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William F. Fox - "Civil Government of Virginia"

Eliza Lee Follen - "Conscience"

General Philip Henry Sheridan - "The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete"

A. A. Milne - "Belinda"

Charlemont

W >> W. Gilmore Simms >> Charlemont




"Say not so, Margaret--think not so, I beseech you. With your
genius, your enthusiasm--your powers of expression--there is nothing,
becoming in your sex, and worthy of it, which you may not be."

"You can not deceive me! It might be so, if this were Italy; there,
where the very peasant burns with passion, and breathes his feeblest
and meanest thoughts and desires in song. But here, they already
call me mad! They look on me as one doomed to Bedlam. They avoid
me with sentiments and looks of distrust, if not of fear; and when
I am looking into the cloud, striving to pierce, with dilating eye
its wild yellow flashing centres, they draw their flaxen-headed
infants to their breasts, and mutter their thanks to God, that he
has not, in a fit of wrath, made them to resemble me! If, forgetful
of earth, and trees, and the human stocks around me, I pour forth
the language of the great song-masters, they grin at my insanity--they
hold me incapable of reason, and declare their ideas of what that
is, by asking who knows most of the dairy, the cabbage-patch,
the spinning-wheel, the darning-needle--who can best wash Polly's
or Patty's face and comb its head--can chop up sausage-meat the
finest--make the lightest paste, and more economically dispense
the sugar in serving up the tea! and these are what is expected
of woman! These duties of the meanest slave! From her mind nothing
is expected. Her enthusiasm terrifies, her energy offends, and if
her taste is ever challenged, it is to the figures upon a quilt or
in a flower-garden, where the passion seems to be to make flowers
grow in stars, and hearts, and crescents. What has woman to expect
where such are the laws; where such are the expectations from her?
What am I to hope? I, who seem to be set apart--to feel nothing
like the rest--to live in a different world--to dream of foreign
things--to burn with a hope which to them is frenzy, and speak
a language which they neither understand nor like! What can I be,
in such a world? Nothing, nothing! I do not deceive myself. I can
never hope to be anything."

Her enthusiasm hurried her forward. In spite of himself, Stevens was
impressed. He ceased to think of his evil purposes in the superior
thoughts which her wild, unregulated energy inspired. He scarcely
wondered, indeed--if it were true--that her neighbors fancied
her insane. The indignation of a powerful mind denied--denied
justice--baffled in its aims--conscious of the importance of all
its struggles against binding and blinding circumstances--is akin
to insanity!--is apt to express itself in the defiant tones of a
fierce and feverish frenzy.

"Margaret," said he, as she paused and waited for him, "you are not
right in everything. You forget that your lonely little village of
Charlemont, is not only not the world, but that it is not even an
American world. America is not Italy, I grant you, nor likely soon
to become so; but if you fancy there are not cities even in our
country, where genius such as yours would be felt and worshipped,
you are mistaken."

"Do you believe there are such?" she demanded incredulously.

"I KNOW there are!"

"No! no! I know better. You can not deceive me. It can not be so.
I know the sort of genius which is popular in those cities. It is
the gentleman and lady genius. Look at their verses for example.
I can show you thousands of such things that come to us here, from
all quarters of the Union--verses written by nice people--people
of small tastes and petty invention, who would not venture upon the
utterance of a noble feeling, or a bold sentiment of originality,
for fear of startling the fashionable nerves with the strong words
which such a novelty would require. Consider, in the first place,
how conclusive it is of the feeblest sort of genius that these
people should employ themselves, from morning to night, in spinning
their small strains, scraps of verse, song, and sonnet, and invariably
on such subjects of commonplace, as can not admit of originality,
and do not therefore task reflection. Not an infant dies or is
born, but is made the subject of verse; nay, its smiles and tears
are put on record; its hobby-horse, and its infant ideas as they
begin to bud and breathe aloud. Then comes the eternal strain about
summer blooms and spring flowers; autumn's melancholy and winter's
storms, until one sickens of the intolerable monotony. Such are
the things that your great cities demand. Such things content them.
Speak the fearless and always strange language of originality and
strength, and you confound and terrify them."

"But, Margaret, these things are held at precisely the same value
in the big cities as they are held by you here in Charlemont. The
intelligent people smile--they do not applaud. If they encourage
at all it is by silence."

