallible charm for the toothache; item, a brass thimble; item, half a nutmeg.

"Curse your cunning," said he; and went off muttering.

The old woman tottered trembling to Mrs. Gaunt, related this outrage with an air of injured innocence, then removed her cap, undid her hair, and took out a letter from Leonard.

"This must end, and shall," said Mrs. Gaunt, firmly; "else it will drive him mad and me too."

Bolton fair-day came. It was a great fair, and had attractions for all classes. There were cattle and horses of all kinds for sale, and also shows, games, wrestling, and dancing till daybreak.

All the servants had a prescriptive right to go to this fair; and Griffith himself had never missed one. He told Kate over-night he would go, if it were not for leaving her alone.

The words were kinder than their meaning; but Mrs. Gaunt had the tact, or the candor, to take them in their best sense. "And I would go with you, my dear," said she; "but I should only be a drag. Never heed me; give yourself a day's pleasure, for indeed you need it. I am in care about you: you are so dull of late."

"Well, I will," said Griffith. "I'll not mope here when all the rest are merry-making."

Accordingly, next day, about eleven in the morning, he mounted his horse and rode to the fair, leaving the house empty; for all the servants were gone except the old housekeeper; she was tied to the fireside by rheumatics. Even Ryder started, with a new bonnet and red ribbons; but that was only a blind. She slipped back and got unperceived into her own bedroom.

Griffith ran through the fair; but could not enjoy it. Hærebat lateri arundo. He came galloping back to watch his wife, and see whether Betty Gough had come again or not.

As he rode into the stable-yard he caught sight of Ryder's face at an upper window. She looked pale and agitated, and her black eyes flashed with a strange expression. She made him a signal which he did not understand; but she joined him directly after in the stable-yard.

"Come quietly with me," said she, solemnly.

He hooked his horse's rein to the wall, and followed her, trembling.

She took him up the back stairs, and, when she got to the landing, turned and said, "Where did you leave her?"

"In her own room."

"See if she is there now," said Ryder, pointing to the door.

Griffith tore the door open; the room was empty.

"Nor is she to be found in the house," said Ryder; "for I've been in every room."

Griffith's face turned livid, and he shivered and leaned against the wall. "Where is she?" said he, hoarsely.

"Humph!" said Ryder, fiendishly. "Find him, and you'll find her."

"I'll find them if they are above ground," cried Griffith, furiously; and he rushed into his bedroom, and soon came out again, with a fearful purpose written on his ghastly features and in his bloodshot eyes, and a loaded pistol in his hand.

Ryder was terrified; but instead of succumbing to terror, she flew at him like a cat, and wreathed her arms round him.

"What would you do?" cried she. "Madman, would you hang for them? and break my heart,—the only woman in the world that loves you? Give me the pistol. Nay, I will have it." And, with that extraordinary power excitement lends her sex, she wrenched it out of his hands.

He gnashed his teeth with fury, and clutched her with a gripe of iron; she screamed with pain: he relaxed his grasp a little at that; she turned on him and defied him.

"I won't let you get into trouble for a priest and a wanton," she cried; "you shall kill me first. Leave me the pistol, and pledge me your sacred word to do them no harm, and then I'll tell you where they are. Refuse me this, and you shall go to your grave and know nothing more than you know now."

"No, no; if you are a woman, have pity on me; let me come at them. There, I'll use no weapon. I'll tear them to atoms with these hands. Where are they?"

"May I put the pistol away then?"

"Yes, take it out of my sight; so best. Where are they?"

Ryder locked the pistol up in one of Mrs. Gaunt's boxes. Then she said, in a trembling voice, "Follow me."

He followed her in awful silence.

She went rather slowly to the door that opened on the lawn; and then she hesitated. "If you are a man, and have any feeling for a poor girl who loves you,—if you are a gentleman, and respect your word,—no violence."

"I promise," said he. "Where are they?"

"Nay, nay. I fear I shall rue the day I told you. Promise me once more: no bloodshed—upon your soul."

"I promise. Where are they?"

"God forgive me; they are in the Grove."

