ANOTHER SHADE OF THE PICTURE.
While the earth of Potter’s Field is closing over all that remains of
Anna Bonard, Maria McArthur may be seen, snatching a moment of rest, as
it were, seated under the shade of a tree on the Battery, musing, as is
her wont. The ships sail by cheerily, there is a touching beauty about
the landscape before her, all nature seems glad. Even the heavens smile
serenely; and a genial warmth breathes through the soft air. “Truly the
Allwise,” she says within herself, “will be my protector, and is
chastising me while consecrating something to my good. Mr. Keepum has
made my father’s release the condition of my ruin. But he is but flesh
and blood, and I—no, I am not yet a slave! The virtue of the poor,
truly, doth hang by tender threads; but I am resolved to die struggling
to preserve it.” And a light, as of some future joy, rises up in her
fancy, and gives her new strength.
The German family have removed from the house in which she occupies a
room, and in its place are come two women of doubtful character. Still,
necessity compels her to remain in it; for though it is a means
resorted to by Keepum to effect his purpose, she cannot remove without
being followed, and harassed by him. Strong in the consciousness of her
own purity, and doubly incensed at the proof of what extremes the
designer will condescend to, she nerves herself for the struggle she
sees before her. True, she was under the same roof with them; she was
subjected to many inconveniencies by their presence; but not all their
flattering inducements could change her resolution. Nevertheless, the
resolution of a helpless female does not protect her from the insults
of heartless men. She returns home to find that Mother Rumor, with her
thousand tongues, is circulating all kinds of evil reports about her.
It is even asserted that she has become an abandoned woman, and is the
occupant of a house of doubtful repute. And this, instead of enlisting
the sympathies of some kind heart, rather increases the prejudice and
coldness of those upon whom she has depended for work. It is seldom the
story of suffering innocence finds listeners. The sufferer is too
frequently required to qualify in crime, before she becomes an object
of sympathy.
She returns, one day, some work just finished for one of our high old
families, the lady of which makes it a boast that she is always engaged
in “laudable pursuits of a humane kind.” The lady sends her servant to
the door with the pittance due, and begs to say she is sorry to hear of
the life Miss McArthur is leading, and requests she will not show
herself at the house again. Mortified in her feelings, Maria begs an
interview; but the servant soon returns an answer that her Missus
cannot descend to anything of the kind. Our high old families despise
working people, and wall themselves up against the poor, whose virtue
they regard as an exceedingly cheap commodity. Our high old families
choose rather to charge guilt, and deny the right to prove innocence.
With the four shillings, Maria, weeping, turns from the door, procures
some bread and coffee, and wends her way to the old prison. But the
chords of her resolution are shaken, the cold repulse has gone like
poison to her heart. The ray of joy that was lighting up her future,
seems passing away; whilst fainter and fainter comes the hope of once
more greeting her lover. She sees vice pampered by the rich, and poor
virtue begging at their doors. She sees a price set upon her own ruin;
she sees men in high places waiting with eager passion the moment when
the thread of her resolution will give out. The cloud of her night
does, indeed, seem darkening again.
But she gains the prison, and falters as she enters the cell where the
old Antiquary, his brow furrowed deep of age, sleeps calmly upon his
cot. Near his hand, which he has raised over his head, lays a letter,
with the envelope broken. Maria’s quick eye flashes over the
superscription, and recognizes in it the hand of Tom Swiggs. A
transport of joy fills her bosom with emotions she has no power to
constrain. She trembles from head to foot; fancies mingled with joys
and fears crowd rapidly upon her thoughts. She grasps it with feelings
frantic of joy, and holds it in her shaking hand; the shock has nigh
overcome her. The hope in which she has so long found comfort and
strength-that has so long buoyed her up, and carried her safely through
trials, has truly been her beacon light. “Truly,” she says within
herself, “the dawn of my morning is brightening now.” She opens the
envelope, and finds a letter enclosed to her. “Oh! yes, yes, yes! it is
him-it is from him!” she stammers, in the exuberance of her wild joy.
And now the words, “You are richer than me,” flash through her thoughts
with revealed significance.
Maria grasps the old man’s hand. He starts and wakes, as if unconscious
of his situation, then fixes his eyes upon her with a steady, vacant
gaze. Then, with childlike fervor, he presses her hand to his lips, and
kisses it. “It was a pleasant dream—ah! yes, I was dreaming all things
went so well!” Again a change comes over his countenance, and he
glances round the room, with a wild and confused look. “Am I yet in
prison?-well, it was only a dream. If death were like dreaming, I would
crave it to take me to its peace, that my mind might no longer be
harassed with the troubles of this life. Ah! there, there!”—(the old
man starts suddenly, as if a thought has flashed upon him)—” there is
the letter, and from poor Tom, too! I only broke the envelope. I have
not opened it.”
“It is safe, father; I have it,” resumes Maria, holding it before him,
unopened, as the words tremble upon her lips. One moment she fears it
may convey bad news, and in the next she is overjoyed with the hope
that it brings tidings of the safety and return of him for whose
welfare she breathed many a prayer. Pale and agitated, she hesitates a
moment, then proceeds to open it.
