Books: Justice in the By Ways

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"Let no such thoughts enter your mind, Tom," says the affectionate
girl; "divest yourself at once of feelings that can only do you
injury. You have engaged my thoughts during your troubles. Twice I
begged your mother to honor me with an interview. We were humble
people; she condescended at last. But she turned a deaf ear to me
when I appealed to her for your release, merely inquiring if-like
that other jade-I had become enamored of--" Maria pauses, blushing.

"I would like to see my mother," interposes Tom.

"Had I belonged to our grand society, the case had been different,"
resumes Maria.

"Truly, Maria," stammers Tom, "had I supposed there was one in the
world who cared for me, I had been a better man."

"As to that, why we were brought up together, Tom. We knew each
other as children, and what else but respect could I have for you?
One never knows how much others think of them, for the--" Maria
blushes, checks herself, and watches the changes playing over Tom's
countenance. She was about to say the tongue of love was too often
silent.

It must be acknowledged that Maria had, for years, cherished a
passion for Tom. He, however, like many others of his class, was too
stupid to discover it. The girl, too, had been overawed by the
dignity of his mother. Thus, with feelings of pain did she watch the
downward course of one in whose welfare she took a deep interest.

"Very often those for whom we cherish the fondest affections, are
coldest in their demeanor towards us," pursues Maria.

"Can she have thought of me so much as to love me?" Tom questions
within himself; and Maria put an end to the conversation by ringing
the bell, commanding the old servant to hasten dinner. A plate must
be placed at the table for Tom.

The antiquarian, having, as he says, left the young people to
themselves, stands at his counter furbishing up sundry old
engravings, horse-pistols, pieces of coat-of-mail, and two large
scimitars, all of which he has piled together in a heap, and beside
which lay several chapeaus said to have belonged to distinguished
Britishers. Mr. Soloman suddenly makes his appearance in the little
shop, much to Mr. McArthur's surprise. "Say-old man! centurion!" he
exclaims, in a maudlin laugh, "Keepum's in the straps-is, I do
declare; Gadsden and he bought a lot of niggers-a monster drove of
'em, on shares. He wants that trifle of borrowed money-must have it.
Can have it back in a few days."

"Bless me," interrupts the old man, confusedly, "but off my little
things it will be hard to raise it. Times is hard, our people go,
like geese, to the North. They get rid of all their money there, and
their fancy-you know that, Mr. Snivel-is abroad, while they have,
for home, only a love to keep up slavery."

"I thought it would come to that," says Mr. Snivel, facetiously. The
antiquarian seems bewildered, commences offering excuses that rather
involve himself deeper, and finally concludes by pleading for a
delay. Scarce any one would have thought a person of Mr. McArthur's
position, indebted to Mr. Keepum; but so it was. It is very
difficult to tell whose negroes are not mortgaged to Mr. Keepum, how
many mortgages of plantation he has foreclosed, how many high old
families he has reduced to abject poverty, or how many poor but
respectable families he has disgraced. He has a reputation for
loaning money to parents, that he may rob their daughters of that
jewel the world refuses to give them back. And yet our best society
honor him, fawn over him, and bow to him. We so worship the god of
slavery, that our minds are become debased, and yet we seem
unconscious of it. Mr. Keepum did not lend money to the old
antiquarian without a purpose. That purpose, that justice which
accommodates itself to the popular voice, will aid him in gaining.

Mr. Snivel affects a tone of moderation, whispers in the old man's
ear, and says: "Mind you tell the fortune of this girl, Bonard, as I
have directed. Study what I have told you. If she be not the child
of Madame Montford, then no faith can be put in likenesses. I have
got in my possession what goes far to strengthen the suspicions now
rife concerning the fashionable New Yorker."

"There surely is a mystery about this woman, Mr. Snivel, as you say.
She has so many times looked in here to inquire about Mag Munday, a
woman in a curious line of life who came here, got down in the
world, as they all do, and used now and then to get the loan of a
trifle from me to keep her from starvation." (Mr. Snivel says, in
parentheses, he knows all about her.)

"Ha! ha! my old boy," says Mr. Snivel, frisking his fingers through
his light Saxon beard, "I have had this case in hand for some time.
It is strictly a private matter, nevertheless. They are a bad
lot-them New Yorkers, who come here to avoid their little delicate
affairs. I may yet make a good thing out of this, though. As for
that fellow, Mullholland, I intend getting him the whipping post. He
is come to be the associate of gentlemen; men high in office shower
upon him their favors. It is all to propitiate the friendship of
Bonard-I know it." Mr. Snivel concludes hurriedly, and departs into
the street, as our scene changes.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ANNA BONARD SEEKS AN INTERVIEW WITH THE ANTIQUARY.

