THE PRETTY PASS THINGS CAME TO.
As an iceberg sinks dissolved into the waters of the Southern ocean, so
sank the cold, blue night into the golden crystal of a warm, delicious
day. Again beneath the hiving roofs of the great city, awoke the complex,
many-actioned, myriad-thoughted swarm of life, and again through the
grotesque and picturesque crooked streets poured the motley varieties
of civic existence, with the municipal clash and rattle, the scurry of
driving feet, the blab of many voices, the incessant buzzing roar. The
traders went to their trade; the merchants to their stores and wharves;
the mechanics to their labor; the little ones to their schools; the
women to their household tasks; the lawyers to their courts; the clergy
to their conventions; the anti-slavery people to their debate; the dark
children of the race of Attucks to their humble toils, and the phantoms
of the Reign of Terror with them.
In the fencing-school, Monsieur Bagasse fenced with his pupils, pausing
with curious eyes, and chin levelled at the door whenever a new footstep
was heard upon the stairs, and wondering why Wentworth and Harrington,
who had seldom failed before, did not arrive. Captain Vukovich, too,
with thoughts intent on the cigar-shop he was going to open, and bent on
consulting the young men with regard to the best situation, and perhaps
invoking a little material aid, waited for them, meditatively stroking
his thin moustache, and wandering up and down the fencing-school. But
they both waited in vain, for the young men did not appear.
Harrington meanwhile, up after four hours’ sleep, was closeted with
Captain Fisher, telling him his night’s adventure, the astounded Captain
swearing tobacco at every pause in the narrative, with his head all
askew, like a marine raven who had been taught nothing but imprecations
on slavery and slaveholders.
Wentworth, exhausted by his night of suffering, had gone down to his
studio, and lay there asleep on a sofa, pale and haggard, in the
dim-pictured, shadowy room. Among the paintings and sketches around
the chamber, was one canvas with its face turned to the wall. It was
the unfinished portrait of Emily. On the easel, illumined by the pale
slanting light from the single unshaded window, was the canvas which
held, sketched in in dead colors, the Death of Attucks. Vaguely through
its confused gloom, loomed one dark figure with arm uplifted in menace
and defiance.
Emily had appeared at the breakfast-table, calm and pale, with dark
circles around the dimmed lustre of her eyes. To Mrs. Eastman’s anxious
inquiries, she had simply pleaded indisposition, and after the meal, at
which Muriel alone, paler than usual, was chatty and gay, she had retired
to her room to collect her thoughts for the coming hour of confession and
departure.
Muriel, sinking from her assumed gaiety into sobriety, went to market
near by in Mount Vernon street, returned in a few minutes, and, sitting
alone in the library, resolutely shut out all thought for the present
regarding the mysterious complication of affairs, and resumed the studies
she had begun before breakfast, bent on pursuing them till Harrington
came to go with her to Southac street.
In the mean time things had come to a pretty pass in the private
counting-room of Mr. Atkins’s office on Long Wharf.
“Yes, sir, things have come to a pretty pass when such an infernal rascal
undertakes to let a black beggar loose from aboard my brig,” foamed
Captain Bangham, red with passion, and pounding the desk with his fist.
The merchant sat in an arm-chair near the desk, looking at the captain,
with iron-clenched jaws, his eyes sparkling with rage in his set blanched
face.
“If I ever heard of such a thing in all my life, Bangham!” he exclaimed,
slapping both arms of his chair with his palms, and glaring all around
the little mahogany-furnished office. “But where were you when this was
done?”
“I, sir? Asleep in the cabin, Mr. Atkins. Never knew a thing about it,
sir, till this morning. Just for special safety I didn’t have the brig
hauled up to the dock yesterday, but let her lay in the stream. ‘Jones,
says I, have you seen the nigger this morning?’ ‘No I haven’t, says he,
cool as you please. ‘I guess I’ll take a look at him,’ says I, and so
I took a biscuit and a can of water, and toted down to the hole where
I had the nasty devil tied up, and begod, he was gone! I tumbled up on
deck: ‘Jones,’ I shouted, ‘where’s the nigger?’ ‘I don’t know where he
is now,’ says he, lazy as a ship in the doldrums. ‘All I know is,’ says
he, ‘that I rowed him ashore about midnight, and told him to put for it.’
By ⸺” gasped Captain Bangham, with a frightful oath, “I was so mad that
I couldn’t say a word. I just ran into the cabin, and when I came out,
Jones wasn’t to be seen.—Hallo, there he is now!” cried the captain,
starting to his feet and pointing out of the window to a tall figure
lounging along the wharf, and looking at the shipping.