He bounded away from her like some beast of prey; and she crouched and trembled on the steps of the door: and, now that she realized what she was doing, a sickening sense of dire misgiving came over her, and made her feel quite faint.

And so the weak, but dangerous creature sat crouching and quaking, and launched the strong one.

Griffith was soon in the Grove; and the first thing he saw was Leonard and his wife walking together in earnest conversation. Their backs were towards him. Mrs. Gaunt, whom he had left lying on a sofa, and who professed herself scarce able to walk half a dozen times across the room, was now springing along, elastic as a young greyhound, and full of fire and animation. The miserable husband saw, and his heart died within him. He leaned against a tree and groaned.

The deadly sickness of his heart soon gave way to sombre fury. He came softly after them, with ghastly cheek, and bloodthirsty eyes, like red-hot coals.

They stopped; and he heard his wife say, "'T is a solemn promise, then: this very night." The priest bowed assent. Then they spoke in so low a voice, he could not hear; but his wife pressed a purse upon Leonard, and Leonard hesitated, but ended by taking it.

Griffith uttered a yell like a tiger, and rushed between them with savage violence, driving the lady one way with his wrists, and the priest another. She screamed: he trembled in silence.

Griffith stood a moment between these two pale faces, silent and awful.

Then he faced his wife. "You vile wretch!" he cried: "so you buy your own dishonor, and mine." He raised his hand high over her head; she never winced. "O, but for my oath, I'd lay you dead at my feet! But no; I'll not hang for a priest and a wanton. So, this is the thing you love, and pay it to love you." And with all the mad inconsistency of rage, which mixes small things and great, he tore the purse out of Leonard's hand: then seized him felly by the throat.

At that the high spirit of Mrs. Gaunt gave way to abject terror. "O mercy! mercy!" she cried; "it is all a mistake." And she clung to his knees.

He spurned her furiously away. "Don't touch me, woman," he cried, "or you are dead. Look at this!" And in a moment, with gigantic strength and fury, he dashed the priest down at her feet. "I know ye, ye proud, wanton devil!" he cried; "love the thing you have seen me tread upon! love it—if ye can." And he literally trampled upon the poor priest with both feet.

Leonard shrieked for mercy.

"None, in this world or the next," roared Griffith; but the next moment he took fright at himself. "God!" he cried, "I must go or kill. Live and be damned forever, the pair of ye." And with this he fled from them, grinding his teeth and beating the air with his clenched fists.

He darted to the stable-yard, sprang on his horse, and galloped away from Hernshaw Castle, with the face, the eyes, the gestures, the incoherent mutterings of a raving Bedlamite.

WHAT WILL IT COST US?

If we take the arm of Mr. Smith, who is one of many perplexed at this time by the cost of living, and go round with him to rebuke the tradesmen who oppress and devour him by overcharges of every kind, we shall find these obdurate persons very quick upon their defence, and full of admirable justification of their supposed extortion.

The wicked grocer, who in these piping times of peace makes Mr. Smith pay twenty cents a pound for sugar, fifty-five cents for coffee, and a dollar and a half for tea, replies, when reproached with his heartlessness, that Mr. Smith gives him depreciated paper, not gold, for his sugar, while he must pay the importer for prime cost, freight, and duty, with the added premium on gold, and the importer's profit on the aggregate, as well as the new duty on refining; and that as to coffee, it has actually risen in price at Java through the Dutch government's monopoly of the entire product, while our own law has imposed a duty of five cents in gold upon it. This abandoned tradesman declares that he must have a large profit to cover risks in holding such articles as tea and coffee, when trade is unsettled and gold falling; and asserts that he makes no more on tea now than he did in the days when it cost Mr. Smith only thirty-five or forty cents a pound. The duty of twenty-five cents, and the withdrawal and destruction by privateers of many ships formerly engaged in the trade, have brought up the price of tea, and the grocer is none the richer, though Mr. Smith is considerably the poorer.

