Charlemont; Or, The Pride of the Village Part 44

"In his pocket, I suppose."

"He had none. He was at a distance from my ungrateful son, and flying that he should not be murdered. The lamb under the hands of the butcher.

And would you believe it, Brother Cross, he had gone forth only to counsel the unworthy boy--only to bring him back into the fold--gone forth at his own prayer, as Brother Stevens declared to Betsy, just before he went out."

"I am of opinion that he deceived her and yourself."

"Where were his pistols then?"

"He must have concealed them. He told Ned Hinkley, this very day, that he had pistols, but that they were here."

"Run up, Betsy, to Brother Stevens's room and see."

The old lady disappeared. Calvert proceeded.

"I can only repeat my opinion, founded upon the known pacific and honorable character of William Hinkley, and certain circ.u.mstances in the conduct of Stevens, that the two did go forth, under a previous arrangement, to fight a duel. That they were prevented, and that Stevens had no visible weapon, is unquestionably true. But I do not confine myself to these circ.u.mstances. This young man writes a great many letters, it is supposed to his friends, but never puts them in the post here, but every Sat.u.r.day rides off, as we afterward learn, to the village of Ellisland, where he deposites them and receive others. This is a curious circ.u.mstance, which alone should justify suspicion.

"The ways of G.o.d are intricate, Brother Calvert," said John Cross, "and we are not to suspect the truth which we can not understand."

"But these are the ways of man, Brother Cross."

"And the man of G.o.d is governed by the G.o.d which is in him. He obeys a law which, perhaps, is ordered to be hidden from thy sight."

"This doctrine certainly confers very extraordinary privileges upon the man of G.o.d," said Calvert, quietly, "and, perhaps, this is one reason why the profession is so prolific of professors now-a-days; but the point does not need discussion. Enough has been shown to awaken suspicion and doubt in the case of any ordinary person; and I now come to that portion of the affair which is sustained by the testimony of Ned Hinkley, our young friend here, who, whatever his faults may be, has been always regarded in Charlemont, as a lover and speaker of the truth."

"Ay, ay, so far as he knows what the truth is," said old Hinkley, scornfully.

"And I'm just as likely to know what the truth is as you, uncle!','

retorted the young man, rising and coming forward from his corner.

"Come, come," he continued, "you're not going to ride rough shod over me as you did over Cousin Bill. I don't care a snap of the finger, I can tell you, for all your puffed cheeks and big bellied speeches. I don't, I tell you!" and suiting the action to the word, the st.u.r.dy fellow snapped his fingers almost under the nose of his uncle, which was now erected heavenward, with a more scornful pre-eminence than ever.

The sudden entrance of Mrs. Hinkley, from her search after Stevens's pistols, prevented any rough issue between these new parties, as it seemed to tell in favor of Stevens. There were no pistols to be found.

The old lady did not add, indeed, that there was nothing of any kind to be found belonging to the same worthy.

"There! That's enough!" said old Hinkley.

"Did you find anything of Stevens's, Mrs. Hinkley?" inquired Mr.

Calvert.

"Nothing, whatever."

"Well, madam," said Calvert, "your search, if it proves anything, proves the story of Ned Hinkley conclusively. This man has carried off all his chattels."

John Cross looked down from heaven, and stared inquiringly at Mrs.

Hinkley.

"Is this true? Have you found nothing, Sister Betsy?"

"Nothing."

"And Brother Stevens has not come back?"

"No!"

"And reason for it, enough," said old Hinkley. "Didn't you hear that Ned Hinkley threatened to shoot him if he came back?"

"Look you, uncle," said the person thus accused, "if you was anybody else, and a little younger, I'd thrash you for that speech the same as if it was a lie! I would."

"Peace!" said Calvert, looking sternly at the youth. Having obtained temporary silence, he was permitted at length to struggle through his narrative, and to place, in their proper lights, all the particulars which Ned Hinkley had obtained at Ellisland. When this was done the discussion was renewed, and raged, with no little violence, for a full hour. At length it ceased through the sheer exhaustion of the parties.

Calvert was the first to withdraw from it, as he soon discovered that such was the bigotry of old Hinkley and his wife, and even of John Cross himself, that nothing short of divine revelation could persuade them of the guilt of one who had once made a religious profession.

Brother Cross, though struck with some of the details which Calvert had given, was afterward prepared to regard them as rather trivial than otherwise, and poor Ned was doomed to perceive that the conviction was general in this holy family, that he had, by his violence, and the terror which his pistols had inspired, driven away, in desperation, the most meek and saintly of all possible young apostles. The youth was nearly furious ere the evening and the discussion were over. It was very evident to Calvert that nothing was needed, should Stevens come back, but a bold front and a lying tongue, to maintain his position in the estimation of the flock, until such time as the truth WOULD make itself known--a thing which, eventually, always happens. That night Ned Hinkley dreamed of nothing but of shooting Stevens and his comrade and of thrashing his uncle. What did Margaret Cooper dream of?

