Mrs. Edwards.
“Yes, I thank you,” he replied.
“You were with General Green, perhaps?”
“Yes--that is--yes m'am.”
“How is your mother's health?”
“Very well indeed,--that is, when--when she isn't sick. She is generally
sick.”
“Indeed.”
“Yes, but she's pretty well otherwise. How are you?” this last,
desperately.
“Oh, thanks, I'm quite well,” Mrs. Edwards replied, with a slight
elevation of the eyebrows. Somehow he felt that he ought not to have
asked that, and then he made another desperate resolution to go home.
“I think they'll be looking for me at home,” he said, tentatively rising
halfway from his chair. “Father isn't well, you see.” He had a vague
feeling that he could not go unless they formally admitted the adequacy
of his excuse.
At that moment there came the noise of an axe from the green, with
shouts.
“What is that?” asked Mrs. Edwards of her husband, who entered from the
store at that moment.
“The rascals--that is--” he corrected himself with a glance at Perez,
“the men are chopping down the whippingpost to put on the bonfire.
You were not thinking of going so soon, Captain Hamlin?” he added with
evident concern.
“Yes, I think I will go,” said Perez, straightening up and assuming a
resolute air.
“I beg you will not be so hasty,” said Mrs. Edwards, taking her
husband's cue, and Perez abjectly sat down again.
“You must partake of my hospitality,” said Edwards. “Jonathan, draw a
decanter of that old Jamaica. Desire, bring us tumblers.”
The only thought of Perez was that the liquor would, perhaps, brace him
up a little, and to that end he filled his tumbler well up and did not
refuse a second invitation. The result answered his expectations. In a
very few moments he began to feel much more at ease. The incubus upon
his faculties seemed lifted. His muscles relaxed. He recovered the free
control of his tongue and his eyes. Whereas he had previously been only
conscious of Mrs. Edwards, and but vaguely of the room in which they
were and its other inmates, he now began to look around, and take
cognizance of persons and things and even found himself complimenting
his host on the quality of the rum with an ease at which he was
surprised. He could readily have mustered courage enough now to take
his leave, but he no longer felt in haste. As I observed above, he had
heretofore but vaguely taken notice of Desire, as she had sat silently
near by. Now he became conscious of her. He observed her closely. He had
never seen her dressed as she was now, in a low-necked, white dress with
short sleeves. As he was a few moments before, such new revelations
of her beauty would have daunted him, would have actually added to his
demoralization, but now he contemplated her with an intense, elated
complacency. It was easier talking with Mr. Edwards than with Madam,
and half an hour had passed, when Perez rose and said, this time without
trying to excuse himself, that he must go. Mrs. Edwards had some time
before excused herself from the room. Jonathan had also gone. Desire
bade him good evening, and Squire Edwards led the way into the store to
show him out. But Perez, after starting to follow him, abruptly turned
back, and crossing the room to where Desire stood, held out his hand.
She hesitated, and then put hers in it. He raised it to his lips,
although she tried to snatch it away, and then, as if the touch had
maddened him, he audaciously drew her to him and kissed her lips. She
broke away, shivering and speechless. Then he saw her face crimson to
the roots of her hair. She had seen her mother standing in the doorway,
looking at her. But Perez, as he turned and went out through the
store, did not perceive this. Had he turned to look back, he would have
witnessed a striking tableau.
Desire had thrown herself into a chair and buried her face in her arms,
against whose rounded whiteness the crimsoned ear tips and temples
testified to the shameful glow upon the hidden face while her mother
stood gazing at her, amazement and indignation pictured on her face. For
a full half minute she stood thus, and then said:
“My daughter, what does this mean?”
There was no answer, save that, at the voice of her mother, a warm glow
appeared upon the nape of the girl's neck, and even spread over the
glistening shoulders, while her form shook with a single convulsive sob.
“Desire, tell me this instant,” exclaimed Mrs. Edwards.
The girl threw up her head and faced her mother, her eyes blazing with
indignant shame and glistening with tears, which were quite dried up by
her hot cheeks ere they had run half their course.
“You saw,” she said in a low, hard, fierce tone, “the fellow kissed me.
He does it when he pleases. I have no one to protect me.”
“Why do you let him? Why didn't you cry out?”
