UNDER THE ELMS.
Mrs. Arnold was in her chamber waiting with a heavy heart for the return
of her husband, and for the first sight of her son.
But the two men did not return so promptly as she expected. Under one of
the noble elms which shaded the college grounds they had paused in deep
conversation. Both were agitated, and the voice of the old man was stern
and deep, almost as if it had been uttering a malediction.
“Benedict,” he was saying, “before this girl shall be left to her ruin,
I will tell that which shall destroy you.”
“What, the thing you hinted at when I was home! as if I gave it a
thought.”
“Yes, Benedict, it is of your crime I speak.”
“‘Crime,’ sir!”
“The first great crime which brought distraction upon me,—hardness of
heart on you.”
“Speak out, sir, you exasperate me with half-sayings. Of what crime am I
guilty?”
“It is hard to speak of it. I have never uttered the awful words before,
but you will have them. I speak of ARSON AND FRAUD.”
The old man spoke so sternly, and the words came out so like a
denunciation, that Benedict staggered back and hid his face in the
shadows. Conscience, after all, made a coward of him. His voice shook
when he spoke.
“You charge these things on me. This suspicion, sir, is enough to
separate father and son forever.”
“‘Suspicion!’ Benedict, I saw the act.”
“You!—you!”
“As God shall judge us, my son, I saw you.”
“Ha!”
“It was a stormy night. Do you remember it? Can you ever forget it? A
wild, stormy night—not with rain or snow, but the wind blew awfully and
the lightning flashed in and out through the clouds,—dry lightning, such
as makes the air hot around you? I went home. Do you remember leaving
the shutters open? You were to bar them and sleep in the store. It was a
common thing, and when you asked it I had nothing to oppose. People say
that when great evils threaten you, some presentiment warns you against
them. It was not so with me. I went out very happy. We had done a good
day’s business, and I was going home to a contented wife and pleasant
fireside. It was not a presentiment that brought me back.”
“It must have been some infernal fiend,” hissed the young man through
his clinched teeth.
“It did the work of a fiend for me and mine,” was the rejoinder. “The
wind rose, and swelled, and rioted that night as I have never seen it
before nor since. There was a long stretch of woods between the town and
our homestead. The gale tore through the trees like a tornado. I could
hear the great limbs crack and go crashing through the branches
underneath, tearing them away to work new havoc. Just as I entered this
wood, a great hemlock, hollow at the trunk, was lifted up by the roots
and hurled across the road not twenty feet from where I stood. The crash
frightened me.
“Any one of the great limbs, that were twisted off like straws, would
have killed me in falling. I turned when the hemlock fell and ran out of
the woods. It was surely unsafe to go home, so I made up my mind to
hurry back and sleep with my son in the store.”
“An infernal piece of folly,” muttered the son.
“I reached the store and was going in, but one leaf of the shutters was
open, and, thinking the wind had torn out the bolt, I stopped to fasten
it—and looked in.”
“Well, sir, and you saw what?”
“I saw my own son standing over a mass of burning shavings, on which he
was heaping pine-knots and pouring oil. The smoke already filled the
store; flames leaped from the burning mass, and licked the ceiling. I
strove to call out, but the sight struck me dumb. The words struggled in
my throat like a death-rattle. I beat against the shutters with my
hands. I tried the door. It was bolted inside. Then I shouted; agony
unchained my voice as terror had chained it: but the wind swept the
cries from my lips. Nothing could be heard that night above its fierce
howls. Then the door was burst open and great waves of flame broke
through. With them came a human form. Yours, yours, Benedict Arnold. I
saw it clearly by the vivid light of the fire. I saw it leaping through
the darkness and away into the woods I had not dared to pass. Ten
thousand devils seemed howling a welcome to their fellow-sinner as you
entered the shadows. I ran after you. I shouted furiously that you
should turn back and help me put out the fire; but it was useless. You
had plunged into the black chasms of the wood, and were gone. Then I
went back to the store, panting for breath, bathed in sweat, faint and
sick. The fire had broken out from every crevice; flames were leaping
through the windows; and, curling upwards from the door, they lapped the
shingled roof madly, as wolves drink blood. I was too late, too late.”
The old man took out his handkerchief and dashed it across his forehead,
wiping great drops of agony away. The moonbeams fell on his head, and
against the crimson folds of his handkerchief those rugged features were
ghastly white.
Arnold was the first to speak. While this terrible narrative was poured
forth, more like a last appeal than an accusation, his iron heart had
resumed its hardness. The first shock of a conscience not quite dead had
left him dumb. But when the old man stopped, trembling and exhausted,
his audacious spirit came back.
“Old man, were you crazy then, or are you crazy now?”
“Almost, almost, I fear!” panted the unhappy parent.
“I should think so; to hunt an only son down with charges like this—why
they are worthy of a romance.”
“How true they are, you and the God who shall hereafter judge us both
know well,” was the solemn reply.
“I should think,” answered the son, still keeping in the shadow,
however, for he could not face the old man even then, “I should think
this wild scene sprang from a wish to frighten me into your measures,
but that my own father cannot believe me quite a coward.”
“A coward! No. It is I that have been the coward.”
“In not having courage enough to denounce me, perhaps. A tender father
to regret that!”
“I knew that the penalty was death.”
“And is still, father.”
The old man groaned. Arnold took courage.
“You saw this and did not inform. It is too late now: the insurance has
been paid and spent long ago. I thought my own father knew me better
than to suppose I would be frightened into any thing, especially with
threats about a dead matter like this. You allowed the insurance to be
paid without speaking.”
“True, true. I was a coward, and had no strength from that hour till the
good God saw fit to call me back to his fold. I tried to drown it all
out of my brain. But since then I have become a man, an honest man, for
that debt of sin has been paid, every farthing.”
“Paid! What, the insurance?”
“Yes, Benedict, your sin has made me a poor man, but, thank God, I am
free of that sin.”
“You have played the fool to this extent, and how?”
“I have mortgaged the farm. Your mother and I are working and saving
every way to keep the old roof over our heads; but your debt is paid so
far as man is concerned.”
“So you have given away the home from over my mother’s head, and now
follow me with reproaches! It is doubtless the part of a good Christian
to first disinherit and then pursue an only son with threats of ruin.”
“I do no such thing, Benedict. So far as the power lay in me I have
atoned for your crime.”
“‘Crime,’ again!”
“‘Crime,’ I said; but another I will never see go unpunished. This girl,
the daughter of my old friend—while it is time, she must be saved.”
“But I am pledged, openly pledged to marry another. You know that, yet
come to me with this sort of preaching, as if faithlessness to one woman
were not the same as desertion of another. I cannot marry both, that you
must allow.”
“I will not argue this matter,” said the elder Arnold, “but my pledge is
given to Joshua Leonard. It shall be fulfilled.”
“Not by me, sir. I am not to be coerced. If the girl has pursued me
here, take her back again before she attempts mischief, or it’ll prove
the worse for her. Tell her this.”
“No, I will not.”
“Then I will, and in words that shall make themselves felt in every
nerve of her body. How dare she pursue me in this way!”
Arnold came out from the shadow of the elm, as he ceased speaking, and
walked angrily across the green. The starlight shone on his face, and it
was that of a demon.