The merchant jumped from his chair, threw up the window, and shouted,
“Here, you, Jones! Come in here.”
The figure looked up nonchalantly, and lounged across the street toward
the office.
“He’s coming,” said the merchant, purple with excitement, and sinking
back into his chair.
They waited in silence, and presently the tall figure of the mate was
seen in the outer office, through the glass door, lounging toward them.
He opened the door in a minute, and came in carelessly, chewing slowly,
and nodding once to Mr. Atkins. A tall man, dressed sailor-fashion, in a
blue shirt and pea-jacket, with a straw hat set negligently on his head,
and a grave, inscrutable, sunburnt face, with straight manly features and
dull blue eyes.
“Mr. Jones,” said the merchant, his face a deeper purple, but his voice
constrained to the calm of settled rage, “this is a fine liberty you have
taken. I want to know what you mean by it?”
“What do you refer to, Mr. Atkins?” returned the mate, stolidly.
“What do I refer to, sir? you know what I refer to. I refer to your
taking that man from my brig,” roared the merchant.
“Mr. Atkins,” replied the mate, phlegmatically, “Bangham, there, was
going to take that poor devil back to Orleans. You don’t mean to tell me
that you meant he should do it?”
“Yes, sir, I _did_ mean he should do it,” the merchant vociferated.
“Then you’re a damned scoundrel,” said the mate, with the utmost
composure.
Captain Bangham gave a long whistle, and sat mute with stupefaction. Mr.
Atkins turned perfectly livid, and stared at the mate with his mouth
pursed into an oval hole, perfectly aghast at this insolence, and almost
wondering whether he had heard aright.
“You infernal rascal,” he howled, springing to his feet the next instant,
purple with rage, “do you dare to apply such an epithet to _me_? _You_—to
_me_?”
“To you?” thundered the seaman, in a voice that made Mr. Atkins drop
into his chair as if he was shot. “To you? And who are you? You damned
lubberly, purse-proud aristocrat, do you want me to take you by the heels
and throw you out of that window? Call me that name again, and I’ll do
it as soon as I’d eat. _You_, indeed? You’re the Lord High Brown, aint
you? You’re the Lord Knows Who, you blasted old money-grubber, aint you!
_You_, indeed!”
In all his life, Mr. Atkins had never been so spoken to. He sat in a
sort of horror, gazing with open mouth and glassy eyes at the sturdy
face of the seaman, on which a brown flush had burned out, and the firm,
lit eyes of which held him spell-bound. Bangham, too—horror-stricken,
wonder-stricken, thunder-stricken—sat staring at Jones for a minute, then
burst into a short, rattling laugh, and jumping to his feet, cried, “Oh,
he’s mad, he’s mad, he’s mad, he’s got a calenture, he’s got a calenture,
he’s mad as a March hare,” capering and hopping and prancing, meanwhile,
in his narrow confine, as if he would jump out of his skin.
“You, too, Bangham,” said the mate, making a step toward him, with a
menacing gesture, at which the captain stopped capering, and shrank,
while Mr. Atkins slightly started in his chair, “you just clap a stopper
on that ugly mug of yours, and stop your monkey capers, or you’ll have
me afoul of you. I haven’t forgot your didoes with the men aboard the
Soliman. Just you say another word now, and I’ll put in a complaint
that’ll lay you by the heels in the State Prison, where you ought to have
been long ago, you ugly pirate, you!”
The captain evidently winced under this threat, which Mr. Jones delivered
with ominous gravity, slowly shaking, meanwhile, his clenched fist at him.
“And now look here, you brace of bloody buccaneers,” continued the
irreverent seaman, “short words are best words with such as you. I untied
that poor old moke of a nigger last night, and rowed him ashore. What are
ye going to do about it?”
Evidently a question hard to answer. Merchant and captain, stupefied and
staring, gave him no reply.
“Hark you, now, Atkins,” he went on. “We found that man half dead in the
hold when we were three days out—a sight to make one’s flesh crawl. The
bloody old pirate he’d run away from, had put a spiked collar on his
neck, just as if he was a brute, with no soul to be saved. I’m an old
sea-dog—I am; and I’ve seen men ill treated in my time, but I’m damned
if I ever seen a man ill-treated like that God-forsaken nigger. He’d run
away, and no blame to him for running away. He’d been livin’ in swamps
with snakes and alligators, and if he hadn’t no right to his freedom,
he’d earned one fifty times over, and it’s my opinion that a man who goes
through what he did has more right to his freedom than two beggars like
you, who never done the first thing to deserve it. Mind that now, both of
ye!”
