Harrington: A Story of True Love

by William Douglas O'Connor

The noise of life thickened around the party as they passed down Winter street into Washington street, the main avenue of Boston. The street was processional, grotesque, and gay under the moon. Vehicles of all sorts dashed and rattled over the pavement, and passengers were bustling and swarming along the irregular vista of lighted shop windows, under the dark, motley buildings covered with their multitude of golden-lettered signs.

Passing up the crowded thoroughfare, they arrived presently at the Melodeon, where the Anti-Slavery Convention was holding its evening session. It was a hall rented most frequently for concerts and exhibitions of one sort or another, but memorable in history as the church of Theodore Parker. There, on every Sabbath, he shook the hearts of thousands with the sacred and heroic eloquence of those sermons which have passed to shine in pulpit literature with the strong splendors of Taylor and Latimer, and a nobleness and courage all their own.

The hall was full as the party entered, and some one was speaking from the platform. They paused, looking over the dense concourse for seats, and seeing none, were about to try their chance in the gallery above, when a party of five left theirs in the centre of the hall, and going down the aisle at once, they took the vacant places. Harrington had passed in first, and leaning over to Muriel, said in a whisper:

“Did you see your uncle as we came in?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Who was that with him, that looked at you so strangely?”

Harrington turned his head and gazed up to the back of the hall, where Mr. Atkins was sitting, scornfully listening to the speaker. By his side he saw a dark, handsome face, with a moustache, and the face was intently watching him. With a vague thrill he turned again to Muriel.

“I don’t know him,” he whispered.

“It is strange,” she whispered in reply. “I saw by Mr. Atkins’s manner that he was telling that person who we were, and I know by the slight start the stranger gave, and the look he cast at you, that my uncle had mentioned your name, and that the stranger had some interest in you.”

Nothing more was said, but Harrington felt disturbed even to apprehension, though he could not have told why. In a minute or two, looking around again, he saw the stranger still watching him, and saw his eye wander away with a sinister smile. Turning his face resolutely to the platform, Harrington, with another mysterious tremor, tried to recollect if he had ever seen that face before, and unable to recall it, he dismissed it from his thoughts with a strong effort of will, and set himself to listen to the speaker.

Just then, the speaker ended, and sat down, amidst a rushing rustle of the audience, and some slight applause. There was a minute’s intermission, during which Harrington’s eye swept over the multitude, seated in rows around him, and filling the gallery, which extended in a horse-shoe curve around the walls of the oblong hall. Both sexes were about equally represented in the concourse, which was dotted here and there with the dark faces of negroes. The platform was occupied by a number of the anti-slavery leaders, men and women. The chairman, who was leaning from his seat in hasty conference with two or three persons, was the gallant Francis Jackson, a wealthy citizen, who, when the “gentlemen” of Boston had broken up an anti-slavery meeting of women, fifteen years before, opened his house to the outcasts, at the imminent peril of having it razed by the mob. But he was resolved to defend free speech, and in this cause, said he, “let my walls fall if they must: they will appear of little value after their owner shall have been whipped into silence.” Such was the Roman deed, the Roman word, of Francis Jackson. Near him sat Garrison. The light of the chandelier shone full on the bald head and high-featured, dauntless face of the grand Puritan—a face in which blended the austere gentleness of Brewster with the stern integrity and solemn enthusiasm of Vane. Not far distant was the antique and noble countenance of Burleigh, with its long beard and lengths of ringlets giving it the character of some of the heads mediæval painters have imagined for Jesus. An orator he, whose massive and definite logic ran burning with Miltonian sweep, and could burst, when he so chose, in an iron hail of Miltonian invective. By his side, Harrington saw the domed brow and Socratic features of the mighty Theodore, with the lips curling in some rich stroke of whispered wit, which brought a momentary smile to the face of Burleigh. Behind them was the rugged and salient visage of Parker Pillsbury, a man whose speech rode like the Pounder of Bivar, and smote with a flail. Before Harrington’s eye had wandered from him, the chairman rose, announcing a name which was lost in the sudden pour of applause that swept up from the front, and spread from rank to rank with loud cheers, and then at once the whole concourse burst into a surging and tossing uproar of acclamation, as a beautiful patrician figure, dressed in black, came forward on the lighted platform.