IO TRIUMPHE.
The solemn time slowly wore away. Gradually the twilight began to glimmer
through the slats of the western window. Wentworth rose noiselessly,
opened the window, put back the blinds, and withdrew the curtains; then
extinguishing the light, resumed his seat again beside Emily.
The glimmering twilight slowly melted into pale dawn with a deep violet
sky; and the few vague noises of reawakening life began to sound in the
streets of the quiet neighborhood. Soon the violet of the sky changed
into the light blue of early morning, touched by the unrisen sun, and the
pure pallor of the daylight, lay within the chamber, and on its bowed and
silent occupants.
Day broadened, and the first fresh beams of the sunrise reddened on the
tops of the chimneys. A faint stir came to them from the inner room, and
the folding-doors unclosed a little, and remained slightly ajar. They
all rose, and stood in silence. Looking through the aperture, they saw
that the lamps were extinguished within, and that a brighter day than
theirs flushed with light the silent room. Suddenly the folding-doors
swung wide open, and Muriel appeared, with a face of cloudless radiance.
For a moment she stood in silence, exalted, dazzling, a presence
like intoxicating music; her snowy drapery falling around her in holy
bacchanal folds, her amber hair rippling goldenly and low, and her
features kindled with a smile like morning.
“It is over,” she said, her voice thrilling with a rapture of tenderness.
“He has gone.”
They stood in silence, gazing with awe upon her pure and lovely face, and
the light of her immortal joy and peace floated in upon their cold and
desolate sorrow, like heavenly rays upon a winter sea. Her sacred and
auroral beauty interblended with their sense of the solemn presence of
the dead, and the feelings that arose within them were like the prayers
and hymns of resurrection.
Standing with bowed heads, the passing perfume of her robes told them
that she moved, and they silently followed her into the room where all
that was mortal of the hero lay. The curtains were drawn aside, and the
light of the morning, warmed by the coming gold of the sunrise, streamed
tenderly upon the white and noble features. He lay reclined, the head
resting upon a cushion, the hands crossed upon the bosom, the bearded
face beautiful in grand and sweet serenity, with the lips and eyelids
closed. So peaceful and unchanged was his countenance, save in its marble
pallor, that it might have been thought he slept. But he was dead.
Nerveless now the limbs so mighty in liberty’s defence; pulseless now the
strong heart whose generous currents beat for man; the busy brain that
had wrought with such divine ambitions for the race, was stilled; and all
the godhood that had given that body its majesty and beauty, was gone
from it forever.
They gazed calmly upon the deserted form. Grief had had its hour. It
would but have profaned the sanctuary of that holy and grand repose. The
beauteous peace of death was there, and it made them still. Silently, for
a little while, they looked with mournful and chastened spirits upon the
clear and lovely features, and as they turned away, Emily bent and kissed
the sacred forehead.
“Sleep sweetly, gallant and gentle heart,” she said in a voice like
fervid music. “Sleep, folded in the rest of Heaven, folded in our
Savior’s arms. Well for us if we had died like you.”
She rose with a rapt and pallid face, and moved away encircled by
Wentworth’s arm, with her own around him.
“I love you, Richard,” she said. “I love you with my whole nature! But
far above me, I saw a nobler love than mine. It was a love too great and
sweet for me—a love to which I never could attain; and with that love I
loved him.”
He did not reply, but clasped her closer to him, and they all went out
into the other section of the room.
While they stood in silence, a loud and violent ring, like the jar of
devils breaking in upon their solemn peace, came at the hall entrance.
Muriel paused a moment, then shut the folding doors, and stepped into
the passage. Patrick was up, and was already shuffling along the entry
below to answer the summons. Presently the hall-door opened, and Muriel,
leaning over the banister, heard a harsh and angry voice say:
“Where’s Mr. Harrington? I want to see him immediately.”
It was Lemuel Atkins.
“Patrick,” said Muriel, before the servant could reply, “show that person
up here.”
She retired into the library, and trampling rudely up-stairs came Mr.
Atkins, and strode into the library with his hat on, livid with passion.
“Where’s that ruffian husband of yours?” he brawled, fronting Muriel. “I
want to see him instantly. Where is he? Where have you hidden him?”
“Mr. Atkins,” said Wentworth, stepping forward, with a stem white face,
“permit me to remind you that you are speaking to a lady, and that you
have your hat on in her presence. Take your hat off at once, sir.”
Mr. Atkins took his hat by the rim with both hands, pulled it down more
firmly on his head, and swelling out his chest with vulgar insolence,
fronted Wentworth with a blustering air.
“There, sir,” said he.
“And there, sir,” replied Wentworth, knocking the hat from his head clear
across the room.
Mr. Atkins, frightened a little at this decisive action, glared at him
with glassy eyes, but Wentworth, with a cold, stern face, retired a few
paces, with his gaze fixed on Muriel. Bagasse, meanwhile, the hat having
fallen near him, crushed it beneath his feet, and stood on it, with an
eye like a red coal.
“Well, sir,” said Muriel, quietly, “you were asking after my husband.
What do you want with him? What is the matter?”
