Charlemont

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Of course we are describing a madness--one of those peculiar
forms of the disease which seems to have its origin in natural and
justifiable suggestions of reason. Not the less a madness for all
that.

Succeeding in her practice at one distance, Margaret Cooper changed
it. From one point to another she constantly varied her practice,
until her aim grew certain at almost any distance within the ordinary
influence of the weapon. To strike her mark at thirty feet became,
in a little while, quite as easy as to do so at five; and, secure
now of her weapon, her next object--though there was no cessation
of her practice--was how to seek and where to find the victim.

In this new object she meditated to disguise herself in the apparel
of a man. She actually commenced the making up of the several
garments of one. This was also the secret labor of the midnight
hour, when her feeble-minded mother slept. She began to feel some
of the difficulties lying in the way of this pursuit, and her mind
grew troubled to consider them, without however, relaxing in its
determination. That seemed a settled matter.

While she brooded over this new feature of her purpose--as if
fortunately to arrest the mad design--her mother fell seriously
sick, and was for some time in danger. The duty of attending upon
her, put a temporary stop to her thoughts and exercises; though
without having the effect of expelling them from her mind.

But another event, upon her mother's recovery, tended to produce
a considerable alteration in her thoughts. A new care filled her
heart and rendered her a different being, in several respects. She
was soon to become a mother. The sickness of soul which oppressed
her under this conviction, gave a new direction to her mood
without lessening its bitterness; and, in proportion as she found
her vengeance delayed, so was the gratification which it promised,
a heightened desire in her mind.

For the humiliating and trying event which was at hand, Margaret
Cooper prepared with a degree of silent firmness which denoted
quite as strongly the resignation of despair as any other feeling.

The child is born.

Margaret Cooper has at length become a mother. She has suffered
the agony, without being able to feel the compensating pride and
pleasure of one. It was the witness of her shame--could she receive
it with any assurances of love? It is doubtful if she did.

For some time after its birth, the hapless woman seemed to be
unconscious, or half-conscious only, of her charge. A stupor weighed
upon her senses. When she did awaken, and her eyes fell upon the
face and form of the infant with looks of recognition, one long,
long piercing shriek burst from her lips. She closed her eyes--she
turned away from the little unoffending, yet offensive object with
a feeling of horror.

Its features were those of Alfred Stevens. The likeness was
indelible; and this identity drew upon the child a share of that
loathing hatred with which she now remembered the guilty father.

It may very well be supposed that the innocent babe suffered under
these circumstances. The milk which it drew from the mother's breast,
was the milk of bitterness, and it did not thrive. It imbibed gall
instead of nutriment. Day after day it pined in hopeless misery;
and though the wretched mother strove to supply its wants and soothe
its little sorrows, with a gradually increasing interest which
overcame her first loathing, there was yet that want of sweetest
sympathy which nothing merely physical could well supply.

Debility was succeeded by disease--fever preyed upon its little
frame, which was now reduced to a skeleton. One short month only
had elapsed from its birth, and it lay, in the silence of exhaustion
upon the arm of its mother. Its eyes, whence the flickering light
was escaping fast, looked up into hers, as she fancied, with an
expression of reproach. She felt, on the instant, the pang of the
maternal conscience. She forgot the unworthy father, as she thought
of the neglectful mother. She bent down, and, for the first time,
imprinted on its little lips the maternal kiss.

A smile seemed to glimmer on its tiny features; and, from that
moment, Margaret Cooper resolved to forget her injuries, for the
time, at least, in the consideration of her proper duties. But
her resolution came too late. Even while her nipple was within its
boneless gums, a change came over the innocent. She did not heed
it. Her eyes and thoughts were elsewhere; and thus she mused, gazing
vacantly upon the wall of her chamber until her mother entered the
room. Mrs. Cooper gave but a single glance at the infant when she
saw that its little cares were over.

"Oh, Margaret!" she exclaimed, "the child is dead."

The mother looked down with a start and shudder. A big tear fell
from her eyes upon the cold cheek of the innocent. She released
it to her mother, turned her face upon the couch, and uttered her
thanks to Heaven that had sedecreed it--that had left her again
free for that darker purpose which had so long filled her mind.

"Better so," she murmured to her mother. "It is at peace. It will
neither know its own nor its mother's griefs. It is free from that
shame for which I must live!"

"Come now, Margaret, no more of that," said the mother sharply.
"There's no need of shame. There are other things to live for
besides shame."

