A SECRET INTERVIEW.
While the scene we have related in the foregoing chapter was being
enacted, there might be seen pacing the great colonnade of the
Charleston hotel, the tall figure of a man wrapped in a massive talma.
Heedless of the throng of drinkers gathered in the spacious bar-room,
making the very air echo with their revelry, he pauses every few
moments, watches intently up and then down Meeting street, now
apparently contemplating the twinkling stars, then turning as if
disappointed, and resuming his sallies. “He will not come to night,” he
mutters, as he pauses at the “Ladies’ door,” then turns and rings the
bell. The well dressed and highly-perfumed servant who guards the door,
admits him with a scrutinizing eye. “Beg pardon,” he says, with a
mechanical bow. He recognizes the stranger, bows, and motions his
hands. “Twice,” continues the servant, “she has sent a messenger to
inquire of your coming.” The figure in the talma answers with a bow,
slips something into the hand of the servant, passes softly up the
great stairs, and is soon lost to sight. In another minute he enters,
without knocking, a spacious parlor, decorated and furnished most
sumptuously. “How impatiently I have waited your coming,” whispers,
cautiously, a richly-dressed lady, as she rises from a velvet covered
lounge, on which she had reclined, and extends her hand to welcome him.
“Madame, your most obedient,” returns the man, bowing and holding her
delicate hand in his. “You have something of importance,—something to
relieve my mind?” she inquires, watching his lips, trembling, and in
anxiety. “Nothing definite,” he replies, touching her gently on the
arm, as she begs him to be seated in the great arm-chair. He lays aside
his talma, places his gloves on the centre-table, which is heaped with
an infinite variety of delicately-enveloped missives and cards, all
indicative of her position in fashionable society. “I may say, Madame,
that I sympathize with you in your anxiety; but as yet I have
discovered nothing to relieve it.” Madame sighs, and draws her chair
near him, in silence. “That she is the woman you seek I cannot doubt.
While on the Neck, I penetrated the shanty of one Thompson, a poor
mechanic-our white mechanics, you see, are very poor, and not much
thought of-who had known her, given her a shelter, and several times
saved her from starvation. Then she left the neighborhood and took to
living with a poor wretch of a shoemaker.”
“Poor creature,” interrupts Madame Montford, for it is she whom Mr.
Snivel addresses. “If she be dead-oh, dear! That will be the end. I
never shall know what became of that child. And to die ignorant of its
fate will—” Madame pauses, her color changes, she seems seized with
some violent emotion. Mr. Snivel perceives her agitation, and begs she
will remain calm. “If that child had been my own,” she resumes, “the
responsibility had not weighed heavier on my conscience. Wealth,
position, the pleasures of society-all sink into insignificance when
compared with my anxiety for the fate of that child. It is like an
arrow piercing my heart, like a phantom haunting me in my dreams, like
an evil spirit waking me at night to tell me I shall die an unhappy
woman for having neglected one I was bound by the commands of God to
protect-to save, perhaps, from a life of shame.” She lets fall the
satin folds of her dress, buries her face in her hands, and gives vent
to her tears in loud sobs. Mr. Snivel contemplates her agitation with
unmoved muscle. To him it is a true index to the sequel. “If you will
pardon me, Madame,” he continues, “as I was about to say of this
miserable shoemaker, he took to drink, as all our white mechanics do,
and then used to abuse her. We don’t think anything of these people,
you see, who after giving themselves up to whiskey, die in the poor
house, a terrible death. This shoemaker, of whom I speak, died, and she
was turned into the streets by her landlord, and that sent her to
living with a ‘yellow fellow,’ as we call them. Soon after this she
died-so report has it. We never know much, you see, about these common
people. They are a sort of trash we can make nothing of, and they get
terribly low now and then.” Madame Montford’s swelling breast heaves,
her countenance wears an air of melancholy; again she nervously lays
aside the cloud-like skirts of her brocade dress. “Have you not,” she
inquires, fretting her jewelled fingers and displaying the massive gold
bracelets that clasp her wrists, “some stronger evidence of her death?”
Mr. Snivel says he has none but what he gathered from the negroes and
poor mechanics, who live in the by-lanes of the city. There is little
dependence, however, to be placed in such reports. Madame, with an air
of composure, rises from her chair, and paces twice or thrice across
the room, seemingly in deep study. “Something,” she speaks, stopping
suddenly in one of her sallies—“something (I do not know what it is)
tells me she yet lives: that this is the child we see, living an
abandoned life.”
