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Charlemont

W >> W. Gilmore Simms >> Charlemont









CHAPTER XXXVI.

SUSPENSE AND AGONY.





At the risk of seeming monotonous, we must repeat the reflection
made in our last chapter, that the things we are about to lose for
ever seem always more valuable in the moment of their loss. They
acquire a newer interest in our eyes at such a time, possibly
under the direction of some governing instinct which is intended
to render us tenacious of life to the very last. Privation teaches
us much more effectually than possession the value of all human
enjoyments; and the moralist has more than once drawn his sweetest
portraits of liberty from the gloom and the denials of a dungeon.
How eloquent of freedom is he who yearns for it in vain! How glowing
is that passion which laments the lost!

To one dying, as we suppose few die, in the perfect possession
of their senses, how beautiful must seem the fading hues of the
sunlight, flickering along the walls of a chamber! how heavenly
the brief glimpses of the blue sky through the half-opened window!
how charming the green bit of foliage that swings against the pane!
how cheering and unwontedly sweet and balmy the soft, sudden gust
of the sweet south, breathing up from the flowers, and stirring the
loose drapery around the couch! How can we part with these without
tears? how reflect, without horror, upon the close coffin, the damp
clod, the deep hollows of the earth in which we are to be cabined?
Oh, with what earnestness, at such a moment, must the wholly
conscious spirit pray for life! now greedily will he drink the
nauseous draught in the hope to secure its boon! how fondly will
he seize upon every chimera, whether of his own or of another's
fancy, in order to gain a little respite--in order still to keep
within the grasp of mind and sight, these lovely agents of earth
and its Master, which, in our day of strength and exultation, we
do not value at one half their worth! And how full of dread and
horror must be that first awful conviction which assures him that
the struggle is in vain--that the last remedy is tried--that nothing
is left him now but despair--despair and death! Then it is that
Christianity comes to his relief. If he believes, he gains by his
loss. Its godlike promise assures him then that the things which
his desires make dear, his faith has rendered immortal.

The truth of many of these reflections made their way into the
mind of Margaret Cooper, as she pursued the well-known path along
the hills. She observed the objects along the route more narrowly
than ever. She was taking that path for the last time. Her eyes
would behold these objects no more. How often had she pursued the
same route with Alfred Stevens! But then she had not seen these
things; she had not observed these thousand graces and beauties of
form and shadow which now seemed to crowd around, challenging her
regard and demanding her sympathies. Then she had seen nothing
but him. The bitterness which this reflection occasioned made her
hurry her footsteps; but there was an involuntary shudder that
passed through her frame, when, in noting the strange beauty of the
path, she reflected that it would be trodden by her for the last
time. Her breathing became quickened by the reflection. She pressed
forward up the hills. The forests grew thick around her--deep,
dim, solemn, and inviting. The skies above looked down in little
blessed blue tufts, through the crowding tree-tops. The long vista
of the woods led her onward in wandering thoughts.

To fix these thoughts--to keep them from wandering! This was
a difficulty. Margaret Cooper strove to do so, but she could not.
Never did her mind seem such a perfect chaos--so full of confused
and confusing objects and images. Her whole life seemed to pass in
review before her. All her dreams of ambition, all the struggles
of her genius! Were these to be thrown away? Were these all to be
wasted? Was her song to be unheard? Was her passionate and proud
soul to have no voice? If death is terrible to man, it is terrible,
not as a pang, but as an oblivion; and to the soul of genius,
oblivion is a soul-death, and its thought is a source of tenfold
terror.

"But of what avail were life to me now? Even should I live," said
the wretched woman, "would it matter more to the ambition which I
have had, and to the soul which flames and fevers within me? Who
would hearken to the song of the degraded? Who, that heard the
story of my shame, would listen to the strains of my genius? Say
that its utterance is even as proud as my own vanity of heart would
esteem it--say that no plaint like mine had ever touched the ear
or lifted the heart of humanity! Alas! of what avail! The finger
of scorn would be uplifted long before the voice of applause. The
sneer and sarcasm of the worldling would anticipate the favoring
judgment of the indulgent and the wise. Who would do justice to
my cause? Who listen? Alas! the voice of genius would be of little
avail speaking from the lips of the dishonored.

