AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR.
In a few minutes the two young ladies, cloaked and bonneted,
came out into the sunlit street, where stood the carriage, which
Patrick, the inside man, had brought up from Niles’s stables. Emily,
characteristically indifferent to the driver, swept in and took her
seat. Muriel, on the contrary, who was on friendly terms with everybody,
courteously bent her head to him as she passed. The driver took off his
hat to her, and stood waiting for orders.
“Wait a minute, please,” said Muriel.
Presently, Patrick, a grey-haired, decorous old Irishman, came out with a
basket, covered with a white cloth, which he deposited on the seat of the
carriage.
“Bless me, what’s that!” exclaimed Emily, laughing.
“Pardiggle tracts for the poor,” said Muriel, jestingly. “Patrick, tell
Charles to hurry.”
Patrick went in and soon returned with Tugmutton, who jumped down the
steps, and scrambled into the carriage. Tugmutton’s fat face was all
agrin and shining like satin-wood. The happy youth had devoured a whole
pie, and was in a state of supreme exhilaration. His repletion, however,
did not prevent him from ogling the basket by his side, and he would have
liked nothing better than to make his dessert on its contents.
Muriel gave the driver his directions, and the vehicle started off down
Temple and into Cambridge street to the corner of Garden. They were
turning up Garden street, when Tugmutton opened his great eyes, and said.
“Well now, I declare! If there ain’t Mr. Harrington!”
Muriel leaned forward, and caught sight of the noble soldier-figure of
Harrington striding up the street before them.
“Hullo! Mr. Harrington! I say!” screeched Tugmutton.
Harrington turned, with the sun on the martial lines of his face and
beard. He caught sight of the inmates of the carriage instantly, and
signaling to the driver to stop, he came down the street, to the side of
the carriage.
“What is it, John?” asked Muriel.
“Nothing,” he replied, smiling, and bending his head to Emily. “It’s a
false alarm, I find. But these poor people are very much excited, and I
was going up to quiet them.”
“Come in. We’re going to Roux’s,” said Muriel.
Harrington entered, sat in Tugmutton’s place, taking him on his knee, and
the carriage went on till it reached the corner of Southac street, where
it stopped.
“There’s considerable of a crowd here,” cried the driver.
They all looked out at the carriage window upon the squalid neighborhood.
Only a Dickens or a Victor Hugo could fitly describe the strange and
picturesque scene which met their eyes. Huddled together in excited
groups, or moving hither and thither in straggling masses, hundreds of
colored men and women, clad in every variety of costume, and lawless
and unhuman in aspect, swarmed over the street with a loud, dense
inarticulate confusion of voices, the bright sunlight bringing out
their motley forms and bronze faces in grotesque and vivid salience. So
uncouth and various were the costumes—coats and hats of extinct styles
and patterns, frowsy and shabby raiment of every fashion within the last
half century, intermingling with the many-colored gowns and head-dresses
of the girls and women—that but for the heavy-lipped, sombre faces, with
their flashing teeth and wild-rolling eyes, and the menacing gestures and
threatening hum of the multitude, it might have seemed some masquerading
mob, arrayed in the garments of the old clothes shops. Protruding from
every window in the dingy and dilapidated houses on either side of the
street, big clusters of heads, mostly those of women and children,
some with great shocks of wool, some bullet-shaped and closely shorn,
some wearing white mob caps and red and yellow bandanna kerchiefs,
were bobbing restlessly over the excited multitude below. Up and down
cellar-ways, and in and out of numerous alleys and yawning doors, uneasy
shoals were constantly pouring, passing from or mingling with the mongrel
and fantastic concourse in the street, which continually moved in the
sunlight with a hoarse, turbulent, swarming undertone, like the far-off
roar of insurrection.
A deep flush came to the broad-nostrilled face of Harrington as he gazed.
“What a sight for Boston in the nineteenth century!” he exclaimed.
“Vaunting her civilization while terror invades the refuge of her poor!”
Emily, deathly pale, leaned back in the carriage, and shuddered.
At that moment, a portion of the crowd, seeing the carriage, set up a
clamor of cries, and surged down toward it. Two or three stones were
thrown, which rattled on the pavement around the vehicle, and the horses
began to plunge and rear. Instantly Muriel flung open the carriage-door,
and springing into the street, calm and fearless, held up her hand.
Harrington quickly leaped out after her.
