HERALD SHADOWS.
It was about one o’clock when they arrived. After a hasty dinner, Muriel
withdrew to argue matters with her mother, while Harrington went into
the library, and Wentworth, who was suffering from the heat, started
for home to change his clothes, promising to meet his friend soon at the
house in Chambers street.
The conference with Mrs. Eastman lasted nearly an hour, failed of result
of course, and without telling her mother of her purpose, Muriel went
into the library, and gave her decision in favor of instant action.
Harrington immediately put his revolver in his pocket, and took, in
case of need, a hundred dollars in bills, which Muriel, with her usual
foresight, had drawn from the bank that morning. Then receiving her
fervent hopes for his success, he folded her in his arms and kissed her,
and sallied forth upon his mission.
He was resolute and calm, yet nervously alive with incertitudes and
apprehensions, which fled like strange shadows across his burning brain.
The day was still brilliant and sultry, but in the stainless blue of the
morning masses of bright wild clouds had gathered, and lay fantastically
changing from shape to shape in densely huddled concourse. He watched
them as he strode along, finding in their tottering transformations
and flaring brightness, as in the mutable shapes they assumed, some
weird expression of his own mood. Here they were unclimbable alps of
cloudy snow, upreared in a glittering mass of mountainous giddiness,
and toppling from their bases. There they stretched in a carded drift
of fierce white fire, smouldering in the resplendent blue, and consumed
by its own intensity. In one place they had heaped into the form of a
defying giant, impotently melting away in fantastic dissolution. In
another they were a long cohort of crouching lions looking out of their
manes. Below the zenith, before him, a solitary cloud shaped itself into
a vapory hydra; beyond, another wore the semblance of some mongrel dragon
of the air; and all were sphinxine, monstrous, dazzling, wonderful—a
phantasmagoric rack of intervolved chimeras.
With such a pageant bright and wild above his head, and with a feeling
corresponsive to it all within his mind, he strode on through the quiet
streets of the neighborhood, and arrived at his house in Chambers street.
For some reason or other, the Captain had not yet arrived, and, expecting
him presently, after a minute’s kindly chat with Hannah and Sophy, he
went into his own apartment.
The afternoon sun lay bright and cheerful within the room where he had
spent so many sweet and studious hours, but the first thing he saw
on entering, brought night and winter on his heart. Below the empty
pedestal, the bust of the beloved Verulam lay shattered to fragments on
the floor. His head sunk upon his breast, and he stood sadly gazing upon
the ruin. He did not grieve for the loss of the treasured statue; he did
not even remember to think how the accident could have occurred; all
considerations were lost in the feeling of mournful significance which
swept over his burning brain, as he brooded on the broken image of the
majestic Lord of Civilization.
A few moments he gazed upon the wreck with a face of marble; then,
suddenly, his features became convulsed, and his eyes filled with tears.
“It is well, it is well!” he cried, in a transport of passionate sorrow.
“Oh image, why should you stand there when the shamed land has lost
her breed of noble blood, and civilization sleeps, and tyranny darkens
back upon the world! Well may you lie shattered, for all that is human
and holy is shattered too. Why should I keep you in this base city,
where all that is noble rests in the grave, or lives a dying life in
the forlorn grapple with hell! Fade, fade, large memories of saints and
martyrs—drop, statues of heroes—melt, phantoms of old honor from the
pictured wall—away, and yield your places to the forms of clowns and
knaves! Come, you artists,” he raved, in passionate bitterness—“come, you
dilettante bastards—come, you anatomies, whom the ghost of Angelo mocks
and scorns—here is work for you. God! the serpentry and maggotry of Power
are all before you! Choose from them—choose from them—mould us statues of
slavers, paint us pictures of kidnappers, to fill the vacant places! Down
with the just and great—up with the small and vile!”
Quivering with the tempest of his agony, he tottered away, and flinging
himself into his chair, covered his face with his hands.
A few minutes trailed by in deep stillness. Gradually he became calm,
and his hands dropped from his white and sorrowful features.
“I waste my heart in grief,” he mournfully murmured. “It will pass, it
will pass. Oh, winter of Slavery you will pass, and the spring-time
of Freedom will emerge. It is but a season—only a season. Patience,
patience, patience.”
