LA BOSTONIENNE.
Emily covered her face with her hands, and for more than fifteen minutes
sat in silent stupor where Muriel had left her. At length she sprang up,
throwing her clenched hands from her in agony, and walked the library.
Her eyes were hotly lustrous, her damask cheeks vivid with heightened
color, her parted lips wore an unnatural bloom, and the flush of fever
deepened the sunny gold of her complexion. Slowly, with measured steps,
to and fro, up and down, she paced the room, with rustling robes, like a
doomed Sultana.
“Great Heaven!” she murmured, stopping suddenly in the centre of the
floor, and clasping her hands; “to know that it has come to this!
She thinks I love Harrington. How shall I undeceive her! How shall I
undeceive him! How extricate myself from this maze! O, for a friend, a
counsellor! Richard, Richard, how can you treat me so basely! To turn
from me—and in my very sight to turn from me to her! O, that I could die,
that I could die!”
Wringing her clasped hands, a wild heart-break in her face, she heard a
light step in the passage. The door opened, and Muriel reappeared, gay
and elegant as usual, and bending into a graceful courtesy, half playful,
half unconscious, as she came forward. As for Emily, no one could have
discovered a trace of emotion in her. At the sound of Muriel’s footsteps,
she had dissolved into a sumptuous beauty, with a rich, indolent smile on
her brilliant-colored face, her bare, rounded arms folded on her bosom,
and her figure in nonchalant and queenly repose.
“Ah, neglectful one,” said Muriel, shaking a finger at her, “to let your
moulding drop to pieces for lack of a little water! I told you yesterday
that you ought to wet the clay. Just now I looked into the studio, and
saw the poor Muriel almost crumbling. Thou naughty girl!”
“I declare I forgot it,” replied Emily. “I meant to water the bust
yesterday, and it slipped my mind. I will see to it presently.”
“If you don’t, I’ll never give you another sitting,” returned Muriel. “So
take notice.”
All sorts of studies and arts were pursued at the house in Temple street.
Muriel, amidst her botany, drawing, moulding, music, Latin, French,
German, Italian, miscellaneous reading, and her vigorous calisthenics,
had for a year past interpolated the art of fencing, which Harrington had
taught her, and which was at present her grand passion. Emily, who had
been absent at Chicago for the last ten months, had previously learned
from Wentworth and Muriel how to mould in clay, and upon her return,
urged on chiefly by him, had resumed this crowning accomplishment of
hers, and began to develop in it unusual talent. The bust referred to was
one of Muriel, which she had been working on. Lately, the check she had
received in her love for Wentworth, had sadly damped the ardor of her
passion for sculpture, and the bust had been neglected.
“Don’t let your belief in Wentworth’s flirtations interfere with your
pursuit of the fine arts, _mignonne_,” continued Muriel, gaily.
“Dear me, no!” languidly returned Emily. “His flirtations are nothing to
me.”
“Certainly not,” said Muriel, sportively patting her on the shoulder.
“And as you owe the bad boy a debt of gratitude for showing you how to
mould, be civil to him, I pray.”
“Civil? And am I not civil to him?” returned Emily, smiling with lazy
serenity.
“Ah, wicked one, no,” said Muriel, silverly murmuring the words into
Emily’s ear, as she stood behind her with her arms around her waist, and
her face looking jestingly over her shoulder. “Not a bit civil. Didn’t
I see that freak of the violets this morning! I know that hurt Richard’s
feelings. Not because you did not give them to him, but on account
of your manner, which was indescribably disdainful. I verily believe
Fernando had something to do with that transaction. What was it he said
to you at the table when I saw you color?”
“Oh, nothing,” replied Emily, blushing. “It was something he meant for a
joke, though I thought it rather impudent. To tell the truth, Muriel, I
did intend to share the violets between Harrington and Wentworth, when
Fernando observed to me that Wentworth would be delighted to receive a
true-love posy from me, or something of that sort. Now that provoked me,
and I knew Wentworth had put him up to say it, for I saw them whispering
and laughing together just before, and I”—
“My dear Emily,” said Muriel, in a beseeching tone, coming around in
front of the speaker, “how can you be so unreasonable as to jump to such
a conclusion?”
