University of Virginia Library

50. CHAPTER L.
HARK FROM THE TOMBS A DOLEFUL SOUND.

IT was decided that Mrs. Dinneford should go with Lehming to find Nestoria,
and furthermore that she should if possible bring the girl back to her
own house, there to hide her until some wiser thing might be done.

The difference between the expressions of these two as they set off on their
errand was something very curious. Lehming, oppressed and cowed by the
illegality of the adventure, had that stealthy, cast-down air which a good man
cannot help wearing when his conscience troubles him. Mrs. Dinneford, on
the contrary, although a thoroughly worthy and fervently well-meaning soul,
felt no inward reprovings whatever. As is the case with most women, she
had little respect for statutes and enactments in themselves, but only so far as
they seemed in every special case to work sweetness and light, and wanted to
evade them whenever they, in her opinion, wrought the contrary. If she realized
at all that her errand was a law-breaking one, she cared little for it.
The idea that she was flying to the rescue of a “lost lamb,” who had fallen
into a pit of sorrows, occupied nearly the whole of her affectionate and impulsive
spirit. So, while her honest face was excited and anxious, it was also eager
and elated and cheerful.

They left the house on foot, with the intention of taking a hack at a stand
some distance away. But they had scarcely shut the door behind them when
a breathless, ragged boy fluttered up the steps, holding forth a letter, which
proved to be for Mrs. Dinneford.

“It is Cousin John's hand,” she said, as she broke open the dirty envelope,
“and it is the very first note he ever wrote me in his life, and something outlandish
must have happened. I do believe Emerson is dead or the sky has
fallen.”

She read, colored, laughed outright, and handed the billet to Lehming.

“What stupid blunder can this be?” exclaimed Lehming in great anxiety
“He says nothing about Nestoria; but she may be there nevertheless. We
must go first to the Tombs,” he added, though mortally afraid of entering that
reputed abode of justice.

They walked on hurriedly, found a hack, and set off for the Tombs. Lehming
was in a state of anxiety which amounted to anguish; his diseased heart
throbbed so painfully that he could not talk.

“Take courage, Walter,” said Mrs. Dinneford cheerfully. “This looks to
me like a providence. It comes at such a critical time that I cannot believe
it to be anything less than an interposition of the Almighty finger. I trust

that it happens for good, and to give us prosperity in our adventure. It is my
nature to believe that an interference is always meant in mercy, until I find
otherwise. We have few chastisements even which are not covert blessings.
That wretched engagement, for instance; the presence of it was alarming and
the departure humiliating; but I do entertain a hope that it has sobered Alice
for good. She was always a child before, blowing soap-bubbles as it were out
of the windows of life, and wondering that the passing realities should break
them. But now she seems a woman. Didn't you observe something noble in
her face and manner and thoughts this morning? I am so glad you saw it!
She was willing in a moment to sacrifice her own plans and feelings for the
sake of little, lovely Nestoria. Dear me! that poor child—that wandering,
hiding child—what do you suppose ails her? Is she crazy? Have terror and
grief discomposed her intellect on one subject? I can't account for her conduct
otherwise. Oh, what a mystery and labyrinth of darknesses this Wetherel
affair, as they call it, has been. Well, we shall come to the issue of it some
day, and find that every step of the tangled path was plain enough, only for
the blindness of our finite sight. Both she and all of us have been guided from
on high, and the Lord's guidance is always marvellous, though it end in a
blessing.”

“I do sincerely pray that it may end well,” sighed Lehming, whose mind
and conscience were more instructed than Mrs. Dinneford's, and saw more
sides to every moral question, and had thornier doubts.

With a great tumping of hearts—beating sullenly and bodefully, like the
drums of an execution—they presently pulled up before the Tombs. The famous
headquarters of the New York correctional system, sombre enough by
reason of its Egyptian architecture, and still more sombre because of its associations
with crime and punishment, looked unusually lowering through a
drizzling rain.

“Wait for me in the hack, and keep your face veiled,” whispered Lehming
as he quitted Mrs. Dinneford.