"To the talent which I have, and the ambition which still burns
within me, life then can bring nothing--no exercise--no fruition.
Suppose, then, that the talent is left to slumber--the ambition
stifled till it has no further longings! Will life yield anything
to the mere creature of society--to my youth--to my beauty--to
my sense of delight--if still there be any such sense left to me?
Shall I be less the creature of social scorn, because I have yielded
my ambition--because I have forborne the employment of those glorious
gifts which Heaven in its bounty has allotted me?

"Alas! no! am I not a woman, one of that frail, feeble sex, whose
name is weakness?--of whom, having no strength, man yet expects
the proofs of the most unyielding--of a firmness which he himself
can not exercise--of a power of self-denial and endurance of which
he exhibits no example. If I weep, he smiles at my weakness. If I
stifle my tears, he denounces my unnatural hardihood. If I am cold
and unyielding, I am masculine and neglected--if I am gentle and
pliant, my confidence is abused and my person dishonored. What
can society, which is thus exacting, accord to me, then, as a mere
woman? What shame will it not thrust upon me--a woman--and as I
am?

"Life then promises me nothing. The talent which I have, lies
within me idle and without hope of use. The pure name of the woman
is lost to me for ever. Shame dogs my footsteps. Scorn points its
finger. Life, and all that it brings to others--love, friends,
fame, fortune--which are the soul of life--these are lost to me
for ever. The moral death is here already. The mere act of dying,
is simply the end of a strife, and a breathing and an agony. That
is all!"

The day became overcast. A cloud obscured the sunlight. The blue
tufts of sky no longer looked downward through the openings of the
trees. The scene, dim and silent before, became unusually dark. The
aspect of nature seemed congenial with the meditated deed. She had
reasoned herself into its commission, and she reproached herself
mentally with her delay. Any self-suggestion of an infirmity of
purpose, with a nature such as hers, would have produced precipitation.
She turned down a slight gorge among the hills where the forest
was more close. She knelt beneath a tree and laid down her pistol
at its foot.

She knelt--strange contradiction!--she knelt for the purposes of
prayer. But she could not pray. It would seem that she attributed
this effort to the sight of the pistols, and she put them behind
her without changing her position. The prayer, if she made any, was
internal; and, at all events it did not seem to be satisfactory.
Yet, before it was ended, she started with an expression of
painful thought upon her face. The voice of her reason had ceased
its utterance. The voice of her conscience, perhaps, had been unheard;
but there was yet another voice to be heard which was more potent
than all.

It was the mother's voice!

She placed her hand upon her side with a spasmodic effort. The
quickening of a new life within her, made that new voice effectual.
She threw herself on the ground and wept freely. For the first
time she wept freely. The tears were those of the mother. The true
fountain of tears had been touched. That first throb of the innocent
pledge of guilty passion subdued the fiend. She could have taken
her own life, but dared not lift the deadly weapon against that. The
arm of the suicide--was arrested. She groaned, she wept, bitterly
and freely. She was at once feebler and more strong. Feebler, as
regarded her late resolution; stronger as regarded the force of
her affections, the sweet humanities, not altogether subdued within
her heart. The slight pulsation of that infant in her womb had been
more effectual than the voice of reason, or conscience, or feminine
dread. The maternal feeling is, perhaps, the most imperious of all
those which gather in the heart of woman.

Margaret Cooper, however, had not altogether resolved against
the deed. She only could not do it there and then. Her wretched
determination was not wholly surrendered, but it was touched, enfeebled;
and with the increasing powers of reflection, the impetuosity of
the will became naturally lessened. Those few glimpses along the
roadside which had made her sensible to the beauties she was about
to lose, had prepared her mind to act in counteraction of her
impulse; and the event which had brought into play the maternal
instinct, naturally helped the cause of roason in her soul.

Still, with the erring pride of youth she reproached herself with
her infirmity of purpose. She resolved to change her ground, as if
the instinct which had been awakened in one spot would not everywhere
pursue her. Time was gained, and in such cases, to gain time is
everything. Perhaps no suicide would ever take place if the individual
would wait ten minutes. The soul takes its color from the cloud,
and changes its moods as often. It is one of the best lessons to
the young, to wait! wait! wait! One of the surest signs of strength
is where the individual waits patiently and makes no complaint.

