he was delighted out of measure to find any honorable escape from the
predicament in which we were, he pulled a long face, and after some
thought, said that he would grant the conditions, provided the rebels
also surrendered their arms, and took the oath of allegiance to the
state. At this Hamlin laughed a little.
“'I see, sir, we are but wasting time,' he said, with a mighty
indifferent air. 'You have got the boot on the wrong foot. It is we who
are granting you terms, not you us. You may thank your stars I don't
require your men to surrender their arms. Look you, sir, my men will not
give up their guns, or take any oath but go as free as yours, with your
promise of protection hereafter. If you agree to those terms, you may
come into Lee, and we will disperse. If not let us lose no more time
waiting, but have at it.'
“It was something to make one's blood run cold, to hear the fellow talk
so quietly about murdering us. The General hemmed and hawed a little,
and made a show of talking aside with me, and presently said that to
avoid shedding the blood of the misguided men on the other side, he
would consent to the terms, but he added, the artillery must at any rate
be surrendered.
“'It is private property,' said Hamlin.
“'It is forfeited to its owner by its use against the government,'
replied the General sturdily.
“'I will not stickle for the gun,' said Hamlin, 'but will leave you to
settle that with the owner,' and, as he spoke, he looked as if he were
inwardly amused over something.
“Thereupon we separated. The announcement of the terms was received by
our men with a cheer, for they had made up their minds that there was
nothing before them but a march back to Stockbridge in the face of the
wind and to meet the ridicule of the populace. As we now approached the
cannon at quick-step Abner Rathbun came around and stood in front of it,
so we did not see it till we were close upon it. He was grinning from
ear to ear. The road just behind was packed with rebels all likewise on
the broad grin, as if at some prodigious jest. As we came up Hamlin said
to the General:
“'Sir, I now deliver over to you the artillery, that is if you can
settle it with Mrs. Perry. Abner stand aside.'
“Rathbun did so and what we saw was a yarn-beam mounted on a pair of
oxcart wheels with the tongue of the cart resting on the ground behind.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXTH
THE RESTORATION
As was remarked in the last chapter, it was some three weeks after
the famous encounter at Lee that Dr. Partridge entertained Desire one
afternoon with the account of the affair which I have transcribed for
the information of my readers. The interval between the night before the
Lee expedition, when she had taken her sickness, and the sunny afternoon
of expiring February, when she sat listening to the doctor's story, had
for her been only a blank of sickness, but in the community around, it
had been a time of anxiety, of embitterment, and of critical change. The
gay and brilliant court, of which she had for a brief period been the
center, had long ago vanished. Hamlin's band at Lee had been the last
considerable force of rebels embodied in Southern Berkshire, and a few
days after its dispersal the companies from other towns left Stockbridge
to return home, leaving the protection of the village to the home
company. Close on this followed the arrival at Pittsfield of General
Lincoln with a body of troops called into Berkshire by the invitation
of General Patterson, to the disgust of some gentlemen who thought the
county quite capable of attending to its own affairs. These forces
had completed the pacification of Northern Berkshire, where, among the
mountain fastnesses rebel bands had till then maintained themselves, so
that now the entire county was subdued and the insurrection, so far
as concerned any overt manifestation, was at an end. In Stockbridge
Tax-collector Williams once more went his rounds. Deputy Sheriff
Seymour's red flag floated again from the gable ends of the houses
whence the mob had torn it last September, foreclosure sales were made,
processes were served, debtors taken to jail, and the almost forgotten
sound of the lash was once more heard on the green of Saturday
afternoons as the constable executed Squire Woodbridge's sentences at
the reërected whipping-post and stocks. Sedgwick's return to Boston to
his seat in the Legislature early in February, had left Woodbridge to
resume unimpeded his ancient autocracy in the village, and with as many
grudges as that gentleman had to pay off, it may well be supposed
the constable had no sinecure. The victims of justice were almost
exclusively those who had been concerned in the late rebellion. For
although the various amnesties, as well as the express stipulations
under which a large number had surrendered, protected most of the
insurgents from penalties for their political crimes, still misdemeanors
and petty offenses against property and persons during the late
disturbances were chargeable against most of them, and tried before a
magistrate whom, like Woodbridge, they had mobbed. A charge was as good
as a proof.