"No! no! that you might say, if, unhappily, public opinion did not
express itself. The same magazines which bring us the verses bring
us the criticism."

"That is to say, the editor puffs his contributors, and disparages
those who are not. Look at the rival journal and you will find
these denounced and another set praised and beplastered."

"Ah! and what would be my hope, my safety, in communities which
tolerate these things; in which the number of just and sensible
people is so small that they dare not speak, or can not influence
those who have better courage? Where would be my triumphs? I, who
would no more subscribe to the petty tyranny of conventional law,
than to that baser despotism which is wielded by a mercenary editor,
in the absence of a stern justice in the popular mind. Here I may
pine to death--there, my heart would burst with its own convulsions."

"No! Margaret, no! It is because they have not the genius,
that such small birds are let to sing. Let them but hear the true
minstrel--let them but know that there is a muse, and how soon
would the senseless twitter which they now tolerate be hushed
in undisturbing silence. In the absence of better birds they bear
with what they have. In the absence of the true muse they build no
temple--they throng not to hear. Nay, even now, already, they look
to the west for the minstrel and the muse--to these very woods.
There is a tacit and universal feeling in the Atlantic country,
that leads them to look with expectation to the Great West, for the
genius whose song is to give us fame. 'When?' is the difficult--the
only question. Ah! might I but say to them--'now'--the muse is
already here!"

He took her hand--she did not withhold it; but her look was subdued--the
fires had left her eyes--her whole frame trembled with the recoil
of those feelings--the relaxation of those nerves--the tension
of which we have endeavored feebly to display. Her cheek was no
longer flushed but pale; her lips trembled--her voice was low and
faint--only a broken and imperfect murmur; and her glance was cast
upon the ground.

"You!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, I! Have I not said I am not altogether what I seem? Ah!
I may not yet say more. But I am not without power, Margaret, in
other and more powerful regions. I too have had my triumphs; I too
can boast that the minds of other men hang for judgment upon the
utterance of mine."

She looked upward to his glance with a stranger expression of
timidity than her features had before exhibited. The form of Stevens
had insensibly risen in seeming elevation as he spoke, and the
expression of his face was that of a more human pride. He continued:--

"My voice is one of authority in circles where yours would be one
of equal attraction and command. I can not promise you an Italian
devotion, Margaret; our people, though sufficiently enthusiastic,
are too sensible to ridicule to let the heart and blood speak out
with such freedom as they use in the warmer regions of the South:
but the homage will be more intellectual, more steady, and the fame
more enduring. You must let your song be heard--you must give me
the sweet privilege of making it known to ears whose very listening
is fame."

"Ah!" she said, "what you say makes me feel how foolishly I have
spoken. What is my song? what have I done? what am I? what have I
to hope? I have done nothing--I am nothing! I have suffered, like
a child, a miserable vanity to delude me, and I have poured into
the ears of a stranger those ravings which I have hitherto uttered
to the hills and forests. You laugh at me now--you must."

The paleness on her cheek was succeeded by the deepest flush of
crimson. She withdrew her hand from his grasp.

"Laugh at you, Margaret! You have awakened my wonder. Struck with
you when we first met--"

"Nay, no more of that, but let us follow these windings; they lead
us to the tarn. It is the prettiest Indian path, and my favorite
spot. Here I ramble morning and eve, and try to forget those vain
imaginings and foolish strivings of thought which I have just
inflicted upon you. The habit proved too much for my prudence, and
I spoke as if you were not present. Possibly, had you not spoken
in reply, I should have continued until now."

"Why did I speak?"

"Ah! it is better. I wish you had spoken sooner. But follow me
quickly. The sunlight is now falling in a particular line which
gives us the loveliest effect, shooting its rays through certain
fissures of the rock, and making a perfect arrow-path along the
water. You would fancy that Apollo had just dismissed a golden
shaft from his quiver, so direct is the levelled light along the
surface of the lake."

