ANNA BONARD SEEKS AN INTERVIEW WITH THE ANTIQUARY.
It is night. King street seems in a melancholy mood, the blue arch of
heaven is bespangled with twinkling stars, the moon has mounted her high
throne, and her beams, like messengers of love, dance joyously over the
calm waters of the bay, so serenely skirted with dark woodland. The dull
tramp of the guardman's horse now breaks the stillness; then the
measured tread of the heavily-armed patrol, with which the city swarms
at night, echoes and re-echoes along the narrow streets. A theatre
reeking with the fumes of whiskey and tobacco; a sombre-looking
guard-house, bristling with armed men, who usher forth to guard the
fears of tyranny, or drag in some wretched slave; a dilapidated "Court
House," at the corner, at which lazy-looking men lounge; a castellated
"Work House," so grand without, and so full of bleeding hearts within; a
"Poor House" on crutches, and in which infirm age and poverty die of
treatment that makes the heart sicken--these are all the public
buildings we can boast. Like ominous mounds, they seem sleeping in the
calm and serene night. Ah! we had almost forgotten the sympathetic old
hospital, with its verandas; the crabbed looking "City Hall," with its
port holes; and the "Citadel," in which, when our youths have learned to
fight duels, we learn them how to fight their way out of the Union.
Duelling is our high art; getting out of the Union is our low. And, too,
we have, and make no small boast that we have, two or three buildings
called "Halls." In these our own supper-eating men riot, our soldiers
drill (soldiering is our presiding genius), and our mob-politicians
waste their spleen against the North. Unlike Boston, towering all bright
and vigorous in the atmosphere of freedom, we have no galleries of
statuary; no conservatories of paintings; no massive edifices of marble,
dedicated to art and science; no princely school-houses, radiating their
light of learning over a peace and justice-loving community; no majestic
exchange, of granite and polished marble, so emblematic of a thrifty
commerce;--we have no regal "State House" on the lofty hill, no
glittering colleges everywhere striking the eye. The god of slavery--the
god we worship, has no use for such temples; public libraries are his
prison; his civilization is like a dull dead march; he is the enemy of
his own heart, vitiating and making drear whatever he touches. He wages
war on art, science, civilization! he trembles at the sight of temples
reared for the enlightening of the masses. Tyranny is his law, a
cotton-bag his judgment-seat. But we pride ourselves that we are a
respectable people--what more would you have us?
The night is chilly without, in the fireplace of the antiquary's back
parlor there burns a scanty wood fire. Tom has eaten his supper and
retired to a little closet-like room overhead, where, in bed, he muses
over what fell from Maria's lips, in their interview. Did she really
cherish a passion for him? had her solicitude in years past something
more than friendship in it? what did she mean? He was not one of those
whose place in a woman's heart could never be supplied. How would an
alliance with Maria affect his mother's dignity? All these things Tom
evolves over and over in his mind. In point of position, a mechanic's
daughter was not far removed from the slave; a mechanic's daughter was
viewed only as a good object of seduction for some nice young gentleman.
Antiquarians might get a few bows of planter's sons, the legal gentry,
and cotton brokers (these make up our aristocracy), but practically no
one would think of admitting them into decent society. They, of right,
belong to that vulgar herd that live by labor at which the slave can be
employed. To be anything in the eyes of good society, you must only live
upon the earnings of slaves.
"Why," says Tom, "should I consult the dignity of a mother who discards
me? The love of this lone daughter of the antiquary, this girl who
strives to know my wants, and to promote my welfare, rises superior to
all. I will away with such thoughts! I will be a man!" Maria, with eager
eye and thoughtful countenance, sits at the little antique centre-table,
reading Longfellow's Evangeline, by the pale light of a candle. A lurid
glare is shed over the cavern-like place. The reflection plays curiously
upon the corrugated features of the old man, who, his favorite cat at
his side, reclines on a stubby little sofa, drawn well up to the fire.
The poet would not select Maria as his ideal of female loveliness; and
yet there is a touching modesty in her demeanor, a sweet smile ever
playing over her countenance, an artlessness in her conversation that
more than makes up for the want of those charms novel writers are
pleased to call transcendent. "Father!" she says, pausing, "some one
knocks at the outer door." The old man starts and listens, then hastens
to open it. There stands before him the figure of a strange female,
veiled. "I am glad to find you, old man. Be not suspicious of my coming
at this hour, for my mission is a strange one." The old man's crooked
eyes flash, his deep curling lip quivers, his hand vibrates the candle
he holds before him. "If on a mission to do nobody harm," he responds,
"then you are welcome." "You will pardon me; I have seen you before. You
have wished me well," she whispers in a musical voice. Gracefully she
raises her veil over her Spanish hood, and advances cautiously, as the
old man closes the door behind her. Then she uncovers her head,
nervously. The white, jewelled fingers of her right hand, so delicate
and tapering, wander over and smooth her silky black hair, that falls in
waves over her Ion-like brow. How exquisite those features just
revealed; how full of soul those flashing black eyes; her dress, how
chaste! "They call me Anna Bonard," she speaks, timorously, "you may
know me?--"
"Oh, I know you well," interrupts the old man, "your beauty has made you
known. What more would you have?"