“As I was going on to say, Madame,” pursues Mr. Snivel, with great
blandness of manner, “when our white trash get to living with our
negroes they are as well as dead. One never knows what comes of them
after that. Being always ready to do a bit of a good turn, as you know,
I looked in at Sam Wiley’s cabin. Sam Wiley is a negro of some
respectability, and generally has an eye to what becomes of these white
wretches. I don’t-I assure you I don’t, Madame-look into these places
except on professional business. Sam, after making inquiry among his
neighbors-our colored population view these people with no very good
opinion, when they get down in the world-said he thought she had found
her way through the gates of the poor man’s graveyard.”
“Poor man’s graveyard!” repeats Madame Montford, again resuming her
chair.
“Exactly! We have to distinguish between people of position and those
white mechanics who come here from the North, get down in the world,
and then die. We can’t sell this sort of people, you see. No keeping
their morals straight without you can. However, this is not to the
point. (Mr. Solomon Snivel keeps his eyes intently fixed upon the
lady.)
“I sought out the old Sexton, a stupid old cove enough. He had neither
names on his record nor graves that answered the purpose. In a legal
sense, Madame, this would not be valid testimony, for this old cove
being only too glad to get rid of our poor, and the fees into his
pocket, is not very particular about names. If it were one of our
‘first families,’ the old fellow would be so obsequious about having
the name down square—”
Mr. Snivel frets his fingers through his beard, and bows with an easy
grace.
“Our first families!” repeats Madame Montford.
“Yes, indeed! He is extremely correct over their funerals. They are of
a fashionable sort, you see. Well, while I was musing over the decaying
dead, and the distinction between poor dead and rich dead, there came
along one Graves, a sort of wayward, half simpleton, who goes about
among churchyards, makes graves a study, knows where every one who has
died for the last century is tucked away, and is worth six sextons at
pointing out graves. He never knows anything about the living, for the
living, he says, won’t let him live; and that being the case, he only
wants to keep up his acquaintance with the dead. He never has a hat to
his head, nor a shoe to his foot; and where, and how he lives, no one
can tell. He has been at the whipping-post a dozen times or more, but
I’m not so sure that the poor wretch ever did anything to merit such
punishment. Just as the crabbed old sexton was going to drive him out
of the gate with a big stick, I says, more in the way of a joke than
anything else: ‘Graves, come here!—I want a word or two with you.’ He
came up, looking shy and suspicious, and saying he wasn’t going to harm
anybody, but there was some fresh graves he was thinking over.”
“Some fresh graves!” repeats Madame Montford, nervously.
“Bless you!—a very common thing,” rejoins Mr. Snivel, with a bow.
“Well, this lean simpleton said they (the graves) were made while he
was sick. That being the case, he was deprived-and he lamented it
bitterly-of being present at the funerals, and getting the names of the
deceased. He is a great favorite with the grave-digger, lends him a
willing hand on all occasions, and is extremely useful when the yellow
fever rages. But to the sexton he is a perfect pest, for if a grave be
made during his absence he will importune until he get the name of the
departed. ‘Graves,’ says I, ‘where do they bury these unfortunate women
who die off so, here in Charleston?’ ‘Bless you, my friend,’ says
Graves, accompanying his words with an idiotic laugh, ‘why, there’s
three stacks of them, yonder. They ship them from New York in lots,
poor things; they dies here in droves, poor things; and we buries them
yonder in piles, poor things. They go-yes, sir, I have thought a deal
of this thing-fast through life; but they dies, and nobody cares for
them-you see how they are buried.’ I inquired if he knew all their
names. He said of course he did. If he didn’t, nobody else would. In
order to try him, I desired he would show me the grave of Mag Munday.
He shook his head, smiled, muttered the name incoherently, and said he
thought it sounded like a dead name. ‘I’ll get my thinking right,’ he
pursued, and brightening up all at once, his vacant eyes flashed, then
he touched me cunningly on the arm, and with a wink and nod of the head
there was no mistaking, led the way to a great mound located in an
obscure part of the graveyard—”
“A great mound! I thought it would come to that,” sighs Madame
Montford, impatiently.