He sat for a little while, then rose, gathered up and laid out of sight
the fragments of the statue, bore the pedestal up-stairs, and returning
resumed his chair.
The minutes were wearing on in deep silence when a low knock came to the
door.
“Enter,” cried Harrington, looking up from his mournful musing.
The door opened and revealed the grotesque and sloven figure of Bagasse.
He had on an old swallow-tailed coat, and wore his usual dingy cap, with
the visor turned down, under which his swarthy, upturned face, with the
mustachioed, lion mouth open in a curious smile, and the nose adorned
with the horn-rimmed goggles, pointed with suave inquiry at Harrington,
while the hand performed a military salute.
“Why, Bagasse!” cried Harrington, smiling, and rising from his chair to
cross over and shake hands—“how are you? Come in. I’m glad to see you.”
“Ah, Missr Harrington,” returned the old soldier, entering and bowing low
with a quick motion, over the hand he grasped in his, “I am vair glad to
see you. I haf not see you for so long. Zen I fancee you are seek, and I
call zoo be vair sure zat it is not zat keep you from ze acadamee. How is
you helt? Br-r-r! _Sacrebleu!_ but you haf been seek, eh?” he cried, with
a sudden commiseration, expressed by a shrug of his shoulders, a lift of
his eyebrows, and a startled grimace of his features, as he noticed the
whiteness of Harrington’s countenance. “_Mon Dieu!_ you is vair pale wis
you eye circle wis ze dark color! O my fren’ Missr Harrington, was is ze
mattair wis you?”
A little moisture gathered in Harrington’s eyes at the pathetic anxiety
of the old man’s look and voice, but he smiled cheerfully, and shook his
head.
“No, Bagasse,” he replied, “I am not sick. I am as well as I have ever
been. Come, take a seat.”
Bagasse removed his cap, and sitting on the sofa, kept his upturned
visage pointed in dubious inquiry at Harrington, who had resumed his
chair.
“You know I have been married,” said Harrington smilingly.
“Marry! No! _Mon Dieu_, no! I haf not hear zat!” exclaimed Bagasse, with
a start, and his bright eye glowing from a flushed visage.
“Yes,” replied Harrington. “To that beautiful rich lady Mr. Witherlee
told you of.”
Bagasse turned the color of heated iron, partly with joy at this
intelligence, partly with wonder at Harrington’s knowledge of what had
passed between himself and Witherlee.
“By dam!” he exclaimed suddenly, “I am so glad I haf ze desire zoo dance
like ze vair devail! But how you know what zat pup Witterly—ex-cuse me,
Missr Harrington, but zat is vair bad young man—ah, vair bad!—how you
know what he say zoo me?”
“No matter, Bagasse,” returned Harrington, smiling, “we won’t talk of
that. But my wife heard of what you said to him—you remember?—what you
said you would tell me if you were her—and she said that to me. Yes, she
did.”
Bagasse, with his grotesque ferruginous face all aglow with a dozen
emotions, sprang up with a stamp which shook the room, dropped into his
seat again, and slapped his heart with his hand.
“Hah!” he hoarsely cried, “it is superb! By dam! I sall fly. My heart is
too big for his box. And zat beautifool, rich, vair, fine ladee say zat?
Sublime! She is great, she is grand, she is more zan ze great Empress
Josephine of ze great Nap-oleon. Ah, Hypolite Bagasse my frien’, you haf
ze biggest compliment I sall evair hear!”
“You must see my wife, Bagasse,” continued Harrington. “She feels very
grateful to you, first for defending me from poor Witherlee’s talk”—
“_Sacre!_” growled Bagasse, interrupting, “I catch zat pup Witterly in
my acadamee once more, and I break him in two pieces ovair my knee!”
“No,” said Harrington, gently, “for my sake, don’t touch him. He has been
punished enough already. Say that you won’t touch him, Bagasse.”
“Missr Harrington, I do evairysing you want,” replied the pacified
fencing-master. “You say let Witterly off, I let him off. I treat him wis
civilitee.”
“That’s right,” returned Harrington; “do. But as I was saying, my wife
feels especially grateful to you for having given her the charming idea
of making that speech to me, and she wants to see you, and know you, and
thank you herself. So the first opportunity I get, I am going to take you
to her house.”
