William Douglas O'Connor

“ In a city whose vice it is that its valor and compassion run to brains, he was an arm. A mind trained for the human service, and an arm. An arm swift, and loving-swift to smite the robbers of the poor; a heart that could feel tenderly and gently even for them; a life which beat, in its every artery, with the blood of his love for mankind. Oh, never can I mourn him! The question that shakes the land and age came to him—in the person of that forlorn wanderer it came, saying, shall it be slavery or liberty for such as me—and not with a word, but with a deed he answered, liberty! ”

“ The most degraded slaveholder is white beside such a wretch as you. Never let me hear again of Southern infamy. You, a Northern merchant, kidnapping your brother—kidnapping a man whose right it is to say with you, in his prayers to Heaven, ‘Our Father’—not respecting even the miserable forms of pirate law in your infernal zeal for wickedness—what wretch is there, however black, that does not whiten into virtue beside you! Lafitte himself sees in you a depth of mean vice to which his self-respect will not permit him to descend. ”

“ His eye gleamed and bright color lit his face as he listened to the triumphal terror and glory of the thrilling strain. On and on it swept in cadences of tears and fire; down and down it darkened in weird and burning melody, fraught with the passion of all human wrongs; and rising into the pealing cry of the battle-summons, and flowing into the proud, heroic tones of mournful rapture which seem to exult for the dead who die for man, it melted away.
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Harrington sat, flushed and throbbing, in the fragrant silence of the room. The organ had ceased and gone, and he was alone. ”

“ He did not answer, and she remained silent for a few moments, with her soul wildly stirred.
“Oh, Lemuel Atkins,” she exclaimed at length, “if you only knew the harm you have done us!”
“Pity him, Muriel,” answered Harrington. “Both he and Lafitte are the cause of this disaster. Let us pity and forgive them. They are the victims, and not we.”
“I do,” she responded, clasping her hands; “I pity and forgive them.”
“It only remains for me to decide,” he said, after a pause. “If I go to-night I feel I shall save Antony. But I think it will not be done without a struggle, and I shall be killed. ”

“ One hailed the carriage—probably some passing hack—the other decoyed the boy away to prevent his outcries—and the rest we know. O Boston, Boston! I loved you once—every stone in your pavement was dear to me; but I sicken of you now, and I shall never walk your streets with joy again! A poor, helpless, harmless man—a fugitive from the worst tyranny that deforms the world—and in the streets of this free city, in open daylight, on the Sabbath, with a crowd standing around, he can be stolen, as a horse could not be stolen, and not one person lifts a hand to prevent it, or asks why! ”

“ Squatting on his stool in the corner of the room, the horrified Tugmutton glared at them, with his white eyes bulging from his blobber face under his great shocks of wool, like some lubber imp of darkness risen to work them bane.
In a few moments Harrington’s hands fell heavily from his face, and agile as lightning, Muriel flashed into his arms, and clung to him, with a smile brilliant and tender as the morning on her impassioned features.
“Oh, my beloved!” she cried, “do not sink from yourself into despair—do not lose the immortal in the mortal! ”

“ The thrilling feeling slowly died away like failing music, and timidly looking up, Wentworth saw the eyes of Muriel sink from their celestial height and rest kindly and lovingly on him.
“Come to me, Richard,” she said. “You alone have not spoken to me—you alone have not expressed your joy.”
“Muriel,” he answered, moving near her, with a timid and tardy step, “if so bad a boy as I am”—
“Bad? oh, no! You are not a bad boy,” she said with tender playfulness, caressing him as she spoke. “You are my own dear brother Richard, gallant, and fond, and true. Could I love you if you were not? ”

“ The negro stood touched, but irresolute. Harrington saw that the crisis had come, and that a feather either way would turn the scale. A desperate inspiration came to him, and with a bound he tore open the door of the inner room, and dragged Lafitte front to front with the negro.
“Look at him!” he cried. “Helpless, miserable, merciless wretch, I cast him on your mercy! Show him what it is to be a man. Teach him the lesson that he never learned—how the brave can spare; and let him crawl home with the shame upon him that he owes his life to the compassion of the people he would destroy!” ”