Nor if they appealed to a jury, was their chance much better, for the
Legislature coming together again in February, had excluded former
rebels from the jury box for three years, binding them to keep the peace
for the same time, and depriving them of the elective franchise in all
forms for a year, while on the other hand complete indemnity was granted
to the friends of government for all offences against property or
persons, which they might have committed in suppressing the rebellion.
Without here controverting the necessity of these measures, it is easy
to realize the state of hopeless discouragement to which they reduced
the class exposed to their effect. Originally driven into the rebellion
by the pressure of a poverty which made them the virtual serfs of the
gentlemen, they now found themselves not only forced to resume their
former position in that respect, but were in addition, deprived of the
ordinary civil rights and guarantees of citizens. In desperation many
fled over the border into New York and Connecticut, and joined bands of
similar refugees which were camped there. Others, weaker spirited,
or bound by ties they could not or would not break, remained at home,
seeking to propitiate their masters by a contrite and circumspect
demeanor, or sullenly enduring whatever was put upon them. A large
number prepared to emigrate to homes in the West as soon as spring
opened the roads.
Of the chief abettors of Perez, the fortunes may be briefly told. Jabez
Flint had sold all he had and escaped to Nova Scotia to join one of the
numerous colonies of deported Tories which had been formed there. Jabez
was down on his luck.
“I've hed enough o' rebellin,” he declared. “I've tried both sides on't.
In the fust rebellion I wuz agin' the rebels, an the rebels licked. This
ere time I tuk sides agin' the govment, an the govment hez licked. I'm
like a feller ez is fust kicked behind an then in the stummick. I be
done on both sides, like a pancake.”
Israel Goodrich and Ezra Phelps, being excepted from the amnesties as
members of the rebel committee, had only escaped jailing because, as men
of some substance they had been able to give large bonds to await the
further disposition of the Boston government.
“I didn' mind so much 'bout that,” said Israel, “but what come kinder
tough on me wuz a seein them poor white-livered pulin chaps tew my house
tuk back ter jail.”
For the debtors whom the mob had released from Great Barrington jail,
including those to whom Israel had given asylum, had now been recaptured
and returned to the charge of Cephas Bement and his pretty wife. Reuben
Hamlin had been taken with the rest, though his stay in jail this
time did not promise to be a long one, for he had overdone his feeble
strength in that night walk through the snow to Lee, and since then had
declined rapidly. He was so far gone that it would scarcely have been
thought worth while to take him to jail if he could have remained at
home. But as the sheriff had now sold the Hamlin house at auction, and
Elnathan and his wife had been separated and boarded out as paupers,
this was out of the question.
There was one man in Stockbridge, however, who was more to be pitied
than Reuben. Peleg Bidwell found himself at the end of the rebellion
as at the opening of it, the debtor and thrall of Solomon Gleason, save
that his debt was greater, his means of paying it even less, while by
his insolent bearing toward Solomon during the rebellion, he had made
him not only his creditor but his enemy. The jail yawned before Peleg,
and of the jail he, as well as the people generally, had acquired a new
horror since the day when the mob had brought to light the secrets of
that habitation of cruelty. He felt that, come what might, he could not
go to a jail. And he did not. But his pretty wife stayed at home and
avoided her former acquaintances, and those who saw her said she was
pale and acted queer, and Peleg went about with a hangdog look, and
Solomon Gleason was a frequent caller, and the women of the neighborhood
whispered together.
Abner Rathbun and Meshech Little had fled across the border, and Abe
Konkapot would have done so but for the fact that he could not leave his
sweetheart Lu to be secured by his rival and brother, Jake. Jake, having
out of enmity to his brother sided with the government party, was now
in favor with the powers that were, and more preferred than ever by Lu's
mother. But Abe knew the girl liked him rather the better, and did not
let himself be discouraged. Jake, observing that he made little progress
in spite of his advantages, laid a plot against his brother. The latter
had acquired in the army a tendency to use profane language in moments
of excitement, and it was of this weakness that Jake took advantage.