“Oh! I know he had something to do with it,” returned Emily, obstinately;
“so I just punished him by giving all the flowers to Harrington. I know
it piqued him, and I’m glad of it.”
Muriel sighed, and then laughed, feeling painfully the littleness of
this conduct, yet excusing Emily out of her sense of the provocation of
Witherlee.
“_N’importe_, Emily dear,” she said lightly, after a pause. “It matters
not. But I blame Fernando for it all. I am not unjust to him, for I
appreciate his power and talents, and very often find him agreeable
enough. But I do not like his carping and cavilling and the envious
spirit of him, and I cannot help thinking that he is untruthful, and
given to mischief-making. What he said to you was really impudent—and,
by the way, it was quite matched by the impudence of his joining us this
morning, uninvited, and so coolly walking into the house with us unasked.
If I had not been amused at it, I should have been indignant. It was a
cool proceeding, faith,—positively arctic.”
Muriel paused to laugh delightedly at the drollery of the recollection.
“However, let it all go,” she continued. “Only, Emily, beware of being
influenced by Fernando. That’s good counsel. For my part, if I catch
him at any of his tricks, we shall quarrel outright. I believe I never
quarrelled with anybody in my life, and perhaps the experience may be
refreshing. But come—business before pleasure. What are you going to do
to-day? I must go on a tour—will you come with me?”
“Where are you going?” asked Emily.
“First and foremost, I am on a Pardiggle excursion among two or three
families of my parish,” replied Muriel.
Dickens’ “Bleak House,” was coming out in serials at that period, and
Muriel, with the rest of the town, was full of it, and was particularly
delighted with Mrs. Pardiggle, to whom she jestingly likened herself when
she made visits of charity.
“The Pardiggle path will first lead me to poor Mrs. Roux,” continued
Muriel. “Mrs. Roux, in Southac street, the wife of the colored man who
was here the other day to white-wash the studio. She had another child
born a couple of months ago—did I tell you?—and we must take care of the
black babies as well as the white ones, you know, and the black mothers,
too, as well as the white mothers, most gorgeous honey-darling.”
Emily smiled at the pet name Muriel bestowed upon her, admiringly gazing
meanwhile at the fair face, half arch, half serious, which looked at her
over the lace ruffle.
“Poor Roux was very sick in March,” continued Muriel, “and has only got
to work again recently—so as times are hard with them, mother and I have
taken them under our wing.”
“How did you find them out, Muriel?” asked Emily.
“Oh, through Harrington,” answered her friend. “Harrington is the
general repository of the grievances and troubles of everybody he falls
in with, and when he can’t help, he tells us, and we help. We are a
Pardiggle society. He is the President, and mother and I are the Board of
Directors.”
“I have a mind to become a member,” said Emily, smilingly. “But where
next?”
“Next,” answered Muriel, “I am going to make a call on the Tenehans.
That’s an Irish family in North Russell street. Then there is Judith, the
sempstress, for whom I have some sewing. Let’s see—that’s all to-day, I
believe. Then I’m going to see Captain Greatheart.”
“Who’s that?” interrupted Emily.
“Mr. Parker, of course.”
“Mr. Parker? Pray what entitles a lawyer to that Bunyanesque”—
“A lawyer! Bless me, Emily, where are your five wits! It is _the_ Mr.
Parker I mean—Theodore Parker. And is he not a model Captain Greatheart?
The nineteenth century Apollyon has reason to know him in that character,
at all events. So too have the poor Christians and Christianas, for whom
he is guarding shield and smiting sword.”
Emily bowed her head in assenting abstraction.
“I’m going to see if he has in his library a book I want,” continued
Muriel. “Then, perhaps, I’ll go to the Athenæum, and refresh my
art-sense—no I won’t either, for I remember Fernando said he would be
there, and I can’t enjoy pictures with his everlasting cavilling in my
ears.”
“Fernando has exquisite tastes,” said Emily, musingly.