“The matter is this, madam,” roared the merchant, bending his livid and
brutal face down to hers, with his horse-jaws wide open. “I send a damned
runaway scoundrel down the harbor for safe-keeping, and your ruffianly
husband goes down there, and not only takes him away, but nearly kills
the men I put in charge of him. Don’t you deny it, madam, and say it was
some one else, for one of those men heard the runaway rascal call him by
his name. Now, where is he? Out with him at once! Here’s one of those
men just come up to me with the news; yes, and there’s another thing. He
had to hail a boat that was passing to take him up to the city, for your
robber of a husband upset every boat that was at the wharf. Yes, madam,
upset them! And then when the men endeavored to retake their prisoner,
he fell upon them with his fists and feet, and nearly killed them. There
they are, seven of them, all mangled, and bruised, and battered, and—.
Where is he, I say? Produce him at once!”
There was no change in Muriel’s serene face while the merchant belched
all this into it, save only a close contraction of her delicate nostrils;
and this was not caused by emotion but by the fetor of his breath, which
was abominable.
“How many men did you say, sir?” she asked quietly, the moment he had
done speaking.
“I said seven, madam; seven men all bruised and”—
He stopped, arrested and confused nearly to choking, by her still smile
of scorn.
“Seven men, Lemuel Atkins,” said she, derisively. “Seven men with knives
in their hands. Seven armed ruffians, and my husband, bare-handed,
crushed them all! Oh, my husband, but I am proud of you! And you, Lemuel
Atkins, you have the face to come here, and blazon the shame of your
seven hired assassins. Well done!”
Brutal and impudent as he was, Mr. Atkins could not but be abashed at
this sarcastic exposure of his inglorious complaint, and stood working
his jaw in the effort to collect himself.
“And you want to see my husband?” pursued Muriel. “Good. You shall see
him. Richard, throw open those doors.”
Wentworth immediately flung the folding-doors asunder, and Muriel,
grasping the merchant by the wrist, drew him into the room, and up to the
couch.
“There he is,” said she, “murdered! By you!”
The merchant’s visage instantly changed to a frightful and ghastly blue,
his jaw dropped, his hair rose bristling, and, petrified with horror,
he stood glaring at the corpse. Like many coarse natures, he had a
natural vulgar dread of a dead body, but added to that was the terrific
shock of being brought suddenly before the slaughtered corpse of his
niece’s husband, the dreadful consciousness that he himself was morally
responsible for this ruin, and the soul-sickening fear that now the law
would pursue its authors, and that his own wicked and illegal act, with
the blood of a murder on it, would be exposed to the public view. The
simple illegal kidnapping, at a time when Boston had gone for kidnapping,
was nothing; his tribe would wink at that; but with this crime upon it,
he never could survive the consequences.
“See,” said Muriel, laying bare the breast, “there is the wound of the
knife that slew him. You, Lemuel Atkins, through your agent, struck that
blow.”
She looked at him with clear and glowing eyes, but he did not heed her,
nor did the ghastly aspect of his visage change. Transfixed with horror,
he stood immovable, his gaze bound by a dreadful fascination to the short
purple line in an orb of red suffusion on the white breast. But at last,
his glassy eyes wandered to her face.
“It’ll kill her,” he murmured in a horrible, low voice, talking to
himself as though she were not present. “She’ll die of grief for him.”
Muriel smiled—a clear, still smile that made him shiver.
“You think so!” she replied, in firm and steady tones. “You think I will
die of grief for my slain husband? Well you may, for I loved him with a
love of whose strength and fervency a nature like yours knows, and can
know, nothing. Well may you think so, for he was the light of life to me.
But see—” she seized the merchant’s hand, and laid it on her wrist—“the
pulse beats calm! Feel”—she placed his hand upon her heart—“there is no
throb of anguish there! Look at my face—it is not the face of grief!
Kill me? No, it will not kill me! Grieve me? No it can never grieve me!
Sorrow nor death can come not nigh me—for he lies dead in the divinest
death a man can die, and I am filled with gladness and with pride! Should
I not be glad and proud? The most forsaken of mankind, the Pariah of a
despised and trampled race, came from long years of misery to his charge,
and when you stole that most wretched being that you might send him back
to the hourly murder from which he had emerged, my spotless hero went
from this house knowing that he never would return alive, and willingly
laid down his life to save him. Yes—he knew that the price of that man’s
liberty was his own life, and he paid it. Alone he did it—alone he took
your victim from his captors—alone and naked-handed he crushed the seven
assassins who dared to front him in his manhood—and with that red star
of honor on his breast he came home here to die in my exulting arms.
There he lies—dead in the noblest death a man can suffer—death in the
service of the weak and poor. Dead—and on all his life the splendor of
that heroic devotion; dead—and on his breast that red blazon of glory
immortal; and I could rifle earth of its roses to deck this hour, and
break up heaven for the music of my joy!”
The clear and fiery silver of her voice rang through him like a hundred
swords, and staggering back a pace, he fairly crouched before the stormy
effulgence of her beauty. For she flamed upon him, dilated, with a
terrible enthusiasm quivering through her flushed and kindled features
and an electric aureole of victory darting from her like a sense of rays.