Bagasse turned swarthy-red at this, and looked embarrassed.
“Pardon me, Missr Harrington—ex-cuse me, sir, please,” he said, with
suave shamefacedness, bowing low as he sat. “But it is too mush
honor—vair many too mush. You beautifool, vair, fine, ladee wife, she
is so high, she is so _distingué_, she is ze count-ess, ze duch-ess,
ze queen. She is so far up like ze beautifool sun. I am so low down
like ze paving-stone ze sun shine on. You zink now! I am ze poor old
fencing-mastair—ze man zat eat ze garleek and drink ze brandee-bottel—ze
ugly old devail Bagasse, so low down. Br-r-r-r! It is not propair zat I
make ze viseet zoo ze vair, fine, beautifool rich ladee-wife—I, zee poor
way low down child of ze people. _Sacrebleu_, no!”
“Oh, Bagasse, Bagasse,” said Harrington, in a tone of good natured
chiding, “fie upon you to talk in that way! Suppose my wife is the sun,
as you say. Well, the sun is a democrat. The sun shines as sweetly on
you as on the emperor. Now my wife is like the sun in that particular
at least. Ah, Bagasse, she, too, is a child of the people, and she
will be proud to know a man who could make the manly speech you made!
She is not a lady who respects coats and bank-stock, but heart, honor,
manhood. Come, now, you fancy her a bit of a Marie Antoinette. Not at
all, Bagasse. Think of that dear child of the people whom Frenchmen
love—Josephine. That is a better image of her. Don’t say a word—you shall
visit her, and then you’ll see how much at home she’ll make you feel.”
All which Harrington said in French that Bagasse might perfectly
understand him. The old man sat, with a touched face, looking at the
floor for some time after the young scholar had ceased to speak. Looking
up, at length, with an unsteady eye, he saw that the sad, introverted
expression had returned to the pallid features before him. In fact,
Harrington’s thoughts had dropped away to the trouble on his mind, and he
was wondering why the Captain did not come.
“Missr Harrington,” said Bagasse, in a voice, a little lower and hoarser
than usual, “you make me vair proud—you do me vair mush honor. But ah, my
joay haf mush melancolee wis him, for you look so pale, so bad. Ex-cuse
me, Missr Harrington—but was is ze mattair wis you? Why, you look so
white, so sorrowfool? Ah, tell you old Bagasse zat he may say ze leetel
word wis comfort in him! You marry ze beautifool, dear ladee wife—_mon
Dieu!_ zat sall make you so happy zan evairybody. Why zen you haf zat
face? Zat is not ze face for ze new husband—_sacrebleu_, no! Now why is
zat?”
Harrington paused a moment before replying, struggling to repress the
agitation he felt not only at the rude tenderness of the old Frenchman’s
words and manner, but at the aching sense it brought him of the grief
that had clouded his sweet and perfect happiness.
“Don’t ask me, Bagasse,” he faltered. “Kind old friend, I wish I could
tell you, but there are reasons”—
A low knock at the door made him break off in the midst of his sentence.
“No, don’t go,” he said to the fencing-master, who had moved to rise.
“Come in,” he cried.
The door opened slowly, and to the astonishment of Harrington, Driscoll
the stevedore entered. Harrington smiled vaguely, and bent his head with
an absent and wondering air in reply to the abashed and awkward bow the
Irishman made as he came in.
“Why, Mr. Driscoll,” he said, slowly, “I didn’t expect to see you,
though I’m glad you came. Take a chair. How are you?”
“Purty well, thank ye kindly, Mr. Harrington,” replied Driscoll, taking
off his old straw hat, and wiping his forehead with his coat sleeve,
without looking at the young man.