“And let father be whipped, let him be killed! Don't you know why
I didn't?” cried the girl in a voice hoarse with excitement and
overwhelming exasperation that the motive of the sacrifice should not be
understood, even for a moment. She had sprung to her feet and was facing
her mother.
“Was it for this that he released your father the other day?”
Desire looked at her mother without a word, in a way that was an answer.
Mrs. Edwards seemed completely overcome, while Desire met her horrified
gaze with a species of desperate hardihood.
“Yes, it is I,” she said, in a shrill, nervously excited tone. “It is
your daughter, Desire Edwards, whom this fellow has for a sweetheart.
Oh, yes. He kisses me where he chooses, and I do not cry out. Isn't it
fine, ha! ha!” and then her overstrained feelings finding expression in
a burst of hysterical laughter, she threw herself back into her chair,
and buried her face in her arms on the table as at first.
“What's the matter? What ails the girl?” said Edwards, coming in from
the store, and viewing the scene with great surprise.
“The matter?” replied Mrs. Edwards slowly. “The matter is this: as that
fellow was leaving, and your back was turned, he took our girl here and
hugged and kissed her, and though she resisted what she could, she did
not cry out. I stood in that door and saw it with my own eyes. When I
called her to account for this scandal, she began vehemently to weep,
and protested that she dared not anger him by outcry, fearing for your
life if he were offended. And she further hinted that it was not the
first time he had had the kissing of her. Nay, she as good as said it
was with kisses that she ransomed you out of his hands the other day.”
Edwards listened with profound interest, but with more evidence of
curiosity than agitation, and after thinking a few moments, said
thoughtfully:
“I have marvelled much by what manner of argument she compassed our
deliverance, after the parson, a man mighty in persuasion and rebuke,
had wholly failed therein. Verily, the devices of Providence for the
protection of his saints in troublous times are past understanding. To
this very intent doubtless, was the gift of comeliness bestowed on the
maiden, a matter wherefore I have often, in much perplexity, inquired
of the Lord, seeing that it is a gift that often brings the soul into
jeopardy through vain thoughts. But now is the matter made plain to my
eyes.”
It was no light thing in those days for a wife to reproach her lord, but
Mrs. Edwards' eyes fairly lightened as she demanded with a forced calm:
“Will you, then, give up your daughter to these lewd fellows as Lot
would have given up his daughters to save his house?”
“Tut! tut!” said Edwards, frowning. “Your speech is unbridled and
unseemly. I am not worthy to be likened to that holy man of old, for
whose sake the Lord well nigh saved Sodom, nor am I placed in so sore
a strait. You spoke of nothing worse than kissing. The girl will not be
the worse, I trow, for a buss or two. Women are not so mighty tender. So
long as girls like not the kissing, be sure t'will do them no harm, eh,
Desire?” and he pinched her arm.
She snatched it away, and rushing across the room, threw herself upon
the settle, with her face in the cushion.
“Pish!” said her father, peevishly, “she grudges a kiss to save her
father from disgrace and ruin. It is a sinful, proud wench!”
“Proud!” echoed the girl, raising her tear-stained face from the cushion
and sitting up. “I was proud, but I'm not any more. All the rabble are
welcome to kiss me, seeing my father thinks it no matter.”
“Pshaw, child, what a coil about a kiss or two, just because the fellow
smells a little, maybe, of the barn! Can't you wash your face after?
Take soap to 't, and save your tears. Bless me! you shall hide in the
garret after this, but for my part, I shall still treat the fellow
civilly, for he holds us, as it were, in the hollow of his hand,” and he
went into the store in a pet.
There was one redeeming feature about the disturbances in Stockbridge.
The early bedtime habits of the people were too deeply fixed to be
affected by any political revolution, and however noisy the streets
might be soon after dusk, by half past nine or ten all was quiet. As
Perez crossed the green, after leaving the store, the only sound that
broke the stillness of the night, was the rumble of wheels on the Boston
road. It was Sedgwick's carriage, bearing him back to the capital, to
take his seat in the already convened State Senate. If his flying visit
home had been a failure so far as his law business before the Supreme
Court was concerned, it had at least enabled him to gain a vivid
conception of the extent and virulence of the insurrection.