Not him alone did she overwhelm—the air of the room was deluged with the
torrent magnetism of her spirit, as if it had been flooded with a rushing
ether of light flame, and every heart beat as with the wings of eagles,
and every cheek was pale with the draining rapture of her ardor. Not him
alone, but him chiefly, and only him with dread. Had she flashed hate
and scorn upon him, he could have better borne it. But this supernatural
exultation over an event which he thought would have bowed her in
pallid agonies of grief—this sublime and haughty glory in her husband’s
fate—astounded and terrified him. It mingled with his sense of her pæan
tones and words, the patrician nobility of her figure in its snowy
odor-breathing raiment, all the fiery beauty and dazzling enchantments
of her presence—and it rushed into a consciousness worse than the
consciousness of her hate and scorn—the consciousness of the thing he was
contrasted with her. The very sight of her was the insupportable verdict
of his own utter baseness, and he stood crouching and shuddering, with
his glassy eyes bound to her face, as if some judgment angel, dreadful in
loveliness, had burst upon him from the woman he knew.
She turned away, and his gaze slowly reverted to the corpse. At once,
with tenfold vehemence, his former fear and horror rose within him.
“My God!” he gasped, “this is an awful tragedy!”
Sudden as lightning she wheeled around, and the first slanting beam of
the sunrise smote her forehead, and lit her noble features with a new
resplendence!
“It is not!” she cried, in a proud and ringing voice. “It is a triumph!
You threw the interests of your party and your trade into the scale
against a man’s liberty. He threw the rich, red blood of his heart
into the other side, and weighed you down. It is a triumph! Call it no
tragedy which breaks one fetterlock, even at the cost of a sweet life!
Oh, brother of the despised and the rejected, well for earth’s proudest
if he went to God like you, the savior of a poor spirit from the curse
of bonds, and bearing up to heaven the trophy of one broken chain! Pass
me, sorrow, pass, and come not nigh me—for oh, my husband, you laid down
your life for a weak and lowly slave, and there is morning in my heart
forever!”
Her pealing voice, proud and ringing while she spoke to him, melted into
clear and noble pathos as she turned to the visioned image of her hero,
and the words breathed in tones of illimitable ecstasy upon an air that
seemed to beat and swim in rapture. The swiftly ascending sunlight rested
upon her as she stood with clasped hands, her tresses shining in golden
glory around her divinely kindled face, her soft, white drapery flowing
and trembling around her, and gazing upon her from the inner room as
through a veil of fire and tears, she seemed to them like some splendid
seraph of the morning, dilated with holy and heroic joy.
A low groan heaved from the chest of the wretched Atkins. She looked
at him. He was gazing with a face of abject horror and despair on the
majestic figure of the dead.
“Come away,” she said, solemnly, taking the passive wretch by the arm,
and leading him into the other room. “I pity you from the depths of my
soul. You are the tragedy—you and the social order that has ruined you.
Would that I could do you good! I cannot. You are made, and only death
can unmake you. Well will it be for you when your sad failure of an
earthly life is ended, and you can resume that you were before you were
born.”
He turned toward her, dreadfully agitated, with the foul tears flowing on
his convulsed and livid visage.
“Spare me,” he hoarsely faltered, clasping his hands, “spare me the
exposure! For the love of God, let it be hushed up! It’ll ruin me and my
family, and—Oh, I beg of you let it”—
“Listen to me,” said Muriel, interrupting him. “My mother has not yet
left her chamber, and therefore does not know of what has happened.
Spare her the anguish of seeing you here with the body of her beloved
son lying there. I have already kept you too long. But hear this: the
persons present, and one other, are the only persons who know of this
transaction, and they are pledged never to divulge it. Keep it secret
then yourself. It ends here.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you; I’m very grateful, indeed I am,” he hurriedly
replied, showing in his agitation a mean relief at his escape from the
consequences of his wickedness; “I’ll go at once.”
He looked around for his hat. Bagasse kicked it over to him, with an eye
that flashed red fire. Atkins did not show the least resentment at the
insult, but hastily picking up the crushed castor, hurriedly left the
library straightening it out, and presently they heard the hall-door
close behind him.
Muriel went to the body of Harrington, and arranged the clothes over
the bosom. In a moment or two the others followed her, and as they
approached, she turned toward them.
“I must go up to tell mother of this,” she said. “It is better that she
should hear it in her own chamber.”
“We ought to have called her, that she might see John before he died,”
said Emily.
“No,” replied Muriel; “I thought of it, but I feared to have her here for
her own sake. And I fear the shock it will give her now. I must go at
once.”
She moved to the entrance, but at that moment Mrs. Eastman entered the
library in the section beyond the folding doors. Muriel sprang, caught
her in her arms, and gazed with all her soul in her eyes, into her pale
countenance. Mrs. Eastman had not caught sight of the body, but she saw
Bagasse and the Captain, and knew at once that something unusual had
happened, and with a startled glance at the averted faces of the group,
she looked with ashen features at Muriel.
“Mother,” said Muriel, in a firm, proud voice, “look at me. Am I not
happy?”
Mrs. Eastman gazed with a wan smile at the radiant countenance of her
daughter.
“Yes, dear,” she wonderingly murmured; “I never saw you look more so. But
why are you joyful?”
“Because this is a day of joy, mother,” replied Muriel. “It is the joy of
joys to-day. Heaven touches earth with me, and I am happy. Mother, the
poor man who was stolen from us is saved! John has ransomed him!”