Harrington, wondering at his curious air of awkward bashfulness, and
beginning to feel a rising perturbation, as he remembered that he had
seen the man in Atkins’ office not long before, blankly stared at him. He
was a strong, thick-set, stooping man, dressed in coarse canvas trowsers,
all stained with pitch and dirt; a soiled red flannel shirt; and a short
frowsy old coat with large horn buttons. He had what is commonly called
a thoroughly Irish face—which means not the Irish face of Jeremy Taylor
or Edmund Burke, but the face of an Irish peasant after despotism,
political, social, and religious, has wrought on him and his ancestry
for a certain period, giving him some abjectness, some lawlessness, some
clownishness, some stupidity, some insensibility, an aspect of hard work
and poor fare and low condition, and degrading his forehead, clouding his
eye, lowering his nose, making his lips loose, his gums prominent, his
cheeks scrawny, his throat scraggy, and barbarizing the manhood of him
generally. Such, with the addition of tan and freckles got from labor
in the sun, and also the grime and sweat of that labor, was the visage
of Driscoll. The only other thing Harrington noticed about him was that
he kept his left hand tightly clenched while he wiped his face with the
rough sleeve of his right arm.
“Well,” continued Harrington, after a pause, “how goes it, Mr. Driscoll?
How is your wife? And the children? And how is the broken leg? Won’t you
sit down?”
“They’re all purty well, sur, thank ye kindly,” returned Driscoll,
ducking his head continuously as he spoke, and moving up to the table.
“And the leg’s sthrong as a post, glory be to God, sur. Sorra the word o’
lie in it, but it’s yerself that it’s owin’ to, and divil a leg I’d have
to stand on this minit widout you, Mr. Harrington.”
“Oh, well,” said Harrington, smiling; “I’m glad you’re over that
trouble. But you came up to tell me something, I suppose. Did—did Mr.
Atkins send you?”
“Deed he did not, sur,” replied Driscoll. “I kem up to make bowld to ask
ye something, Mr. Harrington, if ye wouldn’t think it an offince, sur,”
he added, with a furtive sidelook at Bagasse, who sat with an upturned
face of curious interrogation levelled at him.
“Certainly not,” replied Harrington. “No offence at all. Ask away. Never
mind my friend, there.”
“Bad scran to me if I wor to mind a frind o’ yours, sur,” returned
Driscoll, coming close up to the edge of the table, and looking uneasily
at Harrington. “It’s a quistion I’ll make bowld to ask ye, sur.”
“Well, ask on,” said Harrington, blankly gazing at him, with a mounting
color, and his heart beating painfully with a blind clairvoyant sense of
what was coming.
“Are ye,” confidentially asked the stevedore, with considerable burr on
the “are”—“are ye opposed, sur, to it’s bein’ done?”
Harrington started so violently, and turned so pale, that Bagasse sprang
to his feet, and Driscoll’s face grew stupid with surprise.
“To what being done?” gasped Harrington. “Speak quick. Tell me what you
mean?”
“Are ye opposed, sur, to ould Atkins sendin’ off the durty negur? That’s
what I mane,” said Driscoll.
“I am!” cried Harrington, with a lightning look at Bagasse, and a wish
that he was out of the room.
Driscoll looked at the table, and looking at it, slowly swung up his
clenched left fist like one pelting a pool, and hurled a twenty dollar
gold piece ringing on the cloth.
“Then I’m dommed if I’ll do it,” he exultingly howled, with a thump of
his fist on the money. “Hurroo for the bridge that carries us over, and
it’s you that wor the bridge of goold to me and the ould woman and the
childher in the black hour, Mr. Harrington. Ould Atkins and his money
to the divil, and bad scran to him and his for an ould robber, for I’m
dommed if I’ll do wan thing that ye are opposed to, sur. Arrah, bad look
to him, and may he niver know glory, for the black thafe o’ the world
that he is; but it’s yerself that dhressed him down thremindous this
blissed day, Mr. Harrington. Troth, but it’s the good blood that’s in the
Harringtons, and kings and imperors they wor in the ould country wanst,
and sorra the word o’ lie in it!”
With which highly apocryphal assertion, Driscoll’s excited outburst
ceased, and he fell to wiping his heated face, first with one coat-sleeve
and then with the other.
Harrington rose from his seat, white as death, his nostrils heaving and
his eyes aflame.
“Bagasse,” he said, “will you be kind enough to leave me”— He stopped,
touched by the look of tender sympathy on the grotesque face of the
fencing-master. “No,” he cried, “don’t go. Stay with me. You shall
know it—you shall know what it is that is killing me. But tell me,” he
pursued, speaking in French, “tell me, on the honor of a soldier, that
you will never breathe one word of this to any living being, for it is a
secret which must be kept close as the grave.”