“Fernando has exquisite _dis_tastes,” returned Muriel, piquantly. “Which
I shall not enjoy this morning. So instead of the Athenæum, I’ll go to
the Anti-Slavery Convention at the Melodeon. Uncle Lemuel was here last
evening, you know, talking up Union-saving and the Fugitive Slave Law,
and Mr. Webster, and all that sort of thing, and I shan’t feel right
again till I hear the voices of the Good Old Cause from the platform of
the Garrisonians.”
“Well, Muriel, you are the most astonishing Bostonienne I know,” said
Emily, laughing. “I should just like to analyze your mélange. Let’s see
now. In the first place, you defy fashion, and insist on wearing dresses
that show your shape, when all the rest of us are swaddled in half a
dozen starched petticoats, and are pining in secret for the hoops of our
grandmothers to come into vogue again. You”—
“How many have you on, honey-bird? Come, ‘’fess,’ as Topsy says,”
demanded Muriel, mischievously.
“I? Oh, I’m moderate,” returned Emily. “I only wear six.”
Muriel put up her hands, orbed her mouth, and opened her large eyes in
mock horror.
“Goodness me!” said Emily, laughing and smoothing her bounteous skirts,
“Six is nothing. Why everybody wears seven. Eight and nine are not
uncommon. And there’s Bertha Appleby wears twelve.”
Muriel burst into low, silver laughter, in which she was joined by her
friend.
“To resume,” continued Emily when the mirth had subsided, “you won’t wear
low-necked dresses at parties. You don’t waltz. You don’t flirt. You
don’t care to be admired. You don’t run after the lions. You pay court to
all the taboo people, visit those who are voted out of good society, ask
them to visit you”—
“And cry ‘à bas la Madame Grundy,’” put in Muriel, with a free and frolic
toss of her arm.
“Yes, and cry, ‘down with Mrs. Grundy,’” continued Emily. “Then you
cultivate the most miscellaneous and outlandish set of characters—authors
and actors, and actresses, and reformers, and clergymen, and musicians
and comeouters and people respectable and disrespectable all meet here,
higgledy-piggledy, in the most heterogeneous mixture—the most chaotic”—
“O no, Emily dear, not chaotic,” interposed Muriel, “not chaotic but
cosmic. I accept them all as Nature accepts them all. Down with the
walls! That’s my principle. No castes—no factitious distinctions. Let
fine people of all sorts come together and learn to know each other.
Democracy forever!”
“Yes, indeed—but doesn’t good society get horrified at your doings!”
laughingly exclaimed Emily “Doesn’t the whole neighborhood hold up
its hands at you? Why, your aristocratic acquaintance look at you with
perfect horror.”
“Well,” rejoined Muriel, with nonchalant gaiety, “you know what Mercutio
says: ‘Their eyes were made to see and let them look.’”
“And then your studies,” ran on Emily. “Perfectly omnivorous. French,
German, Italian, Latin, music, drawing, painting, moulding, science,
poetry, history, oratory, philosophy, Shakspeare, Bacon, Dante, Plato,
Goethe, Swedenborg.”
“And Fourier,” interpolated Muriel. “I’ve added him to my list, you know,
and Uncle Lemuel says I ought to blush to own that I read him. The poor
man thinks Fourier had hoofs and horns and a harpoon tail.”
“Yes, I know,” rejoined Emily with a laugh. “He says such works loosen
the foundations of society and are fatal to the interests of morality,”
she added, mimicking Uncle Lemuel’s stock phrases, which he used in
common with a great many people of the highest respectability. “But to
resume, Muriel: there are your muscularities. You skate, you swim, you
climb mountains, you ride horseback, you walk ten miles on a stretch, you
saddle or harness your horse like a stableman, you catch up your horse’s
feet, and look at the shoes like a blacksmith, you dance, you row, you
lift weights, you swing by your hands, you walk on the parallel poles”—
“And fence,” suggested the amused listener. “Don’t forget the fencing!”
“Yes, and fence with Wentworth and Harrington, besides turning the studio
up-stairs into a gymnasium. Then you go on these tours, as you call them.
