The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
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?
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