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Algernon Blackwood - "The Garden of Survival"

Georg Ebers - "The Bride of the Nile, Volume 6."

Mark Twain - "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven"

Unknown - "The Bible, Douay Rheims, Book 1: Genesis"

Charlemont

W >> W. Gilmore Simms >> Charlemont




"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 finisned, 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
repetition. 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 assure 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 passion 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 nobleness 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, asserted
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 sturdy 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 passed 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 passed 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.

The old man did not once raise his eyes until the prayer was over.
He would not have done so had the house been on fire. But at the
close, he looked up at his son with a brow of thunder. The cloud
was of serious and very unusual blackness. He had for some time been
dissatisfied with his son. He had seen that the youth entertained
some aversion for his guest. Besides, he had learned from his
worthy consort, that, in an endeavor of Brother Stevens to bestow
good counsel upon the youth, he had been repulsed with as little
respect as ceremony. There was one thing that the stern old man had
not seen, and could not see; and that was the altered appearance
of the lad. As he knew of no reason why he should be unhappy, so he
failed to perceive in his appearance any of the signs of unhappiness.
He saw nothing but the violation of his laws, and that sort of
self-esteem which produces fanaticism, is always the most rigid
in the enforcement of its own ordinances. Already he regarded the
youth as in a state of rebellion and for such an offence his feeling
was very much that of the ancient puritan. No one more insists
upon duty, than he who has attained authority by flinging off the
fetters of obedience. Your toughest sinner usually makes the sourest
saint.

"And is this the way, William Hinkley, that you show respect to
God? Do you despise the blessing which Brother Stevens asks upon
the food which sustains us?"

"I presume, sir, that God has already blessed all the food which
he bestows upon man. I do not think that any prayer of Brother
Stevens can render it more blessed."

"Ha! you do not, do you? Please to rise from this table."

"Nay, sir--" began Stevens.

"Rise, sir," continued the old man, laying down knife and fork,
and confronting the offender with that dogged look of determination
which in a coarse nature is the sure sign of moral inflexibility.

"Forgive him, sir, this time," said Stevens; "I entreat you to
forgive him. The young man knows not what he does."

"I will make him know," continued the other.

"Plead not for me, sir," said William Hinkley, glaring upon Stevens
with something of that expression which in western parlance is
called wolfish, "I scorn and spurn your interference."

"William, William, my dear son, do not speak so--do not make your
father angry."

"Will you leave the table, sir, or not?" demanded the father, his
words being spoken very slowly, through his teeth, and with the
effort of one who seeks to conceal the growing agitation. The eyes
of the mother fell upon the youth full of tears and entreaty. His
fine countenance betrayed the conflicting emotions of his soul.
There was grief, and anger, despair and defiance; the consciousness
of being wrong, and the more painful consciousness of suffering
wrong. He half started from his chair, again resumed it, and gazing
upon Stevens with the hate and agony which he felt, seemed to be
entirely forgetful of the words and presence of the father. The
old man deliberately rose from the table and left the room. The
mother now started up in an agony of fear.

"Run, my son--leave the room before your father comes back. Speak
to him, Brother Stevens, and tell him of the danger."

"Do not call upon him, mother, if you would not have me defy you
also. If YOUR words will not avail with me, be sure that his can
not."

"What mean you, my son? You surely have no cause to be angry with
Brother Stevens."

"No cause! no cause!--but it matters not! BROTHER Stevens knows
that I have cause. He has heard my defiance--he knows my scorn and
hate, and he shall feel them!"

"William, my son, how--"

The steps of the father, approaching through the passageway, diverted
her mind to a new terror. She knew the vindictive and harsh nature
of the old man; and apprehensions for her son superseded the feeling
of anger which his language had provoked.

"Oh, my son, be submissive, or fly. Jump out of the window, and
leave Brother Stevens and me to pacify him. We will do all we can."

The unlucky allusion to Brother Stevens only increased the young
man's obstinacy.

"I ask you not, mother. I wish you to do nothing, and to say nothing.
Here I will remain. I will not fly. It will be for my father and
mother to say whether they will expel their only son from their
home, to make room for a stranger."

"It shall not be said that I have been the cause of this," said
Stevens, rising with dignity from his chair; "I will leave your
house, Mrs. Hinkley, only regretting that I should be the innocent
cause of any misunderstanding or discontent among its members. I
know not exactly what can be the meaning of your son's conduct.
I have never offended him; but, as my presence does offend him, I
will withdraw myself--"

"You shall not!" exclaimed old Hinkley, who re-entered the room
at this moment, and had heard the last words of the speaker. "You
shall not leave the house. Had I fifty sons, and they were all to
behave in the manner of this viper, they should all leave it before
you should stir from the threshold."

The old man brought with him a cowskin; and the maternal apprehensions
of his wife, who knew his severe and determined disposition, were
now awakened to such a degree as to overcome the feeling of deference,
if not fear, with which the authority of her liege lord had always
inspired her.

"Mr. Hinkley, you won't strike William with that whip--you must
not--you shall not!" and, speaking thus, she started up and threw
herself in the old man's way. He put her aside with no measured
movement of his arm, and approached the side of the table where
the young man sat.

"Run, William, run, if you love me!" cried the terrified mother.

"I will not run!" was the answer of the youth, who rose from his
seat, however, at the same moment and confronted his father.

"Do not strike me, father! I warn you--do not strike me. I may be
wrong, but I have suffered wrong. I did not mean, and do not mean,
to offend you. Let that content you, but do not strike me."