“Halloa, there!” he shouted, with a commanding voice, which, like
Muriel’s gesture, fell like magic upon the thoughtless assailants. He was
well known in the quarter, and the negroes recognizing a friend, set up a
cheer of welcome. Tugmutton meanwhile had pounced from the carriage upon
the boys that threw the stones, and assaulted them with a shower of cuffs
and kicks. He came back, presently, full of victory, his blobber cheeks
puffed out with rage and self-importance.
“Them miser’ble young niggers haven’t got no more gumption than just
nothin’ at all,” he spluttered. “Guess they’ll mind now, though. Gosh! I
lit on ’em like a duck on a June bug. When I fall afoul of ’em guess they
think it’s General Washington and the spirit of seventy-six. Miser’ble
young bloats!”
Harrington could not help smiling as he looked down on the fat imp, who
was delivering himself in these figurative terms, with an indescribable
swell and swagger. The horses were still pawing and trembling, and Muriel
went to their heads, and stood with one gloved hand grasping the reins,
and the other patting and stroking the cheeks and noses of the alarmed
animals. The driver, who sat on his box, white as a sheet, firmly holding
the reins, looked down admiringly on the fearless and graceful sunlit
figure, and the negroes standing around, stared with delighted awe.
Harrington, meanwhile, was at the carriage door, assuring Emily, who
protested that she was not afraid, as indeed she was not, for she was
naturally courageous. Presently Muriel came around to the carriage door,
her face bright and calm.
“Now,” she said, “I will go on to Roux’s. The carriage had better stand
here. Emily, will you come with us?”
“But you’re not going through that crowd, Muriel!” exclaimed Emily.
“Why certainly,” replied Muriel, laughing. “I wouldn’t miss the chance
for the world. Going through that crowd is part of my culture. Besides,
dear, the crowd won’t eat us.”
“I think I will stay here,” returned Emily. “I am not afraid, but this
scene is terribly painful to me, and I could hardly bear to go among the
poor people. Do you think this will drive some of them off to Canada,
Muriel?”
“I fear so,” replied Muriel, with a wistful glance at the concourse.
Emily colored, and her eyes filled with tears.
“Let me give something for them, Muriel,” she faltered, taking out her
porte-monnaie. “You may know some of them who want means, and if you do,
give them this.”
She held out a little roll of bills—fifty dollars. It was money she had
intended for shopping, and it was all she had with her.
“But, dear Emily,” said Muriel, looking at her with humid eyes, “I do not
know that I shall meet with any one who will need it.”
“No matter,” replied Emily; “take it with you in case you should. I wish
I could help them all.”
Muriel took the bills with a tender smile, and Harrington caught the
profuse hand, and looked fervently in the face of the giver. At that
look Emily cowered, for she thought it the look of love she had wickedly
evoked, and her soul quailed in grief and shame. Muriel, too, misread the
look, and her spirit rose in generous feeling at the token of a lover’s
happiness in his beloved one.
“Ah, thou noble one!” she said, with playful sweetness. “Thou rose of the
rose-garden! Well, it shall be as you say. Come, Charles; you can carry
the basket. John, you will stay here to keep Emily company.”
Before Emily could reply, Muriel moved away, followed by the triumphant
Tugmutton with the basket on his arm. Presently she was passing through
the parting concourse, bending her head in acknowledgment of the bows,
and curtseys, and doffing of hats which saluted her. The negro in his
lowest estate is a gentleman in his courtesy, superior in this to many a
white of high and low degree. 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. Low Irish, in their place, would have stood
stolidly and gazed. Low English would have shambled aside with clownish
loutishness. Low Americans would have stared and leered, and perhaps spat
tobacco-juice on her skirts as she passed them. The low negroes were
civil as Frenchmen.
In the heart of the grotesque and motley throng, Muriel came upon a black
man whom she knew—an erect and stalwart figure, straight as an Indian,
with a fine, masculine face, and the full swart negrine features. He was
standing in a doorway in his shirtsleeves. Instantly bowing low, and
taking off his felt hat when he saw her, he came forward in courteous
posture as she stopped. Muriel smiled graciously, and gave him her hand
as freely and firmly as she would have given it to her most aristocratic
friend. He took it reverentially, yet without bashfulness, while all the
black people around stared.
“Have you heard the news, Mr. Brown?” she asked.
“Yes, madam,” returned the negro, bowing low. “It’s sad news, too, madam.
As yet we don’t know which of us they’re after, but I was just going down
town to see the Vigilance Committee, and find out about it.”
