INTERSTITIAL.
That evening, visitor after visitor called, and the parlor was full of
talk and music and laughter. Amidst her company, Muriel felt a lonely
longing for the face of Harrington. He sometimes dropped in late, for a
little while, and this evening, as ten o’clock approached and the guests
began to depart, she half-hoped he would come. But he did not, and tired
with her last night’s vigil, as with the fatigues of the day, she went to
rest as soon as the last visitor had said good night.
The next day came bright and beautiful, and Harrington not appearing as
he commonly did, Muriel went out to take her early morning walk alone.
While she was out, he arrived and at once went up to the chamber where
Roux was confined.
It was not more than six o’clock, but Roux was up and dressed. He sat
in a chair, and Tugmutton, squatted on a stool by his side, was reading
aloud to him from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Tugmutton’s reading was a treat to
hear. It was, when the text was at all serious, what is called at the
theatres, spouting, and spouting of the most grandiloquent order, at
that. Accompanied, also, by much and varied action of his big paw, and
interspersed not only with explanations and comments of his own, but
whenever he came to anything that particularly pleased him, with chirrups
and guffaws of goblin laughter, and bobbings and waggings of his big
head and blobber cheeks over the page, the effect was, to say the least
of it, peculiar. On the present occasion, the fat Puck happened to have
arrived at a chapter highly congenial to his special views on the Slavery
Question—to wit: that wherein George Harris and his fellow runaways
fight the hunters of men; and Roux was at some trouble to detach the
sense of the narrative from the luxurious overgrowth of dissertation,
interpolation, exclamation, cachinnation, and general outward limbs
and flourishes wherewith Tugmutton was embellishing it. Having got to
the point where Phineas topples the slave-hunter down the rocks, the
delighted squab leaned back and gave vent to an uproarious guffaw, and
in the midst of this, while Roux, with a faint and curious smile on his
simple, dark face, was listening, Harrington’s knock was heard at the
entrance.
Tugmutton instantly grew sober, and sat staring with his great white eyes
at the door, as Roux crossed to open it.
“Good morning, Mr. Roux,” said Harrington, entering, and shaking hands
with him. “How are you?”
“Firs’rate, thank ye, Mr. Harrington,” replied the smiling Roux, bowing
humbly, and shutting the door again.
The intuitive Tugmutton, instantly gathering from Harrington’s slightly
distraught air, that something was the matter, remained perfectly
motionless, squatting on his low stool with the book in his hands, and
staring open-mouthed at him, with a look of preternatural curiosity on
his fat face.
“Sit down, Roux,” said Harrington, dropping into a chair without noticing
the boy, and gazing absently around the room.
Roux resumed his chair, and with his hand fumbling over his mouth as was
usual with him, rolled his eyes timidly about the room.
“Roux, I’ve got news to tell you,” faltered Harrington, smiling. “Good
news. What would be the best news you could hear?”
Roux smiled faintly, and still fumbling around his mouth with his hand,
while his eyes continued to wander, he appeared to hesitate.
“Well, Mr. Harrington,” he said, after a pause, “I ruther feel oncertain
as to what to say. It would be the most uncommonest best news, if I heerd
that my brother Ant’ny was to git away. But I’m afeard that’s not likely,
Mr. Harrington.”
Roux’s eyes kept wandering, and Harrington looking hard at the opposite
wall, smiled furtively. The next instant both he and Roux were startled
by a sudden screech of eldritch mirth, and by the apparition of Tugmutton
pitching forward on his hands, and slapping over in a somerset as quick
as light, coming up clean on his feet with a sober-staring face, and a
low “Hoo!” They both stared at him, Harrington with a stir in his blood,
for he had not seen the squab, and he was completely startled by his
appearance in this astonishing gymnastic.
“Hi!” exclaimed Tugmutton, standing legs dispread, just as he had landed
from his flip-flap, and pointing at Harrington with his thumb, while
a jovial grin slowly spread over his fat visage. “Hi! That nigger has
arroven! My gosh! Mr. Harrington, I smell a rat as if I was nothin’ but
nose! Hooraw! Three cheers! Likewise a horse larf! O sing you niggers,
sing!” and chanting this line in a shrill voice, Tugmutton stopped to fly
into a furious double-shuffle and breakdown, with his shock head bobbing
like mad.