“Why!” exclaimed Mrs. Eastman, starting, with a bright smile, in her
daughter’s arms. “This is indeed good news. But what do you mean—how did
John ransom him?”
“With a great price, my mother,” cried Muriel, a brilliant smile
irradiating her inspired features. “A price which I am willing and proud
to pay. Are you?”
“I would pay any price for such a good as this,” replied Mrs. Eastman,
with some wonder visible in her joy.
“Any, mother?”
“Yes, any.”
“Ah, mother, let me try you. Suppose the price was your whole fortune.
Would you give it?”
“I would give it all,” answered Mrs. Eastman, fervently. “I would give
everything rather than go through life with the shame and agony of
Lemuel’s sin and that poor man’s murder upon me.”
“But, mother, suppose Heaven asked of you a greater price than that.
Suppose it asked, as the price of a poor man’s liberty, your daughter’s
life, or the life of your son. Would you give it? Answer me yes,” she
cried, with flashing eyes. “Tell me that yours is not a cheap devotion to
the old New England honor—the old New England liberty—the old New England
justice! Tell me that you are willing to offer up to Heaven the dearest
and the proudest sacrifice a soul can offer, that I may love you with the
love of love forevermore!”
To stand before that impassioned and magnetic face, to hear those burning
and electric tones, and not be kindled by their enthusiasm, was not in
human nature. The flame thrilled through the mother’s soul, and with a
pale, proud countenance, and quivering nostrils, while a vague and awful
consciousness of what had happened arose within her, she looked steadily
into the flushed and exalted features of Muriel.
“I have not your spirit, Muriel,” she tremulously answered, “and such a
sacrifice would be hard for me to make, but I would strive to make it—I
would strive to be worthy of my daughter.”
“Mother of my heart!” cried Muriel, with passionate fervor. “Behold, the
hour has come for you to strive with every mortal weakness. Lean on me
now—let me fill you with my strength—let me dilate you with my joy. Rouse
up your soul to fortitude—nerve it to bear as only a woman’s soul can
bear—for Heaven has asked the great sacrifice of us all. Oh, my mother,
Heaven has said to him we love—the price of the ransom is your own
life—and with his life he has paid it.”
The mother looked at her with a pale, still countenance. She did not
swoon, she did not shriek, she did not weep nor tremble. The strong
sustaining spell of Muriel’s spirit was upon her; her clear magnetic eyes
upheld her; and she breathed in the mighty ether of that electrifying
sphere of pride and joy. Left to herself she might have dropped dead or
mad; but interpenetrated with that effluent will, and moved and kindled
by the grandeur of her daughter’s nobleness, she rose in courage like the
courage of a spirit when it leaves the serene regions to dare the doom of
dark avatars.
“I hear you,” she said, in a low, full, equal voice, sounding more like
Muriel’s than her own. “I hear you, and I am filled with your life. You
wish me to be calm and strong. I am calm and strong. I understand you
perfectly. You tell me that he is dead.”
“Mother,” replied Muriel, with solemn fervor, “his earthly life is ended,
but he lives forever. He died a hero’s death, and all who made earth
noble with their living and their dying, rise up to welcome him.”
There was a moment’s pause, in which their eyes remained bound to each
other. Then the low, full, equal voice spoke on.
“Tell me more, Muriel. Tell me how he died. I am calm. I can bear to hear
it all.”
“I will tell you, my mother,” Muriel replied. “He heard that the man was
a prisoner in a boat at an island wharf in the bay. Last night he sailed
through the tempest, and captured him. Seven to one, they followed him
to the beach, and fell upon him. He crushed them every one, received a
death-wound in the fray, returned in victory, and died here at sunrise.
That is all.”
The pale face flushed slowly.
“I drove him to this,” was the low reply. “Did I not? Have not I killed
him?”
“No, mother,” answered Muriel, calmly. “It is not so. I had determined to
disregard your wishes, but this plan was surer, and he and I chose it.”
The pale face lightened, and the flush died away in marble pallor.
“No, it was not I that killed him,” she said, slowly. “It was another,
and him I renounce forever. Lemuel”—
“Hush, mother,” said Muriel. “Not a word of him. Let us pity and pardon
him—but do not utter his name again. Let him pass in peace.”
There was a brief interval of silence before the mother spoke again.
“Where is he, Muriel? Let me see him. Do not hold me from him. Do not
fear for me. I am calm and strong. I can bear to see him now, though he
is dead.”
The pleading and pathetic voice touched Muriel to her heart’s core,
though there was no sign of emotion on her face. Her clasp tightened
around her mother, and for a moment her clear eyes dwelt upon the pallid
countenance.
“Can you bear to look upon him now?” she replied. “Be calm—be strong.
Look into that room. He is there.”
The mother, strongly held by Muriel’s arms, slowly turned her head, and
gazed. A broad ray of sunlight rested on the couch, and the sculptured
face shone in white splendor. Long and breathlessly she gazed upon it.
“Come,” murmured Muriel.
Clasped in each other’s arms, they moved slowly to the side of the couch,
and stood gazing on the white and noble features, clear-cut and glorious
in the dazzling stream of light which fell upon them, and relieved by
the violet velvet on which the body lay. It was death, but death in the
lustrous beauty of a vision. The rich magic splendor that irradiated the
majestic countenance, seemed issuant from it—a blazing halo, in which it
would rest forever.