Bagasse struck hands with him with passionate and martial energy.
“I swear it,” he hoarsely cried in French. “Let me know it, for I cannot
bear to see you suffer, and if I can help you, I will!”
“Good!” exclaimed Harrington. “Driscoll, attend to me. Where is that
negro?”
“They’ve got him, sur, in the cuddy of a boat down on Spectacle Island,”
replied the stevedore, frightened into conciseness by the stern voice and
flaming eyes of Harrington.
“Who are they that have him? Men employed by Atkins?”
“Yes, sur. Siven o’ thim, sur. It’s me that wor to be eight.”
“Seven men paid by Atkins. Who are they? Stevedores?”
“Stevedores and sailors, sur. Twinty dollars apiece they get for it,
sur.”
“What are they doing with him there?”
“Howlding on to him, sur, till the Soliman sails. She’s to heave to, and
take him on board, sur.”
“When does the Soliman sail?”
“To-morrow morning at break o’ day, sur.”
“To-morrow morning? No—you mean Tuesday night.”
“’Deed I don’t, sur. She sails to-morrow morning, if there’s a breath o’
wind.”
Harrington drew his breath. Lucky I found this out, he said to himself;
to-morrow I should have been too late.
“Driscoll,” he continued, “are those men armed?”
“They’ve got their knives, sur.”
“No pistols?”
“Sorra the wan, sur.”
“Do they stay in the boat all the time?”
“’Deed they don’t, sur. Wan or two o’ thim stays in her turn and turn
about, and the rist o’ thim plays cards in the little room o’ the house
on the island.”
“The house? Oh, it’s a hotel. Does the owner of the house know they have
a negro in the boat?”
“’Deed he don’t, sur. The negur’s tied hand and fut, and kep’ in the
cuddy.”
“What does the owner of the house think those men are there for?”
“I don’t know, sur. Captain Bangham paid him well for the room they have,
and he niver comes nigh thim at all.”
“How long were you there?”
“This morning early, I wint down with thim, sur.”
“How came you to be up in the city this noon?”
“I kem up, sur, with Captain Bangham. He wint down to the island in a
boat of his own, along wid us this morning early, and stayed wid us a
while, dhrinkin’ like a fish, till he got purty dhrunk. So I kem back wid
him to help him manage the boat lest he’d get dhrowned, sur.”
“How came you to come up with him, and not a sailor?”
“We dhrew lots for it, sur, and I was the wan.”
“And you were going down to the island again?”
“Yis, sur. I was goin’ in the first boat that wint down the harbor. I
wint in to ould Atkins to take the pay, for the others had got theirs,
and there wasn’t enough in his pocket for me when he paid thim, so he
tould me to come in whin I kem up from the island, and begorra, I tuk him
at his word.”
“Did Atkins pay those men himself?”
“Deed he did, sur. Early in the mornin’ when they wint down, he was
there, and paid thim.”
“This Captain Bangham is the captain of the Soliman, I suppose?”
“Yis, sur.”
“Where does the boat lie that has the negro on board?”
“At the wharf o’ the island, sur.”
“This room in which the men stay—where is it?”
“It’s in the outbuilding, sur. A little room nixt to the kitchen, low
down, wid the doore openin’ on the ground, an’ wan step for the stairs,
sur.”
“Good. Now, Driscoll, you are not going to help these men any more?”
“I’m dommed if I’ll do it, whin you’re opposed to me doin’ it, sur.
Troth, I heard ivery word ye said to the ould thafe, and says I to
meself, if I do wan thing that Mr. Harrington’s set aginst, and he the
gintleman that befrinded me and mine in the black throuble, may the divil
fly away wid me.”
“Driscoll, take that gold piece back to Mr. Atkins, and tell him you’ve
thought better of it. Don’t say another word to him but that. Have no
quarrel with him. Say that, put the money on his desk, and leave his
office. Do you understand?”
“Yis, sur. I’ll do it.”
“Good. You shall not lose by it. Take this from me.”
Harrington drew from his pocket the money he had received from Muriel,
and counted him out twenty-five dollars.
“Here, Driscoll,” he said, holding out the bills to him.
“Oh, begorra, Mr. Harrington, but I’ll niver take it from you. Plaise
don’t offer it to me.”