"There are--there are!" exclaimed the daughter, with spasmodic
energy. "Were there not, I should, indeed, be desperate."

"To be sure you would, my child. You have a great deal to live
for yet; and let a little time blow over, and when everything's
forgotten, you will get as good a husband as any girl in the
country."

"For Heaven's sake, mother, none of this?"

"But why not! Though you are looking a little bad just now--quite
pale and broken--yet it's only because you have been so ill; and
this nursing of babies, and having 'em too, is a sort of business
to make any young woman look bad; but in spite of all, there's not
a girl in the village, no matter how fresh she may be looking, that
can hold a candle to you."

"For mercy, mother!--"

"Let me speak, I tell you! Don't I know? You're young, and you'll
get over it. You will get all your beauty and good looks back, now
that the baby's out of the way, and there's no more nursing to be
done. And what with your beauty and your talents, Margaret--"

"Peace! mother! Peace--peace! You will drive me to madness if you
continue to speak thus."

"Well, I'm sure there's no knowing what to say to please you. I'm
sure, I only want to cheer you up, and to convince you that things
are not so bad as you think them now. The cloud will blow over
soon, and everything will be forgotten, and then, you see--"

The girl waved her hand impatiently.

"Death--death!" she exclaimed. "Oh! child of shame, and bitterness,
and wrath!" she murmured, kneeling down beside the infant, "thou
art the witness that I have no future but storm, and cloud, and
wrath, and--Vengeance!"

The last word was inaudible to her mother's ears.

"It is an oath!" she cried; "an oath!" And her hands were uplifted
in solemn adjuration.

"Come--come, Margaret! none of this swearing. You frighten me with
your swearing. There's nothing that you need to swear about! What's
done can't be helped now, by taking it so seriously. You must only
be patient, and give yourself time. Time's the word for us now;
after a little while you'll see the sky become brighter. It's a
bad business, it's true; but it needn't break a body's heart. How
many young girls I've known in my time, that's been in the same
fix. There was Janet Bonner, and Emma Loring, and Mary Peters--I
knew 'em all, very well. Well, they all made a slip once in their
lives, and they never broke their hearts about it, and didn't look
very pale and sad in the face either; but they just kept quiet and
behaved decent for awhile, and every one of 'em got good husbands.
Janet Bonner, she married Dick Pyatt, who came from Massachusetts,
and kept the school down by Clayton's Meadow; Emma Loring married
a baptist-preacher from Virginia, named Stokes. I never saw him to
know him; and as for Mary Peters, there never was a girl that had
a slip that was ever so fortunate, for she's been married no less
than three times since, and as she's a widow again, there's no
telling what may happen to her yet. So don't you be so downcast.
You're chance is pretty nigh as good as ever, if you will only hold
up your head, and put the best face on it."

"Oh! torture--torture! Mother, will you not be silent? Let the dead
speak to me only. I would hear but the voice of this one witness--"

And she communed only with the dead infant, sitting or kneeling
beside it. But the communion was not one of contrition or tears--not
of humility and repentance--not of self-reproach and a broken
spirit. Pride and other passions had summoned up deities and angels
of terror and of crime, before the eyes and thoughts of the wretched
mourner, and the demon who had watched with her and waited on her,
and had haunted her with taunt and bitter mockeries, night and day,
was again busy with terrible suggestions, which gradually grew to
be divine laws to her diseased imagination.

"Yes!" she exclaimed unconsciously.

"I hear! I obey! Yet speak again. Repeat the lesson. I must learn
it every syllable, so that I shall not mistake--so that I can not
fail!"

"Who are you talking to, Margaret?" asked the mother anxiously.

"Do you not see them, where they go? There--through the doors;
the open windows--wrapped in shadows, with great wings at their
shoulders, each carrying a dart in his bony grasp."

"Lord, have mercy! She's losing her senses again!" and the mother
was about to rush from the apartment to seek assistance; but with
the action, the daughter suddenly arose, wearing a look of singular
calmness, and motioning to the child, she said:--

"Will you not dress it for the grave?"

"I'm going about it now. The poor lovely little creature. The
innocent little blossom. We must put it in white, Margaret--virgin
white--and put white flowers in its little hands and on its breast,
and under its head. Oh! it will look so sweet in its little coffin!"

"God! I should go mad with all this!" exclaimed the daughter.
"were it not for that work which is before me! I must be calm for
that-calm and stern! I must not hear--I must not think--not feel--lest
I forget myself, and the deed which I have to do. That oath--that
oath! It is sworn! It is registered in heaven, by the fatal angel
of remorse, and wrath, and vengeance!"

