CHAPTER XXIX.

HELL ON HEAVEN IMPINGING.

As Mr. Parker only preached in the forenoon, they did not go to church again, but after dinner sat together all the afternoon in the library, reading aloud, and talking, and supremely happy.

So the sweet and peaceful day wore slowly on to sunset, and as the declining beams gilded the rich room, the trio sank, as if by mutual consent, into a lapse of silence, and sat enjoying the luxury of the happy hour, and glad in their own society. Mrs. Eastman reclined in a fauteuil, her cheek pensively resting on her hand, and her serene, poetic face musing between its graceful silver tresses on the lovers. The clouds had melted from her mind, and she only thought with tranquil joy of the beautiful change that had come so silently upon her daughter’s life, sundering no tie and marring no relation, and her soul was filled with gratitude to know that the love of her child was anchored on a heart so noble.

Unconscious that she was the subject of such sweet reflection, Muriel sat in reverie, and Harrington, sitting at a little distance, fondly dreamed upon her vision-like beauty. So exquisite in her delicate clear color, with the silken amber tresses rippling low around her cheeks, and the perfection of her form tenderly told by the pale, rose-hued robe, that she touched his imagination with a strange sense of faëry. He was so happy, as he gazed on her, that he could scarcely believe in his happiness. Mixed with his ethereal pleasure in her loveliness, was a dim feeling as of one who had wedded a princess in his dream, and knew that he dreamed, and would awaken soon to find himself unwedded and alone. Strange—strange to think that this surpassing woman was his wife. But it was true; it was indeed reality, and not a dream; it was indeed reality, and it had flooded life with the tranquil ecstasy of heaven.

Gazing upon her in deep abstraction, he became aware that her sweet eyes were fixed upon his face, and saw, by the suffusion on her countenance, as of the rosy color of the morning, that she was conscious of his ardent gaze. Confused a little at being thus detected in his admiration, he started, blushing, and then laughed, as she archly shook her finger at him.

“I caught you,” she said. “Now, John, what were you thinking of?”

“Of you, Muriel. Of our happiness. I am strangely happy to-night. Were not you conscious, and you, mother, of a singular happiness as we all sat here in silence together? The Sabbath peace of the evening was like the peace of heaven.”

They did not answer, but bowed their heads in assent, and lulled by the sweet influences of the hour, remained in silence. It was but a few moments, and the sunset light died from the room; and as it faded away, and the first grey of twilight filled the air, Muriel and Harrington both rose, as if its departure was the dissolution of a spell that had held them, and approached each other with loving faces and outstretched arms.

They were within a yard’s distance, when suddenly the door-bell rang with such a violent and furious clanging clatter, that they stood still. It was like the scream of a fury warning them asunder. The love-look dropped from their faces, and their arms fell. Only a second’s pause, and again the bell rang and rang and rang, clashing and clanging without intermission, like the startling peal of an alarum from a chamber where murder was being done, and the struggling victim had seized the bell-rope. Utterly amazed at this frightful clamor, and wondering who could be ringing in such a manner as this, they stood with a shock in their blood, blankly gazing at each other. Suddenly they recovered, as Mrs. Eastman flew past them with an indignant face, and flung open the library door.

“Who dares”—

She stopped in the midst of her incensed exclamation, for at that moment the hall-door was opened, and with a wild clatter of angry words from Patrick below, something bounced in and up-stairs, and rushed panting to fall before them.

It was Tugmutton. They gazed upon him in utter amazement. He fell prone, then rose suddenly on his knees as if a spring in the floor had shot him up, and knelt gasping and speechless before them, a fat open-mouthed face of ashen fright glaring with white saucer-eyes upon them from its great shocks of wool, and the two huge hands lifted like the paws of a begging dog, in an agony of supplication. For a moment, they looked at him astounded. Suddenly Harrington saw his cap lying on the floor—staggered back with a reeling brain, dashed forward with a spring up to Roux’s room, and flung open the door.

Roux was lying on the bed asleep, and did not waken. For an instant Harrington’s eye swept the chamber, then became fixed. He heard the voices down-stairs. He heard the regular breathings of the sleeping man. He heard the dinning of his own brain. Then all seemed to grow still, and with a dreadful feeling in his mind, he slowly turned and went down.

