THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION.
Transformed again in lace and lilac from a fairy prince to a fairy
princess, Muriel joined her friends in the library. Music and blithe talk
filled up the hours till tea-time, and after tea they prepared to go to
the Convention. Mrs. Eastman had declined accompanying them, and they set
out together through the moonlit dusk, Harrington escorting Emily, and
Wentworth Muriel.
“Why, how cold it has grown!” exclaimed Emily, surprised at the strange
chillness of the air, as she and Harrington walked up the shadowy street.
“Yes, indeed,” replied Harrington, “and the wind has changed to the
north, I verily believe. After this warm, delicious day, too! But no New
Englander has a right to be surprised at the freaks of the climate.”
Engaged in conversation, they did not notice, as Wentworth and Muriel
behind them did, when they were passing under the walled plateau, on
which loomed in the dim moonlight the domed bulk of the State House,
two young men who went by considerably intoxicated. The young men were
Horatio and Thomas Atkins, who had been drinking juleps in honor of
Southern institutions with Mr. Lafitte at the Tremont House, whither
they had escorted him after dinner. Thomas had taken so many juleps
that his hat was acock, his whiskerage fiercer than ever, and his gait
a swaggering stagger, while Horatio was in that state of solemn and
stubborn tipsiness in which a man is upon his honor to walk straight.
Muriel sighed as she passed them, and all the way across the broad
Common, its trees and sward dimly lighted by the moon, and chill in the
fresher breath of the keen breeze, while she conversed with Wentworth,
her thoughts rested with vague uneasiness on her uncle and his graceless
sons. It was altogether the most unpleasant topic that ever entered her
mind, and it was especially so on account of her mother. Mrs. Eastman
felt her brother’s general course, particularly his political course,
to be a family disgrace. All the old New England traditions, laws, and
habitudes had been at least passively for liberty up to the insane year
of 1850; and to have her kinsman one of the new brawlers for slavery
and kidnapping was a sore reflection for the gentle lady. She had never
recovered from the wound he had given her spirit, by enrolling himself
as one of the Fifteen Hundred Scoundrels. And on this point, at least,
Muriel felt as strongly as she did, particularly since the report had
arrived that Sims had been scourged to death at Savannah.
The noise of life thickened around the party as they passed down Winter
street into Washington street, the main avenue of Boston. The street was
processional, grotesque, and gay under the moon. Vehicles of all sorts
dashed and rattled over the pavement, and passengers were bustling and
swarming along the irregular vista of lighted shop windows, under the
dark, motley buildings covered with their multitude of golden-lettered
signs.
Passing up the crowded thoroughfare, they arrived presently at the
Melodeon, where the Anti-Slavery Convention was holding its evening
session. It was a hall rented most frequently for concerts and
exhibitions of one sort or another, but memorable in history as the
church of Theodore Parker. There, on every Sabbath, he shook the hearts
of thousands with the sacred and heroic eloquence of those sermons which
have passed to shine in pulpit literature with the strong splendors of
Taylor and Latimer, and a nobleness and courage all their own.
The hall was full as the party entered, and some one was speaking from
the platform. They paused, looking over the dense concourse for seats,
and seeing none, were about to try their chance in the gallery above,
when a party of five left theirs in the centre of the hall, and going
down the aisle at once, they took the vacant places. Harrington had
passed in first, and leaning over to Muriel, said in a whisper:
“Did you see your uncle as we came in?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Who was that with him, that looked at you so
strangely?”
Harrington turned his head and gazed up to the back of the hall, where
Mr. Atkins was sitting, scornfully listening to the speaker. By his side
he saw a dark, handsome face, with a moustache, and the face was intently
watching him. With a vague thrill he turned again to Muriel.
“I don’t know him,” he whispered.
“It is strange,” she whispered in reply. “I saw by Mr. Atkins’s manner
that he was telling that person who we were, and I know by the slight
start the stranger gave, and the look he cast at you, that my uncle had
mentioned your name, and that the stranger had some interest in you.”
Nothing more was said, but Harrington felt disturbed even to
apprehension, though he could not have told why. In a minute or two,
looking around again, he saw the stranger still watching him, and saw
his eye wander away with a sinister smile. Turning his face resolutely
to the platform, Harrington, with another mysterious tremor, tried to
recollect if he had ever seen that face before, and unable to recall it,
he dismissed it from his thoughts with a strong effort of will, and set
himself to listen to the speaker.