Margaret Cooper changed her ground. The spot was a wild one. A
broken ledge of rock was at her feet, and just below it ran a dark,
narrow winding footpath half-obscured by the undergrowth. Here she
once more proceeded to nerve her mind for the commission of the
deed, but she had not been there an instant when she was surprised
to hear the sound of voices.

This was unusual. Who could they be? The villagers were not apt
to stray from church-service whenever a preacher was to be found,
and there was a new one, and consequently a new attraction, that
day, for the spiritual hungry of Charlemont. The path below was
seldom trodden except by herself and an occasional sportsman. The
idea that entered her mind was, that her purpose had been suspected,
and that she was pursued.

With this idea, she placed the pistol to her breast. She had
already cocked the weapon. Her finger was on the trigger. But the
tones of another voice reached her ears from below. They were those
of a woman--sweet, musical, and tender.

A new light broke in upon her mind. This was the language of love.
And who were these new lovers in Charlemont? Could it be that the
voice of the male speaker was that of Stevens? Something in the tone
sounded like it, Involuntarily, with this impression, the weapon
was turned from her own bosom, and addressed in the direction in
which the persons below were approaching. A sudden, joyous feeling
touched her soul. The thought to destroy the criminal by whom she
had been destroyed was a source of exultation. She felt that she
could do it. Both pistols were in her hand. The pathway was not
more than twenty paces distant; and her nerves, for the first time,
braced to an unusual tension, trembled with the new excitement in
her soul.

The intruders continued to approach. Their voices became more
distinct, and Margaret Cooper was soon undeceived as to one of them
being that of Alfred Stevens. She was compelled to lie close, that
she might not betray her position and purpose. The male speaker was
very urgent; the voice seemed that of a stranger. That of the female
was not so clearly distinguishable, yet it seemed more familiar to
the unintentional listener.

Something of feminine curiosity now entered the bosom of Margaret
Cooper. Crouching where she was, she deposited the pistols at her
feet. She remained breathlessly, for the slightest movement would
have revealed her to the persons who were now just below. They
passed close beneath the place of her concealment, and she soon
discovered that they were lovers; and what their language was, even
if she had not heard it, might have been conjectured.

The girl was a very pretty brunette of Charlemont--a sweet, retiring
damsel of her own age, named Rivers--whom she knew only slightly.
She was a shy, gentle, unpresuming girl, whom, for this reason,
perhaps, Margaret had learned to look upon without dislike or scorn.
Her companion was a youth whom Margaret had known when a lad, but
who had been absent on the Mississippi for two years. His tall and
masculine but well-made and graceful person sufficiently accounted
for, while it justified, the taste of the maiden. He was a youth
of fine, frank, manly countenance. His garb was picturesque, that
of a bold border-hunter, with hunting-frock of yellow buckskin,
and Indian leggings.

The girl looked up to him with an expression at once of eagerness
and timidity. Confidence and maiden bashfulness spoke equally in
the delight which glowed upon her features. The bright eyes and
sun-burned features of the youth were flushed with the feeling of
happy triumph and assuring love. The relation of the two was sufficiently
evident from their looks, even had they no other language.

What were the emotions of Margaret Cooper as she looked down upon
this pair? At first she thought, as will most persons: "Surely there
is nothing in nature so lovely as the union of two--fond, devoted
hearts. The picture is one equally of moral and physical beauty.
The slight, fragile, depending damsel, hanging in perfect confidence
on the arm of the manly, lofty, and exulting youth--looking up
into his eyes in hope, while he returns the gaze with pride and
fondness! Unconscious of all things but the love which to them is
life and all things besides, they move along the forest way and
know not its solitude; they linger and loiter along its protracted
paths, and see not their length; they cling together through the
lengthened hours, and fancy they have lost no time; they hear each
other's voices, and believe that life is all music and delight."

While Margaret Cooper looked down and heard the pleadings and
promises of the youth, and beheld the sweet emotions of his companion,
engaged in a pleasant struggle between her hopes and misgivings,
she scarcely restrained herself from rising where she was and crying
aloud--like another Cassandra, not to be believed: "Beware! beware!"