Tall, erect, terrible, white as death, he entered the library. They gazed upon his face with draining eyes. He looked at them for a moment in silence. The boy still knelt gasping and shuddering on the floor. But they were motionless—motionless as marble.

“Mother,” His voice was clear and low. He paused. “Mother—collect yourself. Be calm. Has he told you?”

There was silence, intense and awful. He did not look at his wife, but he felt that she turned away. He looked only at the pallid face gazing at him with parted lips and mute eyes between its silver tresses, as if it had turned to stone. Suddenly her voice rang.

“He has not told me. Speak! I can bear anything but this.”

“Mother, the poor wanderer to whom you gave shelter is gone. He went out with the boy. He has been kidnapped in the streets of Boston.”

She stood for a moment, ghastly, rigid, immovable. Suddenly a low cry wailed from her lips and she fell. He sprang and caught her, lifted her in his arms and bore her to a couch. Muriel glanced from the room. Flying to the windows, he flung them open to let in the fresh air. Then, back to the lady in her swoon, and kneeling beside her, his quick hands snapped the silken strings of her bodice, unclasped her belt, and loosened her clothes. The boy softly sank on his face, and lay gasping on the floor.

A light touch: Muriel, calm, self-possessed, pale, was beside him. He took from her hands the glass of water, and sprinkled the pallid face, while she drenched her handkerchief with cologne and bathed the still brow and nostrils. The evening wind blew freshly into the room, and gradually a quiver of life came to the marble features. Harrington silently pointed to the loosened bodice, moved away, and stood with his brow resting on his hand.

Minute after minute passed on and all was silent save the fainter gaspings of the boy. Gradually, low rustling movements and faint murmurs, mixed with the sweet and soothing whispers of Muriel, came to him from the couch. He remained motionless, his mind blank and cold. In a minute or two Muriel spoke to him.

“She has recovered, John.”

His hand fell from his brow as he heard her words, and lifting his white face, he moved noiselessly across the room, closed the windows, and came to the pale lady’s side.

“Mother,” he said, kneeling by her, and tenderly folding her in his arms, “I would not have told you if I could have kept it from you.”

“Hush!” she murmured. “You did well. It was terrible, but I had to know it. Come, I am ready now for the rest. Bring Charles here, and let me know all. I will lie here and listen. Do not fear. I can bear everything now.”

Rising to his feet, he crossed the room, lifted the boy from the floor as lightly as though he were a baby, and held him face to face at arms’ length before him. The hapless Tugmutton, dangling broad-limbed and big-footed between the strong supporting hands, stared with blobber visage, ashen with fright and grief, and with mouth, eyes, and nostrils wildly open, into the white face smiling into his, with a smile gentle even in its ghastliness.

“Charles,” said Harrington, in a low, consoling voice, “don’t be frightened, poor boy. See, I am not angry with you. I feel badly for what has happened, but I am not angry with you, Charles.”

The miserable Tugmutton, inert in his suspension, opened his big mouth wide, and burst into a roar of tears.

“My gosh! Mr. Harrington,” he howled, amidst his grief, “there aint a more mis’able young nigger this side of Jordan than me. He’s took off, and I’m the guilty party, Mr. Harrington, when I didn’t mean it. Oh, Lord A’mighty, I can’t provide for that family never no more, and the man that won’t provide for his family, is just wus than an infidel, and that’s in the Holy Bible, Mr. Harrington, and father’s the victim of misplaced confidence, and oh, my gosh, I wish I was in Canada, as sure as you’re born.”

With which outburst, the wretched Tugmutton let his head droop on the blue-striped shirt which covered his fat chest, and with his grey-jacketed, short fat arms hanging over Harrington’s hands, and his grey-trowsered, short broad legs dangling motionless, he sobbed as if his big heart was breaking. Harrington, filled with compassion for his uncouth sorrow, took him in his arms like an infant, and held him still, not even smiling at the odd ideas and odd phrases which he had poured forth, and which, even in that painful hour, might well have moved a smile.

“Hush, Charles,” murmured the young man. “Don’t cry any more. Come, I want you to tell us all that has happened. I want you to tell the whole truth, and perhaps we can find Antony again.”

At this, Tugmutton started in his arms, and stopped crying instantly.

