plan, clearly-conceived and executed with prompt, relentless vigor, was
perfectly successful, and so noiselessly carried out, that excepting
those families whose heads were arrested by the soldiers, the village
as a whole, had no suspicion that anything in particular was going on,
until waking up the next morning, the people found squads of armed men
on guard at the street corners, and sentinels pacing up and down before
the Fennell house, that building left vacant by Gleason's ejection,
having been selected by Perez for the storage of his prisoners and the
stores he had confiscated. As the people ran together on the green, to
learn the reason of these strange appearances, and the story passed
from lip to lip what had been the plot against their newly-acquired
liberties, and the persons of their leaders, and by what a narrow
chance, and by whose bold action the trouble had been averted, the
sensation was prodigious. The tendency of public opinion which had been
inclining to sympathize a little with the abuse the silk stockings had
been undergoing the past week, was instantly reversed, now that the so
near success of their plot once more made them objects of terror. The
exasperation was far more general and profound than had been excited by
the previous attempt to restore the old order of things, in the case of
the sale of David Joy's house. This was more serious business. Every man
who had been connected with the rebellion, felt in imagination the lash
on his back, and white faces were plenty among the stoutest of them. And
what they felt for themselves, you may be sure their wives and children
and friends felt for them, with even greater intensity. As now and
then the wife or child of one of the prisoners in the guard house, with
anxious face, timidly passed through the throng, on the way to make
inquiries concerning the welfare of the husband or father, black looks
and muttered curses followed them, and the rude gibes with which
the sentinels responded to their anxious, tearful questionings, were
received with hoarse laughter by the crowd.
As Perez, coming forth for some purpose, appeared at the door of the
Fennell house, there was a great shout of acclamation, the popular
ratification of the night's work. But an even more convincing
demonstration of approval awaited him. As he began to make his way
through the throng, Submit Goodrich, Old Israel's buxom, black-eyed
daughter, confronted him, saying:
“My old daddy'd a been in the stocks by this time if it hadn't been for
you, so there,” and throwing her arms around his neck she gave him a
resounding smack on the lips. Meshech Little's wife followed suit, and
then Peleg Bidwell's and a lot of other women of the people, amid the
uproarious plaudits of the crowd, which became deafening as Resignation
Ann Poor, Zadkiel's wife, elbowed her way through the pack and clasping
the helpless Perez against her bony breast in a genuine bear's hug, gave
him a kiss like a file.
“Well, I never,” ejaculated Prudence Fennell, who was bringing some
breakfast to Perez, and had observed all this kissing with a rather sour
expression.
Unluckily for her, Submit overheard the words.
“You never, didn't you? an livin in the same haouse long with him too?
Wal it's time you did,” she exclaimed loudly, and seizing the struggling
girl she thrust her before Perez, holding down her hands so that she
could not cover her furiously blushing face, and amid the boisterous
laughter of the bystanders she was kissed also, a proceeding which
evidently pleased Obadiah Weeks, who stood near, as little as the other
part had pleased Prudence. As Submit released her and she rushed away,
Obadiah followed her.
“Haow'd ye like it?” he said, with a sickly grin of jealous irony. “I
see ye didn' cover yer face very tight, he! he! Took keer to leave a
hole, he! he!”
The girl turned on him like a flash and gave him a resounding slap on
the cheek.
“Take that, you great gumph!” she exclaimed.
“Wha'd ye wanter hit a feller fer?” whined Obadiah, rubbing the smitten
locality. “Gol darn it, I hain't done nothin to ye. Ye didn' slap him
wen he kissed ye, darn him. Guess t'ain't the fuss time he's done it,
nuther.”
Prudence turned her back to him and walked off, but Obadiah, his
bashfulness for the moment quite forgotten in his jealous rage, followed
her long enough to add:
“Oh ye needn' think I hain't seen ye settin yer cap fer him all 'long,
an he ole nuff tew be yer dad. S'pose ye thort ye'd git him, bein in the
same haouse long with him, but ye hain't made aout. He's goin tew York
an he don' keer no more baout yew nor the dirt unner his feet. He ez
good's tole me so.”
