University of Virginia Library

33. CHAPTER XXXIII.

A murder in a novel is a matter usually of a thousand
very thrilling minutiæ. In the hands of that excellent
historico-romancer of modern days, Mr. G. P. R. James,
you would see what he would make of it. You would be
confounded at the dilating substance, the accumulating details—the
fact upon fact—whether of moment or not, is
not necessary to be asked here—which grows out of it on
every hand. You should see the good old butler of the
household, Saunders Maybin or Richard Swopp, by name,
going forth at morning, and suddenly encountering a blood-spot
upon the grass. At which sight the said Saunders
starts, and shakes his head significantly; and says, with
native sagacity, “this is miching malico; it means mischief.”
And so saying, he goes on nosing—all sense from
that moment—till he finds the fag end of a carcass jutting
out from a dung-heap. Nay, it may not be so easily found,
and it may not be in a dung-heap. It may be in the bushes
only, but they may be a good long summer day in finding
it, and by that time the nose of the seeker becomes of rare
service in the search. But, whatever may be the particulars,
you have 'em all; even to the very shape and size of
the wound—made by bowie-knife or bludgeon-stroke—
under which the poor man perished. Then follows
“crowner's quest,” lawyer's arguments, difference of opinion,
and so forth; and there is always an innocent man

nigh, to look like the guilty one, and, by some cursed stupidity,
to get himself laid by the heels in prison to answer
the offence. This is a notable way to relate such an affair, if
it wasn't that some censorious people think it rather tedious.

Having seen how Sharpe was murdered, who was the murderer,
and how the blow was struck—we shall not fatigue the
reader in showing how many versions of the affair got abroad
among those who were, of course, more and more positive
in their conjectures in proportion to the small knowledge
which they possessed. We make short a story, which,
long enough already, we apprehend, might, by an ingenious
romancer, be made a great deal longer. Suspicion fell instantly
on Beauchampe. On whom else should it fall? He
had announced his purpose to take the life of the criminal;
and wherever Sharpe's offence had got abroad, people expected
that he would commit the deed. In our country a
great many crimes are committed to gratify public expectation.
Most of our duels are fought to satisfy the demands
of public opinion, by which is understood the opinions of
that little set, batch, or clique, of which some long-nosed
Solomon—some addle-pated leader of a score whose brains
are thrice addled, is the sapient lawgiver and head. Most
of the riots and mobs are instigated by half-witted journalists,
who first goad the offender to his crime, and, the next
day, rate him soundly for its commission. He who, in a
fit of safe valour, the day before, taunted his neighbour
with cowardice for submitting to an indignity; lifts up his
holy hands with horror when he hears that the nose-pulling
is avenged; and, as a conscientious juryman, hurries the
wretch to the halter who has only followed his own suggestions
in braining the assailant with his bludgeon. All
this is certainly very amusing, and, with proper details,
makes a murder-paragraph in the newspaper which delights
the old ladies to as great an extent as a marriage does the
young ones. It produces that pleasurable excitement which
is the mental brandy and tobacco to all persons of the Anglo-Saxon
breed, for which the appetite is tolerably equal in
both Great Britain and America.

In Beauchampe's case, the hue and cry knew, by a sort
of instinct, in which way to turn its sagacious nostrils.
Beauchampe returned to his dwelling, but not with the steps
of fear; not even with those of flight. His journey homewards
was marked with the deliberation of one who feels

that he has performed a duty, the neglect of which had
long been burdensome and painful to his conscience. It is
of course to be understood that he was labouring under a
degree of excitement which makes it something like an
absurdity to talk of conscience at all. The fanaticism
which now governed his feelings, and had sprung from
them, possessed his mind also. With the air of one who
has gone through a solemn and severe ordeal, with the
feeling of a martyr, he presented himself before his wife.
The deliberation of monomania is one of its most remarkable
features. It is singularly exemplified by one portion
of his proceedings. On leaving her to seek the interview
with Sharpe, he had informed her, not only on what day,
but at what hour, to look for his return; and he reached
his dwelling within fifteen minutes of the appointed moment.
Anxiously expecting his arrival, she had walked
down the grove to meet him. On seeing her he raised his
handkerchief, red with the bloody proofs of his crime, and
waved it in the manner of a flag. She ran to meet him,
and as he leapt from his horse, she fell prostrate on her
face before him. Her whole frame was convulsed, and
she burst into a flood of tears.

“Why weep; why tremble?” he exclaimed. “Do
you weep that the deed is done—the shame washed out
in the blood of the criminal—that you are avenged at last?”

His accents were stern and reproachful. She lifted her
hands and eyes to heaven as she replied—

“No! not for this I weep and tremble; or, if for this, it
is in gratitude to heaven that has smiled upon the deed.”