“Let me down, Mr. Harrington, let me down,” he excitedly vociferated, wriggling like a conger eel from Harrington’s hold, and dumping upon the floor. “My gosh! if you’ll on’y find that Antony, I’ll tell you every word of the truth and the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.”

Harrington pushed a chair up to the couch for Muriel, and seating himself in another, drew the boy near him, and at once, in rapid and excited tones, Tugmutton began his confession, telling everything even to the most irrelevant details.

It appeared from what he said that his empire over Roux had extended also over Antony, and that the latter, completely subjugated by his grand airs and assumption of superior knowledge, had in his simplicity come to look upon him as one of the most powerful of his guardians. In this mood, Tugmutton had regaled him with glowing accounts of the attractions of the city, every inch of which, from Roxbury Line to Salutation Alley, and further in all directions, was as familiar to the Bedouin feet of the fat Puck as his own abode in Southac street. Especially had he dwelt upon the glories of Boston Common, and that day he had expatiated upon them till Antony, filled with wonderment, almost imagined the place some unheard of Eden. Roux falling asleep in the afternoon, Tugmutton had continued his ecstatic panegyric on the Common, and finally wound up by proposing a short tour to that romantic region during the repose of his father. After some demurring on the part of Antony, and considerable domineering on that of Tugmutton, the former yielded, and they stole softly down-stairs and out at the street door, while their hosts were in the library. Reaching the Common, rich in the sunset light, and its malls filled with gaily-dressed promenaders, the enchanted Antony wandered with his pigmy guide across the inclosure, and emerged with him on the Park street corner. There they stood on the pavement, while Tugmutton descanted on the magnificence of the Park street church, with especial reference to the height of the steeple, loftiness of spire being in his view the chief end and crowning perfection of all church architecture. As he was talking, a hack drove up and stood at a little distance from them, and at the same time his eye fell upon a gentleman standing near a side entrance of the church, and smilingly beckoning to him. A little astonished at first, and then a little flattered at this affability, he turned with a lofty and vain-glorious air to Antony, as much as to say, you see the immense consideration paid me by the aristocracy, and bidding him wait there a moment, crossed the street to the stranger, who, with a smiling nod, retreated into the passage, which happened to be open. Thither Tugmutton followed him. What the stranger said, his subsequent fright drove out of his memory, and he could only recollect that he held him lightly by the arm as he spoke to him; but in the midst of the interview, happening to glance around, he saw a man rush, pushing Antony before him, crowd him into the hack, and spring in after him, while the vehicle rattled away down Winter street. Of course Tugmutton sprang to follow, but the stranger seized him by the throat, and shook him so that he could neither speak nor cry. Released presently, the wretched boy rushed into the street, and after the carriage. But it was out of sight, and running back to the church, the stranger was gone. Too much horrified to make any outcry, Tugmutton had instantly run with all his speed back to Temple street, where he had arrived as we have related.

All this, involving details which under ordinary circumstances he would have suppressed as disgraceful to himself, but which he now frankly disclosed in the full conviction that a knowledge of the entire truth would enable Harrington to recapture Antony from the kidnappers, Tugmutton poured forth in his own way to his pale and silent auditors, and ending, sat eagerly staring first at one and then the other, as wondering what was to be done now that he had told all.

“Charles,” said Harrington, “what kind of a looking man was it you saw seize Antony?”

“My gosh! it was so quick that I scase got a sight of him, Mr. Harrington,” returned Tugmutton, staring into the white face of his questioner. “I on’y saw he had on a straw hat an’ a sorter light coat, an’ was tanned consid’ble.”

“Tanned,” mused Harrington. “That must have been the captain of the Soliman.”

He was right in his conviction. It was Bangham.

“I see how it was done,” he pursued. “They were together, and came on Antony and Charles standing there. One hailed the carriage—probably some passing hack—the other decoyed the boy away to prevent his outcries—and the rest we know. O Boston, Boston! I loved you once—every stone in your pavement was dear to me; but I sicken of you now, and I shall never walk your streets with joy again! A poor, helpless, harmless man—a fugitive from the worst tyranny that deforms the world—and in the streets of this free city, in open daylight, on the Sabbath, with a crowd standing around, he can be stolen, as a horse could not be stolen, and not one person lifts a hand to prevent it, or asks why! Not one—not one!”