There was really a good deal more than a joke in calling Perez, Duke
of Stockbridge. The antechamber of the headquarters room, at the
guardhouse, was often half full of a morning with gentlemen, and those
of lower degree as well, waiting to see him with requests. Some wanted
passes, or authority to go out of town, or carry goods away. Others had
complaints of orchards robbed, property stolen, or other injuries from
the lawless, with petitions for redress. The varieties of cases in which
Perez' intervention as the only substitute for law in the village was
being constantly demanded, it would quite exceed my space to enumerate.
In addition to this, he had the military affairs of the insurgent
train-band to order, besides transacting business with the agents of
neighboring towns, and even with messengers from Shays, who already
had begun to call on the Berkshire towns for quotas to swell the
rebel forces, of which a regular military organization was now being
attempted.
An informal sort of constitutional convention at the tavern had
committed the general government of the town, pending the present
troubles, to a Committee of Correspondence, Inspection and Safety,
consisting of Perez, Israel Goodrich and Ezra Phelps, but the two latter
practically left everything to Perez. There was not in this improvised
form of town government, singular as it strikes us, anything very novel
or startling to the people of the village, accustomed as they were
all through the war to the discretionary and almost despotic sway
in internal as well as external affairs, of the town revolutionary
committees of the same name. These, at first irregular, were
subsequently recognized alike by the Continental and state authorities,
and on them the work of carrying the people through the war practically
and chiefly fell. In Berkshire, indeed, the offices of the revolutionary
committees had been even more multifarious and extensive than in the
other counties, for owing to the course of Berkshire in refusing to
acknowledge the authority of the state government from 1775 to 1780, and
the consequent suppression of courts during that period, even judicial
functions had often devolved upon the committees, and suits at law had
been heard and determined, and the verdicts enforced by them. To the
town meeting alone did the revolutionary committees hold themselves
responsible. The effect of the outbreak of the revolutionary war had
been, indeed, to reduce democracy to its simplest terms. The Continental
Congress had no power, and only pretended to recommend and advise. The
state government, by sundering its relations with the crown, lost its
legal title, and for some time after the war began, and as regards
Berkshire, until the county voted to accept the new state constitution
in 1780, its authority was not recognized. During that period it may be
properly said that, while the Continental Congress advised and the state
convention recommended, the town meeting was the only body of actual
legislative powers in the Commonwealth. The reader must excuse this
brief array of dry historical details, because only by bearing in mind
that such had been the peculiar political education of the people of
Berkshire, will it appear fully credible that revolt should so readily
become organized, and anarchy assume the forms of law and order.
From the extent of his property interests and the popular animosity
which endangered them, no gentleman in Stockbridge had more necessity to
keep the right side of Perez Hamlin than Squire Edwards, and it was not
the storekeeper's fault if he did not. Comparatively few days passed in
which Perez did not find himself invited to take a glass of something,
as he passed the store, and without touching the point either of
servility or hypocrisy Edwards knew how to make himself so affable that
Perez began actually to think that perhaps he liked him for his own
sake, and even cherished the wild idea of taking him into confidence
concerning his passion and hope as to Desire. Had he done so Edwards
would certainly have found himself in a very awkward predicament.
Meanwhile, day after day and even week after week passed, and save for
an occasional glimpse of her passing a window, or the shadow on her
bedroom curtain with which his long night watches were sometimes
rewarded, he saw nothing of Desire. She never went on the street, and
for two Sundays had stayed at home from meeting. He could not muster
courage to ask Edwards about her, feeling that it must be that she kept
within doors merely to avoid him. One evening, however, late in October,
as he was sitting over some rum with the storekeeper, the latter
remarked, in a casual way, that the doctor had advised that his daughter
Desire, who had not been well of late, should take a trip to Pittsfield
for her health, and as if it were something quite casual, asked Perez to
have the kindness to make out a pass for her to go the next day. As
the Squire made this request, speaking as if it were a mere matter of
course, Perez was in the act of raising a glass of liquor to his lips.
He gave Edwards one glance, very slowly set down the untasted beverage,
and without a word of reply or of parting salutation, got up and went
out. The moment he was gone the door connecting the living-rooms with
the back of the store, softly opened, and Mrs. Edwards and Desire
entered.