But the warning of Margaret Cooper would have been unnecessary.
The girl was not only free from danger, but she was superior to it.
She had the wholesome fear of doing wrong too strongly impressed
upon her by education--she had too little confidence in herself--was
too well assured of her own weakness--to suffer herself, even for
a moment, to depart, in either thought or deed, from those quiet
but stern proprieties of conduct which are among the best securities
of the young. While she looked in her lover's face with confidence,
and held his arm with the grasp of one who is sure of a right to
do so, there was an air of childish simplicity in her manner which
was wholly at variance with wild passions and improper fancies.
While the hunter maintained her on his arm, and looked down into her
eyes with love, his glance was yet as respectful, as unexpressive
of presumption, as her own. Had the eyes of all Charlemont been
looking on, they would have beheld nothing in the conduct of either
which could have incurred the censure of the most becoming delicacy.

Keen was the emotion and bitter was the thought which worked in the
mind of Margaret Cooper. She looked on the deportment of that young
maiden, whose intellect at another day she would have despised,
with envy and regret. Truer thoughts and feelings came to her as she
listened to the innocent but fond dialogue between the unconscious
pair. The hunter was pursuing an erratic life of enterprise and
industry, then very common among the western youth. He had been
down upon the Mississippi, seeking his fortune in such adventures
as make border-life in our country something like the more civilized
life of the middle ages. He had returned after a long absence,
to claim the bride whose affections he had won long before he had
departed.

Never had knight-errant been more true to his mistress. Her image
had been his talisman as well against danger from without, as against
the demon within. It had never left his mind, and he now returned
for his reward. He had returned to Charlemont just before the church
service had begun, and, being unprepared to go thither, had found
no difficulty in persuading his sweetheart to give the hour of
morning service to himself.

Mixed up with his professions of love was the story of his wanderings.
Never were adventures more interesting to any auditor. Never was
auditor more easily moved by the transitions of the tale from tears
to smiles, and from smiles again to tears. His risks and rewards;
his defeats and successes; his wild adventures by fell and flood--not
perhaps so perilous as those of Othello, but such as proved he
had the soul to encounter the worst in Othello's experience, and
maintain himself as well--drew largely on the maiden's wonder and
delight, increased her tenderness and tremors, and made her quite
as devoted to her hero as ever was Desdemona to her dusky chief.
As they went from hearing below, the manner in which the hunter
concluded his narrative provided a sufficient test for the faith
of his companion.

"And now, Selina, you see all the risks and the dangers. There's
work and perhaps trouble for you to go down with me along the Choctaw
borders. But if there's work, I am the man to do my own share, and
help you out in yours; and, if there's trouble, here's the breast
to stand it first, and here's the arm to drive it back, so that
it'll never trouble yours. No danger shall come to you, so long
as I can stand up between it and you. If so be that you love me as
you say, there's one way to show it: you'll soon make up your mind
to go with me. If yon don't, why--"

"But you know I do love you, John--" murmured the girl.

"Don't I believe it? Well, if what you say means what it should,
you're ready. Here's my hand, and all that it's good for. It can
work for you and fight for you, Selina, and it's yours etarnally,
with all that I have."

The hand of the girl was silently put into that of the speaker.
The tears were in her eyes; but, if she made any other answer, it
was unheard by Margaret Cooper. The rustic pair moved from sight
even as they spoke, and the desolate woman once more remained alone!






CHAPTER XXXVII.

SHAME AND DEATH--THE OATH.





Margaret Cooper was at length permitted to emerge from the place
of her concealment. The voices of the lovers were lost, as well
as their forms, in the wooded distance. Dreaming, like children as
they were, of life and happiness, they had wandered off, too happy
to fancy for a moment that the world contained, in its wide, vast
bosom, one creature half so wretched as she who hung above them,
brooding, like some wild bird of the cliff, over the storm which
had robbed her of her richest plumage.

She sank back into the woods. She no longer had the heart to commit
the meditated crime. This purpose had left her mind. It had given
place to another, however, scarcely less criminal. We have seen
her, under the first impression that the stranger whose voice she
heard was Alfred Stevens, turning the muzzle of the pistol from
her breast to the path on which he was approaching. Though she
discovered her error, and laid the weapon down, the sudden suggestion
of her mind, at that moment, gave a new direction to her mood.