He covered his burning eyes with his hand, and sat still. The doleful boy gazed piteously at the pale, mute faces of the two ladies, his fat, ashen visage quivering with the feeling that he had done a mischief which not even Harrington could undo.

“John.” It was Mrs. Eastman that spoke. “You have not asked who the man was that decoyed Charles.”

He looked with mortal sadness into her agitated face.

“Need I ask, mother?” he drearily replied. “A gentleman. It was not Lafitte, for him Charles knows. There is but one other person that wears the attire of a gentleman who could be a party to this deed.”

The tears flowed on her face, and as they flowed she wiped them away.

“You are right,” she faltered. “It is the last, the worst disgrace I can ever know. A brother of my own blood, the son of the mother that bore me—and with his own hands, not preserving even the miserable decorum of an agent, with his own hands he commits this crime. It almost kills me to think of it.”

“John,” said Muriel, “listen to me.”

He started from his lethargy of sorrow, and gazed into her face. She was pale, collected, calm; her eyes firm and clear, and her voice and manner full of quiet energy.

“John,” she pursued, “we must not waste these hours. All is not lost yet. We have the clues to this infamy in our hands. That man has no doubt been taken on board the Soliman. You must at once procure a writ of habeas corpus and get”—

She paused, arrested by the strange and ghastly smile that changed his countenance.

“I have thought of it,” he said. “If it were not for this Fugitive Slave Law, we might have a chance of success. But see—perjury would be nothing to the men that could do this deed. When the writ is served on them, they will swear that the man is not in their possession. Then a warrant will be procured for his arrest, and after a pretended search, he will be found, dragged before a commissioner, and sent into slavery. And if I get a writ, who will I get to serve it? From the sheriff to the lowest catchpoll is there one of them that can be depended upon to do his duty in such a case? Justice is drugged with slavery. Law winks at kidnapping.”

She looked at him with a still face, touched for a moment by what he said, then refluent to its purpose.

“It must be tried, nevertheless,” she said firmly. “You yourself, John, can serve the writ, or accompany the officer.”

He gazed at her with eyes that filled with tears, as they wandered from her countenance to her mother’s. Mrs. Eastman shrank and covered her face with her hands. In an instant Muriel comprehended the deeper reason which had made him hopeless of a rescue, and with a feeling as nearly like despairing agony as her nature, organized for faith and hope and joy, could feel, she sank back in her chair.

“Muriel,” said he, in a solemn voice, “I have thought of all, and I see no way open to us. Under other circumstances, I would get the writ, and though he probably could not be found, endeavor to save this man. But I cannot take the first step without involving Lemuel Atkins. Can I do it? Think how mother feels this already. Think how she would feel it then. Think of the position we are in.”

“Tell me, John, tell me,” faltered Mrs. Eastman, weeping, “tell me what I ought to do. Ought I to have this made public? What would you do if he were your brother, as he is mine?”

“Mother,” said he, solemnly, “I cannot guide you. Were he my brother, though it might break my heart to do it, I would never keep this wrong secret and silent. But my conscience cannot give the law to yours.”

“I cannot do it,” she sobbed. “You will despise me, but I cannot bear to think of the disgrace my consent would bring upon him.”

“Despise you?” he quickly answered. “Never. Your feeling is sacred to me. I appreciate it. I respect it.”

“At least,” she cried, “give me time to think. Let me first go to him—let me implore him to undo what he has done. He does not know that the man was sheltered here. Oh, perhaps I can prevail with him. Think of the shame it will be one day to his wife and children. When this slavery madness ends, as it may soon, think of the awful shame his family will feel if this act lives against him. How can I bear to have it brought on them! At least for their sake let me try every other effort, and then if I fail, perhaps”—

She faltered—her voice choked with emotion. She could not bring herself to say, that perhaps she would consent to publish her brother’s shame, and bring the fury of anti-slavery rebuke, and the scorn of the coming years of freedom upon him.

They sat in silence thinking with hopeless sadness of the terrible cloud that had rushed so suddenly upon their peaceful and happy day, and the twilight began to darken around them. Mrs. Eastman rose.

“I will go at once to see him,” she said.

“Let me attend you,” said Harrington, rising.