IT is night. King street seems in a melancholy mood, the blue arch
of heaven is bespangled with twinkling stars, the moon has mounted
her high throne, and her beams, like messengers of love, dance
joyously over the calm waters of the bay, so serenely skirted with
dark woodland. The dull tramp of the guardman's horse now breaks the
stillness; then the measured tread of the heavily-armed patrol, with
which the city swarms at night, echoes and reoches along the narrow
streets. A theatre reeking with the fumes of whiskey and tobacco; a
sombre-looking guard-house, bristling with armed men, who usher
forth to guard the fears of tyranny, or drag in some wretched slave;
a dilapidated "Court House," at the corner, at which lazy-looking
men lounge; a castellated "Work House," so grand without, and so
full of bleeding hearts within; a "Poor House" on crutches, and in
which infirm age and poverty die of treatment that makes the heart
sicken-these are all the public buildings we can boast. Like ominous
mounds, they seem sleeping in the calm and serene night. Ah! we had
almost forgotten the sympathetic old hospital, with its verandas;
the crabbed looking "City Hall," with its port holes; and the
"Citadel," in which, when our youths have learned to fight duels, we
learn them how to fight their way out of the Union. Duelling is our
high art; getting out of the Union is our low. And, too, we have,
and make no small boast that we have, two or three buildings called
"Halls." In these our own supper-eating men riot, our soldiers drill
(soldiering is our presiding genius), and our mob-politicians waste
their spleen against the North. Unlike Boston, towering all bright
and vigorous in the atmosphere of freedom, we have no galleries of
statuary; no conservatories of paintings; no massive edifices of
marble, dedicated to art and science; no princely school-houses,
radiating their light of learning over a peace and justice-loving
community; no majestic exchange, of granite and polished marble, so
emblematic of a thrifty commerce;--we have no regal "State House" on
the lofty hill, no glittering colleges everywhere striking the eye.
The god of slavery-the god we worship, has no use for such temples;
public libraries are his prison; his civilization is like a dull
dead march; he is the enemy of his own heart, vitiating and making
drear whatever he touches. He wages war on art, science,
civilization! he trembles at the sight of temples reared for the
enlightening of the masses. Tyranny is his law, a cotton-bag his
judgment-seat. But we pride ourselves that we are a respectable
people-what more would you have us?

The night is chilly without, in the fire-place of the antiquary's
back parlor there burns a scanty wood fire. Tor has eaten his supper
and retired to a little closet-like room overhead, where, in bed, he
muses over what fell from Maria's lips, in their interview. Did she
really cherish a passion for him? had her solicitude in years past
something more than friendship in it? what did she mean? He was not
one of those whose place in a woman's heart could never be supplied.
How would an alliance with Maria affect his mother's dignity? All
these things Tom evolves over and over in his mind. In point of
position, a mechanic's daughter was not far removed from the slave;
a mechanic's daughter was viewed only as a good object of seduction
for some nice young gentleman. Antiquarians might get a few bows of
planter's sons, the legal gentry, and cotton brokers (these make up
our aristocracy), but practically no one would think of admitting
them into decent society. They, of right, belong to that vulgar herd
that live by labor at which the slave can be employed. To be
anything in the eyes of good society, you must only live upon the
earnings of slaves.

"Why," says Tom, "should I consult the dignity of a mother who
discards me? The love of this lone daughter of the antiquary, this
girl who strives to know my wants, and to promote my welfare, rises
superior to all. I will away with such thoughts! I will be a man!
Maria, with eager eye and thoughtful countenance, sits at the little
antique centre-table, reading Longfellow's Evangeline, by the pale
light of a candle. A lurid glare is shed over the cavern-like place.
The reflection plays curiously upon the corrugated features of the
old man, who, his favorite cat at his side, reclines on a stubby
little sofa, drawn well up to the fire. The poet would not select
Maria as his ideal of female loveliness; and yet there is a touching
modesty in her demeanor, a sweet smile ever playing over her
countenance, an artlessness in her conversation that more than makes
up for the want of those charms novel writers are pleased to call
transcendent. "Father!" she says, pausing, "some one knocks at the
outer door." The old man starts and listens, then hastens to open
it. There stands before him the figure of a strange female, veiled.
"I am glad to find you, old man. Be not suspicious of my coming at
this hour, for my mission is a strange one." The old man's crooked
eyes flash, his deep curling lip quivers, his hand vibrates the
candle he holds before him. "If on a mission to do nobody harm," he
responds, "then you are welcome." "You will pardon me; I have seen
you before. You have wished me well," she whispers in a musical
voice. Gracefully she raises her veil over her Spanish hood, and
advances cautiously, as the old man closes the door behind her. Then
she uncovers her head, nervously. The white, jewelled fingers of her
right hand, so delicate and tapering, wander over and smooth her
silky black hair, that falls in waves over her Ion-like brow. How
exquisite those features just revealed; how full of soul those
flashing black eyes; her dress, how chaste! "They call me Anna
Bonard," she speaks, timorously, "you may know me?--"