You have a regular parish of negroes and Irish people, and all sorts of
forlorn characters, on whom you shower food, and clothes, and books,
and goodness knows what else. And you go to theatres, circuses, operas,
lectures, picture-galleries, woman’s rights conventions, abolition
meetings, political gatherings of all sorts at Faneuil Hall, with the
most delectable impartiality. Then you used to attend church at William
Henry Channing’s, which our best society thought horrid.”
“And now Theodore Parker’s”—
“Yes, and now Theodore Parker’s, which they think worse still. And you
have harbored fugitive slaves in your house, and helped them off to
Canada. And you swallow Garrison and Parker Pillsbury”—
“And adore Wendell Phillips.”
“Yes, and adore Wendell Phillips. And subscribe for the ‘Commonwealth’
newspaper, which your uncle says ought to be put down”—
“And the ‘Liberator.’”
“Yes, and subscribe for Garrison’s ‘Liberator,’ which is your uncle’s
_bête noire_. In short, Muriel, I wonder how you keep your popularity.
I’m sure I couldn’t do all that you do, and have these cozy old citizens,
these formal and fashionable mammas, these mutton-chop whiskered,
English-mannered gentlemen, and Beacon street belladonnas, so fond of me
as they are of you. But then, I suppose they don’t know the extent of
your heresies.”
“My dear Emily,” returned Muriel, “please to remember that you’re from
the rural districts. You live at Cambridge half the year, and you’ve
been off there in Chicago for the last ten months, so you don’t know how
many Boston ladies do all, or nearly all, that I do. I’m not half such
an original as you imagine. But see here, bird of Paradise, time passes.
Are you going with me, or not? I’ll go anywhere, or do anything you like,
after the Pardiggle excursion is over. That must be attended to, anyway.”
Before Emily could reply, the door opened, and Mrs. Eastman came in.
A beautiful, fair-complexioned, gentle lady, of middle age, with
silver-grey hair falling in graceful tresses beside her face. As
beautiful in her waning day as Muriel in her matin prime.
“Not gone yet, dear,” she said, with a bright smile.
“Just going, mother.”
“Well the carriage is below, and here is little Charles come to say that
Mrs. Roux is rather poorly. And he says, dear, which I hope is not true,
that some of those dreadful men are in town.”
Muriel’s face grew grave, and she flew to the door.
“Charles!” she called. “Come up-stairs, Charles.”
“Yes, Miss Eas’man. Comin’ right up, Miss Eas’man,” chirruped a shrill,
smart voice, from below, followed by the softened bounce of feet on the
carpeted flight, coming up two stairs at a time.
“What is it?” asked the wondering Emily.
“The kidnappers,” returned Muriel. “Come in, Charles.”
A most astonishing fat negro boy entered, cap in hand, ducking and
bowing, with a scrape of his foot, and showing a saucy row of splendid
white teeth in the droll grin which expanded his big mouth and nostrils;
his great eyes meanwhile revolving rapidly around the library, and
momently vanishing in their whites with a facility curious to behold. His
face, surmounted by a mass of ashen-colored wool, parted on one side into
two great shocks, was exactly the shape of a huge d’Angouleme pear, the
great blobber cheeks making the forehead, which was respectably large,
seem small. His complexion was a clean, warm, dark grey. He was not tall
for his age, which was about ten years, but he was broad. Breadth was
the characteristic of his figure. His short arms were broad; his short
legs were broad; his body was broad; and he broadened his face at present
with a grin. He had big feet, clad in battered old shoes; and big hands,
which just now played with his cap. He wore a grey jacket thrown back
from his fat chest, which was covered with a blue and white small-striped
shirt; and his legs were incased in grey trowsers. Grey, in fact, was the
prevailing color of him all over. The face was intelligent, and full of
precocity, assurance, and supreme self-importance, with what people call
a little-old-man-look pervading it all, though this was only seen when he
was in his grave moods, and now was not visible.
“What is it, Charles?” anxiously asked Muriel.