Equally unblushing is the butcher,—a man who ought to have finer feelings and some sense of remorse. Steak, he tells us, is thirty, second cut of the rib twenty-eight, mutton twenty-eight, and poultry thirty cents a pound, because, as he pretends, the farmers exhausted their supply of cattle in feeding the army for so long a time, and now find it more profitable to raise their lambs, and keep and shear their sheep, than to kill them. To which he adds a note in the minor key concerning the price of gold, and the increased expenses of living, which he has himself to meet, and drives us in despair to the pitiless merchant of whom we buy our dry-goods. He evidently expects Mr. Smith, for he says, with a shameless frankness and readiness: "I admit that I have doubled my prices, but fifty per cent of the rise is due to the premium on gold. Then there come in the war duties, and then the internal revenue taxes. Don't you know that Congress has put taxes on the materials, and upon every process of manufacture, and a further tax of six per cent on sales, to say nothing of stamps and licenses? Look at the report of the Revenue Commission,6 which tells us that most of the duties are duplicated, till they lap over like shingles and slates, and come to ten or twenty per cent on manufactures. Look at their story of the umbrella! Think of Webster's Spelling-Book printed in London for our schools, to evade the taxes! Think of the men who go to Montreal, Halifax, and even to London, for new suits, in consequence of the duties, and of others who once came to me quarterly for a new coat and gave away their worn garments, and who now come yearly! Please examine this bill for coal at fifteen dollars instead of six dollars a ton, and do not forget the city, State, and national taxes."

Incensed to the last degree by the merchant's effrontery, Mr. Smith hurries us to the den which the cruel coal-dealer calls his office, and demands to know how it is that, when the nation no longer requires coal for the uses of war, and coal ought, in the very nature of things, to come down, he has actually raised the price of it to fifteen dollars a ton?

"Gentlemen," answers the coal-dealer, with a hardness not equalled by the hardest clinker in his own anthracite,—"gentlemen, it's true the war is over, but there are taxes on cars, engines, repairs, and gross receipts, that add fifty per cent to transportation, while for five years past the nation has required so much coal and iron to carry on the war and to repair Southern tracks that few coal railways have been built and few mines opened. There must be rivalry and increased production to put down prices. New mines and railways cannot be opened with gold at the present rates, or while the internal taxes, direct and indirect, add fifteen dollars to the cost of each ton of bar-iron. Nor can there be a great fall while there is a prospect that the coal from Nova Scotia is to be excluded or raised in price by the repeal of the Reciprocity Treaty. Freights have risen to the unprecedented rate of four or five dollars per ton between Philadelphia and Massachusetts and Maine; and if we wish for former freights of two dollars per ton and lower prices, we must build steam colliers like those which run between Newcastle and London, and bring back the coasters that left the trade and took shelter under the flag of England. But the first thing is to bring down the price of gold, which will bring down both freight and profits, and enable the poor to enjoy the sparkle of the black diamonds. And now, Mr. Smith, let me say that what with the city, the State, and the national taxes, I am obliged to raise my rents, and I take the liberty to notify you that houses are scarce; and although I regret to disturb an old tenant and customer, I must add another hundred to the rent of the house you occupy. Houses are in demand; few dare to build while materials are so dear. And there are the Shoddies, who would take mine to-morrow at any rent."

Not in the least consoled, but rather exasperated by this suggestion, Mr. Smith fails to recover his spirits, even on the assurance of the city official whom we meet, that the city, impoverished by payment of soldiers' bounties and allowances to soldiers' families, as well as the payment of the interest of her debt in gold throughout the war, still hopes to reduce the interest to five per cent, and, when gold falls, to diminish the taxes.

But if our course of inquiry into the causes of the present ruinous cost of living has not given much solace to Mr. Smith, we may, nevertheless, from the facts elicited and from the arguments of the different tradesmen draw a few useful conclusions and decide what are the evils to be removed or obviated before we can reduce the cost of living; and the chief of these, we have learned, are the following:—

The premium on gold.

The taxes on productions.

The duties on materials.

The charges on transportation.

The duties and taxes which absorb income.

Let us consider whether these evils may not be boldly met and surmounted, and this, too, without impairing the ability of the nation to meet the interest of the debt incurred as the price of freedom, or interfering with the payment of army and navy pensions, and similar expenses.

