University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.

Beauchampe sat, sad and silent, in a corner of one low
chamber in his mother's cottage. The family were all
present. There was an expression in every face that
sympathized with his own. All were sad and gloomy.
A painful reserve, so strange hitherto in that little family
of love, oppressed the spirits of all. They were aware
of the little success which followed his course of wooing.
They, perhaps, did not regret the loss so much as the
disappointment of one whom they so much loved. With
the exception of little Mary Beauchampe, Anna Cooke
had not taken captive the fancy of either of the ladies.
Jane positively feared and disliked her, with the natural
hostility which a person of light mind always entertains
for one of intensity and character. Mrs. Beauchampe's
objections were of another kind; but she had seen too
little of their object, and was too willing to promote her
son's wishes, to attach much importance to them. She
had derived them rather from the casual criticisms of
persons en passant, than from any thing which she herself
had seen. It would have been no hard matter for Beauchampe,
had he been successful in his suit, to reconcile
all the parties to his marriage. That he was unhappy in
his refusal, made them so; and the feeling was the more
painful as the event had made Beauchampe determine to
depart on the ensuing day. He felt the necessity of doing
so. Active life, the strifes of the politician, the triumphs

of the forum, were at hand, offering him alternatives, if
not atonements. In the whirl of successive performance,
and in scenes that demand promptitude of action, he felt
that he could alone dissipate the spell, or at least endure
its weight with dignity, which the charms of Anna Cooke
had imposed upon him. It may be supposed that the
distress of the little family made the scene dull. Much
was said, and much was in the language of complaint.
Poor Mary wept with a keen sense of disappointment,
more like that of her brother than any one. Jane muttered
her upbraidings of the “scornful, high-headed,
frowsy Indian Queen, who was too conceited to see that
Orville was ten thousand times too good a match for
such as she;”—while Mrs. Beauchampe, with the usual
afflicting philosophy of age which has survived passion,
discoursed largely on the very encouraging text which
counsels us to draw our consolation from our very hopelessness.
Pretty counsel, with a vengeance! Beauchampe
thought it so.

The torturous process to which these occasional remarks
and venerable counsels subjected him, drove him
forth at an early hour after dinner. Once more he traversed
the woods in moody meditation. He inly resolved
that he should see them the last time. With this resolve
he determined to pay a personal visit to the spot where,
at his coming, he had obtained the first sight of the woman,
who, from that moment, had filled his sight entirely.
He followed the sinuous course of the woods, slowly,
moodily, chewing the cud of sad and bitter thought alone.
His passion was in its subdued phase. There is a moment
of recoil in the excited heart, when the feelings long
for repose. There is a sense of exhaustion—a dread of
further strife and excitement, the very thought of which
makes us shudder; and the one conviction over all which
fills the mind, is that we could willingly lay ourselves
down in the shady places, none near, and sleep—sleep
the long sleep, in which there are no such tortures and
tumults. Such were the feelings of Beauchampe, and
thus languid, from this recoil, in the overcharged sensibilities,
he went slowly forward, with a movement that denoted
quite as much feebleness as grief. He was already
buried in the thick woods—he fancied himself alone—
when, suddenly, he heard a pistol shot. He started, with

a sudden recollection of a like sound, which had attracted
his ears on his first approach to the same neighbourhood.
The coincidence was at least a strange one. He now
determined to find out the practitioner. He paused for a
few moments, and looked about him. He was not exactly
sure of the quarter whence the sound proceeded;
but he moved forward cautiously and at a venture. Suddenly,
he paused! He discovered, at a distance, the
person of the very woman whom he had been so long
seeking; she, whose obduracy denied him even the boon
of a last look and farewell accent. His first impulse was
to rush forward. A second and different impulse was
forced on him by what he saw. To his astonished eyes
she bore in her hands a pistol. He watched her while
she loaded if. He saw her level it at a tree, and pull the
trigger with unhesitating hand. The bark flew on every
side, betraying, by the truth of her aim, at a considerable
distance, the constancy of her practice.

Beauchampe could contain himself no longer. He now
rushed forward. A faint cry escaped her as she beheld
him. She dropped the pistol by her side, clasped and
covered her face with her hands and staggered back a
few paces. But before Beauchampe reached her, she had
recovered, and picking up the pistol, she came forward.
Her eye sparkled with an expression which showed
something like resentment. Her voice was abrupt and
sharp.

“You rush on your fate!” she exclaimed. “Why,
Beauchampe, do you thus pursue me, and risk your own
destruction?”

“At your hand, it is welcome!” he exclaimed, mistaking
her meaning.

“I mean not that!” she replied.

“But you inflict it!”

“No! no!” impatiently. “I do not. I have prayed
against it—would spare you that and every risk; but you
will it otherwise! You rush on your fate, and if you
dare, Beauchampe—mark me! If you dare—it is at your
option. Heretofore, I have striven for you and against
myself; but you have forced yourself upon my privacy—
you have sought to fathom my secrets, and it is now
necessary that you should bear the penalty of forbidden
knowledge!”