"Oh, I know you well," interrupts the old man, "your beauty has made
you known. What more would you have?"

"Something that will make me happy. Old man, I am unhappy. Tell me,
if you have the power, who I am. Am I an orphan, as has been told
me; or have I parents yet living, affluent, and high in society? Do
they seek me and cannot find me? Oh! let the fates speak, old man,
for this world has given me nothing but pain and shame. Am I--" she
pauses, her eyes wander to the floor, her cheeks crimson, she seizes
the old man by the hand, and her bosom heaves as if a fierce passion
had just been kindled within it.

The old man preserves his equanimity, says he has a fortune to tell
her. Fortunes are best told at midnight. The stars, too, let out
their secrets more willingly when the night-king rules. He bids her
follow him, and totters back to the little parlor. With a wise air,
he bids her be seated on the sofa, saying he never mistakes maidens
when they call at this hour.

Maria, who rose from the table at the entrance of the stranger,
bows, shuts her book mechanically, and retires. Can there be another
face so lovely? she questions within herself, as she pauses to
contemplate the stranger ere she disappears. The antiquary draws a
chair and seats himself beside Anna. "Thy life and destiny," he
says, fretting his bony fingers over the crown of his wig. "Blessed
is the will of providence that permits us to know the secrets of
destiny. Give me your hand, fair lady." Like a philosopher in deep
study, he wipes and adjusts his spectacles, then takes her right
hand and commences reading its lines. "Your history is an uncommon
one--"

"Yes," interrupts the girl, "mine has been a chequered life."

"You have seen sorrow enough, but will see more. You come of good
parents; but, ah!--there is a mystery shrouding your birth." ("And
that mystery," interposes the girl, "I want to have explained.")
"There will come a woman to reclaim you-a woman in high life; but
she will come too late--" (The girl pales and trembles.) "Yes,"
pursues the old man, looking more studiously at her hand, "she will
come too late." You will have admirers, and even suitors; but they
will only betray you, and in the end you will die of trouble. Ah!
there is a line that had escaped me. You may avert this dark
destiny-yes, you may escape the end that fate has ordained for you.
In neglect you came up, the companion of a man you think true to
you. But he is not true to you. Watch him, follow him-you will yet
find him out. Ha! ha! ha! these men are not to be trusted, my dear.
There is but one man who really loves you. He is an old man, a man
of station. He is your only true friend. I here see it marked." He
crosses her hand, and says there can be no mistaking it. "With that
man, fair girl, you may escape the dark destiny. But, above all
things, do not treat him coldly. And here I see by the sign that
Anna Bonard is not your name. The name was given you by a wizard."

"You are right, old man," speaks Anna, raising thoughtfully her
great black eyes, as the antiquary pauses and watches each change of
her countenance; "that name was given me by Hag Zogbaum, when I was
a child in her den, in New York, and when no one cared for me. What
my right name was has now slipped my memory. I was indeed a wretched
child, and know little of myself."

"Was it Munday?" inquires the old man. Scarce has he lisped the name
before she catches it up and repeats it, incoherently, "Munday!
Monday! Munday!" her eyes flash with anxiety. "Ah, I remember now. I
was called Anna Munday by Mother Bridges. I lived with her before I
got to the den of Hag Zogbaum. And Mother Bridges sold apples at a
stand at the corner of a street, on West street. It seems like a
dream to me now. I do not want to recall those dark days of my
childhood. Have you not some revelation to make respecting my
parents?" The old man says the signs will not aid him further. "On
my arm," she pursues, baring her white, polished arm, "there is a
mark. I know not who imprinted it there. See, old man." The old man
sees high up on her right arm two hearts and a broken anchor,
impressed with India ink blue and red. "Yes," repeats the antiquary,
viewing it studiously, "but it gives out no history. If you could
remember who put it there." Of that she has no recollection. The old
man cannot relieve her anxiety, and arranging her hood she bids him
good night, forces a piece of gold into his hand, and seeks her
home, disappointed.