“ Her breath had breathed upon his sense, her lips had met his cheek, and therefore, all thought that she loved another, all evidence that her soul was not in secret, firm alliance with his own, had vanished in the flash of rapture which filled his being. And more—the phantoms which surrounded him had vanished too. Born servant and soldier of mankind, he was often made to feel how powerless he was in the great social war of the many against the one; and at such times, to his spirit, as to that of many a lover of men, came gloomy spectres from the world of complicated wo and wrong. ”

“ Noble and debonair from head to foot, and all imparadised in charm, so on that morning stood Muriel.
Who would have dreamed that the reverie in which she was absorbed was too solemn to have grown upon her spirit from the mighty Tuscan page before her? Who could have imagined, gazing upon her calm loveliness, that a great and awful, though silent, struggle had shaken her heart? Yet it was so. The event which can most convulse a woman’s life had come to her. She loved Harrington, and it had dawned upon her that he loved her friend Emily. ”

“ She sleeps, my noble-hearted Muriel—she who, misled by my proud, spleenful folly, thinks I have given my heart to Harrington. And he! oh, how can he forgive me when I tell him—but he will—that noble nature cannot scorn me; he will understand and pity and pardon. Let me only tell him frankly—let me atone for all my wrong by humbling myself before him; let me crave his compassion and forgiveness, and so be fitter to go from earth to my Savior’s rest. To-morrow I will depart from hence, and before I go I will see Harrington and Muriel, and make my peace with them. ”

“ An atmosphere of fiery ether seemed to envelop the combatants, spreading its glorious delirium through the veins of the gazers, and kindling the delight of battle in their eyes. But as the combat continued, the wild passion of the action became so intense and real that the heroic glow began to pale and mingle with a cold affright, and Wentworth, beginning to feel his agitation master him, was on the point of shouting to Harrington to stop, when there was a sharp snap, followed by sudden silence, and the combat was over. Bagasse stood panting through his mask with a broken foil in his hand. ”

“ The next instant, she leaped from the couch and clasped him in her arms.
There was a long pause of awful silence, in which he stood with head uplifted and his eyes covered with his hands, while she clung to him, her face still between its thick length of waven tresses, and gazed with dilated eyes into his half-hid features.
“My beloved! My own beloved, what is this? Was it a dream? Be calm—be strong. I am with you. I hold you in my arms. No evil thing can come to you when I am near. Love clasps you, my dear and gentle lover, and nothing can harm you.” ”

“ Witherlee cowered at the sight of this solemn and compassionate emotion, and his head fell. In that moment he remembered the hard and cruel insult he had so lately flung upon the man before him, and he trembled in an agony of shame.
“Fernando,” said Harrington, calmly and tenderly, “I pity you from the bottom of my heart. I could almost die with pity for you. Do not, I beg of you, do not degrade your soul by persisting in what you know to be falsehoods. You know you are not telling Emily the truth now, and you know there is not a word of truth in all you have told her.” ”

“ It was first agreed that Harrington should permit himself a vacation, free from the toil of study, in this the golden crescent of their eternal honeymoon. It was next resolved that Harrington should keep his house in Chambers street, and live there when he so chose. Both he and Muriel thought that married people are too intimate with each other, see too much of each other, push too far and frequently into the sacred privacy which Nature sets around the individual soul, and so lose the charm of freshness which is at once the crowning delight and most potent safeguard of love. ”

“ Let me at him, till I cut his heart out!”
“Listen to me, Brown,” said Harrington, in a solemn and majestic voice, fronting the roused passion of the negro with his soul divinely splendid in his eyes. “You are a brave man and the son of the brave. Your father fought in the black corps with Jackson, at New Orleans. Face to face with the foe, in honorable war. You yourself, walked from slavery in Louisiana to freedom in Massachusetts, knife in hand, through a land of enemies. You slew the hounds that followed you. You struck dead the armed hunters that opposed you. ”

“ You remember what one of our leading Whigs said in convention many years ago—in the time, when to be a Whig was not to be a Webster Whig, with a fine speech for kidnapping. ‘Why, sir,’ foamed a slaveholder, ‘if your doctrines obtain, our slaves would cut our throats for us.’ ‘And in God’s name,’ said our Whig friend, tossing the words over his shoulder—‘in God’s name, why shouldn’t they!’”
“Oh, Harrington, Harrington,” said Emily, shaking her head, “is this you? I did not think John Harrington had the heart to hate any man—not even Lafitte—much less kill him, or see him killed.” ”

