University of Virginia Library

35. CHAPTER XXXV.

The arguments of Covington, to persuade Beauchampe
to employ the services of Calvert, were unavailing. He,
at length, gave it up in despair. The very suggestion
which Sharpe had made, that Calvert had some knowledge
already of the wife's character, and that the duel between
himself and Calvert had originated in the knowledge of his
wrong to her—however curious it made Beauchampe to
learn what relation the latter could have had to his wife—
was also a cause, why, in the general soreness of his feelings
on this subject, he should studiously avoid his professional

assistance. The wife, when Covington took his
departure, renewed the attempt. The arguments of the
latter had been more imposing to her mind than they were
to that of the husband; but, repeated by her, they did not
prove a jot more successful than when urged by Covington.
To these she added suggestions of her own, a sample
of which we have seen in a previous chapter; but the
prisoner remained stubborn. The wife at length ceased to
persuade, having, with the quick perception and nice judgment
which distinguished her character, observed the true
point of difficulty—one not to be easily overcome—and
which was to be assailed in a manner much more indirect.
She resolved to engage the services of Calvert herself.
Her own curiosity had been raised in some degree by what
she had heard in respect to this person, and though she did
not believe the story which Covington got from Sharpe,
touching the causes of the duel between himself and rival,
yet the fact that they had fought, and that Calvert had been
wounded in the conflict with her enemy, of itself commended
the former to her regard. As the period for her
husband's trial drew nigh, her anxieties naturally increased,
so as to strengthen her in the resolution which she had
already formed to secure those legal services which Beauchampe
had rejected. Accordingly, concealing her purpose,
she absented herself from the prison, and, having secured
the necessary information, set forth on her mission.

Of the prosperous fortunes of William Calvert some
glimpses have already been given to the reader in the latter
half of this narrative. These glimpses, we trust, have
sufficed to satisfy any curiosity, which the story of his
youth and youthful disappointments might have occasioned
in any mind. We understand, of course, that, thrown
upon his own resources, driven from the maternal petticoats,
which enfeeble and destroy so many thousand sons,
the necessities to which he was subjected, in the rough
attrition of the world had brought into active exercise all
the materials of his physical and intellectual manhood. He
had plodded over the dusky volumes of the law with unrelaxing
diligence. He had gone through his probationary
period without falling into any of those emasculating practices
which too often enslave the moral sense and dissipate
the intellectual courage of young men. He had graduated
with credit; had begun practice with an unusual quantity

of business patronage, and had made his debut with a degree
of eclat, which, while it put to rest all the apprehensions
of the good old man who had adopted him, had effectually
commended him to the public, as one of the strong
men to whom they could turn with confidence, to represent
the characteristics and maintain the rights of the people.
Of his success, some idea may be formed, if we
remember the position in which he stood in the conflict
with Col. Sharpe. If the latter was the Coryphæus of
one party, William Calvert was regarded by all eyes as the
most prominent champion of the other; and though the
other party might be in the minority, it was not the less
obvious to most, that, if the success of the party could be
made entirely to depend upon the relative strength of the
representative combatants, the result would have been very
far otherwise. The best friends of Sharpe, as we have
already seen, endeavoured to impress upon him the belief,
which they really felt, that, with such an opponent as
William Calvert in the field against him, it would require
the exercise of his very best talents in order to maintain
his ground. We need not dwell longer on this part of our
subject.

But with the prominence of position, taken of necessity
by William Calvert, in the political world, was an accumulation
of legal business which necessarily promised fortune.
In the brief space of three years which followed his
admission to the bar, his clients became so numerous as to
render it necessary that he should concentrate his attentions
upon a more limited circuit of practice. Other effects followed,
and the good old man whose name he had taken,
leaving Charlemont, like his protégé, for ever, had come to
live with him in the flourishing town where he had taken
up his abode. Here their united funds enabled them to
buy a fine house and furnish it with a taste, which, day by
day, added some object of ornament or use. The comforts
being duly considered, the graces were necessarily secured,
as the accumulation of means furnished the necessary resources.
Books grew upon the already groaning shelves;
sweet landscapes and noble portraits glowed from the
walls. With no wife to provide in those thousand trifles
for which no funds would be altogether adequate, in the
shocking and offensive style of expenditure which has recently
covered our land with sores and spangles, shame and