“Please, Miss Eas’man,” he began, suddenly stopping his grin, and
looking preternaturally demure, with a portentous roll of his saucer
eyes, “please, Miss Eas’man, I jus’ run up here like a bob-tail nag for
to say—to wit, that Brudder Baby is fus’ rate; so is Josey; so is Tom;
so is I; so is father; and mar isn’t not nearly so well, an’ she feels
right bad lest father should be took off, an’ them kidnappers is in
town, an’ we’ll all be took off, jus’ so sure’s my name’s Tugmutton, Miss
Eas’man—yes, Miss Eas’man, there aint no sort of a chance for us anyway,
jus’ so sure as you’re born.”
Having delivered himself in shrill, fluent tones, to this effect, the
young imp grinned cheerfully, and stood rapidly twirling his cap on his
hand like a pin-wheel, and rolling his eyes at the three ladies. Muriel
looked at him with a still face, but Mrs. Eastman smiled, and Emily, who
had seen him once before, laughed amusedly.
“What an odd creature he is,” said the latter. “To think of his
preferring to be called by that droll name? Don’t you like to be called
Charles?” she asked, addressing the boy.
“Like it extrornerly, Miss Ames—never git done likin’ that name noways,
Miss Ames,” he asseverated, with great earnestness. “But you see, Miss
Ames, ’taint so familiar like as Tugmutton. Father calls me Tugmutton,
an’ mar, an’ Josey, an’ Tom, an’ everbody, since I was knee-high to a
toad, Miss Ames. Tugmutton’s my Christian name, Miss Ames, and Charles’s
my given name as Miss Eas’man give me, Miss Ames.”
“Look here, Charles,” said Muriel, suddenly, “are you sure the kidnappers
are in town?”
“Dead sure, Miss Eas’man—jus’ as sure as can be.”
“How do you know? Who told you?”
“Laws! Miss Eas’man! Why it’s in the newspaper!” blurted out the imp,
rolling up the whites of his eyes at her with a look of amazed reproach.
“O, no, Charles! It’s not in the newspaper, for I’ve read the papers this
morning,” said Muriel, smiling, and shaking her finger at him.
Tugmutton looked demure for a second, then smiled sheepishly, furtively
rolled his eyes one side at the wall, and fidgeted on his feet, and with
his cap and jacket.
“Laws, Miss Eas’man! it’s goin’ to be in the paper. Paper’ll be chock
full of it to-morrow.”
“O, I guess it’s not true,” said Muriel, slowly, with a relieved smile.
“It must be a false alarm, Charles.”
“My gosh, Miss Eas’man, I don’t believe there’s one word of truth in it,”
said Tugmutton, puckering out his great lips with an air of precocious
contempt, and whirling his cap on his hand. “Never _could_ make me
believe one word of that story. It’s jus’ nothin’ but a weak invention of
the enemy.”
The phrase, which Tugmutton had picked up from somebody, was so odd in
his childish mouth, and so oddly expressed, that Emily burst into a fit
of laughter, and threw herself into a chair, while both Mrs. Eastman and
Muriel smiled. Tugmutton grinned delightedly at the effect of his speech,
and then looked awfully demure and dignified.
“Anyhow,” he continued, “all them foolish colored folks are believin’
that story. Them folks has jus’ got no gumption, anyway. Talkin’ about
that story in the street, now—millions of them.”
“Are the colored people out in the street, Charles?” asked Mrs. Eastman.
“In the street? Laws, Missus Eas’man, Southac street’s full of ’em,”
returned Tugmutton.
“There may be something in it, after all, mother,” said Muriel. “I’ll go.”
“Bless me, Muriel, are you not afraid?” exclaimed Emily.
“Afraid! Not at all. What possible danger is there? Besides, I want to
see what’s going on. Come, let’s go.”
Emily rose and followed Muriel, who left the room for her bonnet.
“Come, Charles,” said Mrs. Eastman, moving to the door; “come
down-stairs, and I’ll give you something to eat. Little men like you are
always ready for pie.”
Tugmutton, with the prospect of pie in his delighted vision, flashed into
a huge grin, which displayed all his ivories, and lit his blobber-grey
face; and checking the impulse which prompted him to execute a shuffling
breakdown on the spot, he dodged out at the door after Mrs. Eastman.