I had begun to despair of meeting old Moodie, when, all at once, Irecognized his hand and arm protruding from behind a screen that was set up for the accommodation of bashful topers.As a matter of course, he had one of Priscilla's little purses, and was quietly insinuating it under the notice of a person who stood near.This was always old Moodie's way.You hardly ever saw him advancing towards you, but became aware of his proximity without being able to guess how he had come thither.He glided about like a spirit, assuming visibility close to your elbow, offering his petty trifles of merchandise, remaining long enough for you to purchase, if so disposed, and then taking himself off, between two breaths, while you happened to be thinking of something else.
By a sort of sympathetic impulse that often controlled me in those more impressible days of my life, I was induced to approach this old man in a mode as undemonstrative as his own.Thus, when, according to his custom, he was probably just about to vanish, he found me at his elbow.
"Ah!" said he, with more emphasis than was usual with him."It is Mr.
Coverdale!"
"Yes, Mr.Moodie, your old acquaintance," answered I."It is some time now since we ate luncheon together at Blithedale, and a good deal longer since our little talk together at the street corner.""That was a good while ago," said the old man.
And he seemed inclined to say not a word more.His existence looked so colorless and torpid,--so very faintly shadowed on the canvas of reality, --that I was half afraid lest he should altogether disappear, even while my eyes were fixed full upon his figure.He was certainly the wretchedest old ghost in the world, with his crazy hat, the dingy handkerchief about his throat, his suit of threadbare gray, and especially that patch over his right eye, behind which he always seemed to be hiding himself.There was one method, however, of bringing him out into somewhat stronger relief.A glass of brandy would effect it.
Perhaps the gentler influence of a bottle of claret might do the same.
Nor could I think it a matter for the recording angel to write down against me, if--with my painful consciousness of the frost in this old man's blood, and the positive ice that had congealed about his heart--Ishould thaw him out, were it only for an hour, with the summer warmth of a little wine.What else could possibly be done for him? How else could he be imbued with energy enough to hope for a happier state hereafter?
How else be inspired to say his prayers? For there are states of our spiritual system when the throb of the soul's life is too faint and weak to render us capable of religious aspiration.
"Mr.Moodie," said I, "shall we lunch together? And would you like to drink a glass of wine?"His one eye gleamed.He bowed; and it impressed me that he grew to be more of a man at once, either in anticipation of the wine, or as a grateful response to my good fellowship in offering it.
"With pleasure," he replied.
The bar-keeper, at my request, showed us into a private room, and soon afterwards set some fried oysters and a bottle of claret on the table;and I saw the old man glance curiously at the label of the bottle, as if to learn the brand.
"It should be good wine," I remarked, "if it have any right to its label.""You cannot suppose, sir," said Moodie, with a sigh, "that a poor old fellow like me knows any difference in wines."And yet, in his way of handling the glass, in his preliminary snuff at the aroma, in his first cautious sip of the wine, and the gustatory skill with which he gave his palate the full advantage of it, it was impossible not to recognize the connoisseur.
"I fancy, Mr.Moodie," said I, "you are a much better judge of wines than I have yet learned to be.Tell me fairly,--did you never drink it where the grape grows?""How should that have been, Mr.Coverdale?" answered old Moodie shyly;but then he took courage, as it were, and uttered a feeble little laugh.
"The flavor of this wine," added he, "and its perfume still more than its taste, makes me remember that I was once a young man.""I wish, Mr.Moodie," suggested I,--not that I greatly cared about it, however, but was only anxious to draw him into some talk about Priscilla and Zenobia,--"I wish, while we sit over our wine, you would favor me with a few of those youthful reminiscences.""Ah," said he, shaking his head, "they might interest you more than you suppose.But I had better be silent, Mr.Coverdale.If this good wine, --though claret, I suppose, is not apt to play such a trick,--but if it should make my tongue run too freely, I could never look you in the face again.""You never did look me in the face, Mr.Moodie," I replied, "until this very moment.""Ah!" sighed old Moodie.
It was wonderful, however, what an effect the mild grape-juice wrought upon him.It was not in the wine, but in the associations which it seemed to bring up.Instead of the mean, slouching, furtive, painfully depressed air of an old city vagabond, more like a gray kennel-rat than any other living thing, he began to take the aspect of a decayed gentleman.Even his garments--especially after I had myself quaffed a glass or two--looked less shabby than when we first sat down.There was, by and by, a certain exuberance and elaborateness of gesture and manner, oddly in contrast with all that I had hitherto seen of him.Anon, with hardly any impulse from me, old Moodie began to talk.His communications referred exclusively to a long-past and more fortunate period of his life, with only a few unavoidable allusions to the circumstances that had reduced him to his present state.But, having once got the clew, my subsequent researches acquainted me with the main facts of the following narrative; although, in writing it out, my pen has perhaps allowed itself a trifle of romantic and legendary license, worthier of a small poet than of a grave biographer.