“Driscoll, I insist upon your taking it. You shall.”
He seized the stevedore’s hand, and put the money into it.
“There. Don’t thank me, but attend to what I say. Driscoll, that negro
is a poor laboring man like you. He has as good a right to his freedom
as you have. When you joined those men to keep him in that boat, you
were guilty of a great sin. Never do such a thing again! You say you are
grateful to me. Then be kind to negroes for my sake. Be kind to them for
your own sake. You are a poor man, and you ought to be kind to the poor.”
Driscoll looked abashed and touched. Perhaps the words moved him less
than the solemn and gentle voice which uttered them.
“Sorra the harm I’ll ever work wan o’ thim, sir,” he murmured. “Deed, I
didn’t know it was a sin.”
“And now, Driscoll,” pursued Harrington, “I have reasons for wishing this
matter kept secret, and I want you to swear to me that you will never
speak of this to any person whatever. Never tell anybody that you were in
that boat—that Mr. Atkins hired you—or that you came here and told me.
Never speak of this at all in any way.”
“I’ll swear it, sur. Deed I will.”
Harrington turned to his shelves, and took down a Douai Bible, its covers
blazoned with a golden cross.
“Driscoll,” said he, “you are a Catholic. Here is the Catholic Bible. It
is opposed to slavery. There have been great men of your church who hated
slavery. The Pope himself has cursed slavery. See, here is the cross of
your church on the cover. Take this book in your hands, and swear that
you will never speak to any person, man or woman, of what you have done,
of what passed between Mr. Atkins and you, of what has passed between us
here. Swear it.”
Driscoll reverently received the Bible in his hands, took the oath, and
kissed the cross.
“That is all,” said Harrington, receiving the Bible, and restoring it
to its place. “I am very grateful to you for having told me of this,
Driscoll. You have done me the greatest good that any man could do me.”
Driscoll stood in silence, awed and wonder-stricken at what had passed,
and subdued by the majestic gentleness of Harrington’s demeanor. In a
moment he took the gold piece from the table, and moved to the door.
“God save ye kindly, sur,” he faltered, ducking his head.
“Good bye, Driscoll. Shake hands.”
He awkwardly took the frank hand Harrington outstretched as he came over
to him, felt it grasp his own as never gentleman’s had grasped it before,
and with a wild and woful enthusiasm heaving within him, and repressed by
shame and awe, he turned away, and stole out at the door the young man
opened for him.
Harrington closed the door, and, all unmindful of Bagasse, turned away
with clasped hands, and a face of solemn ecstasy.
“Oh, bread cast upon the waters,” he murmured, “is it thus I find you
after many days? I helped him in his trouble, and he pays me back with
life!”
His head sunk upon his breast, and he stood with closed eyes, rapt and
still, his heart swelling with gratitude and thanksgiving.
Suddenly, from the barrel-organ in the street, a strain of martial music
arose and flowed in upon the dreaming silence. It was the thrilling tonal
glory of the Marseillaise. The thought of his heart came like flame to
the broad-nostrilled countenance of Harrington, and he stood with kindled
features and dilated form, while the proud and mournful music swept like
the march of an army around him. On and on in burning measure, rolled the
sad and conquering lilt of liberty, and darkening down in fire and tears,
voice of the passion of mankind, voice of the wrongs and woes that redden
earth while the good cause lies bleeding, the weird strain arose and rang
in the clear cry for the sword, and wailed in the mournful glory of those
final tones whose melody is like a hymn for the dead who die for Man.
Harrington rushed from the room. The Frenchman, left alone, stood with
a dark glow on his iron visage, and the red light of battle in his eye,
thinking of the old days of military ardor, the old wars in which he had
stormed on Europe, the old Paris folding in her bosom the ashes of the
Emperor, the old France he himself would never see again.
The flush of memory the music brought him was paling into sadness, when
Harrington returned from the street.
“I have paid him, and sent him away, Bagasse,” said the young man. “After
that air, I wanted to hear no more. Now sit down, and I will tell you the
meaning of all this.”
Bagasse took his seat on the sofa, and Harrington sitting beside him, in
a few words told him all.
“And now,” he joyfully said, in conclusion, “everything begins to
lighten, since I know where this poor Antony is to be found.”
