PLAIN TALK.
Mary revolved the affairs of her friend in her mind, during the night.
The intensity of the mental crisis through which she had herself just
passed had developed her in many inward respects, so that she looked
upon life no longer as a timid girl, but as a strong, experienced
woman. She had thought, and suffered, and held converse with eternal
realities, until thousands of mere earthly hesitations and timidities,
that often restrain a young and untried nature, had entirely lost their
hold upon her. Besides, Mary had at heart the true Puritan seed of
heroism,--never absent from the souls of true New England women. Her
essentially Hebrew education, trained in daily converse with the words
of prophets and seers, and with the modes of thought of a people
essentially grave and heroic, predisposed her to a kind of exaltation,
which, in times of great trial, might rise to the heights of the
religious--sublime, in which the impulse of self-devotion took a form
essentially commanding. The very intensity of the repression under
which her faculties had developed seemed, as it were, to produce a
surplus of hidden strength, which came out in exigencies. Her reading,
though restricted to a few volumes, had been of the kind that vitalized
and stimulated a poetic nature, and laid up in its chambers vigorous
words and trenchant phrases, for the use of an excited feeling,--so
that eloquence came to her as a native gift. She realized, in short, in
her higher hours, the last touch with which Milton finishes his
portrait of an ideal woman:--
"Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat
Build in her loftiest, and create an awe
About her as a guard angelic placed."
The next, morning, Colonel Burr called at the cottage. Mary was
spinning in the garret, and Madame de Frontignac was reeling yarn, when
Mrs. Scudder brought this announcement.
"Mother," said Mary, "I wish to see Mr. Burr alone. Madame de
Frontignac will not go down."
Mrs. Scudder looked surprised, but asked no questions. When she was
gone down, Mary stood a moment reflecting; Madame de Frontignac looked
eager and agitated.
"Remember and notice all he says, and just how he looks, Mary, so as to
tell me; and be sure and say that I thank him for his kindness
yesterday. We must own he appeared very well there; did he not?"
"Certainly," said Mary; "but no man could have done less."
"Ah! but, Mary, not every man could have done it _as_ he did. Now don't
be too hard on him, Mary;--I have said dreadful things to him; I am
afraid I have been too severe. After all, these distinguished men are
so tempted! we don't know how much they are tempted; and who can wonder
that they are a little spoiled? So, my angel, you must be merciful."
"Merciful!" said Mary, kissing the pale cheek, and feeling the cold
little hands that trembled in hers.
"So you will go down in your little spinning-toilette, _mimi_? I fancy
you look as Joan of Arc did, when she was keeping her sheep at Domremy.
Go, and God bless thee!" and Madame de Frontignac pushed her playfully
forward.
Mary entered the room where Burr was seated, and wished him
good-morning, in a serious and placid manner, in which there was not
the slightest trace of embarrassment or discomposure.
"Shall I have the pleasure of seeing your fair companion this morning?"
said Burr, after some moments of indifferent conversation.
"No, Sir; Madame de Frontignac desires me to excuse her to you."
"Is she ill?" said Burr, with a look of concern.
"No, Mr. Burr, she prefers not to see you."
Burr gave a start of well-bred surprise, and Mary added,
"Madame de Frontignac has made me familiar with the history of your
acquaintance with her; and you will therefore understand what I mean,
Mr. Burr, when I say, that, during the time of her stay with us, we
should prefer not to receive calls from you."
"Your language, Miss Scudder, has certainly the merit of explicitness."
"I intend it shall have, Sir," said Mary, tranquilly; "half the misery
in the world comes of want of courage to speak and to hear the truth
plainly and in a spirit of love."
"I am gratified that you add the last clause, Miss Scudder; I might not
otherwise recognize the gentle being whom I have always regarded as the
impersonation of all that is softest in woman. I have not the honor of
understanding in the least the reason of this apparently capricious
sentence, but I bow to it in submission."
"Mr. Burr," said Mary, walking up to him, and looking him full in the
eyes, with an energy that for the moment bore down his practised air of
easy superiority, "I wish to speak to you for a moment, as one immortal
soul should to another, without any of those false glosses and deceits
which men call ceremony and good manners. You have done a very great
injury to a lovely lady, whose weakness ought to have been sacred in
your eyes. Precisely because you are what you are,--strong, keen,
penetrating, and able to control and govern all who come near
you,--because you have the power to make yourself agreeable,
interesting, fascinating, and to win esteem and love,--just for that
reason you ought to hold yourself the guardian of every woman, and
treat her as you would wish any man to treat your own daughter. I leave
it to your conscience, whether this is the manner in which you have
treated Madame de Frontignac."
"Upon my word, Miss Scudder," began Burr, "I cannot imagine what
representations our mutual friend may have been making. I assure you,
our intercourse has been as irreproachable as the most scrupulous could
desire."