The mate paused a moment, hitching up his trowsers, and rolling his
tobacco from one side of his twitching mouth to the other, and then, with
his face flushed, and his blue eye gleaming savagely, went on.
“What’s the first thing that brute there did to him? Kicked him, and
he lyin’ half dead. Then in a day or two, when the poor devil got his
tongue, he told how he’d got away, and the sort of pirate he’d got away
from. God! when we all a’most blubbered like babes, what did that curse
there do? Knocked the man down, and beat his head on the deck, till we
felt like mutiny and murder, every man of us! And then when we’d got the
poor devil below, sorter comfortable, down comes Bangham, and hauls him
off to stick him into a nasty hole under hatches, and there he kep’ him
the whole passage, half-starved, among the rats and cockroaches. Scarce
a day of his life aboard, that he didn’t go down and kick and maul him.
He couldn’t keep his hands off him—no, he couldn’t. When I took the man
ashore in the dead o’ night, he was nothin’ but a bundle o’ bones and
nasty rags, and he made me so sick, I couldn’t touch him. That’s the
state he was in. Now, then, look here.”
The mate paused again for a moment, turning his quid, with his face
working, and laying the fingers of his right hand in the palm of his
left, began again in a voice gruff and grum.
“That infernal buccaneer, Bangham,” he said, “was bent on takin’ the poor
devil back to Orleans, after all he’d gone through to get away. Well,
he’s a brute, and we don’t expect nothin’ of brutes like him. But you’re
a Boston merchant, Atkins, and callin’ yourself a Christian man, you put
in your oar in this dirty business, and was goin’ to help Bangham. You
thought I was goin’ to stand by and see you do it. No!” he thundered,
with a tremendous slap of his right hand on the palm of his left, which
made both the merchant and the captain start, “no! I wasn’t goin’ to
stand by and see you do it! I’m an old sea-dog and my heart is tough and
hard, but I’m damned if it’s hard enough to stand by when such a sin as
that’s afoot, and never lend a hand to stop it. I took that man out of
your clutches, you brace of pirates, and I set him adrift! You think
I’m afraid to own it? No, I’m not, begod! I did it. Ephraim Jones is my
name, and I come from Barnstable. There’s where I come from. I’m a Yankee
sailor, and, so help me God, I could never see the bunting of my country
flying at the truck again, if I let you two bloody Algerine thieves carry
off that man to his murder. That’s all I’ve got to say. Take the law of
me now, if you like. I won’t skulk. You’ll find me when you look for me.
And if James Flatfoot don’t have his harpoon into both of you one of
these days, then there’s no God, that’s all!”
Turning on his heel with this valediction, which consigned the merchant
and the captain’s future beyond the grave to the Devil, who, under the
name of James Flatfoot, occupies a prominent place in marine theology,
Mr. Jones carelessly lounged out of the private room, leaving the glass
door open, and with a nonchalant glance at the three or four startled
clerks and book-keepers who sat and stood at their desks wondering what
had been going on within, for they had only caught confused scraps of the
stormy colloquy, he went down stairs, with a load off his mind which had
been gathering there during the whole voyage of the Soliman.
For a moment after his departure, Mr. Atkins sat mute and still, feeling
like one in a horrid dream. Roused presently by a deep-drawn breath from
Captain Bangham, he wheeled his chair around to the desk, and taking out
his white handkerchief, wiped away the cold sweat which had started out
on his face and forehead.
“What are we going to do now, Mr. Atkins?” said the captain.
“I don’t know, Bangham,” replied the merchant in a voice like the faint
voice of a sick man. “I should like to have that scoundrel arrested. Such
insolence I never heard in all my life. My God! what are we coming to in
this country when a low fellow like that can presume to talk so to a man
of my standing!”
He murmured these words feebly, and again wiping his face, sat with his
eyes glassy and his jaw working.
“Mr. Atkins,” said Bangham, after a pause, “this black curse has got off,
but he must be somewhere in the city. If I should happen to meet him
about town anywhere”—
“Just seize him,” cried the merchant, with a start. “Lay hands upon
him at once, and carry him aboard the vessel. You can say, if anybody
interferes, that he is a thief, and that you’re taking him to the
police-office.”
“I’ll do it,” exclaimed the captain, with an oath. “I’ll hang around
Nigger Hill, where he’s likely to be, and if I meet him, off he’ll go.
It’ll be horrid if we don’t find him, and they should happen to hear of
it down in Orleans.”
