Within this belvidere the Frenchman was at work. He was a short, middle-aged, sallow-faced, sharp-featured person—entirely devoted to matters of science, and having no soul for love, pleasure, politics, or any kind of excitement save his learned pursuits. He was now busily employed at a table covered with copper plates coated with silver, phials of nitric acid, cotton wool, pounce, a camera obscura, several boxes, each of about two feet square, and other materials necessary for photography.
The Frenchman spoke English tolerably well; and eyeing his fair visitant from head to foot, he expressed himself infinitely obliged to the person who had sent her. He then entered into particulars; and Ellen found, to her surprise, that the photographer was desirous of taking full-length female portraits in a state of nudity. She drew her veil over her countenance, and was about to retire in disgust and indignation, when the Frenchman, who was examining a plate as he spoke, and therefore did not observe the effect his words had produced upon her, mentioned the price which he proposed to pay her. Now the artist paid better than the statuary; the sculptor better than the artist; and the photographer better than the sculptor. She therefore hesitated no longer; but entered the service of the man of science.
We shall not proceed to any details connected with this new avocation to which that lovely maiden lent herself. Suffice it to say, that having sold her countenance to the statuary, her likeness to the artist, and her bust to the sculptor, she disposed of her whole body to the photographer. Thus her head embellished images white and bronzed; her features and her figure were perpetuated in divers paintings; her bust was immortalized in a splendid statue; and her entire form is preserved, in all attitudes, and on many plates, in the private cabinet of a photographer at one of the metropolitan Galleries of Practical Science.
At length the photographer was satisfied with the results of his experiments regarding the action of light upon every part of the human frame; and Ellen's occupation was again gone.
A tainted soul now resided in a pure body. Every remaining sentiment of decency and delicacy was crushed—obliterated—destroyed by this last service. Pure souls have frequently resided in tainted bodies: witness Lucretia after the outrage perpetrated upon her:—but here was essentially a foul soul in a chaste and virgin form.
And what dread cause had consummated this sad result? Not the will of the poor girl; for when we first saw her in her cold and cheerless chamber, her mind was spotless at the Alpine snow. But dire necessity—that necessity which became an instrument in the old hag's hands to model the young maiden to her purposes. For it was with ulterior views that the designing harridan had introduced the poor girl to that career which, without being actually criminal, led step by step towards criminality. The wretch knew the world well, and was enabled to calculate the influence of exterior circumstances upon the mind and the passions. After the first conversation which she had with Ellen, she perceived that the purity of the virgin was not to be undermined by specious representations, nor by dazzling theories, nor by delusive sophistry: and the hag accordingly placed the confiding girl upon a path which, while it supplied her with the necessaries of life, gradually presented to her mind scenes which were calculated to destroy her purity of thought and chastity of feeling for ever!
When Ellen left the service of the photographer, she repaired for the fifth time to the dwelling of the hag.
The old woman was seated as usual at her work; and she was humming to herself an opera air, which she remembered to have heard many—many years back.
"The Frenchman requires my services no longer," said Ellen. "What next can you do for me?"
"Alas! my poor child," answered the old woman, "the times were never so bad as they are at present! What is to become of us? what is to become of us?"
And the hag rocked herself backwards and forwards in her chair, as if overcome by painful reflections.
"You can, then, do nothing for me?" observed Ellen, interrogatively. "That is a pity! for I have not a shilling left in the world. We have lived up to the income which my occupations produced. My poor old father fancies up to the present moment that I have been working at dress-making and embroidery at the houses of great families; and he will wonder how all my engagements should so suddenly cease. Think, mother: are you not acquainted with another artist or sculptor?"
"Why, my child, do you pitch upon the artist and the sculptor?" inquired the hag, regarding Ellen fixedly in the face.
"Oh!" answered the young maiden, lightly, "because I do not like to have my countenance handled about by the dirty fingers of the statuary; and you cannot suppose that out of the four services I should voluntarily prefer that of the photographer?"
The old woman looked disappointed, and muttered to herself, "Not quite yet! not quite yet!"
"What did you say, mother?" inquired Ellen.
"I say," replied the hag, assuming a tone of kindness and conciliation, "that you must come back to me in ten days; and in the mean time I will see what is to be done for you."
"In ten days," observed Ellen: "be it so!"
And she took her departure, downcast and disappointed, from the old hag's abode.
CHAPTER LVII.
THE LAST RESOURCE.
POVERTY once again returned—with all its hideous escort of miseries—to the abode of Monroe and his daughter. The articles of comfort which they had lately collected around them were sent to the pawnbroker: necessaries then followed to the same destination.
Ellen no longer sought for needle-work: she had for some time past led a life which incapacitated her for close application to monotonous toil; and she confidently reposed upon the hope that the old woman would procure her more employment with an artist or a sculptor.
But at the expiration of the ten days, the hag put her off for ten days more; and then again for another ten days. Thus a month passed away in idleness for both father and daughter, neither of whom earned a shilling.
They could no longer retain the lodgings which they had occupied for some time in a respectable neighbourhood; and now behold them returning to the very same cold, miserable, and cheerless rooms which we saw them occupying in the first instance, in the court leading out of Golden Lane!
What ups and downs constitute existence!
Two years had now passed away since we first introduced the reader to that destitute lodging in Golden Lane. We have therefore brought up this portion of our narrative, as well as all the other parts of it, to the close of the year 1838.
Misery, more grinding, more pinching, and more acute than any which they had yet known, now surrounded the father and daughter. They had parted with every thing which would produce the wherewith to purchase food. They lay upon straw at night; and for days and days they had not a spark of fire in the grate. They often went six-and-thirty hours together without tasting a morsel of food. They could not even pay the pittance of rent which was claimed for their two chambers: and if it had not been for their compassionate neighbours they must have starved altogether.
Monroe could obtain no employment in the City. When he had failed, during the time of Richard Markham's imprisonment, he lost all his friends, because they took no account of his misfortunes, and looked only to the fact that he had been compelled to give up business. Had he passed through the Bankruptcy Court, and then opened his counting-house again to commence affairs upon credit, he would have found admirers and supporters. But as he had paid his creditors every farthing, left himself a beggar, and spurned the idea of entering upon business without capital of his own, he had not a friend to whom he could apply for a shilling.
At length the day came when the misery of the father and the daughter arrived at an extreme when it became no longer tolerable. They