And again, a whisper at her ears repeated:--

"For this, Margaret, and for this only, must thou live".

"I must! I will!" she muttered, as it were in reply, and her eye
glared upon the opened door, as she heard a voice and footsteps
without; and the thought smote her:--

"Should it be now! Come for the sacrifice! Ha!"

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE PALL UPON THE COFFIN.

The noise which arrested the attention of Margaret Cooper, and
kindled her features into an expression of wild and fiery ferocity,
was of innocent origin. The widow Thackeray was the intruder. Her
kindness, sympathy, and unweared attentions, so utterly in conflict
with the estimates hitherto made of her heart and character,
by Mrs Cooper, had, in some degree, disarmed the censures of that
excellent mother, if they had not wholly changed her sentiments.
She professed to be very grateful to Thackeray's attentions, and,
without making any profession, Margaret certainly showed her that
she felt them. She now only pointed the widow to the corpse of the
child, in that one action telling to the other all that was yet
unknown. Then she seated herself composedly, folded her hands,
and, beside the corpse, forgot its presence, forgot the presence of
all--heard no voice, save that of the assiduous demon whom nothing
could expel from her companionship.

"Poor little thing!" murmured the widow Thackeray, as she proceeded
to assist Mrs. Cooper in decking it for the grave.

The duty was finally done. Its burial was appointed for the morrow.

A village funeral is necessarily an event of some importance. The
lack of excitements in small communities, in vests even sorrow and
grief and death with a peculiar interest in the eyes of curiosity.
On the present occasion, all the villagers attended. The funeral
itself might have sufficed to collect them with few exceptions;
but now there was a more eager influence still, working upon the
gossippy moods of the population. To see Margaret Cooper in her
affliction--to see that haughty spirit humbled and made ashamed--was,
we fear, a motive, in the minds of many, much stronger than
the ostensible occasion might have awakened. Had Margaret been
a fashionable woman, in a great city, she might have disappointed
the vulgar desire, by keeping to her chamber. Nay, even according
to the free-and-easy standards prevailing at Charlemont, she might
have done the same thing, and incurred no additional scandal.

It was, indeed, to the surprise of a great many, that she made her
appearance. It was still more a matter of surprise--nay, pious and
virgin horror--that she seemed to betray neither grief nor shame,
surrounded as she was by all whom she knew, and all, in particular,
whom, in the day of her pride, she had kept at a distance.

"What a brazen creature!" whispered Miss Jemima Parkinson, an
interesting spinster of thirty-six, to Miss Ellen Broadhurst, who
was only thirty-four; and Miss Ellen whispered back, in reply:--

"She hasn't the slightest bit of shame!"

Interesting virgins! they had come to gloat over the spectacle of
shame. To behold the agonizing sense of degradation declare itself
under the finger-pointing scorn of those who, perhaps, were only
innocent from necessity, and virtuous because of the lack of the
necessary attractions in the eyes of lust.

But Margaret Cooper seemed quite as insensible to their presence
as to their scorn and her own shame. She, in truth, saw none of
them. She heard not their voices. She conjectured non (sic) nts.
She had anticipated all of them; and having, in consequence, reached
a point of intensity in her agony which could bear no addition,
she had been relieved only by a still more intense passion, by
which the enfeebling one, of mere society, stood rebuked and almost
forgotten.

They little dreamed the terrible thoughts which were working,
beneath that stolid face, in that always eager-working brain. They
never fancied what a terrible demon now occupied that fiery heart
which they supposed was wholly surrendered to the consciousness of
shame. Could they have heard that voice of the fiend whispering in
her ears, while they whispered to one another--heard his terrible
exhortations--heard her no less terrible replies--they would have
shrunk away in horror, and felt fear rather than exultation.

Margaret Cooper was insensible to all that they could say or do.
She knew them well--knew what they would say, and feel, and do;
but the very extremity of her suffering had placed it out of their
power any longer to mortify or shame.

Some few of the villagers remained away. Ned Hinkley and his widowed
sister were absent from the house, though they occupied obscure
places in the church when the funeral-procession took place. An
honorable pity kept them from meeting the eyes of the poor
shame-stricken but not shame-showing woman.