Speaking thus, they came in sight of the party on the opposite
hills, as we have already shown--without, however, perceiving
them in turn. It will be conjectured without difficulty that, with
a nature so full of impulse, so excitable, as that of Margaret
Cooper--particularly in the company of an adroit man like Stevens,
whose purpose was to encourage her in that language and feeling of
egotism which, while it was the most grateful exercise to herself,
was that which most effectually served to blind her to his designs--her
action was always animated, expressively adapting itself, not only
to the words she uttered, but, even when she did not speak, to the
feelings by which she was governed. It was the art of Stevens to
say little except by suggestives. A single word, or brief sentence,
from his lips, judiciously applied to her sentiments or situation,
readily excited her to speech; and this utterance necessarily brought
with it the secret of her soul, the desire of her heart, nay, the
very shape of the delusion which possessed it. The wily libertine,
deliberate as the demon to which we have likened him, could provoke
the warmth which he did not share--could stimulate the eloquence
which he would not feel--could coldly, like some Mephistopheles
of science, subject the golden-winged bird or butterfly to the
torturous process of examination, with a pin thrust through its
vitals, and gravely dilate on its properties, its rich plumage, and
elaborate finish of detail, without giving heed to those writhings
which declared its agonies. It is not meant to be understood that
Stevens found no pleasure himself in the display of that wild,
unschooled imagination which was the prevailing quality in the mind
of Margaret Cooper. He was a man of education and taste. He could
be pleased as an amateur; but he wanted the moral to be touched,
and to sympathize with a being so gifted and so feeble--so high
aiming, yet so liable to fall.

The ardor of Margaret Cooper, and the profound devotion which
it was the policy of Stevens to display, necessarily established
their acquaintance, in a very short time, on the closest footing
of familiarity. With a nature such as hers, all that is wanted is
sympathy--all that she craves is sympathy--and, to win this, no
toil is too great, no sufferance too severe; alas, how frequently
do we see that no penalty is too discouraging! But the confiding
spirit never looks for penalties, and seldom dreams of deceit.

What, then, were the emotions of William Hinkley as he beheld the
cordiality which distinguished the manner of Margaret Cooper as she
approached the edge of the lake with her companion? In the space
of a single week, this stranger had made greater progress in her
acquaintance than HE had been able to make in a period of years.
The problem which distressed him was beyond his power to solve.
His heart was very full; the moisture was already in his eyes; and
when he beheld the animated gestures of the maid--when he saw her
turn to her companion, and meet his gaze without shrinking, while
her own was fixed in gratified contemplation--he scarcely restrained
himself from jumping to his feet. The old man saw his emotion.

"William," he said, "did I understand you that this young stranger
was a preacher?"

"No, sir, but he seeks to be one. He is studying for the ministry,
under Brother Cross."

"Brother Cross is a good man, and is scarcely likely to have anything
to do with any other than good men. I suppose he knows everything
about the stranger?"

William Hinkley narrated all that was known on the subject in the
village. In the innocence of his heart, Brother Cross had described
Alfred Stevens as a monument of his own powers of conversion. Under
God, he had been a blessed instrument for plucking this brand from
the burning. A modified account of the brandy-flask accompanied the
narrative. Whether it was that Mr. Calvert, who had been a man of
the world, saw something in the story itself, and in the ludicrousness of
the event, which awakened his suspicions, or whether the carriage
of Alfred Stevens, as he walked with Margaret Cooper, was rather that
of a young gallant than a young student in theology, may admit of
question; but it was very certain that the suspicions of the old
gentleman were somewhat awakened.

Believing himself to be alone with his fair companion, Alfred
Stevens was not as scrupulous of the rigidity of manner which,
if not actually prescribed to persons occupying his professional
position, is certainly expected from them; and, by a thousand
little acts of gallantry, he proved himself much more at home as
a courtier and a ladies' man than as one filled with the overflow
of divine grace, and thoughtful of nothing less than the serious
earnest of his own soul. His hand was promptly extended to assist
the progress of his fair companion--a service which was singularly
unnecessary in the case of one to whom daily rambles, over hill
and through forest, had imparted a most unfeminine degree of vigor.
Now he broke the branch away from before her path; and now, stooping
suddenly, he gathered for her the pale flower of autumn.

These little acts of courtesy, so natural to the gentleman, were
anything but natural to one suddenly impressed with the ascetical
temper of methodism. Highly becoming in both instances, they were
yet strangely at variance with the straight-laced practices of the
thoroughgoing Wesleyan, who sometimes fancies that the condition
of souls is so desperate as to leave no time for good manners. Mr.
Calvert had no fault to find with Stevens's civility, but there was
certainly an inconsistency between his deportment now, and those
characteristics which were to be predicated of the manner and mode
of his very recent conversion. Besides, there was the story of
the brandy-flask, in which Calvert saw much less of honor either
to John Cross or his neophyte. But the old man did not express his
doubts to his young friend, and they sat together, watching, in a
silence only occasionalry broken by a monosyllable, the progress
of the unconscious couple below.

