CONQUEST.
The progress of events and our story necessarily brings as back to
Charlemont. We shall lose sight of William Hinkley, henceforth Calvert,
for some time; and here, par parenthese, let us say to our readers
that this story being drawn from veritable life, will lack some of that
compactness and close fitness of parts which make our novels too
much resemble the course of a common law case. Instead of having our
characters always at hand, at the proper moment, to do the business of
the artist, like so many puppets, each working on a convenient wire, and
waiting to be whistled in upon the scene, we shall find them sometimes
absent, as we do in real life when their presence is most seriously
desired, and when the reader would perhaps prefer that they should come
in, to meet or make emergencies. Some are gone whom we should rather
see; some present, whose absence, in the language of the Irishman, would
be the best company they could give us; and some, not forthcoming, like
the spirits of Owen Glendower, even when most stoutly called for. The
vast deeps of human progress do not release their tenants at the beck
and call of ordinary magicians, and we, who endeavor to describe events
as we find them, must be content to take them and persons, too, only
when they are willing. Were we writing the dramatic romance, we should
be required to keep William Hinkley always at hand, as a convenient foil
to Alfred Stevens. He should watch his progress; pursue his sinuosities
of course; trace him out in all his ill-favored purposes, and be
ready, at the first act--having, like the falcon, by frequent and
constantly-ascending gyrations, reached the point of command--to pounce
down upon the fated quarry, and end the story and the strife together.
But ours is a social narrative, where people come and go without much
regard to the unities, and without asking leave of the manager. William
Hinkley, too, is a mere man and no hero. He has no time to spare, and he
is conscious that he has already wasted too much. He has work to do and
is gone to do it. Let it console the reader, in his absence, to know
that he WILL do it--that his promise is a good one--and that we have
already been shown, in the dim perspective of the future, glimpses of
his course which compensate him for his mishaps, and gladden the heart
of his adopted father, by confirming its prophecies and hopes.
The same fates which deny that he should realize the first fancies of
his boyhood, are, in the end, perhaps, not a jot kinder to others whom
they now rather seem to favor. His absence did not stop the social
machine of Charlemont from travelling on very much as before. There was
a shadow over his mother's heart, and his disappearance rather aroused
some misgiving and self-reproachful sensations in that of his father.
Mr. Calvert, too, had his touch of hypochondria in consequence of his
increased loneliness, and Ned Hinkley's fighting monomania underwent
startling increase; but, with the rest, the wheel went on without much
sensible difference. The truth is, that, however mortifying the truth
may be, the best of us makes but a very small sensation in his absence.
Death is a longer absence, in which our friends either forget us, or
recollect our vices. Our virtues are best acknowledged when we are
standing nigh and ready to enforce them. Like the argumentative
eloquence of the Eighth Harry, they are never effectual until the
halberdiers clinch their rivets forcibly.
It does not necessarily impugn the benevolence or wisdom of Providence
to show that crime is successful for a season in its purposes. Vice may
prevail, and victims perish, without necessarily disparaging the career,
or impeding the progress of virtue. To show that innocence may fall,
is sometimes to strengthen innocence, so that it may stand against
all assailants. To show vice, even in its moments of success, is not
necessarily to show that such success is desirable. Far from it! As none
of us can look very deeply into the future, so it happens that the boon
for which we pray sometimes turns out to be our bane; while the hardship
and suffering, whose approach we deprecate in sackcloth and ashes, may
come with healing on their wings, and afford us a dearer blessing
than any ever yet depicted in the loom of a sanguine and brilliant
imagination.
We are, after all, humbling as this fact may be to our clamorous vanity,
only so many agents and instruments, blind, and scuffling vainly in our
blindness, in the perpetual law of progress. As a soul never dies, so it
is never useless or unemployed. The Deity is no more profligate in the
matter of souls than he is in that of seeds. They pass, by periodical
transitions, from body to body; perhaps from sphere to sphere; and as
the performance of their trusts have been praiseworthy or censurable,
so will be the character of their trusts in future. He who has shown
himself worthy of confidence in one state, will probably acquire a
corresponding increase of responsibility in another. He who has betrayed
his trusts or impaired them, will share less of the privileges of the
great moral credit system.
