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.
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 secured 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!”