Charlemont; Or, The Pride of the Village Part 25

"Mr. Calvert," said she, "is a very sensible old man, but neither he nor you can enter into the heart of another and say what shall, or what shall not be its source of trouble. It is enough, William Hinkley, that I have my cares--at least I fancy that I have them--and though I am very grateful for your sympathies, I do not know that they can do me any good, and, though I thank you, I must yet decline them."

"Oh, do not say so, Margaret--dear Margaret--it is to proffer them that I seek you now. You know how long I have sought you, and loved you: you can not know how dear you are to my eyes, how necessary to my happiness!

Do not repulse me--do not speak quickly. What I am, and what I have, is yours. We have grown up together; I have known no other hope, no other love, but that for you. Look not upon me with that scornful glance--hear me--I implore you--on my knee, dear Margaret. I implore you as for life--for something more dear than life--that which will make life precious--which may make it valuable. Be mine, dear Margaret--"

"Rise, William Hinkley, and do not forget yourself!" was the stern, almost deliberate answer of the maiden.

"Do not, I pray you, do not speak in those tones, dear Margaret--do not look on me with those eyes. Remember before you speak, that the dearest hope of a devoted heart hangs upon your lips."

"And what have you seen in me, or what does your vain conceit behold in yourself, William Hinkley, to make you entertain a hope?"

"The meanest creature has it."

"Aye, but only of creatures like itself."

"Margaret!" exclaimed the lover starting to his feet.

"Ay, sir, I say it. If the meanest creature has its hope, it relates to a creature like itself--endowed with its own nature and fed with like sympathies. But you--what should make you hope of me? Have I not long avoided you, discouraged you? I would have spared you the pain of this moment by escaping it myself. You haunt my steps--you pursue me--you annoy me with attentions which I dare not receive for fear of encouraging you, and in spite of all this, which everybody in the village must have seen but yourself, you still press yourself upon me."

"Margaret Cooper, be not so proud!"

"I am what I am! I know that I am proud--vain, perhaps, and having little to justify either pride or vanity; but to you, William Hinkley, as an act of justice, I must speak what I feel--what is the truth. I am sorry, from my very soul, that you love me, for I can have no feeling for you in return. I do not dislike you, but you have so oppressed me that I would prefer not to see you. We have no feelings in common. You can give me no sympathies. My soul, my heart, my hope--every desire of my mind, every impulse of my heart, leads me away from you--from all that you can give--from all that you can relish. To you it would suffice, if all your life could be spent here in Charlemont--to me it would be death to think that any such doom hung over me. From this one sentiment judge of the rest, and know, for good and all, that I can never feel for you other than I feel now. I can not love you, nor can the knowledge that you love me, give me any but a feeling of pain and mortification."

William Hinkley had risen to his feet. His form had put on an unusual erectness. His eye had gradually become composed; and now it wore an expression of firmness almost amounting to defiance. He heard her with only an occasional quiver of the muscles about his mouth. The flush of shame and pride was still red upon his cheek When she had finished, he spoke to her in tones of more dignity than had hitherto marked his speech.

"Margaret Cooper, you have at least chosen the plainest language to declare a cruel truth."

The cheek of the girl became suddenly flushed.

"Do you suppose," she said, "that I found pleasure in giving you pain?

No! William Hinkley, I am sorry for you! But this truth, which you call cruel, was shown to you repeatedly before. Any man but yourself would have seen it, and saved me the pain of its frequent repet.i.tion. You alone refused to understand, until it was rendered cruel. It was only by the plainest language that you could be made to believe a truth that you either would not or could not otherwise be persuaded to hear. If cold looks, reserved answers, and a determined rejection of all familiarity could have availed, you would never have heard from my lips a solitary word which could have brought you mortification. You would have seen my feelings in my conduct, and would have spared your own that pain, which I religiously strove to save them."

"I have, indeed, been blind and deaf," said the young man; "but you have opened my eyes and ears, Margaret, so that I am fully cured of these infirmities. If your purpose, in this plain mode of speech, be such as you have declared it, then I must thank you; though it is very much as one would thank the dagger that puts him out of his pain by putting him out of life."