In all these transitions, however, work is to be done. The fact that
there is a trust, implies duty and performance; and the practice of
virtue is nothing more than the performance of this work to the best of
our abilities. Well, we do not do our work. We fail in our trusts. We
abuse tuem. Such a man as Alfred Stevens abuses them. Such a woman as
Margaret Cooper fails in them. What then? Do we destroy the slave who
fails in his duty, or chasten him, and give him inferior trusts? Do you
suppose that the Deity is more profligate in souls than in seeds--that
he creates and sends forth millions of new souls, annually, in place of
those which have gone astray? Hardly so! He is too good an economist for
that. We learn this from all the analogies. As a soul can not perish,
so it never remains unemployed. It still works, though its labors may be
confined to a treadmill.
The mere novel-reader may regard all this as so much unnecessary
digression. But let him not deceive himself. It would be the most
humiliating and painful thought, indeed, could we believe that the
genius which informs and delights us--which guides the bark of state
through a thousand storms and dangers to its port of safety--which
conquers and commands--which sings in melodies that make melodies
in human hearts for thousands of succeeding years--is suddenly to be
suspended--to have no more employment--to do no more work--guide no more
states--make no more melodies! Nay, the pang would be scarcely less to
believe that a fair intellect like that of Alfred Stevens, or a wild,
irregular genius, like that of Margaret Cooper--because of its erring,
either through perversity or blindness, is wholly to become defunct,
so far as employment is concerned--that they are to be deprived of all
privilege of working up to the lost places--regaining the squandered
talents--atoning, by industry and humble desire, the errors and
deficiencies of the past! We rather believe that heaven is a world where
the labors are more elevated, the necessities less degrading; that it
is no more permanent than what we esteem present life; nay, that it is
destined to other transitions; that we may still ascend, on and on,
and that each heaven has its higher heaven yet. We believe that our
immortality is from the beginning; that time is only a periodical step
in eternity----that transition is the true meaning of life--and death
nothing more than a sign of progress. It may be an upward or a downward
progress, but it is not a toilsome march to a mere sleep. Lavish as is
the bounty of God, and boundless as are his resources, there is
nothing of him that we do know which can justify the idea of such utter
profligacy of material.
We transgress. Our business is with the present doings of our dramatis
persons and not with the future employment of their souls. Still, we
believe, the doctrine which we teach not only to be more rational, but
absolutely more moral than the conjectures on this subject which are
in ordinary use. More rational as relates to the characteristics of the
Deity, and more moral as it affects the conduct and the purposes of
man himself. There is something grand beyond all things else, in the
conception of this eternal progress of the individual nature; its
passage from condition to condition; sphere to sphere; life to life;
always busy, working for the mighty Master; falling and sinking to mere
menial toils, or achieving and rising to more noble trusts; but, at all
events, still working in some way in the great world-plantation, and
under the direct eye of the sovereign World-Planter. The torture of
souls on the one hand, and the singing of psalms on the other, may
be doctrines infinitely more orthodox; but, to our mind, they seem
immeasurably inferior in grandeur, in propriety, in noble conception of
the appointments of the creature, and the wondrous and lovely designs of
the benignant Father.
