Harrington: A Story of True Love

by William Douglas O'Connor

Anticipating a crowd of callers, Muriel, unwilling to see them with this trouble on her mind, gave Patrick orders to admit no one but Wentworth and Captain Fisher, Harrington having sent for the latter.

The Captain arrived about ten o’clock, and his features grew all atwist, and his head all awry, the moment he laid eyes on Harrington. There is no knowing the unimaginable screw he would have got himself into could he have seen the ghastly face the young man had worn the evening before. To-day Harrington was only intensely pallid, and his face was resolute, stern, and calm. While the Captain yet stared at him, and before he could express his astonishment, Harrington bade him sit down, and at once told him the whole story.

The moment he had done, the Captain rose in awful wrath, and began to swear. Such oaths! No spruce-gum imprecations then, but tobacco of every conceivable brand, did the infuriated old seaman pour forth in a steady stream. The army that swore terribly in Flanders, never swore worse than he in his wrath. Lafitte, Atkins, Boston, Boston merchants, kidnappers, slaveholders, and slavery in the abstract and in the concrete, did he shower with curses. Never had the Captain such a backsliding before. Harrington, who perhaps thought of Sterne’s Recording Angel, with his disposition to blot out with tears the record of what Muriel called good sins, let him rip away till, as the man in the play says, he got all the bad stuff out of him, and tumbled into his seat exhausted with his rage.

The interview lasted about an hour, and without result. Harrington had thought it best to let the Captain know what had happened, and did not hope that he could suggest any action, as under the circumstances he could not. Profoundly depressed with the knowledge that Mrs. Eastman’s invincible feeling shut out even the forlorn hope of legal or anti-slavery effort, the old man departed with a self-imposed promise to remain all day on the wharf and watch the Soliman.

Mrs. Eastman’s feeling was indeed invincible. She said nothing, but as they saw her moving about the house like a ghost, they understood from her austere and ashen features that she could not bring her heart to consent to her brother’s public dishonor, and her own related disgrace. The family esprit de corps was mighty in her.

Muriel, meanwhile, thinking that the true disgrace and dishonor would be to have Antony sacrificed to any private feeling, however sacred, was holding busy audience with her teeming brain, as to the duty of disregarding her mother’s feeling, and resolutely taking matters into her own hands. The chief consideration that withheld her decision now, was that the captain of the Soliman might deny, when the writ was served on him, that the man was in his possession, and that then, in the interim of delay, Mr. Atkins would procure a regular warrant, which would be fatal to Antony. Besides, she well knew that the moment the fugitive was brought before a Commissioner, the dauntless Harrington, thoroughly trained in the use of arms, and with the might of ten men in him, would burst into the court-room like a thunderbolt of war, and slay every man that stood between him and the rescue, or be himself slain. There was good blood in the veins of young Muriel—the old red blood of the Achaian women who sent their dear ones to Platea with the cry of “return with your shields or upon them”—the old red blood of the New England women who armed their husbands for Lexington; and strong in her faith of the deathlessness of life, she did not shrink from the thought of his death in such a cause; but still she preferred that every peaceful means of obtaining the end should be employed before the last stern issue should be made.

While she yet debated with herself, Wentworth arrived. A hasty council was at once held between the three, and it was resolved that Harrington should wait on Mr. Atkins, with a proposition to buy Antony at any price within reason.

Accompanied by Wentworth, Harrington at once set out for Long Wharf. It was then nearly noon, and the crowded streets through which they passed were salient and swarming in the vertical splendor. A few minutes’ walk brought them to the place of their destination, and Wentworth agreeing to wait outside, wandered across the street to the shipping, while Harrington turned in to the counting-room.

He paused a moment in the dusky ware-room opening on the street, and surveyed its contents. Amongst other merchandise was visible a pile of dirty cotton-bales, burst here and there with their fullness, and the white staple bulging from the rents. The thick, musty, stifling smell of cotton choked the air of the ware-room. It was the same smell that had stifled the conscience of the merchant, the conscience of his fellows, the conscience of the nation—yes, honor, duty, courage, compassion, manhood, independence, all that was truly American.

Pausing only for a moment, Harrington went up-stairs into the office, and glancing at the clerks by the desks, looked away and saw the merchant sitting with his back to him in the little inner counting-room, and by his side Driscoll, the stevedore. He at once passed forward, noticing, as he entered the counting-room that Driscoll had a twenty-dollar gold piece in his hand. Without thinking anything of this, Harrington nodded to the stevedore, and bowed gravely to Mr. Atkins as the latter turned with a sudden flush and a half scowl toward him.