“Have I not supplicated you for these penalties? Ah!
what pain inflicted by your hand would not be pleasure!”

“You love me?—I believe you, Beauchampe, but the
secret of my soul, is the deathblow to your love. Ah!
spare me,—even now I would have you spare me. Go—
leave me for ever; put no faith into a mystery, which
must shock you to hear, shame me to speak,—and leads,
if it drives you not hence with the speed of terror—leads
you to sorrow and certain strife, and possibly the cruelest
doom.”

“Speak! I brave all! I am your bondsman—your
slave—declare the service—let me break down these
barriers which divide us.”

He caught her hand passionately in his as he spoke,
and pressed it to his lips. She did not withdraw it.

“Beauchampe!” she said, with solemnity, fixing her
dark, deep-glancing eyes upon his face—“Beauchampe!
I will not swear you! You shall hear the truth, and
still be free. Know then that you clasp a dishonoured
hand!”

The terrible words were spoken. The effect was instantaneous.
He dropped the hand which he had grasped.
A burning flush crimsoned the face of the woman; an
instant after it was succeeded by the paleness of death.

“I knew it!” she exclaimed, bitterly, and with cruel
keenness of utterance. “I knew that it would come to
this. God! this is thy creature, man! In his selfishness
he destroys,—in his selfishness he shames us. He pries
into our hearts to declare their weakness—to point out
their spots,—to say, see how I can triumph over, and
trample upon!”

“Anna!” exclaimed Beauchampe in husky accents,
“speak not thus—think not thus—give me but a moment's
time for thought. I was not prepared for this.”

The young man looked like one in a dream. A ghastly
expression marked his eyes. His lips were parted,—the
muscles of his mouth were convulsed.

“Nay, sir, it needs not. Your curiosity is satisfied.
There is nothing more.”

“Yes!” he exclaimed, “there is!”

“There is!” she answered promptly. “To clasp the
dishonoured hand and take from its grasp the instrument

of its vengeance. In few words, Beauchampe, this hand
can only be yours, under one condition. Dishonoured
though it is, I tell you, sir, never yet did woman subject
man to more terrible conditions as the price of her love.”

“I take the hand!” he said—“ere the condition is
spoken.”

“No, Beauchampe, that cannot be. You shall never
say that I deceived you. As I shall insist on the fulfilment
of the condition, so it is but fair that you be not hooded
when you pledge yourself to its performance.”

She withdrew the hand, which he offered to take, from
his contact.

“This dishonoured hand is pledged to vengeance on
him who blackened it with shame. Hence its practice
with the weapon of death. Hence the almost daily practice
of the last five years. Here, in these woods, I pursue
a sort of devotion, where Hate is the deity—Vengeance
the officiating priest. I have consecrated my life to this
one object. He who takes my hand must adopt my
pledge—must devote himself also to the work of vengeance!”

He seized it, and took the weapon from its grasp,—
with the pistol lifted to heaven, he exclaimed—

“The oath! I am ready!”

Tears gushed from her eyes. She spoke in subdued
accents.

“Five long years have I toiled with this delusive dream
of vengeance! But what can woman do? Where can
she seek,—how find her victim? Think you, Orville
Beauchampe, that if I could have met my enemy, I would
have challenged the aid of man to do this work of retribution?
In my own soul was the strength—there is no
feminine feebleness of nerve in this eye and arm! I should
have shot and struck—ah! Christ!”

She sunk to the ground with a spasm, which was the
natural effect of such passions working on such a temperament.
The desperate youth knelt down beside her
in an agony of equal passion and apprehension. He
drew her to his breast, he glued his lips to her cheeks,
—scarcely conscious that she was lifeless all the while.
Her swoon however was momentary only. She recovered
even while he was playing the madman in his fondness.

Refusing his assistance and pushing him from her, she
staggered up, exclaiming, in piercing, trembling accents:

“What have I done—what have I said?”

“Given me happiness, dearest,” he replied, attempting
to take her hand.

“No, Beauchampe,” she answered, “let me understand
myself before I seek to understand you. I am scarcely
able though!”—and as she spoke, she pressed her hands
upon her eyes with an expression of pain.

“You are still sick!” he observed apprehensively.

“I am in pain, Beauchampe, not sick. I am used to
these spasms. Do not let them alarm you. They are
not deadly, and if they were, I should not consider them
dangerous. I know not well what I have said to you,
Beauchampe, before this pain; but as I never have these
attacks unless the agony of mind becomes too intense for
one to bear and live, I conclude that I have told you all.
You know my secret—my shame!”

“I know that you are the noblest hearted woman that
ever lived!” he exclaimed rapturously.

“Do not mock me, Beauchampe,” she answered mildly.
“Speak not in language of such extravagance. You
cannot speak too soberly for my ears, you cannot think
too soberly for your own good. You have heard my
secret. You have forced me to declare my shame! You
had no right to this secret. Was it not enough that I
told you that the barrier was impassable between us?
Did I not swear it solemnly?”

“It is not impassable.”