“Did you get it?” asked the latter.
“Get it,” replied Edwards in disgust, “I should think not. He looked at
me like a wolf when I spoke of it. I had some notion that he would stick
his hanger through my stomach, but he thought better of that and got
up and stalked out without so much as winking at me. He's a terrible
fellow. I doubt if he does not some outrage to us for this.”
“Dear! Dear! What shall I do?” cried Desire, wringing her hands. “I
must go. I can't stay here, shut up like a prisoner, I shall be sick and
die.”
“Who knows,” said Mrs. Edwards, “what this ruffian may do next? He will
stop at nothing. He will not much longer respect our house. He may
force himself in any day. She is not safe here. I dare not have her stay
another day.”
“I don't know what can be done, she can't get away without a pass,”
replied Edwards. “It would do no good for me to ask him again. Perhaps
the girl herself might coax a pass out of him. It's the only chance.”
“I coax him! I see him again! Oh I can't, I can't do that,” cried Desire
with an air of overwhelming repugnance.
“I could leave the door ajar you know, Desire, and be ready to come into
the room if he were unmannerly,” said her mother. “I think he's rather
afraid of me. I'm afraid it's the only chance, as your father says, if
you could but bring yourself to it.”
“Oh it doesn't seem as if I could. It doesn't seem as if I could,” cried
the girl.
Perez did not come near the store for some days and it was on the street
that Edwards next met him. The storekeeper was very cordial and made no
further allusion to the pass. In the course of conversation he managed
to make some reference to Desire's piano, and the curiosity the people
seemed to feel about the novel instrument. He asked Perez if he had ever
seen it, and Perez saying no, invited him to drop in that evening and
hear Desire play a little. It is needless to say that the young man's
surprise at the invitation did not prevent his accepting it. It would
have melted the heart of his worst enemy to have seen how long he toiled
that afternoon trying to refurbish his threadbare coat so white in the
seams, and the rueful face with which he contemplated the result. On
presenting himself at the store soon after dusk, Edwards at once ushered
him into the parlor, and withdrew, saying that he must see to his
business.
Desire sat at the piano, no one else being in the room. She looked
rather pallid and thinner than when he had seen her last, but all the
more interesting for this delicacy. There was, however, a far more
striking alteration in her manner, for to his surprise she rose at
his entrance, and came forward with a smile to greet him. He was
delightfully bewildered.
“I scarcely know how to greet a Duke, for such I hear you are become,”
said Desire with a profound curtsy and a bewitching tone of badinage.
Entirely taken aback, he murmured something inarticulate, about her
piano.
“Would your grace like to have me play a little?” she asked, gaily.
He intimated that he would, and she at once sat down before the little
instrument. It was scarcely more to be compared with the magnificent
machines of our day than the flageolets of Virgil's shepherds with the
cornet-a-piston of the modern star performer, but Mozart, Haydn, Handel,
or Beethoven never lived to see a better. It was only about two feet
across by four and a half in width, with a small square sounding board
at the end. The almost threadlike wires, strung on a wooden frame, gave
forth a thin and tinny sound which would instantaneously bring the hands
of a modern audience to its ears. But to Perez it seemed divine, and
when, too, Desire opened her mouth and sang, tears of genuine emotion
filled his eyes. She was more richly dressed than he had ever seen her
before, wearing a cherry colored silk bodice, low necked, and with bell
mouthed sleeves reaching to her elbows only, while the rounded white
arms were set off with coral bracelets, a necklace of the same material
encircling her throat. Upon one cheek, a little below the outside corner
of the eye she wore a small black patch, according to a fashion of the
time, by way of heightening by contrast the delicacy of her complexion.
The faint perfume with which she had completed her toilet, seemed less
a perfume than the very breath of her beauty, the voluptuous effluence
which it exhaled. Having played and sung for some time she let her hands
drop by her side and raising her eyes to meet Perez' fascinated gaze,
said lightly:
“Do you like it?” The most exacting performer would have been satisfied
with the manner in which after a husky attempt to say something in
reply, he bowed his head in silence.