Picking an opportunity when there were witnesses, he provoked Abe to
wrath, and having made him swear profusely, went straightway to Squire
Woodbridge and complained of him for blasphemy. Abe was promptly
arrested and brought before the magistrate. The Squire, not unwilling to
get a handle against so bad a rebel, observed that it was high time for
the authorities to make a head against the tide of blasphemy which had
swept over the state since the war, and to advertise to the rabble
that the statute against profanity was not a dead letter and thereupon
sentenced Abe to ten lashes at the whipping-post, to be at once laid on,
it chancing to be a Saturday afternoon. While Abe, frantic with rage,
was struggling with the constable and his assistants, Jake ran away to
the Widow Nimham's cottage and asking Lu to go to walk, managed to bring
her across the green in time to see the sentence carried into execution.
Jake had understood what he was about. There were no doubt white
girls in Stockbridge who might have married a lover whom they had seen
publicly whipped, but for Lu, with an Indian's intense sensitiveness to
a personal indignity, it would have been impossible. Abe needed no one
to tell him that. As he was unbound and walked away from the post, his
blood-shotten eyes had taken her in standing there with Jake. He did
not even make an effort to see her afterwards and next Sunday Jake's and
Lu's banns were called in meeting. Abe had been drunk pretty much all
the time since, lying about the tavern floor. Widow Bingham said she
hadn't a heart to refuse him rum, and in truth the poor fellow's
manhood was so completely broken down, that he must have been a resolute
teetotaler, indeed, who would not have deemed it an act of common
humanity to help him temporarily to forget himself.
Such then are the events that were taking place in the community
about her while Desire was lying on her sick bed, or making her first
appearances as a convalescent downstairs. Only faint and occasional
echoes of them had reached her ears. She had been told, indeed, that
the rebellion was now all over and peace and order restored, but of the
details and incidents of the process she knew nothing. To be precise it
was during the latter part of the afternoon of the twenty-sixth day of
February, that Dr. Partridge was entertaining her as aforesaid with his
humorous version of the Lee affair. The Dr. and Mrs. Partridge had
come to tea, and to spend the evening, and just here, lest any modern
housewife should object that it is not a New England country practice
to invite company on washing-day, I would mention that in those days
of inexhaustible stores of linen, washing-day rarely came over once a
fortnight. After tea in the evening the Doctor and Squire Edwards sat
talking politics over their snuff-boxes, while Mrs. Partridge and Mrs.
Edwards discussed the difficulty of getting good help, now that the
negroes were beginning to feel the oats of their new liberty, and
the farmers' daughters, since the war and the talk about liberty and
equality, thought themselves as good as their betters. Now that the
insurrection had still further stirred up their jealousy of gentlefolk,
it was to be expected that they would be quite past getting on with at
all, and for all Mrs. Edwards could see, ladies must make up their minds
to do their own work pretty soon.
Desire sat in an armchair, her hands folded in her lap, musingly gazing
into the glowing bed of coals upon the hearth, and listening half
absently to the talk about her. She had been twice to meeting the
day before, and considered herself as now quite well, but she had not
disused the invalid's privilege of sitting silent in company.
“I marvel,” said Squire Edwards, contemplatively tapping his snuff-box,
“at the working of Providence, when I consider that so lately the
Commonwealth, and especially this county, was in turmoil, the rebels
having everything their own way, and we scarcely daring to call our
souls our own, and behold them now scattered, fled over the border,
in prison, or disarmed and trembling, and the authority of law and the
courts everywhere established.”