frippery,—the income of William Calvert was devoted to
the cultivation of such tastes as are legitimate in the eyes of
a truly philosophical judgment. He sought for no attractions
but such as gave employment either to the sense of
beauty or the growth of the understanding. The contemplation
of the forms of beauty produces in the mind a love
of harmony and proportion, which, in turn, establish a
nice moral sense, that revolts with loathing at what is
mean, coarse or brutal; and, with this impression, our
young lawyer, whenever his purse permitted such outlay,
despatched his commission to the Atlantic city for the speaking
canvass or the eloquent and breathing bust. In tastes
like these his paternal friend fully sympathized with him.
In fact they had been first awakened in him by his venerable
tutor, during the course of his boyish education. Thus
co-operating, and with habits, which, in other respects,
were singularly inexpensive, it is not surprising that the
dwelling of William Calvert should already be known,
among the people of—,as the very seat of elegance
and art. His pictures formed a theme among his acquaintance,
and even those who were not, which every new
addition contributed to revive and enlarge; and, in the innocent
pursuit of such objects of grace and beauty—with
books, the philosophies and songs, of the old divines of
Nature—her proper priesthood—the days of the youth began
to go by sweetly and with such soothing, that the memory
of Margaret Cooper, though it never ceased to sadden,
yet failed entirely to sting. He had neither ceased to love
nor to regret; but his disappointment did not now occasion
a pang, nor was his regret such as to leave him insensible
to the genial influences which life every where spreads
generously around for the working spirit, and the just and
gentle heart.

We have formed a sufficient idea of the dwelling-house
of William Calvert. The reader will please go with us
while we enter it. We ascend the neat and always well
swept porch, and pass at once into the parlour. Old Mr.
Calvert is there alone. His hair has become thinner and
much more silvery since we last saw it. But, in other respects,
he seems to have undergone very trifling change.
His skin is quite as smooth as ever; but little wrinkled;
his eye is bright—nay, brighter than it ever seemed to us
in Charlemont; his hopes and heart are lifted—he has

realized the pride of a father without suffering all the trials
and apprehensions of one; and with heart and body
equally in health, he is still young—for a gentle spirit in
age, is not a bad beginning of the soul's immortality. He
owes this state of mind and body, to a contemplative habit
acquired in youth; to the presence of a nice governing
sense of justice, and to that abstinence which would have
justified in him the brag of good old Adam, in “As You
Like It.”—

The old man sits in a snug well-cushioned armchair
with his eyes cast upward. A smile mantles upon his face.
His glance rests upon a portrait of his favourite; and as
he gazes upon the well-limned and justly drawn features—
and as the mild and speaking eye seems to answer to his
own—the unconscious words tremble out from his lips!
Good old man!—he recalls the early lessons that he gave
the boy; how kindly they were taken—with what readiness
they were acquired; and the sweet humility which
followed most of his rebukes. Then, he renews the story
of the first lessons in law—his own struggles and defeats
he recalls—only, as it would seem, to justify the exultation
which announces, under his guidance, the better fortunes
of the youth. And thus soliloquizing, he rises, and mounting
a chair, dusts the picture with his handkerchief, with
a solicitude that has seen a speck upon the cheek, and fancies
a fly upon the hair! This was a daily task, performed
unconsciously, and under the same course of
spiriting! While thus engaged a servant enters and speaks.
He answers, but without any thought of what he is saying.
The servant disappears, and the door is re-opened.
The old man is still busy at the heart-prompted duty. His
lips are equally busy in dilating upon the merits of his
favourite. He still wipes and rewipes the picture; draws
back to examine the outline; comments upon eye and
forehead; and dreams not, the while, what eye surveys
his toils—what ear is listening to the garrulous eulogium

that is dropping from his lips. The intruder is Margaret
Cooper—Mrs. Beauchampe we should have said—but for
a silent preference for the former name, for which we can
give no reason and offer no excuse.

She stands in silence—she watches the labour of the
good old man with mixed but not unpleasant feelings. She
recognises him at a glance. She does not mistake the features
of that portrait which exacts his care. She gazes on
that, too, with a very melancholy interest. The features,
though the same, are yet those of another. The expression
of the face is spiritualized and lifted. It is the face of
William Hinkley—true—but not the face of the rustic,
whom once she knew beneath that name. The salient
points of feature are subdued. The roughness has disappeared,
and is succeeded by the entreating sweetness and
placid self-subjection which shows that the moulding hand
of the higher civilization has been there. It is William
Hinkley, the gentleman—the man of thought, and of the
world—whose features meet her eye; and a sigh involuntarily
escapes her lips. That sigh is the involuntary utterance
of the self-reproach which she feels. Her conscience
smites her for the past. She thinks of the young
man, worthy and gentle, whom she slighted for another—
and that other!—She remembers the youth's goodness—
his fond devotedness; and, forgetting in what respect he
erred, she wonders at herself, with feelings of increasing
humiliation, that she should have repulsed and treated him
so harshly. But, in those days she was mad! It is her
only consolation that she now thinks so.

Her sigh arrests the attention of the old man and
awakens him from his grateful abstraction. He turns,
beholds the lady, and muttering something apologetically,
about the rapid accumulation of dust and cobwebs, he descends
from the chair. A step nearer to the visiter informs
him who she is. He starts, and trembles.

“You, Miss Cooper—can it be?”

“It is, Mr. Calvert—but there is some mistake. I
sought for Col. Calvert, the lawyer.”

“My son—no mistake at all—be seated, Miss Cooper.”

“Your son, Mr. Calvert?”

“Yes, my son—your old acquaintance—but here he
is!”—

William Calvert, the younger, had now joined the party.

