Five or six weeks now glided slowly by, without working any change in either the circumstances or the relations of the characters with whom this history has to do. Bergan still shivered in the chill remoteness of position into which he had been flung, partly by his fault and partly by his misfortune. Not only between him and his relatives, but dividing him from the whole reputable outside world, there seemed to be a gulf fixed, impassable save to formal courtesies and commonplace usages. Anything warmer, more personal, more exacting, sought in vain for an eligible crossing place; and, if it leaped the gray chasm, it was only to lose itself among chill, elusive shapes of mist, on the opposite side.
Thus excluded from the only society for which he cared, Bergan did not, as a weaker character might have done, betake himself for consolation to the lower circles of vice and dissipation that would have welcomed him rapturously. He could better afford to stand alone, he thought, than to throw himself into arms whose embrace would soil, and whose seeming support was an insidious undermining. Besides, it was much more in accordance with his character to regard the exclusion from which he suffered as a challenge to be answered, an adversary to be overcome, rather than a verdict to be acquiesced in. He would prove to the world that it had been mistaken.
Day after day, therefore, he spent in his office,—as many a new-fledged lawyer has done before him,—waiting with what patience he might for the clients that never came, and reading hard, by way of preparation for the cases that never presented themselves. It was dull and lonely work; yet it did him good service, in giving him time for thought and reflection, and in making him acquainted with his own resources of will, courage, patience, and energy.
The only persons who came within the circle of loneliness that surrounded him, were Mrs. Lyte, Cathie, and Dr. Remy. The first showed him much gentle, unobtrusive kindness, chiefly manifesting itself in a motherly oversight of his rooms and prevision of his wants. The second fluttered in and out of his office, like a bird or a butterfly, affording him much amusing, and often opportune, distraction from hard study or sober-hued thought. But neither of these two, for obvious reasons, could give him just the close, helpful friendship, of which he stood in need.
Neither did he find it in Dr. Remy. Though he met the physician daily, and often engaged with him in hour-long colloquies upon all sorts of topics, he never felt that he really knew him any better than on the first day of their acquaintance. The doctor\'s peculiar frankness, which had seemed, at first sight, to promise such facility of intimacy, proved to be really more of the nature of an elastic barrier, yielding everywhere to the slightest pressure, but nowhere completely giving way. Or, it might be still more fitly characterized as a deceitful quagmire, wherein the curious explorer sank indefinitely, but never touched solid bottom.
Not that the doctor was at all reticent in regard to the main facts of his outward life. In a desultory way he had furnished Bergan with a sufficiently distinct outline sketch of his somewhat eventful career, up to the present moment,—a career which, for shifts and turns, outdid that of Gil Blas. According to this, he was born in New Orleans, the posthumous son of a French refugee, by an American wife. When he was twelve years old, his mother had presented him with a stepfather. The gift proved so little to his taste that, two years later, he ran away from the pair, and flung himself into that El Dorado of boyish imagination—life at sea. In one capacity or another, during the next twelve years, he not only contrived to visit most of the countries of Europe, but also by dint of natural aptitude for study, to pick up a language or two, and to acquaint himself with the essential part of a college curriculum. It now occurred to him to return to New Orleans, and claim the modest patrimony awaiting him there, in the hands of his father\'s executors. He found that his stepfather had been dead for three or four years, and his mother, after having exhausted her own scanty resources, was sinking, with her two children, into the dreary depths of poverty. It cost her some effort to recognize the slender stripling of her memory in the brown, bearded, broad-shouldered man, who now presented himself before her as her son. However, his identity was satisfactorily established, both by certain indisputable personal marks, and by the presumptive evidence of his willingness to assume the burden of her support.
His next step had been to place himself in a lawyer\'s office, where, in virtue of close application, he made months do the work of years. Admitted by-and-by to the Bar, he had practised his profession for a brief space, but finding the legal life not wholly to his taste, he had flung it aside; and with the ready facility which had characterized his whole career, had betaken himself to the study and the practice of medicine. Here, he averred, he had found his true vocation, the rightful mistress of his intellect, and should undergo no more transformations, and indulge in no more wanderings.
So far, Dr. Remy gave quite as frank an account of himself as could be expected or desired. But when it came to his inner life of thought, opinion, principle, his frankness was of the sort that obscures, rather than explains. It put forth jest and earnest, reason and sophistry, airy spirituality and dead materialism, with equal readiness, and with as much show of interest in one as the other. If Bergan caught at what seemed to be substance, it turned to shadow in his grasp. If he grappled with apparent earnest, it quickly resolved itself into a hollow helmet of sudden championship, or a thin mask of irony. He was often startled with a doubt whether the doctor had any settled opinions or principles. He pulled down, but he built not up; he attacked, but he rarely defended,—or, if he defended a thing to-day, more likely than not, he would assault it to-morrow. All Bergan\'s own opinions and beliefs seemed to lose their consistency in the universal solvent of the doctor\'s talk, and only took shape again after a protracted process of precipitation, in his own mind and heart.