Why should she not seek to avenge her wrong? Was he to escape without
penalty? was she to be a quiescent victim? True, she was a woman,
destined it would seem to suffer--perhaps with a more than ordinary
share of that suffering which falls to her sex. But she had also
a peculiar strength--the strength of a man in some respects; and
in her bosom she now felt the sudden glow of one of his fiercest
passions. Revenge might be in her power. She might redress her
wrong by her own hand. It was a weapon of death which she grasped.
In her grasp it might be made a weapon of power. The suggestion
seemed to be that of justice only. It was one that filled her whole
soul with a triumphant and a wild enthusiasm.

"I shall not be stricken down without danger to mine enemy. For
THIS--this, at least--strength is allotted me. Let him tremble! In
his place of seeming security let him tremble! I shall pursue his
steps. I will find him out. There shall be a day of retribution!
Alfred Stevens, there is a power within me which tells me you are
no longer safe!

"And why may I not secure this justice--this vengeance? Why?
Because I am a woman. Ha! We shall see. If I am a woman, I can be
an enemy--and such an enemy! An enemy not to be appeased, not to
be overcome. War always with my foe--war to the knife--war to the
last!"

Such a nature as that of Margaret Cooper needed some such object
to give it the passionate employment without which it must recoil
upon itself and end either in suicide or madness. She brooded upon
this new thought. She found in it a grateful exercise. From the
moment when she conceived the idea of being the avenger of her own
wrong, her spirit became more elastic--she became less sensible to
the possible opinions upon her condition which might be entertained
by others. She found consolation, in retreating to this one thought,
from all the rest. Of the difficulties in the way of her design,
it was not in her impetuous character to think. She never once
suspected that the name of Alfred Stevens had been an assumed one.
She never once asked how she was to pursue and hunt him up. She
thought of a male disguise for herself, it is true; but of the means
and modes of travel--in what direction to go. and after what plan
to conduct her pursuit, she had not the most distant idea.

She addressed herself to her new design, however, in one respect,
with amazing perseverance. It diverted her from other and more
oppressive thoughts. Her pistols she carried secretly to a very
distant wood, where she concealed them in the hollow of a tree.
To this wood she repaired secretly and daily. Here she selected a
tree as a mark. A small section of the bark, which she tore away,
at a given height, she learned to regard as the breast of her
seducer. This was the object of her aim. Without any woman fears,
she began her practice and continued it, day by day, until, as we
are told by one of the chroniclers of her melancholy story, "she
could place a ball with an accuracy, which, were it universally
equalled by modern duellists, would render duelling much more fatal
than it commonly is."

In secret she procured gunpowder and lead, by arts so ingenious as
to baffle detection. At midnight when her mother slept she moulded
her bullets. Well might the thoughts and feelings which possessed her
mind, while engaged in this gloomy labor, have endowed every bullet
with a wizard spell to make it do its bidding truly. Bitter, indeed,
were the hours so appropriated; but they had their consolations.
Dark and terrible were the excited moods in which she retired from
her toils to that slumber which she could not always secure. And
when it did come, what were its images! The tree, the mark, the
weapon, the deep, dim forest, all the scenes and trials of the day,
were renewed in her sleep. A gloomy wood filled her eyes--a victim
dabbled in blood lay before her; and, more than once, her own fearful
cry of vengeance and exultation awakened her from those dreams of
sleep, which strengthened her in the terrible pursuit of the object
which occasioned them.

Such thoughts and practices, continued with religious pertinacity,
from day to day, necessarily had their effect upon her appearance
as well as her character. Her beauty assumed a wilder aspect. Her
eye shot forth a supernatural fire. She never smiled. Her mouth
was rigid and compressed as if her heart was busy in an endless
conflict. Her gloom, thus nurtured by solitude and the continual
presence of a brooding imagination of revenge, darkened into
something like ferocity. Her utterance became brief and quick--her
tones sharp, sudden, and piercing. She had but one thought which
never seemed to desert her, yet of this thought no ear ever had
cognizance. It was of the time when she should exercise the skill
which she had now acquired upon that destroyer of herself, whom
she now felt herself destined to destroy.

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