“He is beautiful,” murmured Mrs. Eastman, in a hushed and mournful
voice. “Beautiful as a dream. My dead son!”
Three little words, but in them what a large world of affection and
sorrow found room! A thrill of emotion came to the silent group as her
low, distinct voice, awful in its pathos, gave those words utterance.
Noiselessly and slowly she sank from Muriel’s arms to her knees, and
laid her head upon the pulseless breast; for a little while she remained
there, with the strong glory lending a brighter silver to her tresses;
and rising again, her calm face was wet with tears.
“It is a great grief,” she said, as Muriel again encircled her in her
arms. “It is a greater grief, Muriel, than when your father died. I
wonder that I can bear it as I do. And you, my poor child, widowed now
like me, how can you endure your loss—how can you look so beautiful and
happy, and he lying dead beside you?”
“Look, mother,” cried Muriel, “look at that sky!”
She drew her to the casement as she spoke, and flinging it open, they
stood, with the blithe, fresh air of the brilliant morning around them,
gazing together on the transcendent pomp of the sunrise. Far up the blue
zenith, the sky was bannered with floating clouds of gold and purple and
crimson, and burst on burst of splendor streamed through them from the
dazzling orb which filled the broad day with haughty and majestic glory.
“Is this a day for grief?” said Muriel. “Behold, it throbs with
victory—it trembles with immortality! See how its colors and its
splendors deck the sky! They glow and burn in beauty and in triumph for
the return of a conqueror. Dead soldier of Democracy, the beautiful and
bannered sky is for you! Burst high, flash far, float wide, oh divine
resplendence, and fill the vast with the gorgeous colors of victory, for
to-day all Heaven holds jubilee, and welcomes back one saint and savior
more!”
Her low voice trembled with fervor as it uttered the passionate words,
and her sunlit face shone like an angel’s. Still holding her mother in
her arms, she turned with her to the illuminated form of her lover.
“Think, mother, how he lived,” she said; “think how he died. In a city
whose vice it is that its valor and compassion run to brains, he was an
arm. A mind trained for the human service, and an arm. An arm swift,
and loving-swift to smite the robbers of the poor; a heart that could
feel tenderly and gently even for them; a life which beat, in its every
artery, with the blood of his love for mankind. Oh, never can I mourn
him! The question that shakes the land and age came to him—in the person
of that forlorn wanderer it came, saying, shall it be slavery or liberty
for such as me—and not with a word, but with a deed he answered, liberty!
Ay, with his life he answered, liberty! Look on him with joy as I do, for
grief is insult to the dead who die for man. Proud, proud death! Sweet,
sweet to die for liberty, and sweet to look in life on him who has so
died. Mourn him? Oh, never! My own dear love, my friend, my husband,
angel of my heart and of my life, I do not mourn you—I think of you with
joy and pride. You smile upon me still, you wait for me in the Hereafter,
you see my life all festal with your memory, you see my earthly years
flow forward beautiful with your presence and rich with the light of your
Paradise. Oh, still be with me—let me never lose the dear consciousness
that you see me—let it endure to make my solitude divine, until I meet
you in the world of souls!”
Awed and thrilled by her tender and fervent ecstasy, Mrs. Eastman slowly
withdrew from her arms, and sank into a chair. A deep and solemn silence
tranced the rich room. Muriel glided near her dead lover, and stood with
the soft summershine of June tenderly splendid on her golden hair and
noble features, her soul rapt in exultant joy and peace, and her thoughts
sweeping through Eternity. And as she mused, Emily, with the color in
her face and her eyes like stars, went to the organ, and the deep surge
of music fit for the burial of champions, rose and rolled in ravishing
triumphal grandeur, and swelled in a burning dream of joy immortal, and
endless glory for the brave.
Loud rolled and soared the pæan of the music. Burst on burst, the rays
of haughty splendor streamed through the bannered pomps that flamed
and glowed against the dazzling sapphire of the day. Tide on tide the
effulgence poured around the heavenly-hearted heroine; and kindling
on the violet velvet of the couch, as on the bier of an emperor, into
a softer rapture of triumphant flame, it lay in a blazing halo on the
folded hands, the broad heroic breast, the martial and noble features of
the dead soldier of Democracy.
EPILOGUE.
That morning, at eight o’clock, Wentworth took Roux and Antony, with
the elfin Tugmutton, to Worcester, and delivered them, with a note from
Muriel, to the care of a friend. A week later, and Roux’s family followed
him. Safe in the uncorrupted heart of the Commonwealth, where, even in
that dark period, the old New England honor fortressed the rights of
the lowly—happy, because they knew not what had befallen their strong
friend—thenceforth their humble fortunes flowed in peace.
Wentworth returned in the afternoon of that day, but even before his
return, the news of Harrington’s death had spread abroad among all who
knew the family, and already a number of friends had called. Mrs. Eastman
and Muriel, however, unwilling to be questioned, had decided to excuse
themselves to every one, and nobody was admitted. Harrington had lived
rather a reclusive life—at least, he went but little into what is called
society, and except to a number of poor and humble people, he was little
known. To most of the friends and acquaintance of Muriel, he was a
stranger, and to the neighborhood only a stately figure, sometimes seen
alone from the windows, sometimes walking with her. Hence the interest
the neighborhood felt in his death was, as far as he personally was
concerned, vague, and keen only on account of Muriel, whose loss, so soon
after her marriage, excited a great deal of sympathy and comment.