But though she spoke this fearful language, she spoke
not the true feeling of her soul. We have already striven to
show that she no longer possessed those feelings which
would have desired the performance of the deed. She no
longer implored revenge. She strove to reject the memory
of the murdered man, as well as of the wanton crime by
which he had provoked his fate; and the emotion which
she expressed, when she beheld the bloody signal waving
from her husband's hands, had its birth in the revolting of
that feminine nature, which, even in her, after the long contemplation
which had made her imagination familiar with
the crime, was still in the ascendant. But this she concealed.
This she denied, as we have seen. Her motive

was a noble one. It is soon expressed. “He has done
the deed for me—in my behalf! Shall I now refuse approbation—shall
I withhold my sympathy? No! let his guilt
be what it may, he is mine, and I am his, for ever!” And
with this resolve, she smiled upon the murderer, kissed his
bloody hands, and lifted her own to heaven in seeming
gratitude for its sanction of the crime.

But a new feeling was added to those which, however
conflicting, her words and looks had just expressed. She
rose from the ground in apprehension.

“But are you safe, my husband?” she demanded.

“What matters it?” he replied. “Has he not fallen
beneath my arm?”

“Yes,—but if you are not safe!”

“I know not what degree of safety I need,” was his
reply. “I have thought but little of that. If you mean,
however, to ask whether I am suspected or not, I tell you
I believe I am. Nay, more—I think the pursuers are after
me. They will probably be here this very night. But
what of this, dear wife? I have no fears. My heart is
light. I am really happy—never more so—since the deed
is done. I could laugh, dance, sing,—practise any mirth
or madness—just as one who has been relieved of his
pain, throws by his crutch and feels his limbs and strength
free at last, after a bondage to disease for years.”

And he caught her in his arms as he spoke, and his
eye danced with a strange fire, which made the woman
shudder to behold it. A cold tremor passed through her
veins.

“Are you not happy too—do you not share with me
this joy?” he demanded.

“Oh, yes, to be sure I do!”—she replied with a husky
apprehension in her voice which, however, he did not
seem to see.

“I knew it,—I knew you would be! Such a relief,
ending in a triumph, should make us both so happy. I
never was more joyful, my dear wife. Never! never!”
and he laughed,—laughed until the woods resounded,—
and did not heed the paleness of her cheek; did not feel
the faltering of her limbs as he grasped her to his breast,
did not note the wildness in her eye, as she looked
stealthily backward on the path over which he came.

She, at least, was now fully in her senses, whatever
she may have been before. She stopped him in his anties.
She drew him suddenly aside, into the cover of the grove
—for, by this time, they had come in sight of the dwelling
—and throwing herself on her knees, clasped his in her
arms, while she implored his instant flight. But he flatly
refused, and she strove in vain, however earnestly, to
change his determination. All that she could obtain from
him was a promise to keep silent, and not, by any act of
his own, to facilitate the progress of those who might seek
to discover the proofs of his criminality. Crime, indeed,
he had long ceased to consider his performance. The
change, in this respect, which had taken place in her
feelings and opinions had produced none in his. His
mind had been wrought up to something like a religious
frenzy. He regarded the action not only as something
due to justice—an action appointed for himself particularly,—but
as absolutely and intrinsically glorious. Perhaps,
indeed, such an act as his, should always be estimated
with reference to the sort of world in which the
performer lives. What were those brave deeds of the
middle ages, the avenging of the oppressed, the widow,
and the orphan, by which stalwart chiefs made themselves
famous? Crimes, too, and sometimes of the blackest
sort, but that they had their value as benefits at a period
when society afforded no redress for injury, and consequently
no protection for innocence. And what protection
did society afford to Margaret Cooper, and what
redress for injury? Talk of your action for damages—
your five thousand dollars,—and of what avail to such a
woman; robbed of innocence; mocked, persecuted,—
followed to the last refuge of her life, the home of her
mother and her husband; and afterwards, thrice blackened
in fame by the wanton criminal by slanders of the
most shocking invention. Society never yet could succeed
in protecting and redressing all its constituents, or
any one of them, in all his or her relations. There are a
thousand respects where the neighbours must step in—
where to await for law, or to hope for law, is to leave the
feeble and the innocent to perish. You hear the cry of
murder? Do you stop, and resume your seat with the
comforting reflection that if John murders Peter, John,

after certain processes of evidence, will be sent to the
state prison or the gallows, and make a goodly show on
some gloomy Friday, for the curious of both sexes. Law
is a very good thing in its way, but it is not every thing;
and there are some honest impulses, in every manly
bosom, which are the best of all moral laws, as they are
the most certainly human of all laws. Give us, say I,
Kentucky practice, like that of Beauchampe, as a social
law, rather than that which prevails in some of our pattern
cities, where women are, in three-fourths the number of
instances, the victims,—violated, mangled, murdered,—
where men are the criminals, and where—(Heaven kindly
having withdrawn the sense of shame)—there is no one
guilty—at least none brave enough, or manly enough to
bring the guilty to punishment. What is said is not meant
to defend or encourage the shedding of blood. We may
not defend the taking of life, even by the laws. We regard
life as an express trust from Heaven, of which, as
we should not divest ourselves, no act but that of Heaven
should divest us; but there is a crime beyond it, in the
shedding of that vital soul-blood, its heart of hearts, life
of all life, the fair fame, the untainted reputation; and the
one offence which provokes the other, should be placed
in the opposing balance, as an offset, in some degree, to
the crime by which it is avenged.