THE TYRANT AND HIS VICTIM.
Before Paul de Montreuil started for Norwich, and while the intended
marriage of his sister was kept a secret in New Haven, the unhappy young
man whose interview with Arnold in the pine woods we have already
described, sat alone; and, oh, how wretched in the little room which had
been a happy retreat to him before the painful events that put him in
that bad man’s power! Perhaps upon the face of the earth there could not
have been found a man on whom the burden of a secret could have fallen
with more painful force; but, a sin,—a fraud,—an absolute wrong,—the
very idea that he had been a party to sins like these crushed him to the
earth.
The young man was thinner, paler, and far more feeble than he appeared
that dim night under the pine-trees. A look of wild apprehension burned
in his eyes, and on either cheek glowed the vivid scarlet of a restless
spirit, if not of absolute disease. Many a hard struggle had this man
endured in working his way through the college whose shadow lay almost
around him up to the pulpit which he now filled; and, after all the
privation and toil of his young life, what had it come to? The work of a
single night, of which he was almost unconscious, had shipwrecked him on
the very strand from which he was setting sail on his voyage of
usefulness.
Intellectually, this man was strong. In order to gratify the craving of
a hungry brain he had struggled through a world of difficulty; but in
all other things he was depressed by that nervous weakness which clothes
threatened evil with double power. In his conscience he was so sensitive
that the least dereliction from duty was followed at once by bitter
self-reproach, which might eat his very life out while he brooded
silently over it.
He sat alone, as I have said, in a stiff, high-backed chair, whose
wooden seat a kind landlady had covered with a patchwork cushion of red
and blue cloth, cut in a small-diamond pattern. Shelves were on the
walls, on which a few straggling old books leaned against each other, as
if all the strength had been read out of them. A little spider-legged
table stood before him, on which lay some sheets of paper and a pile of
manuscript,—the first half of his farewell-sermon.
A deathly gloom filled the young man’s eyes as they fell upon this
little heap of written paper; great drops hung on his forehead; and more
than once he clasped his hands and wrung them together in passionate
sorrow.
“Why should I do this,” he thought, looking despairingly around the
room. “Must a single wrong drive me from my home,—from the people who
love me. I—I am sure they do love me,” he broke out, in a passion of
grief; and falling forward, with his face on the table, he wept aloud.
He arose after a while and seized his hat.
“No, no,” he said. “I will not submit to this without a struggle. The
man has a heart. He is young, and youth should be generous. I will
appeal to him again. Why should he wish to ruin me? What good will it do
him to bury me, body and soul, in a mission to those tropic islands. I
have no heart for it,—no strength for it. If I go, long before the
voyage is over they will leave me in mid-ocean, with an eternal booming
of waters for my death-knell. I feel the waves curdling over me now. Oh,
God forgive me,—God forgive me that I have brought myself to this,—I who
so long held myself free from guile, and above reproach,—I who love one
of the most pure and good of thy creatures; but, because of my sin, must
carry this as another sorrow down into the deep waters.”
He sat down again; for in this outburst of passionate grief, all the
strength left him, and he fell into his chair, trembling like a
frightened child.
A door below opened, and the tread of a foot upon the stairs checked his
breath. He listened, watching, as if he expected that some one would
break in upon him.
The minister was not far from right. A quick step came close to the
door. A knock, a sharp motion of the latch, and Arnold came in, the very
picture of robust health.
The minister shuddered and shrunk back in his chair. The lamp shone on
his forehead, and Arnold saw great drops glistening on its surface. For
one instant a thrill of pity crept through his heart; but it was thrust
away at once by rising contempt for a weakness he was not good enough to
understand.
“What, all alone and gloomy as ever! Come, come, man, what is the use of
fretting yourself into a skeleton? The doctors can get one at a cheaper
rate.”
Arnold’s voice was rude and his manner almost insulting. He seemed to
enjoy the anguish of his victim.
“I am not quite alone,” answered the minister, lifting a pale hand to
his forehead and sweeping the moisture away. “The merciful God, who
knows how I suffer and repent, hears us, Benedict Arnold, even in this
poor room.”
“Be it so. While he permits the hawk to swoop on his prey in the face of
Heaven, and the shark to fill his maw with helpless little fish, our
interview will not be likely to draw his lightning from heaven; and, if
it did, I can stand more than that.”