“Thar comes Abner Rathbun,” said some one in the group around Perez.
With heavy eyes, testifying to his debauch over night, and a generally
crestfallen appearance, the giant was approaching from the tavern, where
he had presumably been bracing up with a little morning flip.
“A nice sorter man you be Abner, fer yer neighbors to be a trustin ter
look aout fer things,” said an old farmer, sarcastically.
“Ef 't hadn't been fer Cap'n Hamlin thar, the constable would 'a waked
ye up this mornin with the eend of a gad,” said another.
“You'll have to take in your horns a little, after this, Abner. It won't
do to be putting on any more airs,” remarked a third.
“Go ahead,” said Abner, ruefully, “I hain't got nothin ter say. Ye kin
sass me all ye wanter. Every one on ye kin take yer hack at me. I'm
kinder sorry thar ain't any on ye big nuff ter kick me, fer I orter be
kicked.”
“Never mind, Abner,” said Perez, pitying his humiliated condition.
“Anybody may get too much flip now and then. We missed you, but we
managed to get through with the job all right.”
“Cap'n,” said Abner, “I was bleeged ter ye w'en ye pulled them two
Britshers or'fer me tew Stillwater, but that ain't a sarcumstance to
the way I be bleeged to ye this mornin, fer it's all your doins, and no
thanks ter me, that I ain't gittin ten lashes this very minute, with all
the women a snickerin at the size o' my back. I hev been kinder cocky,
an I hev put on some airs, ez these fellers says, fer I callated ye'd
kinder washed yer hands o' this business, an leff me tew be capin, but
arter this ye'll fine Abner Rathbun knows his place.”
“You were quite right about it, Abner. I have washed my hands of the
business. I am going to take my folks out to York State. I meant to
start this morning. If the silk stockings had waited till to-night they
wouldn't have found me in their way.”
“I callate twuz Providenshil they did'n wait, fer we'd 'a been gone
suckers sure ez ye hedn't been on hand to dew wat ye did,” said one of
the men. “Thar ain't another man in town ez could a did it, or would
dast try.”
“But ye ain't callatin ter go arter this be ye, Perez?” said Abner.
“This makes no difference. I expect to get off to-morrow,” replied
Perez.
“Ye shan't go, not ef I hold ye,” cried Mrs. Poor, edging up to him as
if about to secure his person on the spot.
“Ef ye go the res' on us mout 's well go with ye, fer the silk stockins
'll hev it all ther own way then,” remarked a farmer, gloomily.
“I don't think the silk stockings will try any more tricks right off,”
said Perez, grimly. “I propose to give em a lesson this morning, which
they'll be likely to remember for one while.”
“What be ye a gonter dew to em?” asked Abner, eagerly.
“Well,” said Perez, deliberately, as every eye rested on him. “You see
they had set their minds on havin some whipping done this morning, and
I don't propose to have em disappointed. I'm going to do to them as they
would have done to us. The whipping will come off as soon as Abe can
find Little Pete to handle the gad. I sent him off some time ago. I don'
see what's keeping him.”
His manner was as quiet and matter-of-course as if he were proposing the
most ordinary sort of forenoon occupation, and when he finished speaking
he walked away without so much as a glance around to see how the people
took it. It was nevertheless quite worth observing, the fascinated stare
with which they looked after him, and then turned to fix on each other.
It was Abner who, after several moments of dead silence, said in an awed
voice, like a loud whisper:
“He's a gonter whip em.” And Obadiah almost devoutly murmured, “By
Gosh!”