Then he went trembling up the granite steps and through a heavy, slamming
door, which seemed to close upon him with a gripe. We have not time
to describe the grimy, gloomy great rooms amid which he wandered, nor the
lounging and pert or sullen officials who treated him with elaborate disrespect,
really putting themselves to some trouble about it.

At last he came to John Bowlder; and positively he did not know him.
An officer had to clap the imprisoned philosopher on the shoulder and say,
“Here is your man, sir,” before Lehming could recognize his old friend. It
seemed as if an enchanter's wand must have been waved over Bowlder, or as
if his soul had migrated into some new body. Where was the familiar rosy
face, and where the confident eye and cheery smile? The poor man was as
pale as a sheet, and was ready to sink on the dirty floor with fright, and had
no more joy in his glance than a whipped dog. He was a transfigured creature
in every way; there was nothing left of his usual bigness and bluffness
and blowsiness; there was, so to speak, only a skeleton of the original Bowlder.
He was under examination, it must be understood, and had been stripped
of his outer clothing. To look at him now one would say that he must have
been all outer clothing. The policemen had taken off two coats, two vests,
two pairs of trousers, and more woollen undergarments than I dare tell of.
At last they had peeled him down to his proper outlines in shirt and drawers;
and such ontlines, so altered, so incredibly less, so diminished as if by vast distance!
They hardly knew him themselves, and half thought they had begun

with one man and finished with another, so marvellous had been the change.
A clothes-stand, on which his removed raiment hung, looked much more like
the real Bowlder than did this white taper of a figure.

“Ah—Walter!” exclaimed John, putting out a tremulous hand and seizing
Lehming with the eagerness of a man who seeks to save himself from drowning.
“Here you are at last. Here you are. I want you to bear witness that
I am a good citizen. Tell these good people so. Tell them that I am not a
midnight miscreant. They accuse me, as near as I can make out, of murdering
our good old friend, Judge Wetherel. You know my innocence, Walter.
Get a Bible and swear to it.”

Even his conversation, stripped and divested as it was of transcendentalisms,
was lean and shrunken. A man might have been pardoned for glancing
at the clothes-stand to see if his accustomed phraseology had not been hung up
along with his garments.

Lehming was anxious to know if Nestoria had also been arrested, but he
did not dare even to whisper this question in the presence of justice. So he
simply turned to a policeman and inquired, “What is the meaning of this arrest?”

“Found him in disguise, sir,” replied the policeman, who was a tall, powerful
man of exceedingly combative aspect. “I'll tell you just how it was,”
he added with an air of nonchalant condescension, as though he needn't tell if
he didn't want to, and wouldn't have told if he hadn't felt good-natured. “I
was passing along my beat in Fulton street, an' I saw this old feller wheelin'
bricks with a lot of Irishmen, an' I knew the minute I laid eyes on him he
wan't used to the business. He was a-totterin' around, you see, an' a-tippin'
over his load and a-buckin into the other men, an' makin' a tinker's mess of
it generally. Well, says I, that's comical, an' so I stopped a bit to watch him.
I thought, of course, it was some dead beat who was tryin' to earn a dollar,
and wan't in the habit of doin' it. But after a while he fell down over his barrow,
an' a gold ticker flew out of his vest pocket, an' that on a gold chain, too.
Well, says I, that's queerer than ever; that's a d—n queer start, that is. You
know you don't often see a man who wheels bricks sportin' a gold watch. I
begun to think here was a case. How did a dead beat come by so much jewelry
an' bullion? That's the question. So I staid by an' kept my eye on
him. Well, next thing, a gentleman come along who is in our line, an' I
pinted out this man to him, an' he inspected him a while, an' finally remembered
him. Says he to me, That feller, says he, was up at New Haven time of
the Wetherel murder; he was a hangin' about the house, says he, at the very
time; I'll bet on him, says he. Well, that was a big thing, you know, that
Wetherel murder, an' one of our men has been a-workin' it up ever since, an'
wants all the items he can pick up. So I steps up to our friend here, an' says
to him in substance, Come along with me. Then he sassed me, an' I took him
in charge. Well, here he is—look at him yourself—disguised up to his ears—
a little man dressed to look like a big one. We've took off more things from
him than would clothe an almshouse. Just roll your eye around that haystack
of coats an' trousers over there. Don't it look queer? I leave it to yourself.
Well, that's the story of the arrest; an' now, if there's anythin' to say on the
other side, I shall be glad to hear it; for we don't want to bother no innocent
man; of course we don't.”