"Irreproachable!--scrupulous!--Mr. Burr, you know that you have taken
the very life out of her. You men can have everything,--ambition,
wealth, power; a thousand ways are open to you: women have nothing but
their heart; and when that is gone, all is gone. Mr. Burr, you remember
the rich man who had flocks and herds, but nothing would do for him but
he must have the one little ewe-lamb which was all his poor neighbor
had. Thou art the man! You have stolen all the love she had to
give,--all that she had to make a happy home; and you can never give
her anything in return, without endangering her purity and her
soul,--and you knew you could not. I know you men _think_ this is a
light matter; but it is death to us. What will this woman's life be?
one long struggle to forget; and when you have forgotten her, and are
going on gay and happy,--when you have thrown her very name away as a
faded flower, she will be praying, hoping, fearing for you; though all
men deny you, yet will not she. Yes, Mr. Burr, if ever your popularity
and prosperity should leave you and those who now flatter should
despise and curse you, she will always be interceding with her own
heart and with God for you, and making a thousand excuses where she
cannot deny; and if you die, as I fear you have lived, unreconciled to
the God of your fathers, it will be in her heart to offer up her very
soul for you, and to pray that God will impute all your sins to her,
and give you heaven. Oh, I know this, because I have felt it in my own
heart!" and Mary threw herself passionately down into a chair, and
broke into an agony of uncontrolled sobbing.
Burr turned away, and stood looking through the window; tears were
dropping silently, unchecked by the cold, hard pride which was the evil
demon of his life.
It is due to our human nature to believe that no man could ever have
been so passionately and enduringly loved and revered by both men and
women as he was, without a beautiful and lovable nature;--no man ever
demonstrated more forcibly the truth, that it is not a man's natural
constitution, but the _use_ he makes of it, which stamps him as good or
vile.
The diviner part of him was weeping, and the cold, proud demon was
struggling to regain his lost ascendency. Every sob of the fair,
inspired child who had been speaking to him seemed to shake his
heart,--he felt as if he could have fallen on his knees to her; and yet
that stoical habit which was the boast of his life, which was the sole
wisdom he taught to his only and beautiful daughter, was slowly
stealing back round his heart,--and he pressed his lips together,
resolved that no word should escape till he had fully mastered himself.
In a few moments Mary rose with renewed calmness and dignity, and,
approaching him, said,--
"Before I wish you good-morning, Mr. Burr, I must ask pardon for the
liberty I have taken in speaking so very plainly."
"There is no pardon needed, my dear child," said Burr, turning and
speaking very gently, and with a face expressive of a softened concern;
"if you have told me harsh truths, it was with gentle intentions;--I
only hope that I may prove, at least by the future, that I am not
altogether so bad as you imagine. As to the friend whose name has been
passed between us, no man can go beyond me in a sense of her real
nobleness; I am sensible how little I can ever deserve the sentiment
with which she honors me. I am ready, in my future course, to obey any
commands that you and she may think proper to lay upon me."
"The only kindness you can now do her," said Mary, "is to leave her. It
is impossible that you should be merely friends;--it is impossible,
without violating the holiest bonds, that you should be more. The
injury done is irreparable; but you _can_ avoid adding another and
greater one to it."
Burr looked thoughtful.
"May I say one thing more?" said Mary, the color rising in her cheeks.
Burr looked at her with that smile that always drew out the confidence
of every heart.
"Mr. Burr," she said, "you will pardon me, but I cannot help saying
this: You have, I am told, wholly renounced the Christian faith of your
fathers, and build your whole life on quite another foundation. I
cannot help feeling that this is a great and terrible mistake. I cannot
help wishing that you would examine and reconsider."
"My dear child, I am extremely grateful to you for your remark, and
appreciate fully the purity of the source from which it springs.
Unfortunately, our intellectual beliefs are not subject to the control
of our will. I have examined, and the examination has, I regret to say,
not had the effect you would desire."
Mary looked at him wistfully; he smiled and bowed,--all himself again;
and stopping at the door, he said, with a proud humility,--
"Do me the favor to present my devoted regard to your friend; believe
me, that hereafter you shall have less reason to complain of me."
He bowed, and was gone.
An eye-witness of the scene has related, that, when Burr resigned his
seat as President of his country's Senate, an object of peculiar
political bitterness and obloquy, almost all who listened to him had
made up their minds that he was an utterly faithless, unprincipled man;
and yet, such was his singular and peculiar personal power, that his
short farewell-address melted the whole assembly into tears, and his
most embittered adversaries were charmed into a momentary enthusiasm of
admiration.
It must not be wondered at, therefore, if our simple-hearted, loving
Mary strangely found all her indignation against him gone, and herself
little disposed to criticize the impassioned tenderness with which
Madame de Frontignac still regarded him.
We have one thing more that we cannot avoid saying, of two men so
singularly in juxtaposition as Aaron Burr and Dr. Hopkins. Both had a
perfect _logic_ of life, and guided themselves with an inflexible
rigidity by it. Burr assumed individual pleasure to be the great object
of human existence; Dr. Hopkins placed it in a life altogether beyond
self. Burr rejected all sacrifice; Hopkins considered sacrifice as the
foundation of all existence. To live as far as possible without a
disagreeable sensation was an object which Burr proposed to himself as
the _summum bonum_, for which he drilled down and subjugated a nature
of singular richness. Hopkins, on the other hand, smoothed the
asperities of a temperament naturally violent and fiery by a rigid
discipline which guided it entirely above the plane of self-indulgence;
and, in the pursuance of their great end, the one watched against his
better nature as the other did against his worse. It is but fair, then,
to take their lives as the practical workings of their respective
ethical creeds.