The men who stood around, were intensely angry with the prisoners, for
their plot to arrest and whip them, but the idea of retaliating in kind,
by whipping the prisoners themselves, had not for an instant occurred
to the boldest. The prisoners were gentlemen, and the idea of whipping
a gentleman just as if he were one of themselves, was something the most
lawless of them had never entertained. Education, precedent, and innate
caste sentiment had alike precluded the idea. But after the first
sensation of bewilderment had passed, it was evident that the shock
which the popular mind had received from Perez' words, was not wholly
disagreeable, but rather suggestive of a certain shuddering delight.
The introspective gleam which shone in everybody's eye, betrayed the
half-scared pleasure with which each in his own mind was turning over
the daring imagination.
“Wy not, arter all?” said Meshech Little, hesitatingly, as if his logic
didn't convince himself. “They wuz gonter lick us. They'd a had us
licked by this time. It's tit for tat.”
“I s'pose Goramity made our backs as well as theirn,” observed Abner.
“The on'y odds is in the kind o' coats we wears. Ourn ain't so fine ez
theirn, but it's the back an not the coat that gits licked. Arter Pete
has tuk orf ther coats thar won't be no odds.”
The chuckle with which this was received, showed how fast the people
were yielding to the awful charm of the thought.
“Dew yew s'pose Cap'n really dass dew it?” asked Obadiah.
“Dew it? Yes he'll dew it, you better b'lieve. Did yer see the set of
his jaw w'en he wuz talkin so quiet-like baout lickin em? I wuz in the
army with Perez, an I know his ways. W'en he sets his jaw that air way
I don' keer to git in his way, big ez I be. He'll dew it ef he doos it
with his own hands. He's pison proud, Perez is, an I guess the idee they
wuz callatin tew hev him licked, hez kinder riled him.”
As the people talked, their hearts began to burn. The more they thought
of it, the more the idea fascinated them. Jests and hilarious comments,
which betrayed a temper of delighted expectancy, soon began to be
bandied about.
In ten minutes more, this very crowd which had received in shocked
silence the first suggestion of whipping the gentlemen, had so set their
fancy on that diversion that it would have been hard balking them.
It must be remembered that this was a hundred years ago. The weekly
spectacle of the cruel punishment of the lash, and the scarcely less
painful and disgraceful infliction of the stocks and the pillory left
in their minds no possibility for any revolt of mere humane sentiment
against the proposed doings, such as a modern assembly would experience.
To men and women who had learned from childhood to find a certain
brutish titillation in beholding the public humiliation and physical
anguish of their acquaintances and fellow-townsmen, the prospect of
seeing the scourge actually applied to the backs of envied and hated
social superiors, could not be otherwise than delightfully agitating.
Nor were there lacking supplies of Dutch courage for the timid. Among
the town stores seized and conveyed to the Fennell house the night
before, had been several casks of rum. One of these had been secretly
sequestrated by some of the men and hidden in a neighboring barn. The
secret of its whereabouts had been, in drunken confidence, conveyed from
one man to another, with the consequence that pretty much all the men
were rapidly getting drunk. Shortly after Perez had communicated his
intention to the people, Paul Hubbard, with thirty or forty of the
iron-workers, armed with bludgeons, arrived from West Stockbridge. Some
rumor of the doings of the previous night had reached there, and he had
hastily rallied his myrmidons and come down, not knowing but there might
be some fighting to be done.
“Paul 'll be nigh tickled to death to hear of the whippin,” said Abner,
seeing him coming. “If he had his way he'd skin the silk stockins, an
make whips out o' their own hides to whip em with. He don't seem to love
em somehow 'nuther, wuth a darn.” Nor was Paul's satisfaction at the
news any less than Abner had anticipated. Presently he burst into the
room in the Fennell house, which Perez had appropriated as a sort of
headquarters, and wrung his rather indifferent hand with an almost
tremulous delight.
“Bully for you, Hamlin, bully for you, by the Lord I didn't s'pose you
had the mettle to do it. Little Pete is just the man for the business,
but if he don't come, you can have one of my Welshmen. I s'pose most of
the Stockbridge men wouldn't quite dare, but just wait till after the
whipping. They won't be afraid of the bigwigs any longer. That'll break
the charm. Little Pete's whip will do more to make us free and equal
than all the swords and guns in Berkhire.” And Hubbard went out
exultant.