The antiquary's predictions were founded on what Mr. Soloman Snivel
had told him, and that gentleman got what he knew of Anna's history
from George Mullholland. To this, however, he added what suggestions
his suspicions gave rise to. The similarity of likeness between Anna
and Madame Montford was striking; Madame Montford's mysterious
searches and inquiries for the woman Monday had something of deep
import in them. Mag Munday's strange disappearance from Charleston,
and her previous importuning for the old dress left in pawn with
McArthur, were not to be overlooked. These things taken together,
and Mr. Snivel saw a case there could be no mistaking. That case
became stronger when his fashionable friend engaged his services to
trace out what had become of the woman Mag Munday, and to further
ascertain what the girl Anna Bonard knew of her own history.

CHAPTER XIX.

A SECRET INTERVIEW.

WHILE the scene we have related in the foregoing chapter was being
enacted, there might be seen pacing the great colonnade of the
Charleston hotel, the tall figure of a man wrapped in a massive
talma. Heedless of the throng of drinkers gathered in the spacious
bar-room, making the very air echo with their revelry, he pauses
every few moments, watches intently up and then down Meeting street,
now apparently contemplating the twinkling stars, then turning as if
disappointed, and resuming his sallies. "He will not come to night,"
he mutters, as he pauses at the "Ladies' door," then turns and rings
the bell. The well dressed and highly-perfumed servant who guards
the door, admits him with a scrutinizing eye. "Beg pardon," he says,
with a mechanical bow. He recognizes the stranger, bows, and motions
his hands. "Twice," continues the servant, "she has sent a messenger
to inquire of your coming." The figure in the talma answers with a
bow, slips something into the hand of the servant, passes softly up
the great stairs, and is soon lost to sight. In another minute he
enters, without knocking, a spacious parlor, decorated and furnished
most sumptuously. "How impatiently I have waited your coming,"
whispers, cautiously, a richly-dressed lady, as she rises from a
velvet covered lounge, on which she had reclined, and extends her
hand to welcome him. "Madame, your most obedient," returns the man,
bowing and holding her delicate hand in his. "You have something of
importance,--something to relieve my mind?" she inquires, watching
his lips, trembling, and in anxiety. "Nothing definite," he replies,
touching her gently on the arm, as she begs him to be seated in the
great arm-chair. He lays aside his talma, places his gloves on the
centre-table, which is heaped with an infinite variety of
delicately-enveloped missives and cards, all indicative of her
position in fashionable society. "I may say, Madame, that I
sympathize with you in your anxiety; but as yet I have discovered
nothing to relieve it." Madame sighs, and draws her chair near him,
in silence. "That she is the woman you seek I cannot doubt. While on
the Neck, I penetrated the shanty of one Thompson, a poor
mechanic-our white mechanics, you see, are very poor, and not much
thought of-who had known her, given her a shelter, and several times
saved her from starvation. Then she left the neighborhood and took
to living with a poor wretch of a shoemaker."

"Poor creature," interrupts Madame Montford, for it is she whom Mr.
Snivel addresses. "If she be dead-oh, dear! That will be the end. I
never shall know what became of that child. And to die ignorant of
its fate will--" Madame pauses, her color changes, she seems seized
with some violent emotion. Mr. Snivel perceives her agitation, and
begs she will remain calm. "If that child had been my own," she
resumes, "the responsibility had not weighed heavier on my
conscience. Wealth, position, the pleasures of society-all sink into
insignificance when compared with my anxiety for the fate of that
child. It is like an arrow piercing my heart, like a phantom
haunting me in my dreams, like an evil spirit waking me at night to
tell me I shall die an unhappy woman for having neglected one I was
bound by the commands of God to protect-to save, perhaps, from a
life of shame." She lets fall the satin folds of her dress, buries
her face in her hands, and gives vent to her tears in loud sobs. Mr.
Snivel contemplates her agitation with unmoved muscle. To him it is
a true index to the sequel. "If you will pardon me, Madame," he
continues, "as I was about to say of this miserable shoemaker, he
took to drink, as all our white mechanics do, and then used to abuse
her. We don't think anything of these people, you see, who after
giving themselves up to whiskey, die in the poor house, a terrible
death. This shoemaker, of whom I speak, died, and she was turned
into the streets by her landlord, and that sent her to living with a
'yellow fellow,' as we call them. Soon after this she died-so report
has it. We never know much, you see, about these common people. They
are a sort of trash we can make nothing of, and they get terribly
low now and then." Madame Montford's swelling breast heaves, her
countenance wears an air of melancholy; again she nervously lays
aside the cloud-like skirts of her brocade dress. "Have you not,"
she inquires, fretting her jewelled fingers and displaying the
massive gold bracelets that clasp her wrists, "some stronger
evidence of her death?" Mr. Snivel says he has none but what he
gathered from the negroes and poor mechanics, who live in the
by-lanes of the city. There is little dependence, however, to be
placed in such reports. Madame, with an air of composure, rises from
her chair, and paces twice or thrice across the room, seemingly in
deep study. "Something," she speaks, stopping suddenly in one of
her sallies--"something (I do not know what it is) tells me she yet
lives: that this is the child we see, living an abandoned life."