“I am happy to tell you that it’s a false alarm,” replied Muriel,
smiling. “Mr. Harrington says so, so you can be at ease. Won’t you please
to spread the news among your people here, so that they may be relieved.”
The news was spread already, for she had no sooner said it, than it was
taken up and passed from lip to lip with joyful confusion. Presently it
reached the depths of the crowd, and instantly there was a straggling
shout, followed by a surge of the whole concourse toward the direction
from whence the information had proceeded.
“Stand back,” roared the negro in a tremendous voice. “There’s a lady
here. Don’t crowd the lady.”
Instantly the cry, “don’t crowd the lady,” was taken up, and the dense
masses surged back, every man turning upon his neighbor, and shouldering
him away in officious zeal, till there was a great bare space left around
Muriel and her companion, with a circular crowd around its border, and
further behind in the throng, negroes jumping up and down, to catch a
sight of “the lady.”
Muriel laughed, and at once the negroes in front laughed, and the laugh
spread till it became a universal, jovial guffaw, while some of the
lighter spirits threw themselves into grotesque contortions, and capered
and stamped up and down in extravagant glee. Presently a conviction came
to the crowd that they were at an unnecessary distance, and at once there
was a forward movement of the whole mass to within a yard of Muriel,
every one nervously ready to turn again upon his neighbor, and crowd
him off, at the slightest hint that they were too near, and some of them
looking anxiously at Tugmutton, who, taking upon himself very important
airs by virtue of his attendance upon Miss Eastman, stood holding the
basket, with his blobber cheeks and big lips puffed out in ludicrous
dignity, as wondering at their impudence.
“I trust, Mr. Brown,” continued Muriel, “that none of the poor people
will be frightened by this, into going to Canada.”
The negro looked sombrely into vacancy for a moment before answering. He
was one of the influential men of the quarter, and knew pretty much all
that went on there. Brave, faithful, generous himself, he added to his
good qualities that of keen sympathy for his people.
“I’m afeared, madam,” he said, “that this affair will scare off some of
them. I advise every one to stay that can, and fight it out. I don’t go
myself, and I wouldn’t give two cents for the chance of taking me, so
long as I have this.”
He opened his waistcoat as he spoke, showing a huge sheathed bowie-knife
in a side-pocket of the garment.
“I carry this, madam, night and day,” he continued. “Whenever they want
me, they’ll find me ready. But there’s a lot of folks here that ain’t up
to my way, and the poor cre’turs go. There’s two boardin’ with me now
that have about made up their minds to git away right off, and as they’re
bent on it, I shall have to help them all I can, though cash is rather
low with me just now. Then I’ve been told that old Pete Washington is
goin’, too, with his folks. Pete’s proper scared, and thinks he’s sent
for every time he hears kidnappers are in town. I haven’t heerd tell of
no more.”
He said it with a kind of mechanical sadness, fumbling slowly as he
spoke with the handle of the knife under his waistcoat, his eyes roving
absently, meanwhile, over the gaping faces of the motley crowd.
“Mr. Brown,” said Muriel, “here are fifty dollars, which I want you to
divide at your discretion among those that need means to get away. It
is from a lady who is sitting down there in my carriage. She wanted it
given for this purpose. If you need any more, come to my house at any
time. And if I can do anything, please to let me know, for I want to help
if I can.”
He took the money quietly, put his large black hand over his mouth, and
bowed low. Then throwing back his head and shoulders, and extending his
brawny arm with the bills in the hand, he suddenly fronted the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, with a grandiose manner, pouring his
tremendous bass into the concourse, “a lady in the carriage gives fifty
dollars to help the brethren that are leaving us for Canada. The lady
here has often helped us, and will help again. In my humble opinion,
they’re both of ’em God’s ladies, and”—
The great voice broke. Muriel, astonished by this unexpected outburst,
was yet so overcome by the electric passion of the negro’s speech and
manner, that she lost her self-possession, and knew not how to interpose.
“Three cheers,” screeched Tugmutton, at this juncture, thinking that some
cheering would be highly appropriate.
Three? They cheered till they reeled! Roar on roar went up in solid
volume, till the sky seemed to swoon above them. Muriel, disconcerted for
once in her life, turned to Brown, who stood grimly smiling, and begged
him to quiet them and get them to disperse. He put out his hand, and at
once the tumult immediately around them dropped, though broken shouting
still went on in the rear. Turning to the fat squab who had given the
word for this ovation, and played fugleman with cap and voice to it all,
Muriel silently beckoned him to follow, and hurriedly bowing and smiling
to the calm negro, went on.