Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/90

82 referring, as John Henry himself would have said, not to locality, but condition.

“That is impossible to say,” replied Horatio, “for I have not seen him since yesterday. Then he was situated opposite a bottle of pale sherry, which that rascal Clodman had just brought to the house. They were drinking, and talking over the Organization of Free Disciples. Several wealthy men have become interested in the enterprise, and large amounts have been subscribed. Pendlam is writing a work on the subject.”

“And Susan?”

“Her child is sick, and claims all her attention. They are trying to cure it with magnetisms. Clodman is day and night at the house; his magnetism being considered indispensable for the restoration of the child.”

A month later, Horatio brought me word that the child was dead.

Another month, and I learned that Susan had been sent to some celebrated Western Magnetic Springs for her health.

“How did she go?”

Horatio hesitated. “I am sorry to say she has gone with that rascal Clodman, who is travelling on business for the Association. Pendlam remains at home, hard at work on his book. I will now add what I did not wish you to know,” said Horatio. “For some months Pendlam’s family subsisted almost entirely upon funds advanced him by that rascal Clodman. They talk of his wonderful generosity! But the villain has a wife of his own, and a couple of young children, who are left to suffer for want of the actual necessaries of life. Pendlam has given up preaching, you know, in order to devote himself entirely to the Association.”

“Horatio, I am afraid that all is lost. I did hope better things of Susan. Wretched, wretched girl!”

Tears came into Horatio’s eyes. “How could the damnable thing ever happen?” he exclaimed, passionately. “She was a true, honest girl; and Pendlam is not a bad man.”

“He is a man,” I said, “who verily thinketh no evil. He has imagination, intellect, spirituality; but he wants balance. From the first, I saw that his powers needed centralizing. He had no hold upon integral truth, but snatched here a fragment and there a fragment. Always distrust that man, Horatio, that talks forever of planes, and stand-points, and step-by-step processes, and deems it necessary to inform you each day where he stands.”

“I do not know what could have saved him!” sighed Horatio.

“I know what could; an entire and absorbing love. His wife should have been one towards whom all his thoughts and sympathies would have been drawn. Such a love would have given him concentration, poise, unity. But, on the other hand, his heart had no anchor, and his intellect was left adrift. He has pursued truth, forgetting that truth is a tree, one and mighty, but with innumerable branches; and that it is unsafe to risk the weight of one’s salvation upon a single bough. Susan had no part in his life; she was left with that hungry, yearning heart, until the sympathy even of a Clodman seemed food to her perishing nature. Pity her, Horatio, but do not condemn.”

The Initial Association failed. Clodman did not return; and it was found that he had appropriated to his private use the funds of the Association. Behind him he had left a distressed family, and many creditors. Where was Susan?

I now thought it time to hunt up Pendlam. After no little search, I was sent to an obscure lodging. I opened the door pointed out to me, and entered an extraordinary chamber. The sides were covered with strange diagrams, grotesque drawings, lettered inscriptions. Some were sketched rudely upon the plastering with colored chalk; others were designed upon paper, and pasted on the wall. In the centre of the room sat an indescribable human figure, with its face buried in its hands. It wore an anomalous garment, slashed with various colors, like a harlequin’s coat. Upon