The defeat of such a soul as that of Margaret Cooper can surely be a
temporary defeat only. It will regain strength, it must rise in the
future, it must recover the lost ground, and reassert the empire whose
sway it has unwillingly abandoned; for it is not through will,
wholly, by which we lose the moral eminence. Something is due to human
weaknesses; to the blindness in which a noble spirit is sometimes
suffered to grow into stature; disproportioned stature--that, reaching
to heaven, is yet shaken down and overthrown by the merest breath of
storm that sweeps suddenly beneath its skies. The very hopelessness of
Margaret Cooper's ambition, which led her to misanthropy, was the source
of an ever-fertile and upspringing confidence. Thus it was that the
favoring opinions which Alfred Stevens expressed--a favoring opinion
expressed by one whom she soon discovered was well able to form
one--accompanied by an assurance that the dream of fame which her wild
imagination had formed should certainly be realized, gave him a large
power over her confidence. Her passion was sway--the sway of mind over
mind--of genius over sympathy--of the syren Genius over the subject
Love. It was this passion which had made her proud, which had filled
her mind with visions, and yielded to her a world by itself, and like
no other, filled with all forms of worship and attraction; chivalrous
faith, unflagging zeal, generous confidence, pure spirits, and the most
unquestioning loyalty! Ignorant of the world which she had not seen, and
of those movements of human passion which she had really never felt, she
naturally regarded Alfred Stevens as one of the noble representatives
of that imaginary empire which her genius continually brought before her
eyes. She saw in him the embodiment of that faith in her intellect which
it was the first and last hope of her intellect to inspire; and seeing
thus, it will be easy to believe that her full heart, which, hitherto,
had poured itself forth on rocks, and trees, and solitary places,
forgetful of all prudence--a lesson which she had never learned--and
rejoicing in the sympathy of a being like herself, now gushed forth
with all the volume of its impatient fullness. The adroit art of her
companion led her for ever into herself; she was continually summoned to
pour forth the treasures of her mind and soul; and, toiling in the same
sort of egoisme in which her life heretofore had been consumed, she
was necessarily diverted from all doubts or apprehensions of the occult
purposes of him who had thus beguiled her over the long frequented
paths. As the great secret of success with the mere worldling, is to pry
into the secret of his neighbor while carefully concealing his own, so
it is the great misfortune of enthusiasm to be soon blinded to a purpose
which its own ardent nature neither allows it to suspect nor penetrate.
Enthusiasm is a thing of utter confidence; it has no suspicion; it sets
no watch on other hearts; it is too constantly employed in pouring forth
the treasures of its own. It is easy, therefore, to deceive and betray
it, to beguile it into confidence, and turn all its revelations against
itself. How far the frequency of this usage in the world makes it
honorable, is a question which we need not discuss on this occasion.
Alfred Stevens had now been for some weeks in the village of Charlemont,
where, in the meantime, he had become an object of constantly-increasing
interest. The men shrank from him with a feeling of inferiority; the
women--the young ones being understood--shrank from him also, but
with that natural art of the sex which invites pursuit, and strives
to conquer even in flight. But it was soon evident enough that Stevens
bestowed his best regards solely upon Margaret Cooper. If he sought
the rest, it was simply in compliance with those seeming duties of his
ostensible profession which were necessary to maintain appearances.
Whether he loved Margaret Cooper or not, he soon found a pleasure in
her society which he sought for in no other quarter of the village. The
days, in spite of the strife with William Hinkley, flew by with equal
pleasantness and rapidity to both. The unsophisticated mind of
Margaret Cooper left her sensible to few restraints upon their ordinary
intercourse; and, indeed, if she did know or regard them for an instant,
it was only to consider them as necessary restraints for the protection
of the ignorant and feeble of her sex--a class in which she never once
thought to include herself. Her attachment to Alfred Stevens, though
it first arose from the pleasure which her mind derived from its
intercourse with his, and not from any of those nice and curious
sympathies of temperament and taste which are supposed to constitute the
essence and comprise the secret of love, was yet sufficient to blind her
judgment to the risks of feeling, if nothing more, which were likely to
arise from their hourly-increasing intimacy; and she wandered with
him into the devious woods, and they walked by moonlight among
the solemn-shaded hills, and the unconscious girl had no sort of
apprehension that the spells of an enslaving passion were rapidly
passing over her soul.
How should she apprehend such spells? how break them? For the first time
in her life had she found intellectual sympathy--the only moral response
which her heart longed to hear. For the first time had she encountered
a mind which could do justice to, and correspond on anything like equal
terms with, her own. How could she think that evil would ensue from
an acquisition which yielded her the only communion which she had ever
craved Her confidence in herself, in her own strength, and her ignorance
of her own passions, were sufficient to render her feelings secure; and
then she was too well satisfied of the superiority and nobleness of his.
But, in truth, she never thought upon the subject. Her mind dwelt
only on the divine forms and images of poetry. The ideal world had
superseded, not only the dangers, but the very aspect, of the real.
