MARY revolved the affairs of her friend in her mind during the night.
The intensity of the mental crisis through which she herself had just
passed, had developed her in many inward respects, so that she looked
upon life no longer as a timid girl, but as a strong, experienced
woman. She had thought, and suffered, and held converse with eternal
realities, until thousands of mere earthly hesitations and timidities,
that often restrain a young and untried nature, had entirely lost
their hold upon her. Besides, Mary had at heart the Puritan seed of
heroism,—never absent from the souls of true New England women. Her
essentially Hebrew education, trained in daily converse with the
words of prophets and seers, and with the modes of thought of a grave
and heroic people, predisposed her to a kind of exaltation which,
in times of great trial, might rise to the heights of the religious
sublime, in which the impulse of self-devotion and protection took
a form essentially commanding. The very intensity of the repression
under which her faculties developed seemed as it were to produce a
surplus of hidden strength, which came out in exigencies. Her reading,
though restricted to few volumes, had been of the kind that vitalized
and stimulated a poetic nature, and laid up in its chambers vigorous
words and trenchant phrases, for the use of an excited feeling—so that
eloquence came to her as a native gift. She realized, in short, in her
higher hours, the last touch with which Milton finishes his portrait of
an ideal woman:—
‘Greatness of mind and nobleness, their seat
Build in her loftiest, and create an awe
About her as a guard angelic placed.’
The next morning, Colonel Burr called at the cottage. Mary was spinning
in the garret, and Madame de Frontignac was reeling yarn, when Mrs.
Scudder brought this announcement.
‘Mother,’ said Mary, ‘I wish to see Mr. Burr alone; Madame de
Frontignac will not go down.’
Mrs. Scudder looked surprised, but asked no questions. When she was
gone down, Mary stood a moment reflecting; Madame de Frontignac looked
eager and agitated. ‘Remember and notice all he says, and just how he
looks, Mary, so as to tell me; and be sure and say that “I thank him
for his kindness yesterday;” we must own he appeared very well there;
did he not?’
‘Certainly,’ said Mary; ‘but no man could have done less.’
‘Ah! but Mary, not every man could have done it as he did; now don’t
be too hard on him, Mary; I have said dreadful things to him; I am
afraid I have been too severe. After all, these distinguished men are
so tempted; we don’t know how much they are tempted; and who can wonder
that they are a little spoiled; so, my angel, you must be merciful.’
‘Merciful!’ said Mary, kissing the pale cheek and feeling the cold
little hands that trembled in hers.
‘So you will go down in your little spinning toilette, ma _mie_; I
fancy you look as Joan of Arc did when she was keeping her sheep at
Doremi. Go, and God bless thee!’ and Madame de Frontignac pushed her
playfully forward.
Mary entered the room where Burr was seated, and wished him good
morning, in a serious and placid manner, in which there was not the
slightest trace of embarrassment or discomposure.
‘Shall I have the pleasure of seeing your fair companion this morning?’
said Burr, after some moments of indifferent conversation.
‘No, sir; Madame de Frontignac desires me to excuse her to you.’
‘Is she ill?’ said Burr, with a look of concern.
‘No, Mr. Burr, she prefers not to see you.’ Burr gave a start of
well-bred surprise; and Mary added:—
‘Madame de Frontignac has made me familiar with the history of your
acquaintance with her; and you will therefore understand what I mean,
Mr. Burr, when I say that, during the time of her stay with us, we
would prefer not to receive calls from you.’
‘Your language, Miss Scudder, has certainly the merit of explicitness.’
‘I intend it shall have, sir,’ said Mary, tranquilly; ‘half the misery
of the world comes of want of courage to speak and to hear the truth
plainly, and in a spirit of love.’
‘I am gratified that you insert the last clause, Miss Scudder; I might
not otherwise recognize the gentle being whom I have always regarded
as the impersonation of all that is softest in woman. I have not the
honour of understanding in the least the reason of this apparently
capricious sentence, but I bow to it in submission.’
‘Mr. Burr,’ said Mary, walking up to him, and looking him full in the
eyes with an energy that for the moment bore down his practised air
of easy superiority, ‘I wish to speak to you for a moment, as one
immortal soul should to another, without any of those false glosses
and deceits which men call ceremony and good manners. You have done a
very great injury to a lovely lady, whose weakness ought to have been
sacred in your eyes. Precisely, because you are what you are,—strong,
keen, penetrating, able to control and govern all who come near you;
because you have the power to make yourself agreeable, interesting,
fascinating, and to win esteem and love,—just for that reason you ought
to hold yourself the guardian of every woman, and treat her as you
would wish any man to treat your own daughter. I leave it to your own
conscience whether this is the manner in which you have treated Madame
de Frontignac.’
‘Upon my word, Miss Scudder,’ began Burr, ‘I cannot imagine what
representations our mutual friend may have been making. I assure you,
our intercourse has been as irreproachable as the most scrupulous could
desire.’