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

STORM AND CONVULSION.

What did Margaret Cooper dream of? Disappointment, misery, death. There was a stern presentiment in her waking thoughts, sufficiently keen and agonizing to inspire such dreadful apprehensions in her dreams. The temperament which is sanguine, and which, in a lively mood, inspires hope, is, at the same time, the source of those dark images of thought and feeling, which appal it with the most terrifying forms of fear; and when Sat.u.r.day and Sat.u.r.day night came and pa.s.sed, and Alfred Stevens did not appear, a lurking dread that would not be chidden or kept down, continued to rise within her soul, which, without a.s.suming any real form or decisive speech, was yet suggestive of complete overthrow and ruin.

Her dreams were of this complexion. She felt herself abandoned. Nor merely abandoned. She was a victim. In her desolation she had even lost her pride. She could no longer meet the sneer with scorn. She could no longer carry a lofty brow among the little circle, who, once having envied, were now about to despise her. To the impatient spirit, once so strong--so insolent in its strength--what a pang--what a humiliation was here! In her dreams she saw the young maidens of the village stand aloof, as she had once stood aloof from them:--she heard the senseless t.i.tter of their laugh; and she had no courage to resent the impertinence. Her courage was buried in her shame. No heart is so cowardly as that which is conscious of guilt. Picture after picture of this sort did her fancy present to her that night; and when she awoke the next morning, the sadness of her soul had taken the color of a deep and brooding misanthropy. Such had been the effect of her dreams. Her resolution came only from despair; and resolution from such a source, we well know, is usually only powerful against itself.

It is one proof of a religious instinct, and of a universal belief in a controlling and benevolent Deity, that all men however abased, scornful of divine and human law, invariably, in their moments of desperation, call upon G.o.d. Their first appeal is, involuntarily, to him. The outlaw, as the fatal bullet pierces his breast--the infidel, sinking and struggling in the water--the cold stony heart of the murderer, the miser, the a.s.sa.s.sin of reputation as of life--all cry out upon G.o.d in the unexpected paroxysms of death. Let us hope that the instinct which prompts this involuntary appeal for mercy, somewhat helps to secure its blessings. It is thus also with one who, in the hey-day of the youthful heart, has lived without thought or prayer--a tumultuous life of uproar and riot--a long carnival of the pa.s.sions--the warm blood suppressing the cool thought, and making the reckless heart impatient of consideration. Let the sudden emergency arise, with such a heart--let the blood become stagnant with disease--and the involuntary appeal is to that G.o.d, of whom before there was no thought. We turn to him as to a father who is equally strong to help and glad to preserve us.

Margaret Cooper, in the ordinary phrase, had lived without G.o.d. Her G.o.d was in her own heart, beheld by the lurid fires of an intense, unmethodized ambition. Her own strength--or rather the persuasion of her own strength--had been so great, that hitherto she had seen no necessity for appealing to any other source of power. She might now well begin to distrust that strength. She did so. Her desperation was not of that sort utterly to shut out hope; and, while there is hope, there is yet a moral a.s.surance that the worst is not yet--perhaps not to be. But she was humbled--not enough, perhaps--but enough to feel the necessity of calling in her allies. She dropped by her bedside, in prayer, when she arose that morning. We do not say that she prayed for forgiveness, without reference to her future earthly desires. Few of us know how to simplify our demands upon the Deity to this one. We pray that he may a.s.sist us in this or that grand speculation: the planter for a great crop; the banker for investments that give him fifty per cent.; the lawyer for more copious fees; the parson for an increase of salary. How few pray for mercy--forgiveness for the past--strength to sustain the struggling conscience in the future! Poor Margaret was no wiser, no better, than the rest of us. She prayed--silly woman!--that Alfred Stevens might keep his engagement!

He did not! That day she was to be married! She had some reference to this in making her toilet that morning. The garments which she put on were all of white. A white rose gleamed palely from amid the raven hair upon her brow. Beautiful was she, exceedingly. How beautiful! but alas!

the garb she wore--the pale, sweet flower on her forehead--they were mockeries--the emblems of that purity of soul, that innocence of heart, which were gone--gone for ever! She shuddered as she beheld the flower, and meditated this thought. Silently she took the flower from her forehead, and, as if it were precious as that lost jewel of which it reminded her, she carefully placed it away in her toilet-case.