“Hallo, you, Tug, now,” quavered Roux, looking frightened. “Just you
ricollect where you are now, Tug, in this nice house. What’s the matter
with you, and what you goin’ off in that way for now? I don’t see what
you mean by sech actions, noways.”
Tugmutton stopped in his dance at the sound of Roux’s voice, and with his
short arms akimbo on his ribs, and his short, broad legs dispread, glared
up at him with a look of supreme indignation.
“My gosh, father!” he exclaimed, “if you ain’t stupid now! Why jus’ you
look at them liniments of Mr. Harrington!” and he pointed with his thumb
at Harrington’s face, which was wrinkled into an amused smile. “Now,
what’s there father, jus’ as plain as print?”
Tugmutton ended with a snort, and ineffably disgusted at Roux’s
unintelligence, dumped down on his stool, and looked at Harrington. Roux
meanwhile gazed at the young man with a timid and imploring expression.
“Charles is right, Mr. Roux,” said Harrington, cheerfully, while
Tugmutton relapsed into a jovial grin of satisfaction, showing all his
ivories, and wagging his bushy head delightedly.
“But now, Mr. Roux,” continued Harrington, “I want you to keep cool. The
good news is that your brother is free. Don’t let it overcome you. Be
cool.”
“I will, Mr. Harrington,” stammered Roux, terribly agitated, “I will be
cool. I won’t let it overcome me.”
“That’s right—don’t,” replied Harrington, with an affectation of phlegm.
“By the way, how is your wife? How does she bear the letter I sent her?”
“Oh, she’s pretty well, Mr. Harrington, and she says she thinks I’ll be
safe here,” said Roux, trembling all over.
Harrington led him on to talk of other subjects, diverting his mind as
much as possible from the matter in hand, and in a few minutes got him
tranquil again.
“Now, Mr. Roux,” he said, “Antony is free as I told you, and I want you
to prepare yourself to see him soon.”
“Yes, Mr. Harrington, I will,” said Roux with a wondering face. “Did Miss
Ames buy him, Mr. Harrington?”
“Oh no,” returned Harrington, “how could she when it was only a day or
two since she knew of him? Antony ran away. I have him at my house.”
Roux sprang to his feet, wild with joy.
“Let me go to see him, Mr. Harrington,” he cried.
“No,” said Harrington, rising and gently pressing Roux into his chair
again. “You are not safe out of this room. I will bring him here to stay
with you. Keep cool, Roux, and be patient. You must expect to see Antony
very thin, for he has been sick. But he will soon recover. Now I must go,
and to-night when it is dark, I will bring him here. Good bye. Keep up a
good heart. He will soon be with you.”
“Oh, I knew it from the very fust,” complacently remarked Tugmutton,
taking his leg on his knee, and lolling back a little with the most
indifferent air in the world, “I ain’t astonished. My gosh! no, you can’t
astonish me. I’m above it.”
“That’s because you have a great mind, Charles,” said Harrington,
jestingly. “Now just use your talents in cheering up your father—that’s a
good boy.”
“I’ll do it, Mr. Harrington,” replied the cheerful youth, jumping up to
let Harrington out, with his pear-face shining gleefully. “I’ll cheer him
up so that nobody’ll ever know him again. Good bye, Mr. Harrington. Call
again.”
Nodding pleasantly, Harrington departed, while Tugmutton waved his big
paw with a lofty air, like a king dismissing his prime-minister after a
cabinet council, and closed the door after him.
In the passage below, Harrington met Mrs. Eastman, and mentioned that he
intended to bring Antony there that evening after dark.
“Of course,” he added, “there is no danger of the servants mentioning
that there are colored men in the house. It would not do to have it
gossiped about.”
“No, indeed,” returned Mrs. Eastman, smiling. “They have all, except
little Bridget, been with us for years, and are like part of the family.
Not the least danger of them. You know, John, we have had fugitives here
several times before.
“Yes, I know that,” he replied, laughing.