“Blasphemer!” broke from the white lips of the minister.
“Do you think so? I did not mean to be irreverent,—only truthful. Has it
never struck you, however, how all through life the strong prey upon the
weak? Man and beast, both are alike in this.”
“You talk of nature in its savage state. Christianity is given to subdue
and refine nature. A good man, following the example of Christ, protects
the weaker brother, works for him, bears with him,—sometimes is ready to
die for him.”
The minister spoke with trembling energy. He sat upright in his stiff
chair, and the lamplight fell upon his face, purifying it.
Arnold drew a seat to the table, and sat down upon it, saying,
carelessly,
“Well, well, you shall be the Christian, and I will play the shark.
While there are plenty of little fish in this great sea of life, I am
content with that role.”
The minister shuddered, and covered his eyes with one hand, sighing
heavily. When his hand dropped, Arnold had drawn the manuscript sermon
across the table, and was reading it. With a sensitive thrill, as if the
man were searching his heart, the minister reached forth his hand with a
sharp effort to rescue his thoughts so sacred, as an emanation of his
own life, from the desecration of those mocking eyes.
“No; let me read it,” said Arnold, grasping the loose leaves tightly
with one hand while he gently repulsed the minister’s effort with the
other. “If it is the farewell-sermon, of course I should hear it with
the rest,—so what’s the difference?”
What was the difference? I wonder if common men ever dream of the
shrinking reluctance with which a being who writes sees his warm
thoughts, just as they come fresh from the brain, given over to
criticism, perhaps unfriendly criticism, before his face. It is like
playing with the strings of one’s heart while they are vibrating.
Those who feel this will know how to pity that sensitive man; when he
saw the pages over which he had wept and prayed, under the eye and in
the grasp of his enemy.
“For mercy’s sake give them back. You are torturing me,” he pleaded.
This pathetic cry of a soul that felt itself robbed had no effect upon
the hard man.
“Directly, directly,” he said, keeping one hand heavily on the papers.
“There is genius in this, absolute, downright genius! Why, man, go down
on your knees, and thank me for giving you occasion for a sermon like
this. You never would have produced any thing like it in a whole
lifetime without my help.”
“Without your help!” repeated the minister, drearily. “Without your
help!”
“Why, yes, if, as you say, I have made you suffer. Bruise a flower, if
you want its perfect fragrance.”
The minister groaned aloud, muttering drearily, “But it kills the
flower! It kills the flower!”
“Sometimes,” answered Arnold, fastening his eyes again on the sermon.
“Sometimes.”
He read on, while the very soul of his victim writhed and quivered under
this coarseness.
“That will be a powerful sermon. I did not know that you had so much in
you,” said Arnold, at length, giving the manuscript a push toward its
author. “But when will you preach it? Next Sunday, I hope, for to own
the truth I am very anxious to have you get off.”
“What is the reason of this haste,” inquired the minister, with some
energy, “so long as I remain silent? Why wish me away?”
“It is safer and pleasanter,” answered Arnold, dryly.
The poor man, thus ruthlessly driven from his home and the people he
loved, sat for a moment mute and pale. Then clasping his thin hands in
pathetic anguish, he flung them clenched together upon the table.
“What have I done to you, Arnold, that you should persecute me so? Have
some mercy on me. I love my people: I have worked some good among them,
unworthy as I am to serve my God in any thing. I have tried so hard to
atone for that one wrong,—a wrong I scarcely remember, and would not
believe but for the proof you hold. I do not even know why that wretched
note was given. All that I do know of a certainty is, that a day of
oblivion left me in your power,—left me with a shameful debt, as I was
told, acknowledged under my own hand. If this oblivion came, as you
persist it did, from the wine-cup,—if this debt was made at a
gambling-table,—then, for one unholy day and night, I, God’s sworn
servant, was a drunkard and a gambler.”
“‘If!’” said Arnold, “‘if!’ I was not the only witness.”
“Where is the other man? Bring him face to face with me before I am
bound hand and foot and given up to death!”
There was something in the wretched man’s face that startled Arnold. The
anguish in his voice thrilled even his stony heart. There was more
strength and resistance here than he had supposed possible. But while
this thought was striking him with terror, the minister changed, the
energy in his face died out, tears leaped to his eyes, filling them with
liquid anguish. His hands, that had been lifted from the table, fell
down, clasped imploringly, and his voice was one wail of pain.