Yet her beauty was heightened rather than diminished. Margaret Cooper was beautiful after no ordinary mould. Tall in stature, with a frame rounded by the most natural proportions into symmetry, and so formed for grace; with a power of muscle more than common among women, which, by inducing activity, made her movements as easy as they were graceful; with an eye bright like the morning-star, and with a depth of expression darkly clear, like that of the same golden orb at night; with a face exquisitely oval; a mouth of great sweetness; cheeks on which the slightest dash of hue from the red, red rose in June, might be seen to come and go under the slightest promptings of the active heart within; a brow of great height and corresponding expansion; with a bust that impressed you with a sense of the maternal strength which might be harbored there, even as the swollen bud gives promises of the full-bosomed luxuriance of the flower when it opens: add to these a lofty carriage, a look where the quickened spirit seems ever ready for utterance; a something of eager solemnity in her speech; and a play of expression on her lips which, if the brow were less lofty and the eye less keenly bright, might be a smile--and you have some idea of that n.o.ble and lovely temple on which fires of lava had been raised by an unholy hand; in which a secret worship is carried on which dreads the light, shrinks from exposure, and trembles to be seen by the very Deity whose favor it yet seeks in prayer and apprehension.

These beauties of person as we have essayed, though most feebly, to describe them, were enhanced rather than lessened by that air of anxiety by which they were now overcast. Her step was no longer free. It was marked by an unwonted timidity. Her glance was no longer confident; and when she looked round upon the faces of the young village-maidens, it was seen that her lip trembled and moved, but no longer with scorn. If the truth were told, she now envied the meanest of those maidens that security which her lack of beauty had guarantied. She, the scorner of all around her, now envied the innocence of the very meanest of her companions.

Such was the natural effect of her unhappy experience upon her heart.

What would she not have given to be like one of them? She dared not take her place, in the church, among them. It was a dread that kept her back.

Strange, wondrous power of innocence! The guilty girl felt that she might be repulsed; that her frailty might make itself known--MUST make itself known; and she would be driven with shame from that communion with the pure to which she had no longer any claim! She sunk into one of the humblest seats in the church, drawing her reluctant mother into the lowly place beside her.

John Cross did not that day address himself to her case: but sin has a family similitude among all its members. There is an unmistakeable likeness, which runs through the connection. If the preacher speaks fervently to one sin, he is very apt to goad, in some degree, all the rest: and though Brother Cross had not the most distant idea of singling out Margaret Cooper for his censure, yet there was a whispering devil at her elbow that kept up a continual commentary upon what he said, filling her ears with a direct application of every syllable to her own peculiar instance.

"See you not," said the demon, "that every eye is turned upon you? He sees into your soul; he knows your secret. He declares it, as you hear, aloud, with a voice of thunder, to all the congregation. Do you not perceive that you sit alone; that everybody shrinks from your side; that your miserable old mother alone sits with you; that the eyes of some watch you with pity, but more with indignation? Look at the young damsels--late your companions--they are your companions no longer! They triumph in your shame. Their t.i.tter is only suppressed because of the place in which they are. They ask: 'Is this the maiden who was so wise, so strong--who scorned us--scorned US, indeed!--and was not able to baffle the serpent in his very first approaches?' Ha! ha! How they laugh! Well, indeed, they may. It is very laughable, Margaret--not less laughable and amusing than strange!--that YOU should have fallen!--so easily, so blindly--and not even to suspect what every one else was sure of! O Margaret! Margaret! can it be true? Who will believe in your wit now, your genius, your beauty? s.m.u.tched and s.m.u.tted! Poor, weak, degraded! If there is pity for you, Margaret, it is full of mockery too; it is a pity that is full of bitterness. You should now cast yourself down, and cover yourself with ashes, and cry, 'Wo is me!' and call upon the rocks and the hills to cover you!"

Such was the voice in her soul, which to HER senses seemed like that of some jibing demon at her elbow. Margaret tried to pray--to expel him by prayer; but the object of his mockery had not been attained. She could not surrender herself entirely to the chastener. She was scourged, but not humbled; and the language of the demon provoked defiance, not humility. Her proud spirit rose once more against the pressure put upon it. Her bright, dazzling eye flashed in scorn upon the damsels whom she now fancied to be actually t.i.ttering--scarcely able to suppress their laughter--at her obvious disgrace. On John Cross she fixed her fearless eye, like that of some fallen angel, still braving the chastener, whom he can not contend with. A strange strength--for even sin has its strength for a season--came to her relief in that moment of fiendish mockery. The strength of an evil spirit was accorded her. Her heart once more swelled with pride. Her soul once more insisted on its ascendency.