Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/92

84 the not far-off future give to the symbol a melancholy significance?

“Come,” I said, “leave these abstruse studies; take off that symbolic coat, that tinsel crown; wash, comb your hair, and walk with me.”

“I should enjoy a walk,” replied Pendlam; “but I am directed to retain these symbols upon my person, and you would hardly wish me to appear in the street with them.”

“Directed!—by what authority?”

“By the Spirit. Some beautiful use is to be fulfilled. I see where you are,” added Pendlam;—“from your stand-point it must look absurd enough.”

I sat down, and endeavoured to reason with him. But I found it impossible for a person upon my plane to reach with any argument a person upon his. In vain I recapitulated his successive trials and failures.

“It is true,” he confessed, “I have been called to pass through some strange experiences. But all were necessary steps; and I have now reached a stand-point from which I can look back and see in its indisputable place every grade of the progressive ascent. There has been only apparent failure. Our attempted Association was a necessary foreshadowing of what remains to be unfolded; a prophetic symbol. We have all been taught great lessons.”

“And the vulture and the lamb!” I said, sternly; “where are they?”

“I perceive,” answered Pendlam, charitably, “you do not understand.”

“It is you,” I cried, “who have failed to understand your own symbols. To use plain language, then, where is Susan? She is the lamb that was entrusted to your keeping, and that you suffered the obscene bird to carry away!”

“You are pleased to employ harsh terms,” said Pendlam, meekly. “Susan has done well; she has followed her attractions, and that is obedience to the Spirit. Perfect freedom is essential to progression. Consequently, above a certain plane, monogamy, which has undeniable primitive uses, ceases to exist. The laws of chemical affinity teach this by analogy. When the mutual impartations which result from the conjunction of positive and negative have blended in a state of equilibrium, there is consequent repulsion, and the law of harmonies ordains new combinations. You see where I am,” said Pendlam.

Disheartened and sorrowful, I set out to go. At the door I turned back.

“Can I do anything for you, John Henry?”

“Not unless”—Pendlam hesitated a moment—“if you have a dollar to spare?”

I gave him a bank-bill. As he leaned forward to receive it, he struck his head against the suspended key.

“Another symbol,” I said. “Break not your brains upon the key of brass.”

He scratched his head, rearranged his tinsel, and smiling, advanced to show me the stairs. I looked back once: there crowned he stood, in his symbolic coat, with the green crescent and blue door on the shoulders; and as a gust from the stairway blew open the garment, I beheld a great yellow heart on his breast. That picture remained impressed upon my vision. In the street, I recalled the room, the drawings, the inscriptions,—all so tragical and saddening! I had not proceeded far, when, moved by greater compassion, I turned and retraced my steps. At the door of the house, I saw the servant girl who had admitted me coming out with a bottle, and thought it the same I had seen lying empty under Pendlam’s table. I followed her into a grocery on the corner. She called for gin, and paid for it out of my bank-bill.

I now changed my mind, and went to consult Horatio. It was concluded that Pendlam’s old habits of thought and associations ought to be entirely broken up. Deserted, destitute, dependent, he condescended, after long holding out against us, to listen to what we proposed. Hearing of a vacancy in a newspaper office in a western city, we had procured for him the situation. Not without a struggle, he consented to accept it, abandoned his