THE DOOM.
With this determination our suspicious youth made rapid progress in
getting out his horse. A few minutes saw him mounted, and putting
some of his resolution into his heels, he sent the animal forward at a
killing start, under the keen infliction of the spur. He had marked with
his eye the general course which Stevens had taken up the hills, and
having a nag of equal speed and bottom, did not scruple, in the great
desire which he felt, to ascertain the secret of the stranger, to make
him display the qualities of both from the very jump. Stevens had been
riding with a free rein, but in consequence of these energetic measures
on the part of Hinkley, the latter soon succeeded in overhauling him.
Still he had already gone a space of five miles, and this, too, in
one direction. He looked back when he found himself pursued, and his
countenance very clearly expressed the chagrin which he felt. This
he strove, but with very indifferent success, to hide from the keen
searching eyes of his pursuer. He drew up to wait his coming, and there
was a dash of bitterness in his tones as he expressed his “gratification
at finding a companion where he least expected one.”
“And perhaps, parson, when you didn't altogether wish for one,” was the
reply of the reckless fellow. “The truth is, I know I'm not the sort of
company that a wise, sensible, learned, and pious young gentleman would
like to keep, out the truth is what you said about taking a stretch, man
and beast, seemed to me to be just about as wise a thing for me and
my beast also. We've been lying by so long that I was getting a little
stiff in my joints, and Flipflap, my nag here, was getting stiff in his
neck, as they say was the case with the Jews in old times, so I took
your idea and put after you, thinking that you'd agree with me that bad
company's far better than none.”
There was a mixture of simplicity and archness in the manner of the
speaker that put Stevens somewhat at fault; but he saw that it wouldn't
do to show the dudgeon which he really felt; and smoothing his quills
with as little obvious effort as possible, he expressed his pleasure at
the coming of his companion. While doing so, he wheeled his horse about,
and signified a determination to return.
“What! so soon? Why, Lord bless you, Flipflap has scarcely got in motion
yet. If such a stir will do for your nag 'twont do for him.”
But Stevens doggedly kept his horse's head along the back track, though
the animal himself exhibited no small restlessness and a disposition to
go forward.
“Well, really, Parson Stevens, I take it as unkind that you turn back
almost the very moment I join you. I seem to have scared ride out of you
if not out of your creature; but do as you please. I'll ride on, now I'm
out. I don't want to force myself on any man for company.”
Stevens disclaimed any feeling of this sort, but declared he had ridden
quite as far as he intended; and while he hesitated, Hinkley cut the
matter short by putting spurs to his steed, and going out of sight in a
moment.
“What can the cur mean?” demanded Stevens of himself, the moment after
they had separated. “Can he have any suspicions? Ha! I must be watchful!
At all events, there's no going forward to-day. I must put it off for
next week; and meanwhile have all my eyes about me. The fellow seems to
have as much cunning as simplicity. He is disposed too, to be insolent
I marked his manner at the lake, as well as that of his bull-headed
cousin; but that sousing put anger out of me, and then, again, 'twill
scarcely do in these good days for such holy men as myself to take up
cudgels. I must bear it for awhile as quietly as possible. It will not
be long. She at least is suspicionless. Never did creature so
happily delude herself. Yet what a judgment in some things! What keen
discrimination! What a wild, governless imagination! She would be a
prize, if it were only to exhibit. How she would startle the dull,
insipid, tea-table simperers on our Helicon--nay, with what scorn she
would traverse the Helicon itself. The devil is that she would have a
will in spite of her keeper. Such an animal is never tamed. There could
be no prescribing to her the time when she should roar--no teaching her
to fawn and fondle, and not to rend. Soul, and eye, and tongue, would
speak under the one impulse, in the exciting moment; and when Mrs.