Meanwhile, our fisherman, occupying his lonely perch just above the
stream, had been plying his vocation with all the silent diligence
of one to the manner born. Once busy with his angle, and his world
equally of thought and observation became confined to the stream
before his eyes, and the victim before his imagination. Scarcely
seen by his companions on the heights above, he had succeeded in
taking several very fine fish; and had his liberality been limited
to the supper-table of his venerable friend Calvert, he would long
before have given himself respite, and temporary immunity to the
rest of the finny tribe remaining in the tarn. But Ned Hinkley
thought of all his neighbors, not omitting the two rival widows,
Mesdames Cooper and Thackeray.

Something too, there was in the sport, which, on the present
occasion, beguiled him rather longer than his wont. More than once
had his eye detected, from the advantageous and jutting rock where
he lay concealed, just above the water, the dark outlines of a
fish, one of the largest he had ever seen in the lake, whose brown
sides, and occasionally flashing fins, excited his imagination and
offered a challenge to his skill, which provoked him into something
like a feeling of personal hostility.

The fish moved slowly to and fro, not often in sight, but at such
regularly-recurring periods as to keep up the exciting desire which
his very first appearance had awakened in the mind of his enemy.

To Ned Hinkley he was the beau-ideal of the trout genius. He was
certainly the hermit-trout of the tarn. Such coolness, such strength,
such size, such an outline, and then such sagacity. That trout was
a triton among his brethren. A sort of Dr. Johnson among fishes.
Ned Hinkley could imagine--for on such subjects his imagination
kindled--how like an oracle must be the words of such a trout,
to his brethren, gathering in council in their deep-down hole--or
driven by a shower under the cypress log--or in any other situation
in which an oracle would be apt to say, looking around him with
fierceness mingled with contempt, "Let no dog bark." Ned Hinkley
could also fancy the contemplations of such a trout as he witnessed
the efforts made to beguile him out of the water.

"Not to be caught by a fly like that, my lad!" and precisely as if
the trout had spoken what was certainly whispered in his own mind,
the fisherman silently changed his gilded, glittering figure on his
hook for one of browner plumage--one of the autumn tribe of flies
which stoop to the water from the overhanging trees, and glide off
for twenty paces in the stream, to dart up again to the trees, in
as many seconds, if not swallowed by some watchful fisher-trout,
like the one then before the eyes of our companion.

Though his fancy had become excited, Ned Hinkley was not impatient.
With a cautious hand he conducted the fly down the stream with
the flickering, fidgety motion which the real insect would have
employed. The keen-nosed trout turned with the movements of the
fly, but philosophically kept aloof. Now he might be seen to sink,
now to rise, now he glided close under the rock where the angler
reclined, and, even in the very deep waters which were there, which
were consequently very dark, so great was the size of the animal,
that its brown outline was yet to be seen, with its slightly-waving
tail, and at moments the flash of its glittering eye, as, inclining
on its side, it glanced cunningly upward through the water.

Again did Ned Hinldey consult his resources. Fly after fly was taken
from his box, and suffered to glide upon the stream. The wary fish
did not fail to bestow some degree of attention upon each, but his
regards were too deliberate for the success of the angler, and he
had almost began to despair, when he observed a slight quivering
movement in the object of pursuit which usually prepares the good
sportsman to expect his prey. The fins were laid aback. The motion
of the fish became steady; a slight vibration of the tail only was
visible; and in another moment he darted, and was hooked.

Then came the struggle. Ned Hinkley had never met with a more
formidable prey. The reel was freely given, but the strain was
great upon shaft and line. There was no such thing as contending.
The trout had his way, and went down and off, though it might have
been observed that the fisherman took good care to baffle his efforts
to retreat in the direction of the old log which had harbored him,
and the tangling alders, which might have been his safest places
of retreat. The fish carried a long stretch of line, but the hook
was still in his jaws, and this little annoyance soon led him upon
other courses. The line became relaxed, and with this sign, Ned
Hinkley began to amuse himself in tiring his victim.