And Margaret followed the little corpse to its quiet nook in the
village graveyard. In that simple region the procession was wholly
on foot; and she walked behind the coffin as firmly as if she knew
not what it held. There was a single shiver that passed over her
frame, as the heavy clods fell upon the coffin-lid--but that was
all; and when her mother and the widow Thackeray took each of them
one of her arms, and led her away from the grave, and home, she went
quietly, calmly, it would seem, and with as firm a step as ever!

"She has not a bit of feeling!" said Miss Jemima to Miss Ellen.

"That's always the case with your very smart women," was the reply.
"It's all head with 'em; there's no heart. They can talk fine things
about death, and sorrow, and affliction, but it's talk only. They
don't feel what they say."

Ned Hinkley had a juster notion of the state of the poor victim--of
her failings and her sensibilities, her equal strength and weakness.

"Now," said he to his sister, "there's a burning volcano in that
woman's heart, that will tear her some day to pieces. For all that
coldness, and calmness, and stateliness, her brain is on fire, and
her heart ready for a convulsion. Her thoughts now, if she thinks
at all, are all desperate. She's going through a very hell upon
earth! When you think of her pride--and she's just as proud now as
the devil himself--her misfortune hasn't let her down--only made her
more fierce--you wonder that she lets herself be seen; you wonder
that she lives at all. I only wonder that she hasn't thrown herself
from the rocks and into the lake. She'll do it yet, I'm a-thinking.

"And just so she always was. I knew her long ago. She once told
me she was afraid of nothing--would do as she pleased--she could
dare anything! From that moment I saw she wasn't the girl for Bill
Hinkley. I told him so, but he was so crazy after her, he'd hear to
nothing. A woman--a young woman--a mere girl of fifteen--boasting
that she can dare and do things that would set any woman in
a shiver! I tell you what, sis, the woman that's bolder than her
sex is always in danger of falling from the rocks. She gets such a
conceit of her mind, that the devil is always welcome. Her heart,
after that, stands no sort of chance!

"Protect me, say I, from all that class of women that pride themselves
on their strongmindedness! They get insolent upon it. They think
that mind can do everything. They're so vain, that they never can
see the danger, even when it's yawning at their feet. A woman's
never safe unless she's scary of herself, and mistrusts herself,
and never lets her thoughts and fancies get from under a tight rein
of prudence. For, after all, the passions will have their way some
day, and then what's the use of the mind? I tell you, sis, that
the passions are born deaf--they never listen to any argument.

"But I'm sorry for her--God knows I'm sorry for her! I'd give
all I'm worth to have a fair shot or clip at that rascal Stevens.
Brother Stevens! Ain't it monstrous, now, that a sheep's cover should
be all that's sufficient to give the wolf freedom in the flock?--that
you've only to say, 'This is a brother--a man of God'--and no proof
is asked! nobody questions! The blind, beastly, bigoted, blathering
blockheads! I feel very much like setting off straight, and licking
John Hinkley, though he's my own uncle, within an inch of his life!
He and John Cross--the old fools who are so eager to impose their
notions of religion upon everybody, that anybody may impose upon
them--they two have destroyed this poor young creature. It's at
their door, in part, this crime, and this ruin! I feel it in my
heart to lick 'em both out of their breeches!

"Yet, as I'm a living sinner, they'll stand up in the congregation,
and exhort about this poor girl's misfortune, just as if they were
not to blame at all who brought the wolf into the farmyard! They'll
talk about her sins, and not a word, to themselves or anybody else,
about their own stupidities! I feel it in my heart to lather both
of them right away!"

The sister said little, and sorrowfully walked on in silence
homeward, listening to the fierce denunciations of Ned Hinkley.
Ned was affected, or, rather, he showed his sympathies, in a manner
entirely his own. He was so much for fight, that he totally forgot
his fiddle that night, and amused himself by putting his two
"barking-pups" in order--getting them ready, as he said, "in case
he ever should get a crack at Brother Stevens!"

The cares of the child's burial over, and the crowd dispersed,
the cottage of the widow Cooper was once more abandoned to the
cheerlessness and wo (sic) within. Very dismal was the night of that
day to the two, the foolish mother and wretched daughter, as they
sat brooding together, in deep silence, by the light of a feeble
candle. The mother rocked a while in her easy-chair. The daughter,
hands clasped in her lap, sat watching the candlelight in almost
idiotic vacancy of gaze. At length she stood up and spoke--slowly,
deliberately, and apparently in as calm a mood as she had ever felt
in all her life:--

"We must leave this place, mother. We must go hence--to-morrow if
we can."

"Go?--leave this place? I want to know why! I'm sure we're very
comfortable here. I can't be going just when you please, and leaving
all my company and friends."