The funeral was to be strictly private, and Wentworth returned to find
the beauteous body already prepared for the grave. It lay in its casket
in the library, garbed in the clothes it had worn in life. The young man
gazed upon it a little while, then turned to Muriel.
“Of course,” he said, “the burial permit has been attended to.”
“Yes,” she answered. “Dr. Winslow gave the certificate.”
“What cause could he have assigned for the death?” he asked, with a
startled air.
Muriel looked at him for a moment with a strange, faint smile.
“Enlargement of the heart,” she answered.
Wentworth’s pale face became convulsed, and his eyes filled with tears.
“Yes,” he murmured, clasping his hands, “that was the cause indeed!”
It was a day of grief to all but Muriel. The servants moved about the
house with eyes red with weeping. Patrick seemed ten years older with his
forlorn sorrow. Hannah and the children came to the house, and remained
for a couple of hours, crying bitterly. Gracious and calm and sweet
amidst the mortal anguish, Muriel soothed and strengthened and consoled
them all.
The next day was the day of the funeral. The library where the body lay
was decked as on the day of the wedding, with a profusion of roses. All
the windows were open, and the rich, dark room swam in clear radiance.
In the morning, Mrs. Eastman, Emily, Wentworth, and Captain Fisher, being
present, Muriel produced a brief will which Harrington had made the day
after his marriage. The few engravings which decorated his room, and a
portion of his books, he had bequeathed to Emily and Wentworth. The bulk
of his library was given to Muriel. His house to Captain Fisher, with the
provision that the two rooms in which he had lived should be kept for
the refuge of any fugitive, exile, houseless or outcast person of any
description who might stand in need of succor. His little income he had
also given in charge to the Captain to be expended for the relief of any
human distresses that might fall within his knowledge, or to be used at
his discretion for any charitable end.
The old man bent his head, silently weeping, and the rest sat mute and
still, thinking with swelling hearts of the kind spirit that had left
earth forever.
A little while, and they were gone from the room—all save Muriel
and Wentworth. The latter stood bending over the coffin and looking
mournfully on the beautiful dead face of his friend, and Muriel sat at
the organ dreaming in music, which brooded in sweet and glorious surges
on the sunlit air.
As the melody died away, Wentworth stole slowly to her side.
“I forgot to ask you,” he murmured, “about the burial service. Have you
sent for a clergyman?”
“No, Richard,” she replied. “He needs none. Our thoughts and memories are
the fittest burial rites for him. He was a type and harbinger of the day
when religion shall be the tender love and reverence of every soul for
all. In the vision of that day let us lay his dead form in the grave,
hallowed by our remembrance.”
He bent his head in silence and moved away.
An hour passed by, and a low tap came to the door. It was Patrick come up
to say that Mr. Witherlee was below, and begged to see her. Muriel paused
a moment, with a strange feeling of surprise at this unexpected visit,
and then went down into the parlor.
Witherlee was there, standing hat in hand, in the middle of the floor. He
did not bow as she came in, but looked at her with a rigid and wan face,
and sad opaque eyes. For a moment, Muriel, usually so collected and calm,
lost herself in wonder at his aspect, and blankly gazed at him. He was
singularly changed. All the affected elegance of manner was gone; the
contumeliousness, the superciliousness, the morbidity of the face were
gone too; the handsome brown hair was brushed flat; the handsome eyebrows
seemed as if their expressive lift was lost forever. He was attired in
deep black, with not a line of white visible, and his colorless and rigid
countenance wore a strange expression of wan, ascetic abstraction.
“Why, Fernando,” said Muriel, in a slow, wondering voice, recovering
from her momentary pause, and approaching him with an outstretched hand,
“I am surprised to see you.”
He took her hand and bowed slightly, with an abstracted air.
“I ask your pardon for calling,” he replied, looking vacantly at her, and
speaking as if in dreaming soliloquy. “I heard of his death.”
He paused, looking at her with his rigid lips slightly parted, and his
eyes like sad stone.
“Yes,” said she, slowly, wondering more and more at his strange manner.
“It is true. He died yesterday morning at sunrise.”
There was another long pause, in which she looked blankly at his
abstracted gazing face.
“I am going to join the Catholic church,” he said presently, looking
vacantly at the wall, though his eyes had not seemed to turn from her
countenance.
“Indeed!” she replied.
“Yes,” said he, “in two or three days I am going to Baltimore. I intend
to prepare myself for holy orders.”
“Do you mean that you are going to become a priest?” she wonderingly
asked.
“Yes,” he replied, “in the Catholic church.”
She blankly looked at him, marvelling at what he had told her.
“Would you be kind enough to let me see him?” said he, vacantly. “Only
for a moment. I would be very grateful.”
So great was her wonderment at the strange alteration in him, and so
potent the deadening influence that radiated from him, that for a few
moments she remained still and silent, fixedly looking at his face.
“Certainly, Fernando,” she suddenly replied, starting from her amazement.
“Certainly, you shall see him. Come with me.”