‘Irreproachable! innocent! Mr. Burr, you know that you have taken
the very life out of her; you men can have everything, ambition,
wealth, power; a thousand ways are open to you; and women have nothing
but their hearts, and when that is gone, all is gone. Mr. Burr, you
remember the rich man that had flocks and herds, but nothing would do
for him but he must have the one little ewe lamb which was all his poor
neighbour had. Thou art the man! You have stolen all the love she has
to give, all that she had to make a happy home; and you can never give
her anything in return without endangering her purity and her soul,
and you knew you could not. I know you men _think_ this is a light
matter; but it is death to us; what will this woman’s life be? one long
struggle to forget; and when you have forgotten her, and are going
on gay and happy, when you have thrown her very name away as a faded
flower, she will be praying, hoping, fearing for you; though all men
deny you, yet will not she. Yes, Mr. Burr, if ever your popularity and
prosperity should leave you, and those who now flatter should despise
and curse you, she will always be interceding with her own heart and
with God for you, and making a thousand excuses when she cannot deny;
and if you die, as I fear you have lived, unreconciled to the God of
your fathers, it will be in her heart to offer up her very soul for
you, and to pray that God will impute all your sins to her, and give
you heaven. Oh, I know this because I have felt it in my own heart!’
and Mary threw herself passionately down into a chair, and broke into
an agony of uncontrolled sobbing.
Burr turned away, and stood looking through the window; tears were
dropping silently, unchecked by the cold, hard pride which was the evil
demon of his life.
It is due to our human nature to believe that no man could ever have
been so passionately and enduringly loved and revered by both men and
women as he was, without a beautiful and lovable nature; no man ever
demonstrated more forcibly the truth, that it is not a man’s natural
constitution, but the _use_ he makes of it which stamps him as good or
evil.
The diviner part of him was weeping, and the cold, proud, demon was
struggling to regain his lost ascendency. Every sob of the fair,
inspired child who had been speaking to him seemed to shake his
heart; he felt as if he could have fallen on his knees to her; and
yet that stoical habit, which was the boast of his life, which was
the highest wisdom he taught to his only and beautiful daughter, was
slowly stealing back round his heart, and he pressed his lips together,
resolved that no word should escape till he had fully mastered himself.
In a few moments Mary rose with renewed calmness and dignity, and
approaching him, said, ‘Before I wish you a good morning, Mr. Burr,
I must ask pardon for the liberty I have taken in speaking so very
plainly.’
‘There is no pardon needed, my dear child,’ said Burr, turning and
speaking very gently, and with a face expressive of a softened concern;
‘if you have told me harsh truths, it was with gentle intentions; I
only hope that I may prove, at least by the future, that I am not
altogether so bad as you imagine. As to the friend whose name has been
passed between us, no man can go beyond me in a sense of her real
nobleness; I am sensible how little I can ever deserve the sentiment
with which she honours me. I am ready, in my future course, to obey any
commands that you and she may think proper to lay upon me.’
‘The only kindness you can now do her,’ said Mary, ‘is to leave her. It
is impossible that you can be merely friends,—it is impossible, without
violating the holiest bonds, that you can be more. The injury done is
irreparable, but you can avoid adding another and greater one to it.’
Burr looked thoughtful.
‘May I say one thing more?’ said Mary, the colour rising in her cheeks.
Burr looked at her with that smile that always drew out the confidence
of every heart.
‘Mr. Burr,’ she said, ‘you will pardon me, but I cannot help saying
this: You have, I am told, wholly renounced the Christian faith of your
fathers, and build your whole life on quite another foundation. I
cannot help feeling that this is a great and terrible mistake. I cannot
help wishing that you would examine and reconsider.’
‘My dear child, I am extremely grateful to you for your remark, and
appreciate fully the purity of the source from which it springs.
Unfortunately, our intellectual beliefs are not subject to the control
of our will. I have examined, and the examination has, I regret to say,
not had the effect you would desire.’
Mary looked at him wistfully; he smiled and bowed, all himself again;
and stopping at the door, he said, with a proud humility, ‘Do me the
favour to present my devoted regard to your friend; believe me, that
hereafter you shall have less reason to complain of me.’ He bowed and
was gone.
An eye-witness of the scene has related that when Burr resigned his
seat as president of his country’s senate, he was an object of peculiar
political bitterness and obloquy. Almost all who listened to him had
made up their minds that he was an utterly faithless, unprincipled man;
and yet, such was his singular and peculiar personal power, that his
short farewell address melted the whole assembly into tears; and his
most embittered adversaries were charmed into a momentary enthusiasm of
admiration.
It must not be wondered at, therefore, if our simple-hearted, loving
Mary strangely found all her indignation against him gone, and herself
little disposed to criticise the impassioned tenderness with which
Madame de Frontignac still regarded him.
We have one thing more that we cannot avoid saying of two men so
singularly in juxtaposition, as Aaron Burr and Dr. Hopkins.
Both had a perfect _logic_ of life, and guided themselves with an
inflexible rigidity by it. Burr assumed individual pleasure to be
the great object of human existence; and Dr. Hopkins placed it in a
life altogether beyond self. Burr rejected all sacrifice, Hopkins
considered sacrifice as the foundation of all existence. To live as far
as possible without a disagreeable sensation was an object which Burr
proposed to himself as the _summum bonum_, for which he drilled down
and subjugated a nature of singular richness. Hopkins, on the other
hand, smoothed the asperities of a temperament naturally violent and
fiery by a rigid discipline, which guided it entirely above the plane
of self-indulgence; and, in the pursuance of their great end, the one
watched against his better nature as the other did against his worse.
It is but fair, then, to take their lives as the practical workings of
their respective ethical creeds.