There was so much of subdued feeling in this address--the more intense in its effect, from the obvious restraint put upon it, that the heart of the maiden was touched. The dignified bearing of the young man, also--so different from that which marked his deportment hitherto--was not without its effect.

"I a.s.sure you, William Hinkley, that such alone was my motive for what else would seem a most wanton harshness. I would not be harsh to you or to anybody; and with my firm rejection of your proffer, I give you my regrets that you ever made it. It gives me no pleasure that you should make it. If I am vain, my vanity is not flattered or quickened by a tribute which I can not accept; and if you never had my sympathy before, William Hinkley, I freely give it now. Once more I tell you, I am sorry, from the bottom of my heart, that you ever felt for me a pa.s.sion which I can not requite, and that you did not stifle it from the beginning; as, Heaven knows, my bearing toward you, for a whole year, seemed to me to convey sufficient warning."

"It should have done so! I can now very easily understand it, Margaret.

Indeed, Mr. Calvert and others told me the same thing. But as I have said, I was blind and deaf. Once more, I thank you, Margaret--it is a bitter medicine which you have given me, but I trust a wholesome one."

He caught her hand and pressed it in his own. She did not resist or withdraw it, and, after the retention of an instant only, he released it, and was about to turn away. A big tear was gathering in his eye, and he strove to conceal it. Margaret averted her head, and was about to move forward in an opposite direction, when the voice of the young man arrested her:--

"Stay, but a few moments more, Margaret. Perhaps we shall never meet again--certainly not in a conference like this. I may have no other opportunity to say that which, in justice to you, should be spoken. Will you listen to me, patiently?"

"Speak boldly, William Hinkley. It was the subject of which you spoke heretofore which I shrunk from rather than the speaker."

"I know not," said he, "whether the subject of which I propose to speak now will be any more agreeable than that of which we have spoken. At all events, my purpose is your good, and I shall speak unreservedly. You have refused the prayer of one heart, Margaret, which, if unworthy of yours, was yet honestly and fervently devoted to it. Let me warn you to look well when you do choose, lest you fall into the snares of one, who with more talent may be less devoted, and with more claims to admiration, may be far less honest in his purpose."

"What mean you, sir?" she demanded hurriedly, with an increasing glow upon her face.

"This stranger--this man, Stevens!"

"What of him? What do you know of the stranger that you should give me this warning?"

"What does anybody know of him? Whence does he come--whither would he go? What brings him here to this lonely village?--"

A proud smile which curled the lips of Margaret Cooper arrested the speech of the youth. It seemed to say, very distinctly, that she, at least, could very well conjecture what brought the stranger so far from the travelled haunts.

"Ha! do you then know, Margaret?"

"And if I did not, William Hinkley, these base insinuations against the man, of whom, knowing nothing, you would still convey the worst imputations, would never move my mind a hair's breadth from its proper balance. Go, sir--you have your answer. I need not your counsel. I should be sorry to receive it from such a source. Failing in your own attempt, you would seek to fill my mind with calumnious impressions in order to prejudice the prospects of another. For shame! for shame, William Hinkley. I had not thought this of you. But go! go! go, at once, lest I learn to loathe as well as despise you. I thought you simple and foolish, but honorable and generous. I was mistaken even in this. Go, sir, your slanderous insinuations have no effect upon me, and as for Alfred Stevens, you are as far below him in n.o.bleness and honest purpose, as you are in every quality of taste and intellect."

Her face was the very breathing image of idealized scorn and beauty as she uttered these stinging words. Her nostrils were dilated, her eyes flashing fire, her lips slightly protruded and parted, her hand waving him off. The young man gazed upon her with wild looks equally expressive of anger and agony. His form fairly writhed beneath his emotions; but he found strength enough gaspingly to exclaim:--

"And even this I forgive you, Margaret."

"Go! go!" she answered; "you know not what you say, or what you are. Go!

go!"

And turning away, she moved slowly up the long avenue before her, till, by a sudden turn of the path she was hidden from the sight. Then, when his eye could no longer follow her form, the agony of his soul burst forth in a single groan, and staggering, he fell forward upon the sward, hopeless, reckless, in a wretched condition of self-abandonment and despair.