"Something that will make me happy. Old man, I am unhappy. Tell me, if
you have the power, who I am. Am I an orphan, as has been told me; or
have I parents yet living, affluent, and high in society? Do they seek
me and cannot find me? Oh! let the fates speak, old man, for this world
has given me nothing but pain and shame. Am I--" she pauses, her eyes
wander to the floor, her cheeks crimson, she seizes the old man by the
hand, and her bosom heaves as if a fierce passion had just been kindled
within it.
The old man preserves his equanimity, says he has a fortune to tell her.
Fortunes are best told at midnight. The stars, too, let out their
secrets more willingly when the night-king rules. He bids her follow
him, and totters back to the little parlor. With a wise air, he bids her
be seated on the sofa, saying he never mistakes maidens when they call
at this hour.
Maria, who rose from the table at the entrance of the stranger, bows,
shuts her book mechanically, and retires. Can there be another face so
lovely? she questions within herself, as she pauses to contemplate the
stranger ere she disappears. The antiquary draws a chair and seats
himself beside Anna. "Thy life and destiny," he says, fretting his bony
fingers over the crown of his wig. "Blessed is the will of providence
that permits us to know the secrets of destiny. Give me your hand, fair
lady." Like a philosopher in deep study, he wipes and adjusts his
spectacles, then takes her right hand and commences reading its lines.
"Your history is an uncommon one--"
"Yes," interrupts the girl, "mine has been a chequered life."
"You have seen sorrow enough, but will see more. You come of good
parents; but, ah!--there is a mystery shrouding your birth." ("And that
mystery," interposes the girl, "I want to have explained.") "There will
come a woman to reclaim you--a woman in high life; but she will come too
late--" (The girl pales and trembles.) "Yes," pursues the old man,
looking more studiously at her hand, "she will come too late. You will
have admirers, and even suitors; but they will only betray you, and in
the end you will die of trouble. Ah! there is a line that had escaped
me. You may avert this dark destiny--yes, you may escape the end that
fate has ordained for you. In neglect you came up, the companion of a
man you think true to you. But he is not true to you. Watch him, follow
him--you will yet find him out. Ha! ha! ha! these men are not to be
trusted, my dear. There is but one man who really loves you. He is an
old man, a man of station. He is your only true friend. I here see it
marked." He crosses her hand, and says there can be no mistaking it.
"With that man, fair girl, you may escape the dark destiny. But, above
all things, do not treat him coldly. And here I see by the sign that
Anna Bonard is not your name. The name was given you by a wizard."
"You are right, old man," speaks Anna, raising thoughtfully her great
black eyes, as the antiquary pauses and watches each change of her
countenance; "that name was given me by Hag Zogbaum, when I was a child
in her den, in New York, and when no one cared for me. What my right
name was has now slipped my memory. I was indeed a wretched child, and
know little of myself."
"Was it Munday?" inquires the old man. Scarce has he lisped the name
before she catches it up and repeats it, incoherently, "Munday! Munday!
Munday!" her eyes flash with anxiety. "Ah, I remember now. I was called
Anna Munday by Mother Bridges. I lived with her before I got to the den
of Hag Zogbaum. And Mother Bridges sold apples at a stand at the corner
of a street, on West street. It seems like a dream to me now. I do not
want to recall those dark days or my childhood. Have you not some
revelation to make respecting my parents?" The old man says the signs
will not aid him further. "On my arm," she pursues, baring her white,
polished arm, "there is a mark. I know not who imprinted it there. See,
old man." The old man sees high up on her right arm two hearts and a
broken anchor, impressed with India ink blue and red. "Yes," repeats the
antiquary, viewing it studiously, "but it gives out no history. If you
could remember who put it there." Of that she has no recollection. The
old man cannot relieve her anxiety, and arranging her hood she bids him
good night, forces a piece of gold into his hand, and seeks her home,
disappointed.
The antiquary's predictions were founded on what Mr. Soloman Snivel had
told him, and that gentleman got what he knew of Anna's history from
George Mullholland. To this, however, he added what suggestions his
suspicions gave rise to. The similarity of likeness between Anna and
Madame Montford was striking; Madame Montford's mysterious searches and
inquiries for the woman Munday had something of deep import in them. Mag
Munday's strange disappearance from Charleston, and her previous
importuning for the old dress left in pawn with McArthur, were not to be
overlooked. These things taken together, and Mr. Snivel saw a case there
could be no mistaking. That case became stronger when his fashionable
friend engaged his services to trace out what had become of the woman
Mag Munday, and to further ascertain what the girl Anna Bonard knew of
her own history.