She went quickly from the room and upstairs, almost doubting that he was
following her, so noiseless was his movement. But as she entered the
library and turned, he was there, and moving slowly to the casket on the
table, with his lips parted, and his eyes fixed upon it. He laid his hat
down as he reached it, and gazed intently on the face of the dead. For a
moment, Muriel’s eyes sank from him to the floor, and when she looked up
again, she saw that his hands were folded, his eyes closed, and his lips
moving in prayer. She turned away, with a touched heart.
A few minutes went slowly by, and a dim sense of motion, as if the air
stirred, came to her. He was standing near her, hat in hand. His face was
mute, and sad, and very pale.
“Thank you,” said he, in a low voice. “I am very grateful. It has done me
great good to see him once more. I feel better for it.”
Her heart rose to him, and with a sudden movement she reached out her
hand. He took it instantly, and his lip trembled.
“You were very good to me,” he faltered—“you and Richard and Emily. I do
not feel fit to come here, and I would not have come again if I had not
heard he was dead. I did not feel fit to see him while he lived, but I
wanted to see him when I heard he was no more. He was the best friend I
had in the world. He did me good. I think I really never loved any one
but him.”
“Fernando,” said Muriel, tenderly, “can you not let the past be
forgotten? Do not go away from us. Stay here, for we are your friends,
and you need to be sustained and comforted. Let us forget all that has
happened, and meet happily together now.”
“Thank you,” he replied, sadly. “You are very kind, and I am grateful
to you. But I do not feel fit to live near you. I do not deserve your
friendship.”
Her lips parted to answer him, but he retreated shaking his head
mournfully, and stepping noiselessly from the room, went down-stairs
like a phantom, and was gone. Muriel’s head drooped, and with her hands
clasped together, she stood musing for a long time.
The hours wore on, and as the time drew near to three o’clock, which was
the hour at which they were to bear the dead to Mount Auburn, Muriel
went to her chamber to attire herself for the sacred journey. When she
came down into the library, all who were to go were there. Her mother,
Captain Fisher and his family, Emily and Wentworth, Bagasse, and with him
a new comer—his wife, a little middle-aged, brown Frenchwoman, whose eyes
were swollen and red with hours of weeping for the dead gentleman who
had nursed her husband in his sickness, and helped him and her to meet
life as they had never been helped before. Muriel paused a few moments
to greet her kindly in her own language, and then went to the body of
Harrington.
As she reached the coffined form, illumined by the bright light which
filled the room, she saw something on the dark-garbed breast, which
brought to her golden eyes the first tears they had known since her hero
died. It was the Cross of the Legion of Honor! She knew at once who had
placed it there, and a mighty wave of emotion swept through her as she
gazed on the old soldier’s great-hearted tribute to the valor of her dead.
For a few moments she stood still, then turning with a sun-flash in her
dewy eyes, and her features flushed with generous color, she saw the old
Frenchman standing near her, looking with a reverent and sombre visage,
and an eye of dark brilliance, on the cross of the Legion.
“It is mush bettair zere zan here,” he said, laying his hand upon his
heart, as his eye met hers. “Mon Empereur, he gif me zat wis his own
hand, madame. I was young conscrip’ at Ligny, and I take ze standard from
ze Prussian. Zen he put on my breast zat cross. I lof it wis vair mush
lof, and I will keep it for vair many year till I die. Zen he die—zat is
my ozzer self, and I put it on him. It is his right. Ze brave zhentilman,
wis his gallantree, his goodness, his mush lof, he lie in ze grave wis ze
cross of ze Legion on his breast. Zat is well. It is his right, madame.”
She pressed his hand in both of hers, looking fervently into his uncouth
and martial visage.
“Thanks,” she replied, speaking in French. “You fill me with gratitude.
I accept for him the great and noble tribute of your love. It is, as you
say, his right, for he belonged to the Legion of Honor. He was a soldier
of the Guard—the old Guard which dies; but never surrenders!”
The dark eye blazed as he took in the proud significance of her words,
and silent with emotion, he bowed, and retired.
Two hours later, and, the burial over, they stood in the green and
tender sunlit shadows of Mount Auburn. A still peace filled the sweet
sequestered shades. The birds sang in the murmuring leaves; the soft warm
odors of the flowers and greenery breathed around them; the blue June sky
was cloudless and calm; and the descending sunlight shone sweetly on the
quiet graves.
For a little while after the others were gone, Muriel and Wentworth
lingered looking at the gentle light which floated with the shadows of
the oak-leaves overhead, on the new-made mound.
“It is all over,” said Wentworth mournfully. “Alas! I never thought I
would stand by his grave! He realized the noblest dreams of chivalry—he
was the last grand chevalier—and he is gone. What is left us now!”
“Memories,” she calmly answered, “memories of a life of love. Love beat
through all his life, love nerved him in the strife in which he fell. He
smote like Socrates at Delium—like the divine old Greek who clove his
country’s foe, and blessed him as he died. So smote he with stern love,
and in all the wealth of memories he leaves me, that memory too, is mine.
Sweet memories, I treasure you in my heart of hearts! Sweet blossoms of
True Love, I fold you all. Stern blossom of True Love, I fold you too.”
He gazed with mournful tenderness at her noble features, which were lit
with a brilliant and fervent smile.