"As I was going on to say, Madame," pursues Mr. Snivel, with great
blandness of manner, "when our white trash get to living with our
negroes they are as well as dead. One never knows what comes of them
after that. Being always ready to do a bit of a good turn, as you
know, I looked in at Sam Wiley's cabin. Sam Wiley is a negro of some
respectability, and generally has an eye to what becomes of these
white wretches. I don't-I assure you I don't, Madame-look into these
places except on professional business. Sam, after making inquiry
among his neighbors-our colored population view these people with no
very good opinion, when they get down in the world-said he thought
she had found her way through the gates of the poor man's
graveyard."

"Poor man's graveyard!" repeats Madame Montford, again resuming her
chair.

"Exactly! We have to distinguish between people of position and
those white mechanics who come here from the North, get down in the
world, and then die. We can't sell this sort of people, you see. No
keeping their morals straight without you can. However, this is not
to the point. (Mr. Solomon Snivel keeps his eyes intently fixed upon
the lady.)

"I sought out the old Sexton, a stupid old cove enough. He had
neither names on his record nor graves that answered the purpose. In
a legal sense, Madame, this would not be valid testimony, for this
old cove being only too glad to get rid of our poor, and the fees
into his pocket, is not very particular about names. If it were one
of our 'first families,' the old fellow would be so obsequious about
having the name down square--"

Mr. Snivel frets his fingers through his beard, and bows with an
easy grace.

"Our first families!" repeats Madame Montford.

"Yes, indeed! He is extremely correct over their funerals. They are
of a fashionable sort, you see. Well, while I was musing over the
decaying dead, and the distinction between poor dead and rich dead,
there came along one Graves, a sort of wayward, half simpleton, who
goes about among churchyards, makes graves a study, knows where
every one who has died for the last century is tucked away, and is
worth six sextons at pointing out graves. He never knows anything
about the living, for the living, he says, won't let him live; and
that being the case, he only wants to keep up his acquaintance with
the dead. He never has a hat to his head, nor a shoe to his foot;
and where, and how he lives, no one can tell. He has been at the
whipping-post a dozen times or more, but I'm not so sure that the
poor wretch ever did anything to merit such punishment. Just as the
crabbed old sexton was going to drive him out of the gate with a big
stick, I says, more in the way of a joke than anything else:
'Graves, come here!--I want a word or two with you.' He came up,
looking shy and suspicious, and saying he wasn't going to harm
anybody, but there was some fresh graves he was thinking over."

"Some fresh graves!" repeats Madame Montford, nervously.

"Bless you!--a very common thing," rejoins Mr. Snivel, with a bow.
"Well, this lean simpleton said they (the graves) were made while he
was sick. That being the case, he was deprived-and he lamented it
bitterly-of being present at the funerals, and getting the names of
the deceased. He is a great favorite with the grave-digger, lends
him a willing hand on all occasions, and is extremely useful when
the yellow fever rages. But to the sexton he is a perfect pest, for
if a grave be made during his absence he will importune until he get
the name of the departed. 'Graves,' says I, 'where do they bury
these unfortunate women who die off so, here in Charleston?' 'Bless
you, my friend,' says Graves, accompanying his words with an idiotic
laugh, 'why, there's three stacks of them, yonder. They ship them
from New York in lots, poor things; they dies here in droves, poor
things; and we buries them yonder in piles, poor things. They
go-yes, sir, I have thought a deal of this thing-fast through life;
but they dies, and nobody cares for them-you see how they are
buried.' I inquired if he knew all their names. He said of course he
did. If he didn't, nobody else would. In order to try him, I desired
he would show me the grave of Mag Munday. He shook his head, smiled,
muttered the name incoherently, and said he thought it sounded like
a dead name. 'I'll get my thinking right,' he pursued, and
brightening up all at once, his vacant eyes flashed, then he touched
me cunningly on the arm, and with a wink and nod of the head there
was no mistaking, led the way to a great mound located in an obscure
part of the graveyard--"

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