“Ah, Missr Harrin’ton,” returned the old man, smilingly regarding him
over an upturned chin, “zat face you haf is now ze face of ze new
husband! Ze dear ladee wife will lof zat face so gay. Missr Harrin’ton,
you are ze most grand zhentilman I sall evair see. You feel kind for ze
vair old devail himself. You get white, you get ze dark round you eye for
zat neeger man so mush as he was you own self. Nobody, not ze white man,
not ze neeger man, not no man at all, feel so bad for you like you feel
for evairy ozzer man. Why is zat?”
Harrington’s maxillary muscles wrinkled, and his teeth flashed in
an amused laugh, while his face grew scarlet at this complimentary
recognition of the human kindness that was so mighty in him.
“Bagasse,” said he, “don’t praise me for having the feelings of a man.
If you could have seen the poor fellow when I found him in the street,
and if you could have heard his account of the life he had been living,
you would feel as badly as I did. But here’s Wentworth and the Captain at
last,” he added, catching sight of them from the window near him, as they
entered the garden gate.
They came in presently, and for a moment there was a confusion of
salutations. Then the Captain, having been introduced to Bagasse, turned
to Harrington.
“John,” said he, “I’m awful exercised about keepin’ you waitin’, but”—
“Never mind,” interrupted Harrington. “I shan’t try to get the habeas
corpus writ now. Let me tell you what’s happened.”
“By Jupiter!” cried Wentworth, reddening at the sight of Harrington’s
kindled face. “Antony’s got off! Good! Hurrah!”
“Hold on. Not so fast, Richard,” returned Harrington. “Antony’s not off
yet, but he’s going to be. Now listen.”
And in a few words he gave them an account of the interview with Driscoll.
“So Antony’s in the cuddy of a boat at Spectacle Island,” he added,
concluding. “And now, see here. Thank fortune Mrs. Eastman’s feelings
can be spared, Antony saved, and yet the whole affair be kept strictly
private. I shall wait, Captain, till the dead of night, when those
fellows will all be asleep, and I hope drunk—all except the one in the
boat—and then I shall run down in your craft, land, and capture the
captured.”
“Bravo!” shouted Wentworth. “By Jove! I shall laugh fit to kill when we
get hold of Antony.”
“We?” said Harrington, jestingly. “Why, are you going?”
“Am I going!” roared Wentworth. “Of course I am. Do you think I’d let you
go alone?”
Captain Fisher, who had been sitting in silence, with his winter pippin
face agrin, burst into hearty laughter.
“By the spoon of horn!” he exclaimed, “but this is a leetle the richest
idee I ever heern tell on. But, John, look a-here. Siven of them fellers,
you know. Sposin you find them in the boat all together, like Brown’s
cows, when he had but one? What’ll you do then?”
“It’s not likely,” replied Harrington. “Men love their ease too much to
be out in the night when it’s not necessary. For my own part, I think
Atkins has managed this matter like a fool. Two men would have answered
his purpose perfectly, and he puts eight there. I can’t imagine what he
was thinking of.”
Mr. Atkins was thinking of Harrington, if Harrington could but have known
it. The moment Mrs. Eastman had told him that Antony had been sheltered
in her house, a feeling had come to him that the young scholar, whose
dauntless temper he had some notion of, might possibly attempt a rescue,
and he took his measures accordingly. This accounted, too, for Antony not
being on board the Soliman.
“But look a-here, John,” pursued the Captain. “Satan’s niver onready to
play ye a trick, an’ there’s no countin’ on what’s likely with him. Now
sposin you find them siven fellers in the boat when you git down?”
“In that case,” replied Harrington, gravely, “there’s nothing for it
but a desperate fight. I shall tell them of the illegality of their
proceeding, and try to frighten them into giving up Antony. If they
refuse, I shall fall on them like a fury. Here’s Bagasse has been
training me for years, and I think I should do credit to his training
even with seven men.”
“Missr Harrin’ton,” said Bagasse, with a grimace, “you do me one favor.
No, _pardieu_, I take zat favor. Look. I go wis you. Zat is settle. Zen
if ze seven men wish zoo fight, zey sall fight wis you and me, and zey
find out, by dam, zat we is fourteen!”