After a minute’s further conversation, he departed, and went home to
breakfast, without having asked for Emily, or seen Muriel. To tell the
truth, a feeling of trepidation—a sense of some gathering mystery which
made his heart tremble—had grown upon Harrington since he had left Emily
the day before, and he shrank in spirit from meeting her or Muriel. He
felt darkly that something of import, closely affecting him, remained
undisclosed in the mutual relations of himself and his friends. The words
of Wentworth—“because it has been played upon”—rang in his memory like a
bell. Undoubtedly, Harrington would have unriddled the mystery almost as
quickly as Muriel had done, but the blundering avowal of Wentworth that
he was Muriel’s betrothed, stood in the way of his sight, and baffled him.
Restless; ill at ease; unwilling to think upon the subject, which yet
persisted in invading his mind; and in that state of nervous incertitude,
in which mysterious agitations and sudden tinglings of the blood
incessantly visit the frame, it was a positive relief to Harrington to
get away from himself, among the cheerful, familiar faces around the
Captain’s table. The family were assembled in the dining-room, which
opened off the kitchen. A pleasant, old-fashioned room, looking on the
street, and furnished with plain, old-fashioned, homely furniture.
Curtains of white dimity to the windows; a semi-circular stand, holding
rows of flower-pots, at one of them, from which the smell of geraniums
and roses was shed throughout the apartment; the floor covered with a
woven rag-carpet of soberly gay colors; a bureau, spread with white
linen at one side, with the miniature model of a ship full-rigged, upon
it; straight-backed mahogany chairs, with horsehair seats; two rocking
chairs, with white tidies on their backs; a looking-glass between the
windows, and on the opposite wall, on either side of the mantel, two
portraits, fearfully bad, of the Captain and his wife. The Captain,
however, regarded these works of art with complacent satisfaction,
and held them as chief among his household treasures. The wandering
country artist who had executed them, had represented the Captain as a
dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked, staring, marine Adonis, preternaturally blooming
in complexion, attired in an indigo blue coat with brass buttons, a
buff waistcoat, and a frilled shirt-front, and grasping a spy-glass in
one hand and a quadrant in the other. To match this artistic triumph,
Mrs. Fisher appeared with sky-blue eyes, lily-white complexion, pink
cheeks and lips, an azure dress with a huge broach, and a gold chain and
pencil-case, on which the artist had spent his finest genius and his
brightest chrome. To trace a resemblance between the portrait, and the
kind, quiet, pale-eyed, colorless little woman in a gauze cap, who sat at
the head of the breakfast-table, would have been more difficult than to
establish a similar likeness between the other portrait and the Captain.
But the Captain was happy in the belief that the portraits were gems of
truth and art, and as he himself was accustomed to observe on various
occasions, putting it as a profoundly philosophical conclusion, “What’s
the odds, so as you’re happy!”
A chorus of greetings welcomed Harrington, as he came in and took his
seat at the breakfast table.
“We began to think you warn’t comin’, John,” remarked Mrs. Fisher,
pouring out his coffee.
“I hurried home as quick as I could, Hannah,” replied the young man.
“Well, Sophy, you look as bright as gold this morning. The jewellers
would put you in a box of pink cotton.”
Sophronia, a plump and pretty little miss, with blue eyes, a charming
little snub nose, and a dimple in her chin, smiled coquettishly at this
compliment, and glanced at the smiling face of the speaker.
“My!” she exclaimed, saucily, “how smart you are, John! I wish I could
say such pretty things to you.”
“Well, try,” jested Harrington. “Compliment me on this beard which you
admire so much.”
“Beard indeed!” said Sophy, tossing her head, with a playful pout of her
ripe cherry lips, “I don’t admire it at all. The girls ought to set their
faces against it.”
“Maybe they do, Sophy,” returned Harrington, with sly significance.
Sophy was caught, and tossed her head, coloring and smiling, while the
Captain, with his mouth full of bread and butter, burst into a roar of
laughter, in which Mrs. Fisher, John H., and Joel James joined, the
latter beating the table with the haft of his knife.
“That’s all very well for you to say,” said Sophy, with another fling of
her head, and pout of her lip.
“And that’s all very well for the girls to do,” bantered Harrington,
whereat the merriment burst forth again.
“Gracious! There’s no use in me talking. You’re as smart as a steel trap,
John,” she answered.
Joel James, a bluff and burly rosy-cheeked boy, with his father’s
features and his mother’s blue eyes, interrupted this play of repartee,
to say, with his mouth full of breakfast, that his kite wouldn’t fly
nohow.