As he was leaving, he met no less an one than Parson West coming in, and
wearing rather a discomfited countenance. The parson had been used, as
parsons were in those days, to a good deal of deference from his flock,
and the lowering looks and covered heads of the crowd about the door
were disagreeable novelties. No institution in the New England of
that day was, in fact, more strictly aristocratic than the pulpit. Its
affiliations were wholly with the governing and wealthy classes, and its
tone with the common people as arrogant and domineering as that of
the magistracy itself. And though Parson West was personally a man of
unusual affability toward the poor and lowly, it was impossible in
a time like this that one of his class should not be regarded with
suspicion and aversion by the popular party.
“I would have word with your captain,” he said to the sentinel at the
door.
“He's in thar,” said the soldier, pointing to the door of the
headquarters' room. Perez, who was walking to and fro, turned at the
opening door and respectfully greeted the parson.
“Are you the captain of the armed band without?”
“I am.”
“You have certain gentlemen in confinement, I have heard. I came to see
you on account of an extraordinary report that you had threatened to
inflict a disgraceful public chastisement upon their persons. No doubt
the report is erroneous. You surely could not contemplate so cruel and
scandalous a proceeding?”
“The report is entirely true, reverend sir. I am but waiting for a
certain Hessian drummer who will wield the lash.”
“But man,” exclaimed the parson, “you have forgotten that these are the
first men in the county. They are gentlemen of distinguished birth and
official station. You would not whip them like common offenders. It is
impossible. You are beside yourself. Such a thing was never heard of. It
is most criminal, most wicked. As a minister of the gospel I protest! I
forbid such a thing,” and the little parson fairly choked with righteous
indignation.
“These men, if they had succeeded in their plan last night, would have
whipped me, and a score of others to-day. Would you have protested
against that?”
“That is different. They would have proceeded against you as criminals,
according to law.”
“No doubt they would have proceeded according to law,” replied Perez,
with a bitter sneer. “They have been proceeding according to law for
the past six years here in Berkshire, and that's why the people are in
rebellion. I'm no lawyer, but I know that Perez Hamlin is as good as
Jahleel Woodbridge, whatever the parson may think, and what he would
have done to me, shall be done to him.”
“That is not the rule of the gospel,” said the minister, taking another
tack. “Christ said if any man smite you on the right cheek, turn to him
the other also.”
“If that is your counsel, take it to those who are likely to need it.
I am going to do the smiting this time, and it's their time to do the
turning. They need not trouble themselves, however. Pete will see that
they get it on both sides.”
“And now sir,” he added, “if you would like to see the prisoners to
prepare them for what's coming, you are welcome to,” and opening the
door of the room he told the sentinel in the corridor to let the
parson into the guard room, and the silenced and horrified man of God
mechanically acting upon the hint went out and left him alone.
The imagination of the reader will readily depict the state of mind
in which the families of the arrested gentlemen were left after the
midnight visit of Perez' band. That there was no more sleep in those
households that night will be easily understood. In the Edwards family
the long hours till morning passed in praying and weeping by Mrs.
Edwards and Desire, and the younger children. They scarcely dared to
doubt that the husband and father was destined to violence or death
at the hands of these bloody and cruel men. At dawn Jonathan, who, on
trying to follow his father when first arrested, had been driven back
with blows, went out again, and the tidings which he brought back,
that the prisoners were confined in the Fennell house and as yet had
undergone no abuse, somewhat restored their agitated spirits. An hour or
two later the boy came tearing into the house, with white face, clenched
fists and blazing eyes.
“What is it?” cried his mother and sister, half scared to death at his
looks.
“They're going,”--Jonathan choked.
“They're going to have father whipped,” he finally made out to
articulate.