Just then, the speaker ended, and sat down, amidst a rushing rustle
of the audience, and some slight applause. There was a minute’s
intermission, during which Harrington’s eye swept over the multitude,
seated in rows around him, and filling the gallery, which extended in a
horse-shoe curve around the walls of the oblong hall. Both sexes were
about equally represented in the concourse, which was dotted here and
there with the dark faces of negroes. The platform was occupied by a
number of the anti-slavery leaders, men and women. The chairman, who was
leaning from his seat in hasty conference with two or three persons, was
the gallant Francis Jackson, a wealthy citizen, who, when the “gentlemen”
of Boston had broken up an anti-slavery meeting of women, fifteen years
before, opened his house to the outcasts, at the imminent peril of having
it razed by the mob. But he was resolved to defend free speech, and in
this cause, said he, “let my walls fall if they must: they will appear
of little value after their owner shall have been whipped into silence.”
Such was the Roman deed, the Roman word, of Francis Jackson. Near him
sat Garrison. The light of the chandelier shone full on the bald head
and high-featured, dauntless face of the grand Puritan—a face in which
blended the austere gentleness of Brewster with the stern integrity and
solemn enthusiasm of Vane. Not far distant was the antique and noble
countenance of Burleigh, with its long beard and lengths of ringlets
giving it the character of some of the heads mediæval painters have
imagined for Jesus. An orator he, whose massive and definite logic ran
burning with Miltonian sweep, and could burst, when he so chose, in an
iron hail of Miltonian invective. By his side, Harrington saw the domed
brow and Socratic features of the mighty Theodore, with the lips curling
in some rich stroke of whispered wit, which brought a momentary smile to
the face of Burleigh. Behind them was the rugged and salient visage of
Parker Pillsbury, a man whose speech rode like the Pounder of Bivar, and
smote with a flail. Before Harrington’s eye had wandered from him, the
chairman rose, announcing a name which was lost in the sudden pour of
applause that swept up from the front, and spread from rank to rank with
loud cheers, and then at once the whole concourse burst into a surging
and tossing uproar of acclamation, as a beautiful patrician figure,
dressed in black, came forward on the lighted platform.
It was Wendell Phillips—the flower of the anti-slavery chivalry. Memory
recalls the words in which Robertus Monachus describes the leader of
the twelfth century Crusaders, Godfrey of Bouillon: “He was beautiful
in countenance,” says the chronicler, “tall in stature, agreeable in
his discourse, admirable in his morals, and at the same time so gentle,
that he seemed better fitted for the monk than the knight; but when
his enemies appeared before him, and the combat approached, his soul
became filled with mighty daring; like a lion, he feared not for his
person—and what shield, what buckler, could resist the fall of his
sword?” So might one describe the great Abolitionist. But a poetic heart
would take from that rich old world Past a more lustrous figure than
even Godfrey to stand as his representative. In England they call Lord
Derby the Rupert of debate; and far more aptly might Wendell Phillips
be termed the Tancred of liberty. In his personal appearance, as in the
attitude of his life, the nature of his thought, and the style of his
rhetoric, there was that which recalled the image of the loveliest of
the antique chevaliers. As he stood on that brilliant platform, while
the enthusiastic applause swelled and tossed in a tempest of sound and
stir—one foot advanced, his hands lightly clasped behind him, his head
curved a little to one side, the light bringing out in definite relief a
face and form in strange contrast with every other around him, and whose
statuesque repose seemed heightened by the tumultuous commotion of the
audience—he impressed the eye like a piece of exquisite sculpture when
seen among the alien shapes of men. A tall-browed, oval head of severe
and singular grace; long, clear-cut, Roman features; a keen and penetrant
eye; around the firm mouth a glimmer of feminine sweetness; the face
harmonized with an expression of golden urbanity; and in the whole aspect
the polished ease of the gentleman blended with the lofty bearing of
the Paladin. And a Paladin he was—a star of oratoric tournament, proved
so by many a hard-fought argument in the chivalrous fields of liberty,
where his eloquence, that fiery sword wrought of Justice and Beauty, as
his friend Parker has called it, flashed and rang on the armor of the
vile, and brought new courage to the war. None listened to the bright and
terrible music of his speech unmoved; no bitterest conservative could
hear it without owning its magic. Robbed of his just due of fame by the
unpopularity of the cause he championed, even his foes could whisper that
he was the greatest orator in America—even the scholars of the Boston
“Courier”, the representative pro-slavery organ in that latitude, and the
deadly enemy of the Abolitionists, could call him, with strange warmth,
the Cicero of anti-slavery.
