Free Henry and Clara by Thomas Mallon Page A

The thought of one of them showing up to seek her aid, right on Beekman Place, was almost unbearably affecting.
    Clara certainly had no sympathy for any institution that permitted the likes of Sybil Bashford to own other human beings, but she could not help seeing the comic side of Reverend Beecher’s exertions. The man’s vanity coated every syllable he coddled from his throat, and all the foot-stomping and arm-flailing reminded her of some Indian dance in one of Mr. Cooper’s novels. She leaned forward and looked leftward, and when she succeeded in catching Henry’s eye, she did a quick imitation of the preacher, rolling her eyes and clenching her fists. Henry laughed hard enough to make Ira Harris cast a perplexed glance toward each of them.
    Tonight Clara’s poor papa was too preoccupied by other things to keep his mind on the lecture, let alone the mischief of his daughter and stepson. Right now even the Fugitive Slave Act troubled him less than the fate of Mrs. Mary Hartung, over whose trial he had begun presiding ten days ago. It was a dreadful business, and for the life of him he couldn’t tell who had driven whom, the wife or the paramour, to kill the wretched husband. The normal disappointments between man and wife were a sad part of our earthly existence, to be borne with charity and understanding (he was well aware of the extent to which he had disappointed Pauline these past eleven years); but violent betrayal of the sort that had sundered Mr. and Mrs. Hartung was past reckoning. What if the woman had been the one to make the plan and serve the poison? Would she not then deserve to hang, just as the man, were he the chief evildoer, surely would? Farther down the valley, his friend Matthew Vassar, the brewer, was planning to build a college for women, one that would educate them as fully as Union College educated men. Well, if men and women were to have equality in all things, should not hanging be one of them?
    Onstage Reverend Beecher was talking of an equality so broad it spanned all the races and peoples of the globe: “The glory of intelligence, refinement, genius, has nothing to do with men’s rights. The rice slave, the Hottentot, are as much God’s children as Humboldt or Chalmers.”
    How blessed he was, able to utter these sentiments with such confidence! The judge could appreciate their nobility, but right now their forceful expression would be beyond the capacities of his own depressed soul. Last week Will’s letter from West Point contained a story that troubled Ira Harris greatly: a cadet named Randol from down at Newburgh had a father, once a happy and prosperous man, who’d just killed himself in a fit of delirium. The elder Randol, according to Will, “was very much excited about spiritualism, or something of the sort.” One more poor, forked creature, the judge now reflected, just trying to find some wings to take him over the walls of this vale of tears. And look at the result.
    There were terrible times approaching, Henry was right about that. The judge himself would be too far past his prime to play any part in the coming cataclysm, and his only impulse was to shield those he loved from it, to gather them inside the house, like the apples in his orchard, against the advance of a frost.
    Reverend Beecher was gone from the stage, and the whole of Tweddle Hall was shaking with applause, before the judge even noticed that the lecture was over. As people put on their coats, chattering and arguing about what the minister had said, Harris could barely find the energy to rise from his seat. He was still in it when Clara, who already had her bonnet tied, put a loving hand on his shoulder and said, “Come, Papa. Henry’s Aunt Emeline has asked all of us back for some hot cider. It will drive out the hot air we’ve absorbed.”
    Clara’s sarcasm always charmed the judge, even though he knew it was born as much from a desire to please Henry as from her own nature. The intimacy between the