During this tale John Bowlder had repeatedly attempted to introduce corrections,
saying in a humble, placating voice, “My friend,” but falling extinct
under the strong utterance of the “star.”

“My friend,” he now began again—“my official and much respected
friend, you are very right in the main. But allow me, my friend, a word of
explanation to my friend Lehming. I will tell you, Walter, how I came into
this scrape. I had a desire to know by experience the pains and joys of the
sons of toil. That is the reason why I sought a job at wheeling bricks. The
agreement was a dollar for a day. The remuneration was low because I honestly
avowed that I was a green hand at the bellows of labor. I did not wheel
well; I admit it, my official friend; but I wheeled the best I could. Even my
official friend here must concede that I wheeled zealously.”

“Oh, of course,” nodded the policeman impatiently. “But that's all poppycock,
an' has nothin' to do with the case. I didn't arrest you for bad wheelin'.
You was a suspicious feller, an' you sassed me.”

“Yes, my official friend. I will confess somewhat of guilt in the matter
of sauce,” replied Bowlder. “I did call you a minion. The term is not
savory; at least it is often used in an uncomplimentary sense; and I withdraw
it.”

“Well, now about the gold watch, an' the extry coats an' britches?” continued
the star, anxious to come to the main point. “Who are you, anyway?
Does this man,” turning to Lehming, “know you?”

Of course Lehming declared that he was acquainted with Mr. Bowlder,
and could bear witness to his entire respectability.

“But who are you?” persisted the officer, too clever to believe all he
heard. “Look here, I can't let this man go so easy as that, you know. He'll
have to wait here till we can send for the gentleman that's working up this
Wetherel case. I say, Bill,” he called to a brother minister of justice, “tell
some of them messengers that Sweet is wanted.”

“You'll have to loaf round a spell,” answered the brother minister of justice
with haughty indifference. “Jim is out on a circuit, an' it won't be easy
to find him.”

“Oh, I know his hole,” said the first minister. And in a hoarse whisper
he named a grocery which stood directly opposite Lehming's lodgings.

So Jim was sent for. But presently Wolverton strolled in, also in search
of Sweet, whom he wanted to see about Poloski. And now deliverance came
to John Bowlder, for Wolverton was known to several of the officials, and his
declaration as to the philosopher's respectability was accepted.

“Dress as quickly as possible,” urged Lehming. “I have a hack here and
will take you home.”

“Walter, I will dress quickly,” snuffled Bowlder, who already had a cold
in the head. “But I must go back to my wheeling. I want to clear my character
with those sons of toil who saw that minion take me into custody. Furthermore,
I want to earn that dollar. It is my shamefaced impression that I
never earned a dollar in my life. It is a sensation that I eagerly long for, as
Galahad longed for a sight of the Holy Grail; and I cannot be balked in my
search for it now that I am so near the goal. Go you, and ride in your luxurious
hack; and if you took it on my account, charge it to me. I will devote
my dollar to paying for it.”

He had begun to recover his spirits, and also a tag or two of his transcendent
phraseology. Indeed, by the time that he had got on his first layer of
outer clothing, he broke out reciting, or perhaps improvising, some of his wonderful
verses, chanting them as usual to the tune that the cow died of.

Lehming hurried to his hack, directed his Jehu whither to drive next, and
told Mrs. Dinneford the tale of Bowlder's arrest. Worried and eager as she

was concerning the affair of Nestoria, the cheerful woman burst into one of
her hearty fits of laughter.

“Poor, good, foolish John!” she said. “I wonder what he was meant to
do in this world. It does seem as if half the people we know ought to have
been born in the moon.”

“But I told you, Walter, that this was a providence,” she presently added
with gravity. “You say that man Sweet was sent for. We shall be free to
make our exits and entrances without a spy over us.”