The answer was a blow. The whip descended once, and but once, upon
the shoulders of the young man. His whole frame was in a convulsion.
His eyes dilated with the anguish of his soul; his features worked
spasmodically. There was a moment's hesitation. The arm that smote
him was again uplifted--the cruel and degrading instrument of
punishment a second time about to descend; when, with the strength
of youth, and the determination of manhood, the son grasped the
arm of the father, and without any more than the degree of violence
necessary to effect his object, he tore the weapon from the uplifted
hand.

"I can not strike YOU.'" he exclaimed, addressing the old man. "That
blow has lost you your son--for ever! The shame and the dishonor
shall rest on other shoulders. They are better deserved here, and
here I place them!"

With these words, he smote Stevens over the shoulders, once, twice,
thrice, before the latter could close with him, or the father
interfere to arrest the attempt. Stevens sprang upon him, but the
more athletic countryman flung him off, and still maintained his
weapon. The father added his efforts to those of Stevens; but he
shook himself free from both, and, by this time, the mother had
contrived to place herself between the parties. William Hinkley
then flung the whip from the window, and moved toward the door.
In passing Stevens, he muttered a few words:--

"If there is any skin beneath the cloak of the parson, I trust I
have reached it."

"Enough!" said the other, in the same low tone. "You shall have
your wish."

The youth looked back once, with tearful eyes, upon his mother; and
making no other answer but a glance more full of sorrow than anger
to the furious flood of denunciation which the old man continued to
pour forth, he proceeded slowly from the apartment and the dwelling.






CHAPTER XXI.

CHALLENGE.





The whole scene passed in very few minutes. No time was given for
reflection, and each of the parties obeyed his natural or habitual
impulses. Old Hinkley, except when at prayers, was a man of few
words. He was much more prompt at deeds than words--a proof of which
has already been shown; but the good mother was not so patient, and
made a freer use of the feminine weapon than we have been willing
to inflict upon our readers. Though she heartily disapproved of her
son's conduct toward Stevens, and regarded it as one of the most
unaccountable wonders, the offender was still her son. She never
once forgot, or could forget, that. But the rage of the old man
was unappeasable. The indignity to his guest, and that guest of
a calling so sacred, was past all forgiveness, as it was past all
his powers of language fitly to describe. He swore to pursue the
offender with his wrath to the end of the world, to cut him off
equally from his fortune and forgiveness; and when Brother Stevens,
endeavoring to maintain the pacific and forgiving character which
his profession required, uttered some commonplace pleading in the
youth's behalf, he silenced him by saying that, "were he on the bed
of death, and were the offender then to present himself, the last
prayer that he should make to Heaven would be for sufficient strength
to rise up and complete the punishment which he had then begun."

As for Stevens, though he professed a more charitable spirit, his
feelings were quite as hostile, and much more deadly. He was not
without that conventional courage which makes one, in certain states
of society, prompt enough to place himself in the fields of the
duello. To this condition of preparedness it has hitherto been the
training of the West that every man, at all solicitous of public
life, must eventually come. As a student of divinity, it was
not a necessity with Alfred Stevens. Nay, it was essential to the
character which he professed that he should eschew such a mode of
arbitrament. But he reasoned on this subject, as well with reference
to past habits as to future responsibilities. His present profession
being simply a ruse d'amour (and, as he already began to perceive,
a harmless one in the eyes of the beauty whom he sought, and whose
intense feelings and unregulated mind did not suffer her to perceive
the serious defects of a character which should attempt so impious
a fraud), he was beginning to be somewhat indifferent to its
preservation; and, with the decline of his caution in this respect,
arose the natural inquiry as to what would be expected of him in
his former relations to society. Should it ever be known hereafter,
at a time when he stood before the people as a candidate for some
high political trust, that he had tamely submitted to the infliction
of a cowskin, the revelation would be fatal to all his hopes of
ambition, and conclusive against all his social pretensions. In
short, so far as society was concerned, it would be his social
death.

These considerations were felt in their fullest force. Indeed, their
force can not well be conceived by the citizen of any community
where the sense of individual responsibility is less rigid and
exacting. They naturally outweighed all others in the mind of
Alfred Stevens; and, though no fire-eater, he not only resolved
on fighting with Hinkley, but, smarting under the strokes of
the cowskin--heavily laid on as they had been--his resolution was
equally firm that, in the conflict, they should not separate until
blood was drawn. Of course, there were some difficulties to be
overcome in bringing about the meeting, but, where the parties are
willing, most difficulties are surmounted with tolerable ease. This
being the case at present, it followed that both minds were busy
at the same moment in devising the when, the how, and the where,
of the encounter.

William Hinkley went from the house of his father to that of his
cousin; but the latter had not yet returned from that ride which
he had taken in order to discover the course usually pursued by
Stevens. Here he sat down to dinner, but the sister of Ned Hinkley
observed that he ate little, and fancied he was sick. That he should
come to dine with his cousin was too frequent a matter to occasion
question or surprise. This lady was older than her brother by some
seven years. She was a widow, with an only child, a girl. The child
was a prattling, smiling, good-natured thing, about seven years
old, who was never so happy as when on Cousin William's knee. Poor
William, indeed, was quite a favorite at every house in the village
except that of Margaret Cooper, and, as he sometimes used bitterly
to add, his own. On this occasion, however, the child was rendered
unhappy by the seeming indifference of Cousin William. The heart
of the young man was too full of grief, and his mind of anxiety,
to suffer him to bestow the usual caresses upon her; and when,
putting her down, he passed into the chamber of Ned Hinkley, the
little thing went off to her mother, to complain of the neglect
she had undergone.

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