The applause sunk down, and an expectant, breathless hush succeeded.
Slowly his lips curved apart, and the clear, persuasive silver of his
voice flowed into words. It was a simple and ordinary sentence, and yet
what a fascination it had! It was not a sentence—it was something bright
that flew into the souls of his audience; and as it flew, the magnetic
glance of his eye seemed to follow it, and every one was captive. His
address was at once exposition and criticism. The condition of the
nation, the aggressions of the slave oligarchy, the recent plunder of
Mexico for the extension of slavery, the servility of the pulpit, the
pro-slavery scheming of Northern merchants and manufacturers—these
were his themes, and how he treated them! He was not in his loftiest
lyric mood that night, and his speech only rose now and then from its
tone of exquisite impressive colloquy into the long, imperial sweep of
the oration; but still, as Thomas Davis said of Curran, his words went
forth in robes of light with swords. Shapes of severest crystal grace
that moved to Dorian music, an armed battalia, a bright procession, the
splendid phrases trooped, with strength to strike and skill to guard
for liberty and justice. What language—so finely chosen, so apt, terse,
limpid, electrical! What logic—proof-mail of gold and steel around his
thought, or a smiting weapon of celestial temper! Now came some metaphor
so analogically related to the theme that it flashed on the mind like a
subtle argument. And now a sentence shining upon the imagination with
the beauty of an antique frieze. Here was an expression that memory
would wear like a gem-cameo forever. And here some jewel of classic
story re-cut more purely, or some historic picture that glowed sharp,
definite, in lines and hues of life, upon the eye of the mind. Now it was
the scimitar-glance of wit shearing the floating film of some intangible
popular delusion, or lie. Now some homely illustration borrowed from
the street, the shop, the farm, yet suddenly interpenetrated with as
strange a poetic grace as though it had dropped from the lips of Tully
two thousand years ago. Or here again invective, rising above some gloomy
wrong, and smiting bright, like the diamond sword of Dante’s black-stoled
angel. Rhetoric, yet not the artificial, decorative rhetoric of the
schools, but an organic growth of the man. Art, but art that seemed like
nature, for it was the art that nature makes. One felt, and truly felt,
in listening to the orator, that this was his natural normal speech.
It was beautiful, it was ornate, it was artistic, but it was of the
heart, it was of the life; and everywhere it was the stern, the solemn
voice of conscience, of honor, of virtue—everywhere it was terrible and
sacred with radiant pity for the poor and weak, flaming scorn for the
traitor and the oppressor, burning love for liberty and justice. But who
is he that shall so much as hint description of the classic grace, the
delicate fiery power of the speeches of Wendell Phillips to the men of
Boston? The golden bees that clustered at the lips of baby Plato, must
swarm again from old Hymettus to the cradle of the child unborn who shall
essay to tell the magic of that eloquence. Say that in an age and land
of muck-rakes it was the speech of a gentleman—say that in its tones
were heard the ancestral voices from the blocks and battle-fields of
liberty—say that it touched with heavenly ardor and lifted to nobler life
all uncorrupted hearts, and was light to the blind, and conscience to the
base, and to the caitiff whatever he could know of shame; so leave it to
worthier and more abundant praise, and to the future.
The applause which had burst forth again and again during the speech,
now swelled into a tempest of acclamation as the orator withdrew. Muriel
still kept her lit face fixed on the platform, and Emily, kindled into
ardent color, leaned back with a sigh. Wentworth, meanwhile, flushed with
delight, was splitting his gloves to ribbons with vehement applause, when
looking around, his eye fell upon Harrington, and stopping in the midst
of his furore, he stared at him, amazed. Harrington’s strong face was
white, his brow knitted, and his nostrils tensely drawn.
“What’s the matter, John?” cried Wentworth, alarmed, and raising his
voice to be heard amidst the cheering.
Muriel and Emily both looked at him suddenly, and the young man
recovering, smiled like one sick at heart, and rose. They thought him
ill, and unheeding the announcement of the next speaker, they left
their seats and went from the hall, Muriel and Harrington noticing, as
they passed up the aisle, that the seats occupied by Mr. Atkins and the
stranger were vacant.
In the vestibule, Harrington paused with Emily on his arm.