“We bury these wretched creatures in an obscure place. Indeed, Madame,
I hold it unnecessary to have anything to distinguish them when once
they are dead. Well, this poor forlorn simpleton then sat down on a
grave, and bid me sit beside him. I did as he bid me, and soon he went
into a deep study, muttering the name of Mag Munday the while, until I
thought he never would stop. So wild and wandering did the poor fellow
seem, that I began to think it a pity we had not a place, an insane
hospital, or some sort of benevolent institution, where such poor
creatures could be placed and cared for. It would be much better than
sending them to the whipping-post—”
“I am indeed of your opinion-of your way of thinking, most certainly,”
interpolates Madame Montford, a shadow of melancholy darkening her
countenance.
“At length, he went at it, and repeated over an infinite quantity of
names. It was wonderful to see how he could keep them all in his head.
‘Well, now,’ says he, turning to me with an inoffensive laugh, ‘she
ben’t dead. You may bet on that. There now!’ he spoke, as if suddenly
becoming conscious of a recently-made discovery. ‘Why, she runned wild
about here, as I does, for a time; was abused and knocked about by
everybody. Oh, she had a hard time enough, God knows that.’ ‘But that
is not disclosing to me what became of her,’ says I; ‘come, be serious,
Graves.’ (We call him this, you see, Madame, for the reason that he is
always among graveyards.) Then he went into a singing mood, sang two
plaintive songs, and had sung a third and fourth, if I had not stopped
him. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘that woman ain’t dead, for I’ve called up in my
mind the whole graveyard of names, and her’s is not among them. Why
not, good gentleman, (he seized me by the arm as he said this,) inquire
of Milman Mingle, the vote-cribber? He is a great politician, never
thinks of poor Graves, and wouldn’t look into a graveyard for the
world. The vote-cribber used to live with her, and several times he
threatened to hang her, and would a hanged her-yes, he would, sir-if it
hadn’t a been for the neighbors. I don’t take much interest in the
living, you know. But I pitied her, poor thing, for she was to be
pitied, and there was nobody but me to do it. Just inquire of the
vote-cribber.’ I knew the simpleton never told an untruth, being in no
way connected with our political parties.”
“Never told an untruth, being in no way connected with our political
parties!” repeats Madame Montford, who has become more calm.
“I gave him a few shillings, he followed me to the gate, and left me
muttering, ‘Go, inquire of the vote-cribber.’”
“And have you found this man?” inquires the anxious lady.
“I forthwith set about it,” replies Mr. Snivel, “but as yet, am
unsuccessful. Nine months during the year his residence is the jail—”
“The jail!”
“Yes, Madame, the jail. His profession, although essential to the
elevation of our politicians and statesmen, is nevertheless unlawful.
And he being obliged to practice it in opposition to the law, quietly
submits to the penalty, which is a residence in the old prison for a
short time. It’s a nominal thing, you see, and he has become so
habituated to it that I am inclined to the belief that he prefers it. I
proceeded to the prison and found he had been released. One of our
elections comes off in a few days. The approach of such an event is
sure to find him at large. I sought him in all the drinking saloons, in
the gambling dens, in the haunts of prostitution-in all the low places
where our great politicians most do assemble and debauch themselves. He
was not to be found. Being of the opposite party, I despatched a spy to
the haunt of the committee of the party to which he belongs, and for
which he cribs. I have paced the colonnade for more than an hour,
waiting the coming of this spy. He did not return, and knowing your
anxiety in the matter I returned to you. To-morrow I will seek him out;
to-morrow I will get from him what he knows of this woman you seek.
“And now, Madame, here is something I would have you examine.” (Mr.
Snivel methodically says he got it of McArthur, the antiquary.) “She
made a great ado about a dress that contained this letter. I have no
doubt it will tell a tale.” Mr. Snivel draws from his breast-pocket the
letter found concealed in the old dress, and passes it to Madame
Montford, who receives it with a nervous hand. Her eyes become fixed
upon it, she glances over its defaced page with an air of bewilderment,
her face crimsons, then suddenly pales, her lips quiver-her every nerve
seems unbending to the shock. “Heavens! has it come to this?” she
mutters, confusedly. Her strength fails her; the familiar letter falls
from her fingers. For a few moments she seems struggling to suppress
her emotions, but her reeling brain yields, her features become like
marble, she shrieks and swoons ere Mr. Snivel has time to clasp her in
his arms.