“I'm glad you came in tonight,” she said, “for I want to ask something
of you. Since you are Duke of Stockbridge we all have to ask favors of
you, you see.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“Oh, dear me,” she said, laughing. “That's not the way people ask favors
of kings and dukes. They make em promise to grant the favor first,
and then tell em what it is. This is the way,” and with the words she
dropped lightly on one knee before Perez, and with her clasped hands
pressed against her bosom, raised her face up toward his, her eyes
eloquent, of intoxicating submissiveness.
“If thine handmaiden has found grace in the sight of my lord, the duke,
let my request be done even according to the prayer of my lips.”
Perez leaned forward toward the beautiful upward turning face.
“Whatever you want,” he murmured.
“To the half of my dukedom, you must say.”
“To the half of my dukedom,” he repeated, in a mechanical voice, not
removing his eyes from hers.
“Do you pledge your honor?” she demanded, still retaining her position.
If he had known that she intended asking him to blow his own brains out
the next moment, and had expected to keep his promise, he must needs,
with her kneeling so before him, have answered “yes,” and so he did in
fact reply.
“Thanks,” she said, rising lightly to her feet, “you make a very good
duke indeed, and to reward you I shall not ask for anything like half
your dukedom, but only for a scrap of paper. Here is ink and paper and
a pen. Please write me a pass to go to Pittsfield. Dr. Partridge says
I must have change of air, and I don't want to be stopped by your
soldiers.”
A ghastly pallor overspread his face. “You're not going away,” he
stammered, rising slowly up.
“To be sure I am. What else should I want of the pass? Come, you're not
going to make me do all that asking over again. Please sit right down
again and write it. You know you promised on your word of honor.”
She even put her hand smilingly on his shoulder, as if to push him down,
and as he yielded to the light but irresistible pressure, she put a pen
in his nerveless fingers, saying gayly:
“Just your name at the bottom, that's all. Father wrote the rest to
save you trouble. Now, please.” Powerless against an imperious magnetism
which would have compelled him to sign his own death-warrant, he
scrawled the words. As she took up the precious scrap of paper, and hid
it in her bosom, the door opened, and Mrs. Edwards entered with
stately formality, and the next moment Perez found himself blunderingly
answering questions about his mother's state of health, not having the
faintest idea what he was saying. The next thing he was conscious of was
the cold frosty air on his face as he walked across the green from the
store to the guardhouse.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST
THE HUSKING
Scarcely had Perez left, when Edwards entered the parlor.
“Did you get it?” he asked of Desire.
“Yes, yes,” cried the girl. “Oh, that horrible, horrible fellow! I am
sick with shame all through, sick! sick! But if I can only get away out
of his reach, I shall not mind. Do let Cephas harness the horse into the
chaise at once. He may change his mind. Oh, hurry, father, do; don't,
oh, don't lose a minute.”
Half an hour later, Cephas, an old freedman of Edwards, drove the chaise
up to the side door, and a few bundles having been put into the vehicle,
Desire herself entered, and was driven hastily away toward Pittsfield.
To go back to Perez, on reaching the guardhouse, coming from the
store, he went in and sat down in the headquarters room. Presently, Abe
Konkapot, who was officer of the day, entered and spoke to him. Perez
making no reply, the Indian spoke again, and then went up to him and
laid his hand on his shoulder.
“What is it?” said Perez, in a dull voice.
“What matter with you, Cap'n? Me speake tree time. You no say nothin.
You seek?” Perez looked up at him vacantly.
“He no drunk?” pursued Abe, changing from the second to the third person
in his mode of speech, as he saw the other paid no attention. “Seem
like was heap drunk, but no smell rum,” and he scratched his head in
perplexity. Then he shook Perez' shoulder again. “Say, Cap'n, what ails
yer?”
“She's going away, Abe. Desire Edwards is going away,” replied Perez,
looking up at the Indian in a helpless, appealing way.
“You no like have her go, Cap'n? You like better she stay? What for let
her go then?”
“I gave her a pass, Abe. She was so beautiful I couldn't help it.”
Abe scratched his head.
“If she so preety, me s'pose you keep her all more for that. No let her
go.”
Perez did not explain this point, but presently said:
“Abe, you may let the men go home, if you want. It's nothing to me any
more what happens here in Stockbridge. The silk stockings are welcome
to come and hang me as soon as they please,” and his head dropped on his
breast like one whose life has suddenly lost its spring and motive.