RESUMPTION

What is there to prevent the nation from resuming specie payments during the present year?

There are those who profit by the fluctuations of gold; who gamble in gold, and would make fortunes regardless of the consequences to others; who control the columns of venal papers and write financial articles; who claim to be the leaders of opinion, and tell their confiding readers that Great Britain did not resume for a quarter of a century; that resumption implies contraction and portends ruin; that we have a thousand millions to fund within three years, and therefore cannot resume.

But is not all this fallacious? Our position is not that of the British Isles half a century since, exhausted by a war of twenty years, without a railway, with less than half the wealth and half the population, and one twentieth of the land and mineral resources that we possess, while their debt was fifty per cent more than our own. They were almost stationary, and we are progressive. In descending from a premium of 180 to 30 on gold, we have already accomplished five sixths of the journey towards specie payment without serious disaster and with an easy money-market.

As respects contraction, the instructive report lately addressed to the Secretary of the Treasury by Mr. Carey, the veteran advocate of manufactures, shows that the compound-interest notes are withdrawn; that a large portion of the greenbacks is held as a reserve fund by the banks, another large portion is locked up in the sub-treasury, and the actual circulation of the Union but $460,000,000,—really less than that of France or Great Britain, although our population exceeds that of either of those countries. And Mr. Carey, in his instructive letter, offers proof that our circulation, although in excess of the gold, silver, and bills circulating before the war, is not disproportionate to our commercial transactions. When the Secretary of the Treasury is ready, no serious contraction will probably be required, and no ruin will follow, if our merchants move with caution, and prepare for a return to the only safe standard of values. Let the manufacturer accumulate no stocks, but continue to make goods to order, to sell in advance. Let him cover his sales by the purchase of the materials as the wise and sagacious have done ever since the surrender of Lee, and we shall be ready for the notice that, after an interval of three or four months, the United States will meet their notes and contracts with specie.

Commerce will gradually adapt itself to this notice, as it has done to the decline of gold from 285 to 130 in less than a year. But it is urged that we have a thousand millions of debt to fund within three years, and therefore cannot resume. Did we not fund nearly a thousand millions at par in 1865, and most of this after gold fell to 30 per cent premium? Then the amount was drawn from hoards and commerce; but now our income exceeds expenditures, and we are reducing the debt ten or twenty millions a month; we require no funds for war or unproductive investments, and when we pay one hundred millions, we return it to those who will seek new loans for investment, and doubtless lend on more favorable terms.

At Paris, Brussels, and Frankfort, the average rate of interest last year was less than five per cent. Give Mr. McCulloch power to go there, to issue bonds for one twentieth part of our debt payable there in the currency of the country; and with such a fund at his disposal, he can at once reduce interest and bring back specie, or rather retain it; for we need not seek it abroad. When the Committee of Ways and Means intimate that they will give him this power, gold and exchange fall; if a doubt is expressed, both advance; and the simple question before the public is, whether we shall cripple the Minister of Finance and give the power to Wall Street;—whether our finances are to be governed by the Jews of the gold board and the speculators of the stock exchange, or by the Secretary of the Treasury. If we ended the war by placing one man on the field to direct every movement,—after we had tried in vain to conduct it by committees of Congress and rival generals,—will not one statesman, with plenary power, be equally effective on the field of finance?

The man who carried a Western State through the revulsion of 1857, and maintained specie payments when Boston and New York succumbed,—who has so well and so successfully wielded the limited power we have given him,—well deserves the confidence of the country. Let him have power at once to go to the fountain-head for the small balance we may require from the Old World; let him have the authority to raise funds to meet the floating debt and temporary loan, and to replace the seven-thirties and compound-interest notes as they mature, and we may confidently anticipate both an early resumption of specie payments and reduced rates of interest, and consequent diminution of debt. With a return to specie payments, our current expenses must fall from thirty to forty per cent, and we can well afford to resign any premium on gold we now enjoy.

TAXES ON PRODUCTION

The Revenue Commission enlighten us on this point. In their very able and luminous Report they say:—