"Friends!"

"Yes, friends! There's the widow Thackeray--and there's--"

"And how long is it since Mrs. Thackeray was such a dear friend,
mother?" asked the daughter, with ill-suppressed scorn.

"No matter how long: she's a good friend now. She's not so foolish
as she used to be. She's grown good; she's got religion; and I
don't consider what she was. No!--I'm willing--"

"Pshaw, mother! tell me nothing of your friendships. You'll find,
wherever you go, as many friends as you please, valued quite as
much as Mrs. Thackeray."

"Well, I do say, Margaret, it's very ungrateful of you to speak
so disrespectfully of Mrs. Thackeray, after all her kindness and
attention."

"I do not speak disrespectfully of Mrs. Thackeray. I NEVER did speak
ill of her, even when it was your favorite practice to do so. I
only speak of your newly-acquired appreciation of her. But this is
nothing to the purpose. I repeat, mother, we can not remain here.
I will depart, whether you resolve to go or not. I can not, I will
not, exist another week in Charlemont."

"And where would you go?"

"Back--back to that old farm, from which you brought me in evil
hour! It is poor, obscure, profitless, unsought, unseen: it will
give me a shelter--it may bring me peace. I must have solitude for
a season; I must sleep for months."

"Sleep for months! La me, child, what a notion's that!"

"No matter--thither let us go. I seem to see it, stretching out
its hands, and imploring us to come."

"Bless me, Margaret! a farm stretching out its hands! Why, you're
in a dream!"

"Don't wake me, then! Better I should so dream! Thither I go. It
is fortunate that you have not been able to sell it. It is a mercy
that it still remains to us. It was my childhood's home. Would
it could again receive me as a child! It will cover my head for a
while, at least, and that is something. We must leave this place.
Here every thing offends me--every spot, every face, every look,
every gesture."

"It's impossible, Margaret!--"

"What! you suppose it an honorable distinction, do you, when the
folks here point to your daughter, and say--ha! ha!--listen what
they say! It is the language of compliment! They are doing me honor,
with tongue and finger! Repeat, mother; tell me what they say--for
it evidently gives you great pleasure."

"O Margaret! Margaret!--"

"You understand, do you? Well, then, we go. We can not depart
too soon. If I stay here, I madden! And I must not madden. I have
something which needs be done--which must be done. It is an oath!
an oath in heaven! The child was a witness. She heard all--every
syllable!"

"What all? what did you hear?"

"No matter! I'm sworn to be secret. But you shall hear in time. We
have no time for it now. It is a very long story. And we must now
be packing. Yes, we must go. _I_ must go, at least. Shall I go
alone?"

"But you will not leave your mother, Margaret!"

"Father and mother--all will I leave, in obedience to that oath.
Believe me or not, mother--go with me or not--still I go. Perhaps
it is better that I should go alone."

The strong will naturally swayed the feebler, as it had ever done
before. The mother submitted to an arrangement which she had not
the resolution to oppose. A few days were devoted to necessary
arrangements, and then they left Charlemont for ever. Margaret
Cooper looked not once behind them as they traversed the lonely
hills looking down upon the village--those very hills from which,
at the opening of this story, the treacherous Alfred Stevens and
his simple uncle beheld the lovely little settlement. She recognised
the very spot, as they drove over it, where Stevens first encountered
her, and the busy demon, at her ears whispered:--

"It was here! You remember!"

And she clinched her teeth firmly together, even though she
shuddered at her memories; and she renewed her oath to the demon,
who, thereupon, kept her company the rest of the journey, till she
reached the ancient and obscure farmstead in which she was born.

"She retired," says the rude chronicle from which we have borrowed
many of the materials for this sombre history, "to a romantic little
farm in---, there to spend in seclusion, with her aged mother and
a few servants, the remainder of her days."

Our simple chronicler takes too much for granted. Margaret
Cooper retired with no such purpose. She had purposes entirely at
conflict with any idea of repose or quiet. She thought nothing of
the remainder of her days. Her mother was not so aged but that she
could still think, six months afterward, of the reported marriage
of the widow Thackeray with repining, and with the feeling of one
who thinks that she has suffered neglect and injustice at the hands
of the world. Touching the romance of the ancient farmstead, we
are more modestly content to describe it as sterile, lonely, and
unattractive; its obscurity offering, for the present, its chief
attractions to our desolate heroine, and the true occasion for that
deep disgust with which her amiable mother beheld it.

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