If the latter organ made any part of Doctor Remy\'s bodily system, it never manifested itself to Bergan by any noticeable throb or sensible warmth. The young man was often puzzled by the question whence came the doctor\'s evident interest in himself, since it seemed so plain that it did not spring from any warm personal liking. He felt himself to be the object of his careful study, frequently; of his spontaneous affection and sympathy, never. He could not but wonder at such an amount and duration of a purely intellectual interest,—for such he decided it to be,—when it promised so little result.
However, the doctor\'s was the only society, worthy of the name, that was offered to him; his, too, the only friendship, or semblance thereof, that came within his reach. He gratefully availed himself of both, even while conscious that neither fully met his wants, or would have been the object of his deliberate choice. Without this resource, the flow of Bergan\'s life would have been characterized by a drearier monotony, even, than at present.
The first slight break in its placid current, occurred one morning, on his return from breakfasting at the hotel. To his surprise, Vic was tied before Mrs. Lyte\'s gate, arching her neck, and twisting her ears about, in her usual wild and nervous fashion. In most confiding proximity to her restless heels, Brick lay fast asleep on the sunshiny sward.
Roused by the sound of approaching footsteps, the latter sprang to his feet, and donned the palm-leaf debris that he termed his hat, in time to doff it in deferential acknowledgment of Bergan\'s surprised greeting.
"Why, Brick! how do you do? Is anything the matter at the Hall?"
"No, massa Harry, nothing \'t all. Only, ole massa, he say we\'s gittin lazy,—Vic an\' me;—an\' he tought you\'d better be gettin\' some good out ob us, dan to leab us in de stable—no, I mean, in the cabin, no, one in de stable and turrer in de cabin—a-eatin\' our heads off;—dat\'s jes\' what he said, massa. So he clared us off in a hurry, an\' tole us to gib you his lub, and tell you dat he \'sposed you\'d kinder forgotten \'bout us."
There could be no question but that the overture was kindly meant, on the Major\'s part, but it was one that Bergan could not possibly accept. Judging from present indications, it would be long before his professional income would suffice for his own support, to say nothing of the additional expense of a servant and horse. Besides, he had never regarded either Brick or the filly as actual gifts, but only convenient loans, for his use while at the Hall. Any other view of the matter would, by no means, have suited his independent character. And, if this had been the case before the rupture with his uncle, it was doubly so, now. Major Bergan must not be suffered to think that his resentment had given way, or that his good will had been restored, by the aid of any gifts, however valuable, or kindly bestowed.
Yet he would be glad to send his uncle a friendly message, to show that he was really grateful for his kindness, and ready to accept any overture which would not burden him with too heavy a sense of obligation. To ensure its safe delivery, without the risk of hopeless travesty, at Brick\'s hands, he went to his desk, and wrote:
"DEAR UNCLE: Thank you for sending me your love; that is a thing which I am glad to get and keep. But I cannot keep either Brick or Vic,—I have no present use for them, and no means of providing for them, if I had. Besides, I never regarded either as mine, except while I remained at the Hall. Many thanks, all the same, for your kind intentions.
"Your affectionate nephew,
\'HARRY.\'"
The signature was written only after considerable hesitation. His note would be sure to fail of the desired conciliatory effect, if it wholly ignored the name upon which his uncle had so strenuously insisted. Yet he could not bring himself to incorporate it with his lawful sign-manual. He was forced to compromise matters by thus using it as a sort of sobriquet.
Giving the note to Brick, he bade him take it straightway to his master. The negro\'s face instantly fell; then, it brightened again with the light of a plausible explanation.
"I \'spec I\'se to come back, arter I\'se \'livered it?" he asked, anxiously.
"No, Brick," Bergan gravely answered. "I cannot afford to keep you; it is as much as I can do, just now, to keep myself."
"But, massa Harry," remonstrated Brick, "don\'t you know I \'longs to you? I\'se your nigger, sure as deff; ole massa gib me to you, an\' tole me to wait on you, don\' you \'member? An\' how\'s I a goin\' to wait on you, I\'d jes\' like to know, wid tree good miles atween us? \'Sides, I\'d f............