“Bravo, you old Gascon!” cried Wentworth, slapping him on the shoulder.
“Let him go, Harrington. Don’t refuse.”
“But, Bagasse,” said Harrington, “you have a wife, and I can’t consent
that you should put your life in danger on my affair.”
“Chut! poo, poo!” answered the fencing-master. “Ex-cuse me, Missr
Harrin’ton, but zat is feedelstick! You haf ze beautifool, dear ladee
wife, and I take care of you for her. Good. Zat is well. Now I go wis
you.”
“Don’t deny him, Harrington,” pleaded Wentworth. “Come, let’s arrange the
rest of this matter. Where do we start from?”
“Long Wharf, at about twelve o’clock,” replied Harrington. “Whoever gets
to the boat first will wait for the rest. Then about landing. Faith, it
won’t do to land at Long Wharf, if any of us gets hurt. We shall have the
night police asking questions if they see one of us limp. Besides, the
less seen of Antony the better. We must land at South Boston, where it’s
lonely as a desert.”
“And walk over to the city!” asked Wentworth, with a laugh.
“No, we must have a carriage,” replied Harrington. “Now who’s going to
drive the carriage out and wait there with it? I can’t, for I must go in
the boat.”
“And I must go wis you,” said Bagasse.
“So must I,” added Wentworth.
“It’s me then,” said the Captain, getting all awry. “Now, that’s a pity,
for I want to be with you. And sposin there’s a fight. Then you’re one
able-bodied man the less.”
“See,” put in Bagasse. “I tell you. We get John Todd for to drive. You
pay him money. Zen he go. Zat John Todd lof money.”
“Bravo!” cried Wentworth. “That’s an idea. I’ll give Johnny ten dollars
for the job.”
“I hardly like to have another party in a matter so private,” demurred
Harrington.
“But he needn’t know anything about it,” said Wentworth. “He needn’t even
see Antony. When we land, I’ll go up and get the carriage, letting him
stay behind, put Antony in, drive up again, take Johnny on the box, drive
in town, set him down, and go on to Temple street.”
“Well,” said Harrington, “that may do. Now who’ll get the carriage? We
want a close carriage.”
“I’ll get it,” returned Wentworth. “I know a man who’ll let me have one.
I’ll attend to all that, and to engaging Johnny. Where shall we have the
carriage stand? Say Q street. Good. We’ll all go armed, of course.”
“Certainly,” replied Harrington, “I will take my revolver.”
“And I my pistols,” said Wentworth.
“I sall carree ze good cavalree sabre wis my pistol,” said Bagasse.
“And I’ll take that hickory stick of mine with the lead knob, and that’ll
give any feller a headache that wants one,” said the Captain, with his
head ominously askew.
“Good, everything’s settled,” said Harrington. “Now, gentlemen, to-night
at twelve. We shall get there by two at the latest, if there’s any breeze
at all, and probably at one. You’d better all meet here, and go down
together. I will meet you at the boat.”
“Agreed,” said Wentworth. “Now, Bagasse, you and I will go after Johnny.”
“And I home,” said Harrington. “I’ll meet you again at twelve.”
He lingered a few moments after they had gone, musing with a kindled and
exulting face, and then with a sudden yearning to pour out his gladness
to Muriel, he seized his hat and left the room. In the yard he happened
to think of the dog, and he went for a moment to the kennel. The animal
was lying on its side, apparently asleep, and Harrington was just about
to turn away, when he chanced to notice that its eyes were partly open.
Surprised a little, he bent down, and laid his hand on the animal. It did
not move. The old dog was dead.
He arose, and stood for a moment with a vacant and reeling brain; then
turned, and with a dazed feeling, went into the street and on his way.
The clouds were still bright and wild in the afternoon sky, and tottering
fantastically into ever mutable strange shapes, fierce, dazzling,
sphinxine, wonderful. He gazed at them for a little while as he strode
on, until oppressed by their instability, and with a dark sense that they
were like an untranslatable hieroglyphic of something that had been, or
was, or was to be, and that could not be defined, he turned his eyes
from them, his heart throbbing thick and fast, and his burning brain
giddy with a fullness of life which, like the clouds, seemed to reel in
dissolution, and yet, like them, did not dissolve away.