“Indeed it will, Bangham,” replied the merchant. “Though, of course,
we could explain it satisfactorily. Still, there’s the trouble of the
explanation, and it would be far better if we could return the rascal.
That would settle the whole thing at once.”
“By the way, have you told Lafitte anything about this?” inquired the
captain, anxiously.
“God bless me, no!” replied Mr. Atkins, hurriedly. “Lafitte musn’t know
anything about this. We must keep it from him.”
“What is it you must keep from me, my dear friends?” said a smooth,
courteous voice.
They both started, and turned around. There stood Mr. Lafitte, smiling a
bland sardonic smile. So still—so cool—so unruffled. It almost seemed as
if he had outgrown upon them from the air. But he had come softly through
the outer office, and stood just within the glass door, which Jones had
left open.
“Better not keep anything from me, my dear friends,” blandly continued
the Southerner, smiling stilly down upon their blank and ghast faces.
“Because I am the very devil for finding out things that are kept from
me. Besides, frankness is a virtue—a positive virtue.”
He closed the glass door behind him, and entering, took a chair, and
removed his Panama hat, smiling stilly all the while, with his tawny,
blood-specked, glossy eyes slowly and almost imperceptibly roving from
one to the other.
“Lafitte,” gasped the merchant, feeling as if he was about to faint,
“don’t blame me. I meant it for the best.”
“Blame you, my friend!” returned the Southerner, smoothly, with an air of
tender reproach which was atrocious; “blame you! Could I be so cruel? Ah,
no! Bangham, my love, how are you? It is long since I have seen you. The
last time I saw you, my Bangham, was at the St. Charles Hotel—and oh, my
friend, how drunk you were! But you are not drunk to-day, dear captain.
Ah, no! To-day we can appeal from Philip Bangham drunk to Philip Bangham
sober. Let us then appeal to you to tell us what is the mystery.”
The captain reddened under this address, and looking exceedingly
nonplused, fidgeted with his necktie as if it choked him.
“Lafitte, don’t joke,” said Mr. Atkins, nervously. “Don’t, I beg of you.
I feel ill already, and you disturb me. Listen. Here is the trouble. One
of your slaves was found in Bangham’s vessel when he was three days out,
and came on here to Boston. We kept him bound in the hold, intending to
have him sent back to you, and last night the infernal scoundrel of a
mate let him go, and we’ve lost him.”
“And you were going to keep this from me, were you?” said Mr. Lafitte,
blandly, all the tiger seeming to condense into his glossy, tawny orbs,
while his smile remained serene and still. “Really, my dear Atkins, you
were not frank.”
“Oh, my God!” exclaimed the merchant, “don’t talk so! What was the use of
disturbing you? We were going to institute a search for the negro, and
have him returned to you as quickly and quietly as possible.”
“Good friend! good Atkins!” said the Southerner, with gentle approval.
“So considerate of you. I really hope you may find the runaway, for if
you shouldn’t, and it gets noised on the Levee, your house will suffer.
Of course, I wouldn’t mention it myself, but these things always get out.
The sailors, you know! Very indiscreet those sailors—ah, very, very!”
“Depend on my doing everything I can, Lafitte,” hurriedly replied the
merchant, uncertain whether the Southerner’s words held a menace or no.
“We will ransack the city. Suppose you get a warrant out for him—how will
that do?”
“No,” answered Mr. Lafitte, blandly. “I should prefer not. Since you lost
him, you ought in justice to find him. If you don’t succeed, we may try
the police. But, apropos, you do not tell me the boy’s name.”
“He called himself Antony,” replied Bangham.
They almost shuddered to see the silent change that came to the rich
brunette visage of the Southerner. His complexion became purple and livid
in spots, his nostrils dilated, his eyes were steady orbs of cruel gloss,
with the blood-specks distinct upon their tawn. Slowly swaying in his
chair for a moment, he stopped in this movement, and spoke.
“It is Antony, is it?” he said, in a low, smooth voice. “Gentlemen, I
urge you to find that slave of mine. He is a wretch whom I wish to see
once more. When you told me you had a boy of mine, I thought it must
be one of my brother’s, who ran away the week before I left. I did not
imagine it was Antony, for I thought he was done for in the swamp.”
“Where, Mr. Lafitte?” asked the merchant.
“In the swamp,” repeated Lafitte. “That scoundrel, Mr. Atkins, flew upon
me, and left me for dead on the floor of my house. Then he ran for the
swamp, half-killing my overseer on the way. We roused the neighbors and
hunted for him three days and part of a fourth, and at last finding his
clothes near a bayou, we concluded he was food for alligators. Though why
we should find his clothes, and not him, was a mystery to me. And so he
got to Boston, after all. Now where do you expect to find him, gentlemen?”
