Harrington: A Story of True Love

by William Douglas O'Connor

She had not gone half a dozen paces, before some one came striding to her side. It was Harrington, and she instantly put her arm in his, with a gesture so sudden and joyous, that the young man thrilled.

“I am so glad you have come,” she said.

Emily had insisted on his leaving her, and attending upon Muriel, Harrington remarked.

“But you are pale,” he pursued, looking into her face, which colored and smiled under his kind and searching eyes.

“And now you are not pale,” he added, laughingly.

Muriel laughed silverly, and told the reason of her momentary agitation, which amused Harrington vastly.

Presently they reached the dingy alley in which Roux lived. It was a corner house, inhabited by several families. A flight of wooden steps led up to the second story, in which Roux had two rooms.

Roux was a white-washer, window-cleaner, boot-black and what not by occupation. He had come up from his little shop in Water street, down in the heart of the city, at the rumor which Tugmutton had brought him, that kidnappers were in town; for he was a fugitive, and since the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law he had never felt safe in Boston, where he had previously passed nearly nine secure years.

He was sitting on an old chair, in an attitude of deep dejection, crooning to his babe, which he held in his arms, with his other two children, a boy and girl, sitting on either knee. The baby was a pretty little boy, with negrine features, clear saffron skin, and glittering dark eyes. Josey, who sat on his right knee, was a slender, bright-eyed, brown-skinned little girl, six years old. Tom, sitting on the other knee, was like his sister, and four years of age. They were both pretty children, neatly dressed in clothes which Muriel and her mother had provided for them. Roux himself was a good-looking negro, athletic in build, dark-complexioned, with short, woolly hair, and heavy eyebrows. He was attired in an old sack coat and blue overalls, specked with white-wash, for he had come up to the house in his working clothes. The room in which he sat had received a touch of his art, as the yellow-washed walls and white-washed ceiling testified. It was a poor, low-browed apartment, but neat and clean, though pervaded by that frowsy odor which one often scents in the dwellings of the poor. The floor was bare. Three or four cheap colored prints hung in veneered frames on the walls. There was a trundle bed in one corner for the children; a small cooking-stove near the fireboard, with an immense deal of gawky funnel zigzagging up to a hole in the wall near the ceiling; a small clock ticking faintly on the mantelpiece, with some gaudy ornaments near it; a table, and half a dozen old-fashioned, second-hand chairs. Behind the family group was an open door, giving a view of another room, with a rag-carpet on the floor, a bureau, and a bed, on which lay, in her clothes, a mulatto woman, Roux’s wife.

Roux ceased his crooning as the broad-limbed, blobber-cheeked squab of a Tugmutton threw open the door, grinning from ear to ear, and lumbered in with the basket, which he deposited in the middle of the floor.