“Muriel,” he said, “I want to speak with you a moment.”
She left Wentworth instantly, and came to him, with a face of inquiry.
“Muriel,” he said, in a low, clear voice, taking her hands in his, and
looking into her eyes, “I feel a dreadful foreboding. It struck upon me
just now who that man is we saw with your uncle.”
“Who is it?” she said, quickly.
“Lafitte! I know it is he. I feel it in my soul,” he replied.
For a moment she looked at him vacantly, with parted lips and dilated
eyes.
“Hurry,” she cried, breaking from him; “hurry home. Come, Wentworth.
Oh, it’s nothing,” she said, with a vanishing smile, as she caught the
astonished eyes of the young artist. “Ask me no questions, Richard. You
shall know hereafter.”
And putting her arm in his, they went off rapidly together, followed by
Harrington and Emily.
On the way, Harrington told Emily of his conjecture, and they excitedly
discussed the matter till they arrived with the other two at the door of
the house.
“Now, Emily and Richard,” said Muriel, “you go in. John and I are going
to walk further. And, Emily,” she whispered, “tell mother I shall bring
home five people to stop all night. Remember. Come, John;” and taking his
arm, they went up Temple street together.
“Well, by Jupiter!” exclaimed the mystified Wentworth, “this is decidedly
odd! What does it mean, Emily?”
“I cannot tell you,” replied Emily, coldly. “Will you please ring?”
Wentworth, bitterly recalled to her attitude toward him by this frigid
reticence, rang the bell, and the door opening presently, they went in.
In the meantime, Muriel and Harrington went up the street together, he
vaguely thrilling with the electric energy of her manner. She was silent
for a few moments.
“John,” she said, suddenly, “I respect an intuition like this of yours,
and I think you are right. Roux is in danger. Now this man only arrived
to-day.”
“How do you know, Muriel,” he interrupted.
“Thus,” she replied. “On the way home from Mr. Parker’s, Emily and I
overtook little Julia Atkins, and she said that a gentleman from New
Orleans had come to town, to-day, and was to dine with them. I did not
ask her anything on the subject, for the conceit of the child’s manner
was not agreeable, and I changed the subject. But that was the gentleman
from New Orleans, I am confident. No doubt, Uncle Lemuel and he thought
it would be amusing to visit an Anti-Slavery Convention.”
“Yes, and the next thing a warrant will be out for Roux, and we shall
have another fugitive slave-case in Boston,” said Harrington. “But I
shall stop that by taking Roux home to my house, and sitting with him
with loaded pistols till the hunt is abandoned.”
“Bravo, John,” cried Muriel. “But that will never do. Mr. Atkins told
that man your name, I know, and you are likely to have an early visit
from him. It will not do to have Roux at your house. Roux must be hid
where they will never think of searching for him.”
“True,” he replied. “But, by the way, Muriel, where are we going now?”
“Have you just thought to ask?” she answered, gaily. “Oh, John! But we
are going to bring five people home to my house.”
“Muriel!” He started as he spoke. The tears sprung to his eyes, as
looking into her noble face, he met its proud and laughing gaze.
“We are going to Southac street, you know,” she said, “and we shall bring
home Roux and his wife, Charles, and the two children. That’s five. The
baby we don’t count,” she playfully added.
Harrington was speechless with emotion.
“In Temple street they will be safe for the present,” she continued.
“Then we can decide on the next step. I think Roux must remove to
Worcester, for whatever they may do in Boston, I believe they will never
take a fugitive from Worcester. There’s good blood yet in the heart of
the Commonwealth, the heart of which, moreover, is the heart of Wentworth
Higginson.”
Wentworth Higginson was, at that period, the gallant minister of the Free
Church at Worcester, a man with the Revolutionary soul of fire, and the
incarnate nucleus of that glorious public spirit which is still prompt to
defend a man against the kidnappers in the heart of the old Commonwealth.
“Meanwhile,” pursued Muriel, “I’ll take care of poor Roux.”
“Oh, Muriel!” said Harrington, fervently, “there is no nobleness, no
tenderness, like yours.”
In the wan moonlight he saw her color under his impassioned gaze. She
did not reply for a moment, but turning her face away, she laid her hand
upon his arm, and its almost imperceptible tremor sent a mystical, sweet
agitation through his being.