This required skill and promptness rather than strength. The
hermit-trout was led to and fro by a judicious turn of wrist or
elbow. His efforts had subsided to a few spasmodic struggles--an
occasional struggle ending with a shiver, and then he was brought
to the surface. This was followed by a last great convulsive effort,
when his tail churned the water into a little circle of foam, which
disappeared the moment his struggles were over. But a few seconds
more were necessary to lift the prey into sight of all the parties
near to the lake. They had seen some of the struggle, and had
imagined the rest. Neither Margaret Cooper nor Stevens had suspected
the presence of the fisherman until drawn to the spot by this trial
of strength.

"What a prodigious fish!" exclaimed Stevens; "can we go to the
spot?"

"Oh! easily--up the rocks on the left there is a path. I know it
well. I have traversed it often. Will you go? The view is very fine
from that quarter."

"Surely: but who is the fisherman?"

"Ned Hinkley, the nephew of the gentleman with whom you stay. He
is a hunter, fisherman, musician--everything. A lively, simple, but
well-meaning young person. It is something strange that his cousin
William Hinkley is not with him. They are usually inseparable."

And with these words she led the way for her companion following
the edge of the lake until reaching the point where the rocks seemed
to form barriers to their further progress, but which her agility
and energy had long since enabled her to overcome.

"A bold damsel!" said Calvert, as he viewed her progress. "She
certainly does not intend to clamber over that range of precipices.
She will peril her life."

"No!" said William Hinkley; "she has done it often to my great
terror. I have been with her more than once over the spot myself.
She seems to me to have no fear, and to delight in the most dangerous
places."

"But her companion! If he's not a more active man than he seems he
will hardly succeed so well."

William was silent, his eye watching with the keenest interest the
progress of the two. In a few moments he started to his feet with
some appearance of surprise.

"What's the matter?" demanded Calvert.

"She does not seem as if she wished to ascend the rocks, but she's
aiming to keep along the ledges that overhang the stream, so as
to get where Ned is. That can hardly be done by the surest-footed,
and most active. Many of the rocks are loose. The ledge is very
narrow, and even where there is room for the feet there are such
projections above as leave no room for the body. I will halloo to
her, and tell her of the danger."

"If you halloo, you will increase the danger--you will alarm her,"
said the old man.

"It will be best to stop her now, in season, when she can go back.
Stay for me, sir, I can run along on the heights so as to overlook
them, and can then warn without alarming."

"Do so, my son, and hasten, for she seems bent on going forward.
The preacher follows but slowly, and she stops for him. Away!"

The youth darted along the hill, pursuing something of a table-line
which belonged to the equal elevation of the range of rock on which
he stood. The rock was formed of successive and shelving ledges,
at such intervals, however, as to make it no easy task--certainly
no safe one--to drop from one to the other. The perch of Ned Hinkley,
was a projection from the lowest of these ledges, running brokenly
along the margin of the basin until lost in the forest slope over
which Margaret Cooper had led her companion.

If it was a task to try the best vigor and agility--to say nothing
of courage--of the ablest mountaineer, to ascend the abrupt ledges
from below, aiming at the highest point of elevation. The attempt
was still more startling to follow the lower ledges, some of which
hung, loosened and tottering, just above the deepest parts of the
lake. Yet, with that intrepidity which marked her character, this
was the very task which Margaret Cooper had proposed to herself.
William Hinkley had justly said that she did not seem to know fear;
and when Stevens with the natural sense of caution which belongs
to one to whom such performances are unusual, suggested to her that
such a pathway seemed very dangerous--

"Dangerous!" she exclaimed, standing upon the merest pinnacle of
a loosened fragment which rested on the very margin of the stream.

"Did you never perceive that there was a loveliness in danger
which you scarcely felt to be half so great in any other object or
situation. I love the dangerous. It seems to lift my soul, to make
my heart bound with joy and the wildest delight. I know nothing so
delightful as storm and thunder. I look, and see the tall trees
shivering and going down with a roar, and feel that I could sing--sing
aloud--and believe that there are voices, like mine, then singing
through all the tempest. But there is no danger here. I have clambered
up these ledges repeatedly--up to the very top. Here, you see, we
have an even pathway along the edge. We have nothing to do but to
set the foot down firmly."

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