“ Tassle following, and contemplatively regarding, as he spat and chewed, the shaking calves of the negro’s legs, which he had a chance to do, as the old trowsers, too short in the first instance, were now split up the backs, nearly to the knees, and feebly flapped as the slave tottered on. Antony himself, giddy with his long exposure in the sun, and with the glow of the liquor he had drank, felt his poor mind wander a little, and was conscious of nothing so much as of the queer tattered shadow that bobbed around him, and which he half fancied would trip him up if he were to try to run away now. ”

“ Besides, she well knew that the moment the fugitive was brought before a Commissioner, the dauntless Harrington, thoroughly trained in the use of arms, and with the might of ten men in him, would burst into the court-room like a thunderbolt of war, and slay every man that stood between him and the rescue, or be himself slain. There was good blood in the veins of young Muriel—the old red blood of the Achaian women who sent their dear ones to Platea with the cry of “return with your shields or upon them”—the old red blood of the New England women who armed their husbands for Lexington ”

“ Away, Antony! The bitter term of your bondage is over, and there is nothing now but Liberty or Death for you! Death? Ay, Death in the land of Liberty for the man who repays long years of outrage with one brave grip on the throttle of his oppressor! Death, when the savage planters muster to avenge their fellow, and drag you down to yon bayou, to shriek and scorch your life away among the sappy fagots of the slow fire! Death like this, or else by gnawing famine, or the beasts and reptiles of the swamp whose beckoning horrors soon must close around you! ”

“ Before the headlong, desperate courage of his charge, the loathsome tenants of the swamp gave way. Plunging from the floodwood, the affrighted alligator trundled off, and the startled moccasins slipped and writhed from his path at the noise of his coming. Hark, again! Nearer than before the booming yell of the hounds. Speed, Antony! It is the Sabbath of the Lord our God, and we hunt you down. What man shall there be among us that shall have one slave, and if it fly into the morass on the Sabbath day, shall he not set hounds upon it and hunt it down? Speed on, dark chattel! ”

“ About her hung that indefinable and delicious patrician odor which we sometimes perceive around the persons of fair women, and which touches the imagination like the aroma of a poetic nobility of soul. A thrill fled through the veins of Harrington as he gazed on her, and then his eyes grew sad, and the smile on his face died slowly away.
“Ah, Muriel,” he said, in a low, rapt voice, “the beauty [423] that my eyes see in you is the token of the beauty my soul knows in you. How could I bear to leave you! Once it was a joy to think of death, but now heaven could not tempt me from earth with you.” ”

“ I understand you perfectly. You tell me that he is dead.”
“Mother,” replied Muriel, with solemn fervor, “his earthly life is ended, but he lives forever. He died a hero’s death, and all who made earth noble with their living and their dying, rise up to welcome him.”
There was a moment’s pause, in which their eyes remained bound to each other. Then the low, full, equal voice spoke on.
“Tell me more, Muriel. Tell me how he died. I am calm. I can bear to hear it all.”
“I will tell you, my mother,” Muriel replied. “He heard that the man was a prisoner in a boat at an island wharf in the bay. ”

“ For a full minute she looked at him.
“Harrington!” she said slowly, in a deep still voice from which the tremor had gone. “Is it possible! Can this be so! My whole attitude to you—my court to you—my words, my looks, my actions—all that misled others—that made them think I loved you—that deceived them utterly.”
“They never deceived me, Emily. I looked upon them only as the tokens of your friendship, of your sisterly regard. No more.”
She gazed at him in wondering awe. Suddenly a wild light broke upon her face, and she clasped her hands.
“Oh, man without vanity!” ”

“ Harrington dropped his arm, which had lain like a bar across the bosom of Muriel, and advanced upon the cowering wretch before him.
“Listen!” said he, in a voice like bronze, deep, solemn and awful. “Listen to those murmurs in the street! Hark!”
In the dead hush, there was a noise like a coming sea, pierced with shrill sounds like the distant screams of the curlew.
“Man!” thundered Harrington, “you came here to rob your fellow of all God gave him! You dared to risk your life among these plundered and trampled poor—despoiled and outraged daily by you and such as you! Are you ready to die?” ”