CHAPTER XX.

BLOWS--A CRISIS.

But this mood lasted not long. Youth, pride, anger, a.s.serted themselves before the lapse of many minutes. Darker feelings got possession of his mind. He rose to his feet. If love was baffled, was there not revenge?

Then came the recollection of his cousin's counsel. Should this artful stranger triumph in everything? Margaret Cooper had scarcely disguised the interest which she felt in him. Nay, had not that exulting glance of the eye declared that she, at least, knew what was the purpose of Stevens in seeking the secluded village? His own wrongs were also present to his mind. This usurper had possessed himself of the affections of all he loved--of all of whose love he had till then felt himself secure--all but the good old schoolmaster, and the st.u.r.dy schoolmate and cousin. And how soon might he deprive him even of these?

That was a new fear! So rapid had been the stranger's progress--so adroitly had he insinuated himself into this Eden of the wilderness--bringing discontent and suffering in his train--that the now thoroughly-miserable youth began to fancy that nothing could be safe from his influence. In a short time his garden would all be overrun, and his loveliest plants would wither.

Was there no remedy for this? There was! and traversing the solemn recesses of that wood, he meditated the various modes by which the redress of wrong, and slight and indignity, were to be sought. He brooded over images of strife, and dark and savage ideas of power rioting over its victim, with entirely new feelings--feelings new at least to him. We have not succeeded in doing him justice, nor in our own design, if we have failed to show that he was naturally gentle of heart, rigidly conscientious, a lover of justice for its own sake, and solicitously sensitive on the subject of another's feelings. But the sense of suffering will blind the best judgment, and the feeling of injury will arouse and irritate the gentlest nature. Besides, William Hinkley, though meek and conscientious, had not pa.s.sed through his youth, in the beautiful but wild border country in which he lived, without having been informed, and somewhat influenced, by those characteristic ideas of the modes and manner in which personal wrongs were to be redressed.

Perhaps, had his cousin said nothing to him on this subject, his feelings would have had very much the same tendency and general direction which they were taking now. A dark and somewhat pleasurable anxiety to be in conflict with his rival--a deadly conflict--a close, hard death-struggle--was now the predominant feeling in his mind;--but the feeling was not ALTOGETHER a pleasurable one. It had its pains and humiliations, also. Not that he had any fears--any dread of the issue.

Of the issue he never thought. But it disturbed the long and peaceful order of his life. It conflicted with the subdued tastes of the student.

It was at war with that gentle calm of atmosphere, which letters diffuse around the bower of the muse.

In the conflict of his thoughts and feelings, the judgment of the youth was impaired. He forgot his prudence. In fact, he knew not what he did.

He entered the dwelling of his father, and pa.s.sed into the dining-room, at that solemn moment when the grace before meat was yet in course of utterance by our worthy Brother Stevens. Hitherto, old Mr. Hinkley had religiously exacted that, whenever any of the household failed to be present in season, this ceremony should never be disturbed. They were required, hat in hand, to remain at the entrance, until the benediction had been implored; and, only after the audible utterance of the word "Amen," to approach the cloth.

We have shown little of old Hinkley. It has not been necessary. The reader has seen enough, however, to understand that, in religious matters--at least in the forms and externals of religion--he was a rigid disciplinarian. Upon grace before and after meat he always insisted. His own prayers of this sort might have been unctuous, but they were never short; and the meats were very apt to grow cold, while the impatience of his hearers grew warm, before he finished. But through respect to the profession, he waived his own peculiar privilege in behalf of Brother Stevens; and this holy brother was in the middle of his entreaty, when William Hinkley appeared at the door. He paused for an instant without taking off his hat. Perhaps had his father been engaged in his office, William would have forborne, as usual, however long the grace, and have patiently waited without, hat off, until it had reached the legitimate conclusion. But he had no such veneration for Stevens; and without scruple he dashed, rather hastily, into the apartment, and flinging his hat upon a chair, strode at once to the table.