“Whipped!” echoed Desire, faintly and uncomprehendingly.
“Yes!” cried the boy hoarsely, “like any vagabond, stripped and whipped
at the whipping-post.”
“What do you mean?” said Mrs. Edwards, as she took Jonathan by the
shoulder.
“They're going to whip father, and uncle, and all the others,” he
repeated, beginning to whimper, stout boy as he was.
“Whip father? You're crazy, Jonathan, you didn't hear right. They'd
never dare! It can't be! Run and find out,” cried Desire, wildly.
“There ain't any use. I heard the Hamlin fellow say so himself. They're
going to do it. They said it's no worse than whipping one of them, as if
they were gentlemen,” blubbered Jonathan.
“Oh no! no! They can't, they won't,” cried the girl in an anguished
voice, her eyes glazed with tears as she looked appealingly from
Jonathan to her mother, in whose faces there was little enough to
reassure her.
“Don't, mother, you hurt,” said Jonathan, trying to twist away from
the clasp which his mother had retained upon his arm, unconsciously
tightening it till it was like a vise.
“Whip my husband!” said she, slowly, in a hollow tone. “Whip him!” she
repeated. “Such a thing was never heard of. There must be some mistake.”
“There must be. There must be,” exclaimed Desire again. “It can never
be. They are not so wicked. That Hamlin fellow is bad enough, but oh he
isn't bad enough for that. They would not dare. God would not permit it.
Some one will stop them.”
“There is no one to stop them. The people are all against us. They are
glad of it. They are laughing. Oh! how I hate them. Why don't God kill
them?” and with a prolonged, inarticulate roar of impotent grief and
indignation, the boy threw himself flat on the floor, and burying his
face in his arms sobbed and rolled, and rolled and sobbed, like one in a
fit.
“I will go and have speech with this Son of Belial, Hamlin. It may be
the Lord will give me strength to prevail with him,” said Mrs. Edwards.
“And if not, they shall not put me from my husband. I will bear the
stripes with him, that he may never be ashamed before the wife of his
bosom,” and with a calm and self-controlled demeanor, she bestirred
herself to make ready to go out.
“Let me go mother,” said Desire, half hesitatingly.
“It is not your place my child. I am his wife,” replied Mrs. Edwards.
“Yes mother, but Desire's so pretty, and this Hamlin fellow stopped the
horse-fiddles just to please her, the other time,” whimpered Jonathan.
“Perhaps he'd let father off if she went. Do let her go mother.”
The allusion to the stopping of the horse-fiddle was Greek to Mrs.
Edwards, to whose ears the story had never come. But the present was not
a time for general inquiries. It sufficed that she saw the main point,
the persuasive power of beauty over mankind.
“It may be that you had better go,” she said. “If you fail I will go
myself to my husband, and meantime I shall be in prayer, that this cup
may pass from us.”
Hastily the girl gathered her beautiful disheveled hair into a ribbon
behind, removed the traces of tears from her wild and terror-stricken
eyes, and not stopping even for her hat, in her fear that she might be
too late, left the house and made her way through the throng before the
Fennell house. At sight of her pallid cheeks and set lips, the ribald
jeer died on the lips even of the drunken, and the people made way
for her in silence. It was not that they had ever liked her, or now
sympathized with her. She had always held herself too daintily aloof
from speech or contact with them for that, but they guessed her errand,
and had a certain rude sense of the pathos of such a humiliation for the
haughty Desire Edwards.
CHAPTER NINETEENTH
PEREZ GETS HIS TITLE
As Desire entered the headquarters room, which Parson West had barely
left, Perez was sitting at a table with his back to the door. He turned
at the noise of her entrance and seeing who it was gave a great start.
Then he rose slowly to his feet and confronted her. It was the first
time he had seen her since that Sunday when she cut him dead before all
the people, coming out of meeting. For a moment the two stood motionless
gazing at each other. Then she came quickly up to him and laid her hand
upon his arm. Her dark eyes were full of terrified appeal.