Under the magic action of her fancy, she had come to dwell
“With those gay creatures of the element
That in the colors of the rainbow live,
And play i' the plighted clouds”--
she had come to speak only in the one language, and of the one topic;
and, believing now that she had an auditor equally able to comprehend
and willing to sympathize with her cravings, she gave free scope to
the utterance of her fancies, and to the headlong impulse of that
imagination which had never felt the curb.
The young heart, not yet chilled by the world's denials, will readily
comprehend the beguiling influence of the dreaming and enthusiastic
nature of some dear spirit, in whose faith it has full confidence, and
whose tastes are kindred with its own. How sweet the luxury of moonlight
in commerce with such a congenial spirit! how heavenly the occasional
breath of the sweet southwest! how gentle and soothing fond the whispers
of night--the twirling progress of sad-shining stars--the gentle sway of
winds among the tree-tops--the plaintive moan of billows, as they gather
and disperse themselves along the shores! To speak of these delights;
to walk hand-in-hand along the gray sands by the seaside, and whisper in
murmuring tones, that seem to gather sympathies from those of ocean;
to guide the eye of the beloved associate to the sudden object; to
challenge the kindred fancy which comments upon our own; to remember
together, and repeat, the happy verse of inspired poets, speaking of
the scene, and to the awakened heart which feels it; and, more, to pour
forth one's own inspirations in the language of tenderness and song, and
awaken in the heart of our companion the rapture to which our own
has given speech--these, which are subjects of mock and scorn to the
worldling, are substantial though not enduring joys to the young and
ardent nature.
In this communion, with all her pride, strength, and confidence,
Margaret Cooper was the merest child. Without a feeling of guile, she
was dreaming of the greatness which her ambition craved, and telling her
dreams, with all the artless freedom of the child who has some golden
fancy of the future, which it seeks to have confirmed by the lips
of experience. The wily Stevens led her on, gave stimulus to her
enthusiasm, made her dreams become reasonable in her eyes, and laughed
at them in his secret heart. She sung at his suggestion, and sang her
own verses with all that natural tremor which even the most self-assured
poet feels on such an occasion.
“Beautiful!” the arch-hypocrite would exclaim, as if unconscious
of utterance; “beautiful!” and his hand would possess itself of the
trembling fingers of hers. “But beautiful as it is, Margaret, I am
sure that it is nothing to what you could do under more auspicious
circumstances.”
“Ah! if there were ears to hear, if there were hearts to feel, and eyes
to weep, I feel, I know, what might be done. No, no! this is nothing.
This is the work of a child.”
“Nay, Margaret, if the work of a child, it is that of a child of
genius.”
“Ah! do not flatter me, Alfred Stevens, do not deceive me. I am too
willing to believe you, for it is so dear a feeling to think that I
too am a poet. Yet, at the first, I had not the smallest notion of this
kind: I neither knew what poetry was, nor felt the desire to be a poet.
Yet I yearned with strange feelings, which uttered themselves in that
form ere I had seen books or read the verses of others. It was an
instinct that led me as it would. I sometimes fear that I have been
foolish in obeying it; for oh, what has it brought me? What am I? what
are my joys? I am lonely even with my companions. I share not the sports
and feel not the things which delight my sex. Their dances and frolics
give me no pleasure. I have no sympathy with them or their cares. I
go apart--I am here on the hills, or deep in the forests--sad, lonely,
scarcely knowing what I am, and what I desire.”
“You are not alone, nor are your pleasures less acute than theirs. If
they laugh, their laughter ends in sleep. If you are sad, you lose not
the slightest faculty of perception or sensibility, but rather gain them
in consequence. Laughter and tears are signs neither of happiness nor
grief, and as frequently result from absolute indifference as from any
active emotion. If you are absent from them, you have better company.
You can summon spirits to your communion, Margaret; noble thoughts
attend you; eyes that cheer, lips that assure you, and whispers, from
unknown attendants, that bid you be of good heart, for the good time is
coming. Ah! Margaret, believe me when I tell you that time is at hand.
Such a genius as yours, such a spirit, can not always be buried in these
woods.”