“Yes,” replied the Doctor, “we have reason to be thankful indeed, and
yet I cannot help compassionating the honester among the rebels. It is
the pity of an uprising like this, that while one must needs sympathize
with the want and suffering of the rebels, it is impossible to condemn
too strongly the mad plans they urge as remedies. Ezra Phelps was
telling me the other day, that their idea, had they succeeded, was to
cause so many bills to be printed and scattered abroad, that the
poorest could get enough to pay all their debts and taxes. Some were for
repudiating public and private debts altogether, but Ezra said that
this would not be honest. He was in favor of printing bills enough
so everything could be paid. I tried to show him that one plan was as
dishonest as the other; that they might just as well refuse payment, as
pay in worthless bits of printed paper, and that the morality of the two
schemes being the same, that of refusing outright the payment of dues,
was preferable practically, because at least, it would not further
derange trade by putting a debased and valueless currency in
circulation. But I fear he did not see it at all, if he even gave me
credit for sincerity, and yet he is an honest, well-meaning chap, and
more intelligent than the common run of the rebels.”
“That is the trouble nowadays,” said Edwards, “these numskulls must
needs have matters of government explained to them, and pass their own
judgment on public affairs. And when they cannot understand them, then
forsooth comes a rebellion. I think none can deny seeing in these
late troubles the first fruits of those pestilent notions of equality,
whereof we heard so much from certain quarters, during the late war of
independence. I would that Mr. Jefferson and some of the other writers
of pestilent democratic rhetoric might have been here in the state the
past winter, to see the outcome of their preaching.”
“It may yet prove,” said Dr. Partridge, “that these troubles are to work
providentially to incline the people of this state to favor a closer
union with the rest of the continent for mutual protection, if the
forthcoming convention at Philadelphia shall devise a practicable
scheme. By reason of the preponderant strength of our Commonwealth we
have deemed ourselves less in need of such a union than are our sister
colonies, but this recent experience must teach us that even we are not
strong enough to stand alone.”
“You are right there, sir,” said Edwards. “It is plain that if we keep
on as we are, Massachusetts will ere long split into as many states as
we have counties, or at least into several. What have these troubles
been but a revolt of the western counties against the eastern, and had
we gentlemen gone with the rebels, the state would have been by
this time divided, and you know well,” here Edwards' voice became
confidential, “we have in the main, no great cause to be beholden to
the Bostonians. They treat our western counties as if they were but
provinces.”
Desire's attention had lapsed as the gentlemen's talk got into the
political depths, but some time after it was again aroused by hearing
the mention of Perez Hamlin's name. The doctor was saying:
“They say he is lurking just over the York border at Lebanon. There are
four or five score ruffians with him, who breathe out threatenings and
slaughter against us Stockbridge people but I think we need lose no
sleep on that account for the knaves will scarcely care to risk their
necks on Massachusetts soil.”
“It is possible,” said Edwards, “that they may make some descents on
Egremont or Sheffield or other points just across the line, but they
will never venture so far inland as Stockbridge for fear of being cut
off, and if they do our militia is quite able for them. What mischief
they can do safely they will do, but nothing else for they are arrant
cowards when all's said.”
The talk of the gentlemen branched off upon other topics, but Desire did
not follow it further, finding in what had just been said quite enough
to engross her thoughts. Of course there could be no real danger that
Hamlin would venture a visit to Stockbridge, since both her father and
the doctor scouted the idea; but there was in the mere suggestion enough
to be very agitating. To avoid the possibility of a meeting with
Hamlin, as well as to acquit her conscience of a goading conviction of
unfairness to him, she had already once risked compromising herself
by sending that midnight warning to Lee, nor did she grudge the three
weeks' sickness it cost her, seeing it had succeeded. Nor was the idea
of meeting him any less terrifying now. The result of her experiences
in the last few months had been that all her old self-reliance was gone.
When she recalled what she had done and felt, and imagined what she
might have gone on to do, she owned in all humility that she could no
longer take care of herself or answer for herself. Desire Edwards was
after all capable of being as big a fool as any other girl. Especially
at the thought of meeting Hamlin again, this sense of insecurity
became actual panic. It was not that she feared her heart. She was not
conscious of loving him but of dreading him. Her imagination invested
him with some strange, irrestible magnetic power over her, the magnetism
of a tremendous passion, against which, demoralized by the memory of
her former weakness, she could not guarantee herself. And the upshot was
that just because she chanced to overhear that reference to Perez in the
gentlemen's talk, she lay awake nervous and miserable for several hours
after going to bed that night. In fact she had finally to take herself
seriously to task about the folly of scaring herself to death about such
a purely fanciful danger, before she could go to sleep.