“True Love, indeed!” he answered. “Who but he could leave his beautiful
Muriel, his adored wife, and go away to die for one of the lowliest of
God’s creatures! Ah, were there a thousand such as he, this land would be
purged of every wrong! But he was alone in nobleness.”
“No, not alone,” she said with sudden spirit. “Not alone. This is
America—America, forming and emerging, with martyrs and heroes such as no
land has seen. The Greek could die for freemen; but when died he for the
helot? Oh, I see the heroes of all lands and times! They live and die for
country, for ideas, for religions, but in America they live and die for
man. Land of Lovejoy’s grave, land of Torrey’s grave, land of the graves
obscure and countless, graves of the lovers for whose love the lowest
was not too low, I read your golden augury! You prophecy the future; you
herald the America uprising—the beautiful divine land of lovers and of
friends! Shall it not come? Oh, graves of all who die that it may be,
answer, answer, answer!”
Her thrilling voice ceased, and as they silently moved away, a long and
sea-like swell of wind arose, and all the leaves tossed and swept in an
aspiration of innumerable rushing voices, holier than ever murmured in
the dim groves of Dodona.
Answer, answer, answer! Oh, grave at Auburn, green with summer beauty,
folding beneath the oak-tree shadows the ashes of the dead chevalier,
answer, answer, fading as I gaze! Answer, lone grave in the Adirondacks,
fadeless and immortal above the dust of the True Lover who tried to save
his country from her slaves, and died that the land of lovers and of
friends might be! Answer, graves of the strong score of heroes who flung
themselves with the true-loving sword upon the Jacquerie of slavery, and
perished for the hope that makes America divine! Answer, graves of all
that made the country holy with the passion of their living and their
dying for mankind—answer, and tell us that America emerges, the land of
lovers and of friends!
It comes! It comes! Clear and sweet are your voices, oh, graves! Raging
clamors drown the voices of the living, but clear and sweet are the
voices of the dead, and it comes—the bright land comes—the land of lovers
and of friends, it comes!
THE END.
NOTE
I am indebted for the sketch of the flight of a fugitive through the
Great Pacoudrie (or Cacodrie) Swamp, in the introductory portion of this
volume, to a couple of pages in the graphic and affecting narrative
entitled “Twelve Years a Slave,” by Mr. Solomon Northup, a free citizen
of New York, who was kidnapped in that State, and sold into bondage in
Louisiana, from which he was fortunately rescued and restored to his wife
and children, after a dozen years of enforced servitude.
Another acknowledgment remains to be made. The reader of the twelfth
chapter of this book may already have observed that Harrington, if he
had lived, would have been a believer in the theory regarding the origin
and purpose of the Shakspeare Drama, as developed in the admirable work
by Miss Delia Bacon, entitled “The Philosophy of Shakspeare’s Plays
Unfolded,” in which belief I should certainly agree with Harrington. I
wish it were in my power to do even the smallest justice to that mighty
and eloquent volume, whose masterly comprehension and insight, though
they could not save it from being trampled upon by the brutal bison of
the British literary press, yet lift it to the dignity, whatever may be
its faults, of being the best work ever composed upon the Baconian or
Shakspearean writings. It has been scouted by the critics as the product
of a distempered ideality. Perhaps it is. But there is a prudent wisdom,
says Goethe, and there is a wisdom which does not remind us of prudence;
and, in like manner, I may say that there is a sane sense, and there is a
sense that does not remind us of sanity. At all events, I am assured that
the candid and ingenuous reader Miss Bacon wished for, will find it more
to his profit to be insane with her on the subject of Shakspeare, than
sane with Dr. Johnson.
I am aware that in even making this acknowledgment, I do something to
excite the rancor of the stupid and senseless prejudice which finds no
difficulty in assigning the noblest works of the human genius to the fat
peasant of Stratford—a man who, as Emerson justly says, lived a profane
and vulgar life, and whose biography, collected after the painful labors
of more than a century, does not present a single point which bears any
relation to, or correspondence with, the holy and heroic pages which
bear his name; while, at the same time, this prejudice derides as a
mad and monstrous impossibility, the theory which ascribes those pages
to Lord Bacon and his compeers—men in whose lives and careers all the
Shakspearean conditions are fulfilled, and all the Shakspearealities
included. But since I have decided, for reasons, to advance again, though
even thus slightly, the theory I refer to, it is only fair to render due
credit to its true author. I do so, earnestly wishing that her work might
receive the respectful attention it undoubtedly merits; and, though the
hand which wrote that glowing iliad of the glory and the genius of the
Elizabethan men, will write no more, that justice might be done to the
great dead scholar in her grave.
W. D. O’C.
ANTI-SLAVERY WORKS.
I.
THE PUBLIC LIFE OF CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN,
BY JAMES REDPATH.
With an Autobiography of his Childhood and Youth.
_With a Steel Portrait and Illustrations. pp. 408._
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The diversity of its contents may be judged from the titles of its
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This volume is a collection of the greatest Speeches, Sermons, Lectures,
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and Europe, called forth by John Brown’s Invasion of Virginia. They are
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Henry Newhall, M. D., Conway (of Cincinnati), and Edwin M. Wheelock;
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Appended to the various contributions are the autographs of the authors.
EDITED BY JAMES REDPATH.
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Walt Whitman’s Caution.
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