It was in such artful language as this that the arch-hypocrite flattered
and beguiled her. They were wandering along the edge of the streamlet to
which we have more than once conducted the footsteps of the reader. The
sun was about setting. The autumn air was mild with a gentle breathing
from the south. The woods were still and meek as the slumbers of an
infant. The quiet of the scene harmonized with the temper of their
thoughts and feelings. They sat upon a fragment of the rock. Margaret
was silent, but her eyes were glistening bright--not with hope only,
but with that first glimmering consciousness of a warmer feeling, which
gives a purple light to hope, and makes the heart tremble, for the first
time, with its own expectations. It did not escape Alfred Stevens that,
for the first time, her eye sank beneath his glance; for the first time
there was a slight flush upon her cheek. He was careful not to startle
and alarm the consciousness which these signs indicated. The first
feeling which the young heart has of its dependence upon another is one
little short of terror; it is a feeling which wakens up suspicion, and
puts all the senses upon the watch. To appear to perceive this emotion
is to make it circumspect; to disarm it, one must wear the aspect of
unconsciousness. The wily Stevens, practised in the game, and master of
the nature of the unsuspecting girl, betrayed in his looks none of the
intelligence which he felt. If he uttered himself in the language of
admiration, it was that admiration which would be natural to a profound
adorer of literature and all its professors. His words were those of the
amateur:--
“I can not understand, Margaret, how you have studied--how you have
learned so much--your books are few--you have had no masters. I never
met in my life with so remarkable an instance of unassisted endeavor.”
“My books were hero in the woods--among these old rocks. My teacher was
solitude. Ah! there is no teacher like one's own heart. My instinct made
me feel my deficiencies--my deficiencies taught me contemplation--and
from contemplation came thoughts and cravings, and you know, when the
consciousness of our lack is greatest, then, even the dumb man finds a
voice. I found my voice in consequence of my wants. My language you see
is that of complaint only.”
“And a sweet and noble language it is, Margaret; but it is not in poetry
alone that your utterance is so distinct and beautiful--you sing too
with a taste as well as power which would prove that contemplation was
as happy in bringing about perfection in the one as in the other art.
Do sing me, Margaret, that little ditty which you sang here the other
night?”
His hand gently detained and pressed hers as he urged the request.
“I would rather not sing to-night,” she replied, “I do not feel as if I
could, and I trust altogether to feeling. I will sing for you some other
time when you do not ask, and, perhaps would prefer not to hear me.”
“To hear you at all, Margaret, is music to my ears.”
She was silent, and her fingers made a slight movement to detach
themselves from his.
“No, Margaret, do not withdraw them! Let me detain them
thus--longer--for ever! My admiration of you has been too deeply felt
not to have been too clearly shown, Your genius is too dear to me now to
suffer me to lose it. Margaret--dear Margaret!”
She spoke not--her breathing became quick and hard.
“You do not speak, let me hope that you are not angry with me?”
“No, no!” she whispered faintly. He continued with more boldness, and
while he spoke, his arm encircled her waist.
“A blessed chance brought me to your village. I saw you and returned.
I chose a disguise in which I might study you, and see how far the
treasures of your mind confirmed the noble promise of your face. They
have done more. Like him who finds the precious ore among the mountains,
I can not part with you so found. I must tear you from the soil. I must
bear you with me. You must be mine, Margaret--you must go with me where
the world will see, and envy me my prize.”
He pressed her to his bosom. She struggled slightly.
“Do not, do not, Alfred Stevens, do not press me--do not keep me. You
think too much of me. I am no treasure--alas! this is all deception. You
can not--can not desire it?”
“Do I not! Ah! Margaret, what else do I desire now? Do you think me only
what I appear in Charlemont?”
“No! no!”
“I have the power of a name, Margaret, in my profession--among a
numerous people--and that power is growing into wealth and sway. I am
feared and honored, loved by some, almost worshipped by others; and what
has led me from this sway, to linger among these hills--to waste hours
so precious to ambition--to risk the influence which I had already
secured--what, but a higher impulse--a dearer prospect--a treasure,
Margaret, of equal beauty and genius.”
Her face was hidden upon his bosom. He felt the beating of her heart
against his hand.
“If you have a genius for song, Margaret Cooper, I, too, am not without
my boast. In my profession, men speak of my eloquence as that of a
genius which has few equals, and no superior.”