“No, John. Thank you. I will go alone,” she replied, and left the room.

“You must stay here, Charles,” said Harrington, turning to Tugmutton. “On no account must you go to your father after what has happened, until we decide what to do.”

Tugmutton said nothing, but sat down on a low stool in a corner of the room, and leaned against the wall in deep despondency.

“And what are we to do, Muriel?” murmured Harrington. “How are we to tell Roux of this? It will kill him. Even now, perhaps he is wondering where his brother is. Poor, poor man! Oh, misery, misery!”

He turned away and walked the dim library with an aching heart. Muriel, silent, her mind in its fullest activity, was vainly striving to think of some plan by which this sad stroke of fortune could be retrieved. Presently, Harrington rang for lights, and Patrick came in and lighted the chandelier, whose moony globes of ground glass filled the library with mellow radiance.

Alone again, Harrington turned to Muriel; she rose from her seat, and gliding swiftly toward him, clasped him in her arms. Holding her to him, he gazed, sadly smiling, into her face, exquisite in its pale beauty.

“Beloved,” he murmured mournfully, “it is the first sorrow of our wedded life.”

“The first,” she calmly answered. “But, oh, my husband, let us be grateful that it is a sorrow that we feel for others, and not for ourselves.”

The tears ran down his face, and he fondly bent his head and pressed his lips to her forehead.

“We were so happy,” he faltered. “Never was my spirit lulled in so deep and sweet a happiness as when this dreadful tidings rushed upon me. Strange, strange to think this heavenly day should end thus, in this blackness of darkness. It quite unmans me.”

Folded in each other’s arms, they remained for a little while in silence, while his agitation gradually subsided into sorrowful calm.

“Do you remember, Muriel,” he resumed, “the description in the last chapter of the Revelations of St. John, of the heavenly city where there is no night, nor sun, nor moon, but the glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof? And without, you remember, the Evangelist says is the horrible abode of the wicked. You remember?”

“Yes, I remember,” she answered, gazing into his abstracted and sorrowing face.

“When I was a boy,” he continued, “I used to have a dream, unspeakably awful, derived, I think from my reading of that part of the Revelations. In my dream, I was in heaven—a strangely beautiful dim land, filled with a still, mystic glory. I cannot tell you the ineffable hush that pervaded the happy region, and there I wandered tranced in an indescribable tranquil ecstasy. But in this dream, which I frequently had, I always came to a spot which seemed the confines of the place. The glory of the region ran to a point there, in a shape like the apex of a triangle, and on either side a railing of rich fretted gold separated it from the region beyond. Suddenly, as I stood, a dreadful perception of the outer region would overwhelm me. I saw a horrid realm of black and grisly twilight, strangely mixed with black darkness—I heard the savage baying of dogs, the confused jargon of unhuman blasphemies and demon laughter, and the hideous faces of devils gnashed at me through the golden pales. It is impossible to tell you the ghastly affright that suddenly struck through my ecstasy when this came to me, nor can I say how fearfully it was intensified by the contrast between the ecstatic stillness and glory of the place, and the hideous and discordant sights and sounds beyond. I always awoke in horror, drenched with perspiration, and afraid to be alone in the darkness.”

“What a dreadful dream?” she murmured, shivering slightly, and clinging a little closer to him.

“Yes,” he responded, his voice low, and his white face frigidly fixed on vacancy. “Yes. It was like a spiritual symbol. And now it has come to me.”

His countenance suddenly grew livid and convulsed with writhing anguish, and dark circles started out around his tear-filled eyes.

“It has come to me,” he gasped, tremulously, shaken with strong agony. “I have wandered to the confines of my happy heaven of love, and through the glory and the stillness, and through my sacred ecstasy, the grisly land of slavery strikes upon me, with its jargonic blasphemies and revelries of hate, the gnashing of its devils, and the baying of the dogs that hunt men. It has come to me. The dream of my boyhood was its true symbol. A dreadful dream of reality, and I wake from it in despair and agony and horror.”

His low voice shuddered into silence, and convulsed through all his frame, he tore himself from her, and covered his face with his hands. Sad as she had never been before, she turned away and stood in her wonted attitude, her clasped hands drooping before her, and her head bent upon her bosom. Squatting on his stool in the corner of the room, the horrified Tugmutton glared at them, with his white eyes bulging from his blobber face under his great shocks of wool, like some lubber imp of darkness risen to work them bane.