Singalongohnay was squeaking out her eternal requiems--her new versions
of the Psalms and Scriptures--her blank verse elegiacs--oh! how
blank!--beginning, 'Night was upon the hills,'--or 'The evening veil
hung low,' or, 'It slept,'--or after some other equally threatening form
and fashion--I can fancy how the bright eye of Margaret would gleam with
scorn; and while the Pollies and Dollies, the Patties and Jennies, the
Corydons and Jemmy Jesamies, all round were throwing up hands and eyes
in a sort of rapture, how she would look, with what equal surprise and
contempt, doubting her own ears, and sickening at the stuff and the
strange sycophancy which induced it. And should good old Singalongohnay,
with a natural and patronizing visage, approach, and venture to talk to
her about poetry, with that assured smile of self-excellence which such
a venerable authority naturally employs, how she would turn upon the
dame and exclaim--'What! do you call that poetry?' What a concussion
would follow. How the simperers would sheer off; the tea that night
might as well be made of aqua-fortis. Ha! ha! I can fancy the scene
before me. Nothing could be more rich. I must give her a glimpse of such
a scene. It will be a very good mode of operation. Her pride and vanity
will do the rest. I have only to intimate the future sway--the exclusive
sovereignty which would follow--the overthrow of the ancient idols, and
the setting up of a true divinity in herself. But shall it be so, Master
Stevens? Verily, that will be seen hereafter. Enough, if the delusion
takes. If I can delude the woman through the muse, I am satisfied. The
muse after that may dispose of the woman as she pleases.”
Such was a portion of the soliloquy of the libertine as he rode slowly
back to Charlemont. His further musings we need not pursue at present.
It is enough to say that they were of the same family character. He
returned to his room as soon as he reached his lodging-house, and
drawing from his pocket a bundle of letters which he had intended
putting in the postoffice at Ellisland, he carefully locked them up in
his portable writing-desk which he kept at the bottom of his valise.
When the devout Mrs. Hinkley tapped at his door to summon him to dinner,
the meritorious young man was to be seen, seated at his table, with the
massive Bible of the family conspicuously open before him. Good young
man! never did he invoke a blessing on the meats with more holy unction
than on that very day.
Meanwhile, let us resume our progress with William Hinkley, and inquire
in what manner his wooing sped with the woman whom he so unwisely loved.
We have seen him leaving the cottage of Mr. Calvert with the avowed
purpose of seeking a final answer. A purpose from which the old man did
not seek to dissuade him, though he readily conceived its fruitlessness.
It was with no composed spirit that the young rustic felt himself
approaching the house of Mrs. Cooper. More than once he hesitated
and even halted. But a feeling of shame, and the efforts of returning
manliness re-resolved him, and he hurried with an unwonted rapidity of
movement toward the dwelling, as if he distrusted his own power, unless
he did so, to conclude the labor he had begun.
He gathered some courage when he found that Margaret was from home. She
had gone on her usual rambles. Mrs. Cooper pointed out the course which
she had taken, and the young man set off in pursuit. The walks of the
maiden were of course well known to a lover so devoted. He had sought
and followed her a thousand times, and the general direction which she
had gone, once known, his progress was as direct as his discoveries were
certain. The heart of the youth, dilated with better hopes as he felt
himself traversing the old familiar paths. It seemed to him that the
fates could scarcely be adverse in a region which had always been so
friendly. Often had he escorted her along this very route, when their
spirits better harmonized--when, more of the girl struggling into
womanhood, the mind of Margaret Cooper, ignorant of its own resources
and unconscious of its maturer desires, was more gentle, and could
rejoice in that companionship for which she now betrayed so little
desire. The sheltered paths and well-known trees, even the little
clumps of shrubbery that filled up the intervals, were too pleasant and
familiar to his eye not to seem favorable to his progress, and with a
hope that had no foundation, save in the warm and descriptive colors of
a young heart's fancy, William Hinkley pursued the route which led him
to one of the most lovely and love-haunted glades in all Kentucky.
So sweet a hush never hallowed the sabbath rest of any forest. The very
murmur of a drowsy zephyr among the leaves was of slumberous tendency;
and silence prevailed, with the least possible exertion of her
authority, over the long narrow dell through which the maiden had gone
wandering. At the foot of a long slope, to which his eye was conducted
by a natural and lovely vista, the youth beheld the object of his
search, sitting, motionless, with her back toward him. The reach of
light was bounded by her figure which was seated on the decaying trunk
of a fallen tree. She was deeply wrapped in thought, for she did not
observe his approach, and when his voice reached her ears, and she
started and looked round, her eyes were full of tears. These she hastily
brushed away, and met the young man with a degree of composure which
well might have put the blush upon his cheek, for the want of it.
“In tears!--weeping, Margaret?” was the first address of the lover who
necessarily felt shocked at what he saw.
“They were secret tears, sir--not meant for other eyes,” was the
reproachful reply.
“Ah, Margaret! but why should you have secret tears, when you might have
sympathy--why should you have tears at all? You have no sorrows.”
“Sympathy!” was the exclamation of the maiden, while a scornful smile
gleamed from her eyes; “whose sympathy, I pray?”