“But if it is so, Arnold, you are a man, and I once thought you my
friend. Have mercy upon me, and let this poor soul work out its own
redemption before the Lord. He knows how I have repented, how I have
wept, how I have implored forgiveness on my knees for this great fault.
Why should you, a man like myself, be less merciful than God? He has
forgiven me. I know it,—I feel it in the depths of my soul. Why, then,
are you so cruel?”
Arnold was disturbed. This pathetic address would have softened hate
itself. The minister saw it, and went on with more touching energy.
“I will tell you another thing, Arnold,—a secret that has never passed
my lips, but which has been the very life of my life for many a day. As
you loved the sweet girl who came with you that night, I love a creature
good and pure as she is.”
“‘Is!’” cried Arnold, savagely. “‘Is!’ Why the girl is dead! You must
know that!”
The falsehood was a sudden impulse. Could he make the minister believe
it, half the peril that encompassed him was conquered.
“Dead!” cried the unhappy man. “Dead, and so young! Then, in the grief
of this bereavement, you will find some compassion for one who gave her
to you at the expense of his conscience. If you loved her, think of
another quite as worthy. Week after week I have watched her soft eyes
lifted to mine; these hands have given the holy bread and wine to her
lips; she smiles upon me as I pass her window in the calm twilight. We
love each other, Arnold. I feel that truth in every pulse of my heart.
For her sake let me remain in peace. Your young wife being dead, makes
secrecy innocent. I will never mention the marriage, if you wish it kept
secret. She is now beyond the reach of all harm. I was only afraid of
committing a new sin when I opposed your wishes,—afraid of wronging that
poor trusting girl. Now that she is with God, you will let me rest, for
her sake.”
Arnold turned impatiently from this appeal. Spite of himself it wrung
his hard heart, but he was too far committed for retreat. A few weeks of
delay, and this man pleading so forcibly for a respite from ruin might
change places with him. Because his own heart was relenting he goaded it
into more cutting cruelty.
“You doubt my word!” he said; “doubt your own handwriting! ask for an
interview with the person whom from delicacy I have kept from your
presence! But you shall see him,—talk with him,—receive the blasting
assurance from his own lips. But remember, he did not know the worst. I
kept him in ignorance that you were one of God’s holy ministers. When
that is revealed to him he will not outrage his conscience, as I have
done, by keeping your great transgression a secret. Besides, he is a
ruthless man, and without pity, especially for weaknesses among the
clergy. There is great danger that he may discover your identity with
the holy professor by accident. At any time he may enter your church and
find the man he believes to be so degraded dispensing God’s sacred word
from the pulpit. Up to this time I have managed to keep him away; but
last week he sent me a letter, saying that I might expect him in a few
days.”
The minister bent his head to the table and moaned aloud. Arnold went
round to his chair, and laid a hand, with seeming kindness, on his
shoulder.
“If I have seemed unkind, it was for your own good,” he said. “I hated
to say all this in plain terms; but cannot you see that it is best you
should leave this place, for a time at least? It need not be forever.
Let the congregation vote you leave of absence. In a few months this
unhappy affair can be settled. The day you sail I will give up the note.
Just keep out of the way while the person we dread comes and goes, then
we shall have nothing to fear.”
The minister lifted a hand to his forehead, and arose from his chair.
“Yes; I will go,” he said. “If that poor girl is in her grave, it is
neither leaving her to suffer, or taking sin upon my own soul. I have
thought you harsh, Arnold, and suspected you of things that I begin to
think never entered your mind. Let us forgive each other before we
part.”
Arnold wrung his hand out of that honest grasp. It was like touching
fire. He went down-stairs mattering to himself,—
“There is no help for it. The fellow will come back again, if he lives
so long; but I shall be out of the country long before that. Besides,
how is he to find out whether a girl, whose home is so distant, is
living or dead? Thank heaven his cousin has moved away.”
The minister sat down pale and exhausted. His doom seemed less dreary
than it had an hour before. The idea that he was aiding in a concealment
which might bring shame or sorrow on the fair girl whom he had united to
the man whose steps rang in his ear, had lifted a burden from his
conscience. He would trust himself to the sea now that no fresh wrong
went with him.