“She pitches about like as if she was crazy, John,” he grumbled, munching
between the words.
“That’s because she hasn’t bob enough. We’ll fix that,” returned
Harrington, as much interested in the boy’s grievance as if it was an
affair of State.
“And I can’t make my peg-top spin, John,” complained John H., looking
dolefully at Harrington with his soft black eyes and chubby countenance.
“Can’t? Well, after breakfast I’ll show you how,” said Harrington,
good-naturedly. “The kite shall fly and the top shall spin, as sure as
the world goes round. By the way, Eldad, how’s our friend out yonder? I
haven’t seen him this morning.”
The Captain glanced out at the open window looking into the yard, before
replying.
“He’s up, eating his breakfast,”, he answered. “I’ve locked your door,
and the garden gate too, and here’s the keys,” he added, pointing to them
by the side of his plate.
“Poor forsaken critter!” murmured Hannah compassionately. “It just made
my heart ache to see him when I went up there yesterday. He looked so
awful lean and sick.”
“He looks a great deal better this mornin’,” remarked the Captain. “The
sleep’s done him a heap of good. It’s astonishin’ how much those colored
folks can bear. You wunt know that chap in about a week, he’ll have
fatted up so. I’ve dressed him out, John, in some of my old clothes, and
made him look quite decent.”
“That’s right, Eldad,” said Harrington. “I’ll make it up to you.”
The Captain laid down his knife, and with his head all askew, looked at
Harrington.
“You’ll make it up to me, John?” he remarked, blandly, with a great
disposition to swear. “By the spoon of horn, I’d like to catch you at it!
The best suit of clothes I’ve got in the house wouldn’t be too good for a
man that’s gone through what he has—leastways, if they was fit for him,
which they ain’t; and I’m not goin’ to be paid for my Christian duty,
young man.”
“I ask your pardon, Eldad,” returned Harrington. “I spoke hastily, and
didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“Of course you didn’t,” grumbled the Captain, mollified. “It’s only
just your plaguy openhandedness that wunt let nobody go to expense but
yourself.”
“By the way, Eldad,” hurriedly replied the young man, steering off the
conversation from the approaching commendations, “I’m going to take him
off to-night. He’ll be safer there.”
“All right. So he will,” rejoined the Captain, curtly. “That is, if he’s
safe anywhere in Massachusetts now. It’s ebb-tide with us this year with
a vengeance. If the people haven’t had enough of conservative legislation
to sicken ’em this term of the General Court, they never will have. The
doin’s of the Legislature have been shameful. Half a dozen righteous
measures that passed the Senate, those black sheep in the House have
defeated.
“Yes,” returned Harrington. “The Personal Liberty Bill is lost—the bill
to protect the property of married women is lost, too—the bill”—
“Anyhow, we’ve got the Maine Law,” interrupted the Captain, triumphantly.
“And that’s tyranny, pure and simple,” said Harrington. “Sorry to differ,
Eldad. I respect the temperance people, and I would go for a law that
would shut up every dram-shop in Massachusetts; but this Maine Law is
a downright violation of the doctrines of civil liberty, and I can’t
sacrifice liberty to temperance or anything else.”
Whereupon there was discussion, in which the Captain got the worst of it;
and rising, at last, with his head all awry, and his features atwist,
took his pipe from the mantel-piece, preparatory to a smoke in the yard.
Harrington rose also.
“Why, John,” said Mrs. Fisher, “you’ve made no breakfast at all.”
“Oh yes, Hannah,” he returned, cheerily. “Plenty. Now, Joel and John, the
kite and the top.”
The boys scrambled off to fetch the playthings, while Harrington went
to his own apartments. The kite and the top put in order, Captain
Fisher volunteered to mount guard over Antony if Harrington wanted to
go out; and availing himself of this offer, the young man posted off to
the fencing-school, and after an hour’s vigorous exercise, returned.
Wentworth had called in his absence, and had left word that he was going
out of town for the day, but wanted to see Harrington for something
special to-morrow. Disturbed at this message—he knew not why—and feeling
his strange trepidation stronger than ever, Harrington, who, like Goethe,
always sought relief from cares and troubles in intense application
to his books, immured himself for a long day’s study, dreading to see
Wentworth, dreading to see Emily, dreading, above all, to see Muriel, and
yet he knew not why.