“I know it--it must be so!”
“Move me not to boast, dear Margaret; it is in your ears only that I
do so--and only to assure you that, in listening to my love, you do not
yield to one utterly obscure, and wanting in claims, which, as yours
must be finally, are already held to be established and worthy of the
best admiration of the intelligent and wise. Do you hear me, Margaret?”
“I do, I do! It must be as you say. But of love I have thought nothing.
No, no! I know not, Alfred Stevens, if I love or not--if I can love.”
“You mistake, Margaret. It is in the heart that the head finds its
inspiration. Mere intellect makes not genius. All the intellect in the
world would fail of this divine consummation. It is from the fountains
of feeling that poetry drinks her inspiration. It is at the altars of
love that the genius of song first bends in adoration. You have loved,
Margaret, from the first moment when you sung. It did not alter the case
that there was no object of sight. The image was in your mind--in your
hope. One sometimes goes through life without ever meeting the human
counterpart of this ideal; and the language of such a heart will be that
of chagrin--distaste of life--misanthropy, and a general scorn of his
own nature. Such, I trust, is not your destiny. No, Margaret, that is
impossible. I take your doubt as my answer, and unless your own lips
undeceive me, dearest Margaret, I will believe that your love is willing
to requite my own.”
She was actually sobbing on his breast. With an effort she struggled
into utterance.
“My heart is so full, my feelings are so strange--oh! Alfred Stevens, I
never fancied I could be so weak.”
“So weak--to love! surely, Margaret, you mistake the word. It is in
loving only that the heart finds its strength. Love is the heart's
sole business; and not to exercise it in its duties is to impair its
faculties, and deprive it equally of its pleasures and its tasks. Oh,
I will teach you of the uses of this little heart of yours, dear
Margaret--ay, till it grow big with its own capacity to teach. We will
inform each other, every hour, of some new impulses and objects. Our
dreams, our hopes, our fears, and our desires, ah! Margaret--what a
study of love will these afford us. Nor to love only. Ah! dearest, when
your muse shall have its audience, its numerous watching eyes and eager
ears, then shall you discover how much richer will be the strain from
your lips once informed by the gushing fullness of this throbbing
heart.”
She murmured fondly in his embrace, “Ah! I ask no other eyes and ears
than yours.”
In the glow of a new and overpowering emotion, such indeed was her
feeling. He gathered her up closer in his arms. He pressed his lips upon
the rich ripe beauties of hers, as some hungering bee, darting upon the
yet unrifled flower which it first finds in the shadows of the forest,
clings to, and riots on, the luscious loveliness, as if appetite could
only be sated in its exhaustion. She struggled and freed herself from
his embrace: but, returning home that evening her eye was cast upon the
ground; her step was set down hesitatingly; there was a tremor in her
heart; a timid expression in her face and manner! These were proofs of
the discovery which she then seems to have made for the first time, that
there is a power stronger than mere human will--a power that controls
genius; that mocks at fame; feels not the lack of fortune, and is
independent of the loss of friends! She now first knew her weakness. She
had felt the strength of love! Ah! the best of us may quail, whatever
his hardihood, in the day when love asserts HIS strength and goes forth
to victory.
Margaret Cooper sought her chamber, threw herself on the bed, and turned
her face in the pillow to hide the burning blushes which, with every
movement of thought and memory, seemed to increase upon her cheek. Yet,
while she blushed and even wept, her heart throbbed and trembled with
the birth of a new emotion of joy. Ah! how sweet is our first
secret pleasure--shared by one other only--sweet to that other as to
ourself--so precious to him also. To be carried into our chamber--to be
set up ostentatiously--there, where none but ourselves may see--to be
an object of our constant tendance, careful idolatry, keen suspicion,
delighted worship!
Ah! but if the other makes it no idol--his toy only--what shall
follow this desecration of the sacred thing! What but shame, remorse,
humiliation, perhaps death!--alas! for Margaret Cooper, the love which
had so suddenly grown into a precious divinity with her, was no divinity
with him. He is no believer. He has no faith in such things, but like
the trader in religion, he can preach deftly the good doctrines which he
can not feel and is slow to practise.