“ The weight of social wrong had crushed out or bruised down many an excellence in these humble people, but politeness was one which society could not destroy in them. As Muriel went on through the swarming hum, the clatter of voices would cease, the men and women would step aside from the path, the hats would be taken from the heads with a courteous recognition of her presence, which a snob might not have the wits to honor, but which Philip Sidney’s pulse would surely have quickened to behold. ”

“ It is stern love, but it is love. Wo to the civilization that makes it necessary! Wo to the state that suffers an injury to be done to the humblest man or woman, or leaves his or her protection to the chance charity of the private citizen! And treble wo to the government that gives despotic power to ruffians, and arms and guards them in their crime against mankind with the prestige and forms of civil law!”
Harrington ceased, and they all sat in silence with brooding faces.
“Well, I trust that this wretch may never trouble Boston,” said Emily, at length, with a sigh. ”

“ At this terrible speech, Witherlee lifted his livid and rigid face with a forlorn attempt at dignity, but he could not sustain it. His glittering and unsteady eyes flickered away from the open and gallant countenance of Wentworth; from Emily, gazing at him with lustrous scorn; from Muriel, looking at him with solemn pity; from Harrington, sitting with his head bowed in his hand, and fell. He could not bear to look at them. Mischief-makers, like other criminals, usually mix folly with their crime, and in the commission of their wickedness, commonly leave the clue to its discovery. ”

“ A refluent jealousy vainly strove at that moment to enter the heart of Emily. The charm of her friend’s gracious countenance, and of her mellow silver voice, was strong upon her. But the rich color came to her golden face and over her broad, low brow to the roots of her hair, and her lustrous brown eyes wandered into vacancy.
“Yes, Muriel,” she answered, after a moment’s hesitation, “I agree with you. Life is truliest life in loving and being loved.”
“No, that is not agreeing with me,” said Muriel, with a frank smile. “Life is sufficiently life in loving. ”

“ Along Grove street into May, and from thence up West Centre into Myrtle, the frightened horses tore like a whirlwind; but before they reached Myrtle, the clamor was receding, and the crowd had thinned and fallen behind, unable to keep up with them, but still following in the distance.
“We’re safe!” cried Harrington, joyfully.
“Faith, yes,” returned Muriel, gaily, her golden eyes glowing in the faint pink flush of her face, “but it was warm work while it lasted.” ”

“ Once I have saved you—twice I will not. Go in peace—but come here again on such an errand, and I will slay you with my own hand, for, by the Eternal God, never while I live, shall you nor any one make Boston a hunting-ground for men!”
Lafitte, with his ghastly visage bowed, shook like a leaf while Harrington, with a white face and flaming eyes, and with stem determination in every tone, uttered an admonition which rose to the dignity of the great issue between Liberty and Slavery. ”

“ Recalled to herself by the shutting of the street door, Muriel started from her trance, and flew upstairs into her chamber. Falling on her knees by her bedside, she covered her eyes with her hands, and buried her face in the coverlet, floods of dazzling light pouring upon her brain.
“I see it all!” she cried, springing to her feet, and throwing up her hands, her face radiant, and a smile breaking upon it like March splendors from the wild clouds; “I see it all now! Wentworth and she are lovers. Oh, let me not die with joy!” ”

“ For a little while after the others were gone, Muriel and Wentworth lingered looking at the gentle light which floated with the shadows of the oak-leaves overhead, on the new-made mound.
“It is all over,” said Wentworth mournfully. “Alas! I never thought I would stand by his grave! He realized the noblest dreams of chivalry—he was the last grand chevalier—and he is gone. What is left us now!”
“Memories,” she calmly answered, “memories of a life of love. Love beat through all his life, love nerved him in the strife in which he fell. ”

“ It did not rise again, but ran sombrely swarming on, as Harrington reached in his long arm in a quick and quiet lunge, which was deftly parried with only a faint clink of the foils, and then, with another splendid flash of glitter and color, Muriel sprang, lunging nimbly home, and clash on clash, with a rapturous clamor of steel, came pass and parry on either side, while the hurrying music rose and rang in whirling riot, like a wild, tumultuous race of Mænads, with heavy bars of thunderous sound striking through the loud, triumphant swarming fury of the melody. ”