“It is!”

“No!” he exclaimed with looks and accents equally
decisive—“this is no barrier. You have been wronged
—your confidence has been abused. That I understand.
I care not to know more. I believe you to be all that is
pure and honourable now; and, in this faith, I am all
yours. In this faith I pray you to be mine.”

“Beauchampe! this is not all! Mere love, though it
be such as yours—simple faith, though so generous and
confiding—these do not suffice. The food is sweet—but
it has little nutriment. My soul is already familiar with
higher stimulants. It needs them—it cannot do without
them. I do not ask the man who makes me his wife, to
believe only that I can be true to him—and will!—I demand
something more than a confidence like this, Beauchampe;

my husband must avenge my dishonour. This
is the condition of my hand. Dishonoured as it is, it has
a heavy price. He must devote his life to the work of
retribution. To this he must swear himself.”

“I am already sworn to it. The moment which revealed
your wrong, bound me only as your avenger.
You shall only point to your enemy—”

“Ah! Beauchampe, could I have done so, I should have
needed not to stain your hands with his blood. But he
eludes my sight. I hear no where of him. He is as if
he had never been.”

“His name!” said Beauchampe.

“You shall know all,” she replied, motioning him to a
seat beside her on the trunk of a fallen tree. “You shall
know all, Beauchampe; from first to last. It is due to you
that nothing should be withheld.”

“Spare yourself, dearest;” said Beauchampe tenderly.
“Tell me nothing, I implore you, but the name of your
enemy, and what may be necessary for the work of
vengeance.”

“I will tell you all. It is my pride that I should not
spare myself. It is due to my present self to show that I
am not blind to the weaknesses of my former nature. It
is due to what I am to convince you that I can never
again be what I have been. Oh! Beauchampe, I have
meditated often and sadly since I have known you, the
necessity of making this revelation. At our first meeting
my heart said to myself,—`the love by which I was betrayed,
has at length sent me an avenger!' I saw it in
your instant glances—in the generous earnestness of
your looks and tones—in the fervent expression of your
eye—in the frank impetuous nature of your soul! But I
said to myself, `I will deny myself this avenger. I will
reject the instinct that tells me he is sent as one. Why
should I involve this noble young man in a fate so
desperate and sad as mine? It shall not be!' With this
resolve I strove against you. Nay, Beauchampe, I confess
to you farther, that, even when my will strove most
against you, my heart was most earnest in your favour.
With my increasing regard for you, grew my reluctance
to involve you in my doom. The conflict was close and
trying; and then, when the strife in my mind was greatest,
I meditated what I should reveal to you. I went over

that long and cruel memory in the deep silence of these
woods—in the deeper silence of midnight in my chamber;
I could not escape from the stern necessity which compelled
the remembrance of those moments of bitterness
and shame. By frequent recall they have been revived
in all their burning freshness; every art of the traitor—
the blind steps by which I fell—the miserable mockeries
which deluded me; and the shame which, like a lurid
cloud, dusk and fiery, has ever since hung before my
eyes. All this I can relate, his crime and my folly, nor
omit one fraction which is necessary to the truth.”

“But why tell all this, dearest. Let it be forgotten,—
let all be forgotten except the name of the villain whom it
is allotted me to destroy.”

“Forgotten! It cannot be forgotten. Nay, more, it is
a duty to remember it, that the vengeance may not sleep.
Beauchampe, I have lived for years on this one thought.
By recalling these bitter memories that thought was fed.
Do not persuade me to forget them. You know not how
much of life depends on the sustenance which thought
derives from this copious but polluted fountain. Deprive
me of this sustenance and I perish. Deny me to declare
all, and I can speak nothing. I cannot curb my nature
when I will; and where would you gather the fuel of
anger should I barely say to you that one Alfred Stevens,
—an artful stranger from a distant city, found me a simple
vain child among the hills, and practising on my vanity,
overcame my strength. This would serve but little in
rousing that fierce fire of hate within you which sometimes,
even in my own bosom, burns quite too faintly to
be effectual. No, no! you shall witness the progress of
the criminal. You shall see how he spun his web around
my path—my soul!—by what mousing cunning he contrived
to pull down a wing whose feeblest fancy, in those
unconscious days, was above the mountains and striving
ever for the clouds. You shall see the daily record of its
spasms, which my misery has made. To feel my struggle,
you must share in it from the first.”

He took her hand in his, and prepared to listen.

“You will feel my hand tremble,” said she; “the flush
may suffuse my cheek; for oh! do not suppose I tell this
tale willingly. No! I cannot help but tell it. An instinct,
which I dare not disobey, commands me; and truly, when

I think of the instinct that told me you would come, made
you known to me as the avenger when you did come,
and has forced you thus upon my secret, as it were, I
almost feel a holy sentiment in the compulsion which
makes me tell you all. It feels like a solemn duty. It
must be so! A power beyond my own has willed it—
the same power is beside us, Beauchampe—I feel it—even
now. He will know that I speak nothing but the truth!
He will endow me with strength to tell it all.”