“What are you going to do to my father?” she cried in poignant tones.
After a pause he repeated stammeringly, as if he had not quite taken in
the idea.
“Your father?”
“Yes, my father! What are you going to do to him?” she repeated more
insistently.
His vacant answer had been no affectation. Her beauty, her distress, the
touch of her hand on his arm, her warm breath on his cheek, her face
so near to his, left him capable in that moment of but one thought, and
that was that he loved her wildly, with a love which it had been madness
for him to think he could ever overcome or forget. But it was not with
soft and melting emotions, but rather in great bitterness, that he owned
the mastery of the passion which he had tried so hard to throw off. He
knew that if she despised him before, she must hate and loathe him now.
Knowing this it gave him a cruel pleasure to crush her, and to make
her tears flow, and even while his glowing eyes devoured her face he
answered her in a hard, relentless voice.
“What am I going to do with your father? I am going to whip him with the
others.”
She started back, stung into sudden defiance, her eyes flashing, her
bosom tumultuously heaving.
“You will not! You dare not!”
He shrugged his shoulders and replied coldly:
“If you are so sure of that, why did you come to me?”
“Oh, but you will not! You will not!” she cried again, her terror
returning with a rush of tears.
Weeping she was even more beautiful than before. But conscious of
her loathing her beauty only caused him an intolerable ache. In the
self-despite of an embittered hopeless love he gloated over her despair,
even while every nerve thrilled with wildering passion. She caught that
look, at once so passionate and so bitter, and perhaps by her woman's
instinct interpreting it aright, turned away as in despair, and with her
head bent in hopeless grief walked slowly across the room, laid her
hand on the latch and there paused. After a moment she turned her head
quickly and looked at him, as he stood gazing after her, and
shuddered perceptibly. Her left hand, which hung at her side, clenched
convulsively. Then after another moment she removed her hand from the
latch and came back a few steps toward him and said:
“You kissed me once. Would you like to do it now? You may if you will
let my father go.”
His gaze, before so glowing, actually dropped in confession before her
cold, hard eyes, and for a moment it seemed as if such supreme and icy
indifference had been able quite to chill his ardor. But as he
lifted his eyes again, and looked upon her, the temptation of so much
submissive beauty proved too great. He snatched her in his arms and
covered her lips and cheeks and temples with burning kisses, for one
alone of which he would have deemed it cheap to give his life if he
could not have won it otherwise. He kissed her, passive and unresisting
as a statue, till in very pity he was fain to let her go. Even then she
did not start away, but standing there before him, pallid, rigid, with
compressed lips and clenched hands, said faintly:
“You will release my father?” He bowed his head, unable to speak, and
she went out.
The people whispered to each other as she passed through the crowd, that
she had failed in her mission, she looked so white and anguish-stricken.
And when she reached home and throwing herself into a chair, covered her
face with her hands, her mother said:
“The Lord's will be done. You have failed.”
“No, mother, I have not failed. Father will be released, but I had
liefer have borne the whipping for him.”
But that was all she said, nor did she tell any one at what price she
had delivered him.
Desire had scarcely gone when the door opened and Hubbard and Abner came
in. Perez was sitting staring at the wall in a daze.
“Little Pete's come, and the people want to know when the whipping's
going to begin. Shall I bring em out?” said Hubbard.
“I've made up my mind that it will be better to have no whipping,”
replied Perez, quietly.
“The devil, you have!” exclaimed Hubbard, in high dudgeon.
“I knowd haow 'twoud be w'en I see that air Edwards gal goin in. Ef I'd
been on guard, she'd never a got in,” said Abner, gloomily.
“Who'd have supposed Hamlin was such a milksop as to mind a girl's
bawling?” said Hubbard, scornfully.
“The fellers is kinder sot on seein the silk stockins licked, now ye've
got em inter the noshin on't, an I dunno haow they'll take it ter be
disappointed,” continued Abner.