“Father, father! heaven has shielded me-heaven has shielded me! Ha! ha!
ha! yes, yes, yes! He is safe! he is safe!” And she breaks out into one
wild exclamation of joy, presses the letter to her lips, and kisses it,
and moistens it with her tears. “It was all a plot-a dark plot set for
my ruin!” she mutters, and sinks back, overcome with her emotions. The
old man fondles her to his bosom, his white beard flowing over her
suffused cheeks, and his tears mingling with hers. And here she
remains, until the anguish of her joy runs out, and her mind resumes
its wonted calm.
Having broken the spell, she reads the letter to the enraptured old
man. Tom has arrived in New York; explains the cause of his long
absence; speaks of several letters he has transmitted by post, (which
she never received;) and his readiness to proceed to Charleston, by
steamer, in a few days. His letter is warm with love and constancy; he
recurs to old associations; he recounts his remembrance of the many
kindnesses he received at the hands of her father, when homeless; of
the care, to which he owes his reform, bestowed upon him by herself,
and his burning anxiety to clasp her to his bosom.
A second thought flashes upon her fevered brain. Am I not the subject
of slander! Am I not contaminated by associations? Has not society
sought to clothe me with shame? Truth bends before falsehood, and
virtue withers under the rust of slandering tongues. Again a storm
rises up before her, and she feels the poisoned arrow piercing deep
into her heart. Am I not living under the very roof that will confirm
the slanders of mine enemies? she asks herself. And the answer rings
back in confirmation upon her too sensitive ears, and fastens itself in
her feelings like a reptile with deadly fangs. No; she is not yet free
from her enemies. They have the power of falsifying her to her lover.
The thought fills her bosom with sad emotions. Strong in the
consciousness of her virtue, she feels how weak she is in the walks of
the worldly. Her persecutors are guilty, but being all-powerful may
seek in still further damaging her character, a means of shielding
themselves from merited retribution. It is the natural expedient of bad
men in power to fasten crime upon the weak they have injured.
Only a few days have to elapse, then, and Maria will be face to face
with him in whom her fondest hopes have found refuge; but even in those
few days it will be our duty to show how much injury may be inflicted
upon the weak by the powerful.
The old Antiquary observes the change that has come so suddenly over
Maria’s feelings, but his entreaties fail to elicit the cause. Shall
she return to the house made doubtful by its frail occupants; or shall
she crave the jailer’s permission to let her remain and share her
father’s cell? Ah! solicitude for her father settles the question. The
alternative may increase his apprehensions, and with them his
sufferings. Night comes on; she kisses him, bids him a fond adieu, and
with an aching heart returns to the house that has brought so much
scandal upon her.
On reaching the door she finds the house turned into a bivouac of
revelry; her own chamber is invaded, and young men and women are making
night jubilant over Champagne and cigars. Mr. Keepum and the Hon. Mr.
Snivel are prominent among the carousers; and both are hectic of
dissipation. Shall she flee back to the prison? Shall she go cast
herself at the mercy of the keeper? As she is about following the
thought with the act, she is seized rudely by the arms, dragged into
the scene of carousal, and made the object of coarse jokes. One insists
that she must come forward and drink; another holds an effervescing
glass to her lips; a third says he regards her modesty out of place,
and demands that she drown it with mellowing drinks. The almost
helpless girl shrieks, and struggles to free herself from the grasp of
her enemies. Mr. Snivel, thinking it highly improper that such cries go
free, catches her in his arms, and places his hand over her mouth.
“Caught among queer birds at last,” he says, throwing an insidious wink
at Keepum. “Will flock together, eh?”
As if suddenly invested with herculean strength, Maria hurls the
ruffian from her, and lays him prostrate on the floor. In his fall the
table is overset, and bottles, decanters and sundry cut glass
accompaniments, are spread in a confused mass on the floor. Suddenly
Mr. Keepum extinguishes the lights. This is the signal for a scene of
uproar and confusion we leave the reader to picture in his imagination.
The cry of “murder” is followed quickly by the cry of “watch, watch!”
and when the guardmen appear, which they are not long in doing, it is
seen that the very chivalric gentlemen have taken themselves off-left,
as a prey for the guard, only Maria and three frail females.
Cries, entreaties, and explanations, are all useless with such men as
our guard is composed of. Her clothes are torn, and she is found
rioting in disreputable company. The sergeant of the guard says, “Being
thus disagreeably caught, she must abide the penalty. It may teach you
how to model your morals,” he adds; and straightway, at midnight, she
is dragged to the guard-house, and in spite of her entreaties, locked
up in a cell with the outcast women. “Will you not hear me? will you
not allow an innocent woman to speak in her own behalf? Do, I beg, I
beseech, I implore you-listen but for a minute-render me justice, and
save me from this last step of shame and disgrace,” she appeals to the
sergeant, as the cell door closes upon her.
Mr. Sergeant Stubble, for such is his name, shakes his head in doubt.
“Always just so,” he says, with a shrug of the shoulders: “every one’s
innocent what comes here ’specially women of your sort. The worst
rioters ’come the greatest sentimentalists, and repents most when they
gets locked up-does! You’ll find it a righteous place for reflection,
in there.” Mr. Sergeant Stubble shuts the door, and smothers her cries.