In a few moments Harrington’s hands fell heavily from his face, and agile as lightning, Muriel flashed into his arms, and clung to him, with a smile brilliant and tender as the morning on her impassioned features.

“Oh, my beloved!” she cried, “do not sink from yourself into despair—do not lose the immortal in the mortal! Think of the briefness of this life—think of the endless golden reaches of the life of which all our earthly experience is but a moment. Heaven knows my sympathies are not imperfect; I could die myself—ah, more, I could see you die—to save to a life of human use this poor spirit, whom his fellow spirits, in their incarnate madness, have dragged away from us to wreak their insanity of hate upon. But it is greater pain than my death or yours, to see you mourn his fate with a mourning that forgets the godhood within you. You told me once the divine sentence of the alchemist—‘Heaven hath in it this scene of earth.’ Oh, remember it now—think how brief, how fleeting is this term of grief and wrong—think of the eternal heaven in which the grief and wrong melt away forever, and be sustained and comforted!”

As at the harpings of the young shepherd of Israel, the dark spirit sank from Saul, so at the clear, fervent music of her voice, the agony and horror passed from him, and he grew calm. Fondly and sadly, with the tears still wet upon his cheeks, he gazed into her exalted face, lit with a smile of auroral tenderness.

“You are wise,” he said mournfully, “and I know that my sorrow is weak and unworthy. I sink from my faith—I lose myself in this dark hour of trouble. A poor, helpless, despised, rejected man, more forlorn and wretched than the most loathed outcast—I found him in the friendless streets, I took him to my home, I nourished his feeble life—and they have clutched him from me, and dragged him back to outrage and torment and murder. If it were the act of some solitary ruffian, I could bear it; terrible as it is, I could bear it; but to think that society in all its structure makes it possible for deeds like this to be done! Oh, sleep of civilization! Justice, honor, compassion, love, have you gone from earth forever! Is human brotherhood a Bedlam dream, vanishing from the mind of man, and leaving him to the dark sanity of one life-long mutual murder! Is this civil-suited swarm of sordid devils and furies the vanguard of the new civilization that is to oversweep the world! Let me not think of it—let my sick heart swoon from the misery of it! Oh, that I were dead this night, if death could hide from me this tremendous shame! Better to be dead than stand here, tied hand and foot, unable to lift a finger to prevent the commission of this ghastly outrage. Better death than to live poisoned to my heart’s core with the knowledge that society is one fell league against the weak and poor.”

The words which had begun in sorrow, rose into low tempestuous agony and ended in a tone of heart-broken desolate sadness which language cannot tell. Muriel gazed at him mournfully, and the tears silently welled from her eyes.

“My beloved,” she said in a tremulous voice, sadly smiling as she spoke, “it grieves me more than all other grief, to see you overmastered thus. What can I say to calm you? Alas! that I who love you so deeply, am powerless to lift you from this dread sorrow!”

He looked at her with a spasm of self-control in his sad face, and seemed to struggle into calm.

“Let me not grieve you,” he faltered. “See, it is over. It shall not master me. There: I am strong again. For your sake I will crush it down. I love you—I will not pain you. I will strive to forget it, and be again as in our happy hours of love and peace before this”—

The faltering voice failed, and the mighty struggle to be calm again wrought in his features.

“Courage, courage,” she cried, tenderly smiling upon him. “Courage! All is not ended yet. At worst we can say, with King Francis, that everything is lost but honor. But everything is not lost. We shall devise some means to retrieve this stroke. Oh, my poor mother, if it were not for your unlucky weakness, the victory would not be so difficult! We would sound a blast in Master Lemuel’s ears that would bring down his ambition for kidnapping like Jericho. But there’s no leaven of the Roman in poor mother’s composition, and we are fatally hampered by her feeling.”

“Yes,” said Harrington, mournfully, “the necessity for keeping this matter private is our ruin. I know not what to do, or which way to turn.”

“At all events,” she replied, “let us not despair. Nothing palsies one’s faculties and energies like despair. Come, sit here by me, and let us coolly review our position, and see what we can do.”

She sat down on the couch, and he took his seat by her side.