She woke hours after with a stifled scream, for her mother was standing
in the door of the room, half dressed, the candle she held revealing a
pale and frightened face, while the words Desire heard were:
“Quick, get up and dress, or you'll be murdered in bed! An army of
Shayites is in the village.”
“Four o'clock in the morning courage,” that steadiness of nerve which is
not shaken when, suddenly roused from the relaxation and soft languor of
sleep, one is called to face pressing, deadly, and undreamed of peril in
the weird and chilling hour before dawn, was described by Napoleon as a
most rare quality among soldiers, and such being the case it is hardly
to be looked for among women. With chattering teeth and random motions,
half-distraught with incoherent terrors, Desire made a hasty, incomplete
toilet in the dark of her freezing bedroom, and ran downstairs. In the
living-room she found her mother and the smaller children with the negro
servants and Keziah Pixley, the white domestic. Downstairs in the
cellar her father and Jonathan were at work burying the silver and other
valuables, that having been the first thought when a fugitive from the
tavern where the rebels had first halted, brought the alarm. There
were no candles lit in the living-room lest their light should attract
marauders, and the faint light of the just breaking dawn made the faces
seem yet paler and ghastlier with fear than they were. From the street
without could be heard the noise of a drum, shouts, and now and then
musket shots, and having scraped away the thick frost from one of the
panes, Desire could see parties of men with muskets going about and
persons running across the green as if for their lives. As she looked
she saw a party fire their muskets after one of these fugitives, who
straightway came back and gave himself up. In the room it was bitterly
cold, for though the ashes had been raked off the coals no wood had been
put on lest the smoke from the chimney should draw attention.
The colored servants were in a state of abject terror, but the white
“help” made no attempt to conceal her exultation. They were her friends
the Shayites, and her sweetheart she declared was among them. He'd sent
her a hint that they were coming, she volubly declared, and yesterday
when Mrs. Edwards was “so high 'n mighty with her a makin her sweep the
kitchen twicet over she was goodamiter tell her ez haow she'd see the
time she'd wisht she'd a kep the right side on her.”
“I've always tried to do right by you Keziah. I don't think you have any
call to be revengeful,” said the poor lady, trembling.
“Mebbe I hain't and mebbe I hev,” shrilled Keziah, tossing her head
disdainfully. “I guess I know them ez loves me from them ez don't. I
s'pose ye think I dunno wat yer husbun an Jonathan be a buryin daown
stairs.”
“I'm sure you won't betray us, Keziah,” said Mrs. Edwards. “You've had a
good place with us, Keziah. And there's that dimity dress of mine. It's
quite good yet. You could have it made over for you.”
“Oh yes,” replied Keziah, scornfully. “It's all well nuff ter talk bout
givin some o' yer things away wen yer likely to lose em all.”
With that, turning her back upon her terrified mistress, with the air of
a queen refusing a petition, she patronizingly assured Desire that
she had met with more favor in her eyes than her mother, and she would
accordingly protect her. “Though,” she added, “I guess ye won't need my
helpin for Cap'n Hamlin 'll see nobuddy teches ye cept hisself.”
“Is he here?” gasped Desire, her dismay suddenly magnified into utter
panic.
“Fer sartain, my sweetheart ez sent me word 's under him,” replied
Keziah.
A noise of voices and tramp of feet at the outside door interrupted her.
The marauders had come. The door was barred and this having been tested,
there was a hail of gunstock blows upon it with orders to open and
blasphemous threats as to the consequences of refusal. There was a dead
silence within, but for Mrs. Edwards' hollow whisper, “Don't open.” With
staring eyes and mouths apart the terrified women and children looked at
one another motionless, barely daring to breathe. But as the volley of
blows and threats was renewed with access of violence, Keziah exclaimed:
“Ef they hain't yeur frens they be mine, an I hain't gonter see em kep
aout in the cold no longer fer nobuddy,” and she went to the door and
took hold of the bar.