The young man hesitated to answer. The expression of her eye discouraged
him. He dreaded lest, in offering his sympathies, he should extort from
her lips a more direct intimation of that scorn which he feared. He
chose a middle course.
“But that you should have sorrows, Margaret, seems very strange to me.
You are young and hearty; endowed beyond most of your sex, and with
a beauty which can not be too much admired. Your mother is hearty and
happy, and for years you have had no loss of relations to deplore. I see
not why you should have sorrows.”
“It is very likely, William Hinkley, that you do not see. The ordinary
sorrows of mankind arise from the loss of wives and cattle, children and
property. There are sorrows of another kind; sorrows of the soul; the
consciousness of denial; of strife--strife to be continued--strife
without victory--baffled hopes--defeated aims and energies. These are
sorrows which are not often computed in the general account. It is
highly probable that none of them afflict you. You have your parents,
and very good people they are. You yourself are no doubt a very good
young man--so everybody says--and you have health and strength.
Besides, you have property, much more, I am told, than falls to the lot
ordinarily of young people in this country. These are reasons why you
should not feel any sorrow; but were all these mine and a great deal
more, I'm afraid it would not make me any more contented. You, perhaps,
will not understand this, William Hinkley, but I assure you that such,
nevertheless is my perfect conviction.”
“Yes, I can, and do understand it, Margaret,” said the young man, with
flushed cheek and a very tremulous voice, as he listened to language
which, though not intended to be contemptuous, was yet distinctly
colored by that scornful estimate which the maiden had long since made
of the young man's abilities. In this respect she had done injustice to
his mind, which had been kept in subjection and deprived of its ordinary
strength and courage, by the enfeebling fondness of his heart.
“Yes, Margaret,” he continued, “I can and do understand it, and I too
have my sorrows of this very sort. Do not smile, Margaret, but hear me
patiently, and believe, that, whatever may be the error which I commit,
I have no purpose to offend you in what I say or do. Perhaps, we are
both of us quite too young to speak of the sorrows which arise from
defeated hopes, or baffled energies, or denial of our rights and claims.
The yearnings and apprehensions which we are apt to feel of this sort
are not to be counted as sorrows, or confounded with them. I had a
conversation on this very subject only a few days ago, with old Mr.
Calvert, and this was his very opinion.”
The frankness with which William Hinkley declared the source of his
opinions, though creditable to his sincerity, was scarcely politic--it
served to confirm Margaret Cooper in the humble estimate which she had
formed of the speaker.
“Mr. Calvert,” said she, “is a very sensible old man, but neither he
nor you can enter into the heart of another and say what shall, or what
shall not be its source of trouble. It is enough, William Hinkley, that
I have my cares--at least I fancy that I have them--and though I am
very grateful for your sympathies, I do not know that they can do me any
good, and, though I thank you, I must yet decline them.”
“Oh, do not say so, Margaret--dear Margaret--it is to proffer them that
I seek you now. You know how long I have sought you, and loved you: you
can not know how dear you are to my eyes, how necessary to my happiness!
Do not repulse me--do not speak quickly. What I am, and what I have, is
yours. We have grown up together; I have known no other hope, no other
love, but that for you. Look not upon me with that scornful glance--hear
me--I implore you--on my knee, dear Margaret. I implore you as for
life--for something more dear than life--that which will make life
precious--which may make it valuable. Be mine, dear Margaret--”
“Rise, William Hinkley, and do not forget yourself!” was the stern,
almost deliberate answer of the maiden.
“Do not, I pray you, do not speak in those tones, dear Margaret--do not
look on me with those eyes. Remember before you speak, that the dearest
hope of a devoted heart hangs upon your lips.”
“And what have you seen in me, or what does your vain conceit behold in
yourself, William Hinkley, to make you entertain a hope?”
“The meanest creature has it.”
“Aye, but only of creatures like itself.”
“Margaret!” exclaimed the lover starting to his feet.
“Ay, sir, I say it. If the meanest creature has its hope, it relates to
a creature like itself--endowed with its own nature and fed with like
sympathies. But you--what should make you hope of me? Have I not long
avoided you, discouraged you? I would have spared you the pain of this
moment by escaping it myself. You haunt my steps--you pursue me--you
annoy me with attentions which I dare not receive for fear of
encouraging you, and in spite of all this, which everybody in the
village must have seen but yourself, you still press yourself upon me.”
“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 finished,
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.