“It is nothing but a duty,” she replied, presently, in a gentle voice. “A
clear and simple duty. Life opens plainlier to me every day, and I see
that I have wealth and strength and youth, that I may succor and protect
the poor!”
No more was said, but tranced in thoughts and feelings too sacred and
deep for words, they moved in silence through the dim and solitary
streets, vaguely lit by the wan lustre of the moon. There were lights in
the houses as they passed, for it was not yet ten o’clock, but save a few
boys, white and negro, fantastically playing in some of the streets, and
half-dispirited in their nocturnal games by the strange bleakness of the
air, they hardly met a person.
Lights glimmered dimly in the windows of Southac street, but Roux’s
windows were in darkness. Some negro boys, sitting on the wooden steps
of his abode, made way for them, and ascending they entered the open
outer door, and tapped at the panels of his room. No answer. They tapped
louder. No answer still. Harrington, oddly remembering the strenuous
snoring of Tugmutton on the nights in March when Roux was sick, and he
had watched with him, put his ear to the door and listened for those
tokens of the fat boy’s slumbers. But no sound reached him.
“Pray Heaven nothing has happened,” said Muriel. “Let us try the other
door.”
Harrington turned to the opposite side of the passage, and knocked
loudly. There was an instant stir within, and presently the door opened,
and a strange little wizened colored man, not more than four feet
high, with a pair of tin-rimmed spectacles on his shrunken nose, and a
long coat reaching nearly to his heels, appeared, with a copy of the
“Commonwealth” newspaper in his left hand, and in the other a tallow
candle stuck in a bottle which he held above his head. Harrington had
seen him before, though he had forgotten his name.
“Good evening, sir. Can you tell me where Mr. Roux is this evening?”
asked Harrington.
The little man stood still for a moment, gazing past them at nothing, and
looking like some fantastic little corpse, set bolt upright.
“Good evening, Mr. Harrington. Good evening, Mrs. Harrington,” he said,
at length, in a voice like the squeak of a mouse. Then he paused. Muriel
smiled faintly at the oddity of being called Mrs. Harrington, and though
the wizened creature was not looking at her, he seemed to see the smile,
for he smiled also in a slow, fantastic, frozen way.
“Willum Roux’s been took off,” he at length squeaked in a deliberate tone.
Harrington and Muriel started violently, and holding each other, looked
at the speaker.
“Took off!” gasped Harrington. “What do you mean?”
The little man made another long pause, then squeaked like an
incantation, “Ophelee!”
A large fat mulatto woman with a red kerchief tied round her head, came
from within, rubbing her eyes. Ophelia had evidently been asleep, but
she nodded her head, bright and wide awake, when she saw the visitors.
“What has become of Roux?” said Harrington, looking at her with his pale,
startled face.
“Oh, they’s all been took off to Cambridge,” she replied quickly,
towering in good-natured bulk above her elvish husband, who stood like
one magnetized. “Clarindy Roux’s married sister lives thar, Mr. Har’nton,
an’ her old man come in with his wagon and took’m all out thar this
afternoon. They’s to be fotched back to-morrow at dinner-time, so Tug
says.”
“Thank you,” said Harrington. “Good evening;” and “good evening,” said
Muriel; both too much agitated with the sudden relief that swept over
them, to say another word.
“Laws bless you; good evening,” said Ophelia; and “good evening, Mr.
Harrington—good evening, Mrs. Harrington,” squeaked the strange little
creature, still standing in the same attitude, as Muriel and Harrington
departed.
“Well,” said Muriel, with a deep-drawn breath, and then a laugh, as they
gained the street; “that was as good a fright as I ever got in my life.”
“A fright, indeed,” he returned. “I felt as if I should swoon!”
They walked on in silence for a few moments.
“What a singular little kobold that is,” she said, as they went into the
street.
“Very,” replied Harrington. “He’s a tailor, and a great Free-Soiler, as
you may imagine by the newspaper he had. Now, Muriel, it seems the Rouxs
are fortunately away for the night. So they’re safe for the present.”
“Yes,” she returned, gaily; “and my word is forfeit, for where are my
five captives! _N’importe._ I’ll have them to-morrow.”
“To-morrow, at noon, we’ll come here together,” said Harrington.
“Agreed,” she replied. “Punctually, at one o’clock, we’ll be here; and,
like two fairy princes, carry off the Ogre’s victim.”
They fell from this into a strain of talk, half-gay, half-serious; and,
satisfied that affairs were in a good state at present, returned rapidly
to the house.