“Well, Mr. Lafitte, I don’t exactly know,” returned the merchant,
dubiously; “but Bangham here will look round Nigger Hill, a quarter where
the colored people herd together. The best way would be to get out a
search warrant, and put the matter in the hands of the city marshal.”
“Listen to me, Atkins,” said the Southerner. “I’ve got a clue. Several
months ago I received a letter offering to purchase this fellow. Now,
eight or nine years ago his brother William ran away from me, and it was
clear to me, when I received this letter, that whoever sent it knew where
William was, and was probably put up to it by him.”
“Well, who did send it?” demanded Mr. Atkins.
“That letter,” pursued Lafitte, “was postmarked from Philadelphia, and
the answer was to be sent to a Mr. Joseph House, who, it seems, was to
act as agent in the matter. I called on House, and was told by him that
the person who wrote the letter lived in London. In fact, he showed
me the person’s name and address in a London Directory, and he was so
serious about it, that I swear I was thrown off the track. But I had my
misgivings afterward, and the more I thought of it the stronger they
grew. Mr. Atkins, that letter was signed John Harrington.”
“John Harrington!” exclaimed the merchant, starting and scowling. “You
don’t mean to say”—
“Mr. Atkins,” interrupted Lafitte, “when you told me that fellow’s name
who came into the Abolition meeting last night with your lovely niece, it
flashed upon me at once that he was the man that wrote the letter.”
“Upon my word,” said the merchant, “this is odd. But this Harrington’s
poor as poverty. How should he be buying your negro?”
Mr. Lafitte shrugged his shoulders.
“Who knows?” he returned. “Perhaps the dear William has earned the cash,
and wants to treat himself to a bit of black brother in his old age.
Perhaps,” he added, with a sly, sardonic smile, “your lovely niece wants
to do a little philanthropy for him. She’s rich, you told me. Your
Boston ladies are so fond of the philanthropy business, you know. And
Harrington’s sweet upon her, isn’t he? Who knows but that he has put
her up to it. He looks just like one of those noble fools we read of.
Now, what will you wager he doesn’t know this dear William, and hasn’t
been touched by the sorrows of that black angel? Atkins, keep your eye
on Harrington to find William, and finding William, perhaps you’ll find
Antony.”
“Upon my word, Lafitte, you’re the very devil,” cried the merchant, with
a harsh laugh, looking at the visage of the Southerner, which was lit
with an infernal smile.
“That’s your clue,” said the latter. “Just follow it, and you’ll find I’m
right.”
“But how am I to follow it?” returned the merchant, “There’s any quantity
of black Williams in Boston, probably, and who knows what name your man
goes by now?”
“Egad,” replied Mr. Lafitte, his face darkening, “I didn’t think of that.”
“Had your man William any other name?” asked the merchant.
“Name?” scoffed the Southerner. “The black cattle change their names with
their masters. This fellow would be called by mine, if he was called
anything but William. I bought him and his brother with a lot of others
off the estate of old Madame Roux.”
“Roux? Hold on!” exclaimed Atkins. “Roux? By George, that’s the name of
the colored man Serena—that’s my sister—recommended to us, and we got him
to do some white-washing and window-cleaning this spring!”
“Your sister?” interrogated Lafitte.
“Yes, my sister, Mrs. Eastman. She’s the mother of the young lady you saw
last night.”
Mr. Lafitte leaned back in his chair, and shook with long, silent
merriment, outward token of the raging floods of devilish joy which
swelled within him.
“There you have it, dear Atkins,” he chuckled, at length. “There you have
it. Follow up Roux, my boy, follow up Roux. Set Bangham to look after
the dear William. My own Bangham. Whom I love,” and Mr. Lafitte ogled the
captain in a manner which would have been purely ridiculous if it had not
been superlatively infernal.
Bangham reddened, and looked foolish and uncomfortable under these
affectionate regards.
“I guess I’ll go out and see to the cargo,” he said, rising. “The
stevedores are unlading, you know, Mr. Atkins.”
“That’s right, Bangham,” returned the merchant. “Come back soon, and
we’ll make arrangements for this other matter.”
“_Au revoir_, Bangham. God bless you,” cried the Southerner, after the
departing captain. “And now, Atkins,” he continued, drawing up his chair,
“let’s have a talk about business, and get that off our minds, before we
follow up that dear William and that dear Antony.”