His entrance had been unobserved. He stood in the doorway—his
eye fixed upon the object of his former passion.
His cheeks were very pale; his features were full of
emotion. Margaret turned as the old man spoke, and their
eyes encountered. What were their several emotions
then? Who shall tell them? What scenes, what a story,
did that one single glance of recognition recall. How much
strife and bitterness—what overwhelming passions—and
what defeat, what shame, and sorrow to the one; and to
the other—what triumph over pain—what victory even
from defeat. To her, from pride, exultation and estimated
triumph, had arisen shame, overthrow, and certain fear.
Despair was not yet—not altogether. To the other, “out
of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth
sweetness.” From his defeat he was strengthened; and
from the very overthrow of his youthful passion, had
grown the vigour of his manhood.

The thought of William Calvert, as he surveyed the
woman of his first love, was a natural one:—“Had she
been mine!”—but with this thought he did not now repine
at the baffled dream and desire of his boyhood. If the
memory and reflection were not sweet, at least the bitter
was one to which his lips had become reconciled by time.
Recalling the mournful memory of the past, his sorrow
was now rather for her than for himself. His regret was
not that he had been denied, but that she had fallen. He
recollected the day of her pride. He recalled the flashes
of that eagle spirit, which, while it won his admiration,
had spurned his prayer. The bitter shame which followed,
when, by crawling, the serpent had reached the summits
where her proud soul kept in an aerie of its own, oppressed
his soul as he gazed upon the still beautiful, still majestic
being before him. She too had kept something of that
noble spirit which was hers before she fell. We have
seen how she had sustained herself;—

and still, as the youth gazed, he wondered—and as he remembered,
he could not easily restrain the impulse once
more to sink in homage. But all her story was now known
to him. Of Sharpe's murder he was aware; and that the
wife of the murderer was the same Margaret Cooper, in
whose behalf he had himself met the betrayer in single
combat, he was apprised by private letter from Covington.

While he thus stood beholding, with such evident tokens
of emotion, the hapless woman who had been the
cause, and the victim, equally, of so much disaster—what
were her reflections at the sight of him? At first, when
their eyes encountered, and she could no longer doubt the
identity of the Col. Calvert whom she sought, with the
William Hinkley whom she had so well and so little
known, her colour became heightened—her form insensibly
rose, and her eye resumed something of that ancient
eagle-look of defiance, which was the more natural expression
of her proud and daring character. She felt, in an
instant, all the difference between the present and the past;
between his fortune and her own—and, naturally assuming
that the same comparison was going on in his mind, necessarily
leading to his exaltation at her expense, she was
prepared, with equal look and word, to resent the insolence
of his triumph. But when, at a second glance, she
beheld the unequivocal grief which his looks expressed—
when she saw still, that the fire in his heart had not been
quenched—that the feeling there had nothing in it of triumph—but
all of a deep abiding sorrow and a genuine
commiseration, her manner changed—the bright, keen expression
parted from her glance, and her cheek grew instantly
pale. But her firmness and presence of mind
returned sooner than his. She advanced and extended to
him her hand. The manner was so frank, so confiding,
that it seemed to atone for all the past. It evidently was
intended to convey the only atonement which, in her situation,
she could possibly offer. It said much more than
words, and his heart was satisfied. He took her hand and
conducted her to a seat. He was silent. It was with
great difficulty that he withheld the expression of his
tears.

“You know me, Col. Calvert,” she at length said. “I
see you know me.”

“Could you think otherwise, Margaret?” he succeeded
in replying. “Could I forget?”

“No! not forget, perhaps,” she returned; “but you
seem not to understand me. My person, of course, you
know—who I was—but not who I am?”

“Yes—even that too I know.”

“Then something is spared me!” she replied with the
sigh of one who is relieved from a painful duty.

“I know the whole sad story, Margaret—Mrs. Beauchampe.”

The old man interrupted him with an exclamation of
surprise.

“Mrs. Beauchampe!”

“Yes—I kept the truth from you, sir,” remarked the
young man in side tones: “I thought it would only distress
you to hear it. It was communicated to me by Mr.
Covington. Can I serve you, Margaret—is it for this you
seek me?”

“It is.”

“I am ready. I will do what I can. But it will be
necessary to see Mr. Beauchampe.”

“Cannot that be avoided! I confess, I come to you
without his sanction or authority. He is unwilling to
seek assistance from the law, and proposes, either to argue
his own case, or to leave it, unargued, to the just sense of
the community.”

The youth mused in silence for a few moments, before
he replied. At length—

“I will not hide from you, Margaret,—forgive me—
Mrs. Beauchampe,—the danger in which your husband
stands. The frequency of such deeds as that for which
he is indicted, has led to a general feeling on the part of
the community, that the laws must be rigorously enforced.
But—”

She interrupted him with some vehemence:—“But the
provocation of the villain he slew—”

She stopped suddenly. She trembled, for the truth had
been revealed in her inadvertence.

“What have I said!” she exclaimed.

“Only what shall be as secret with us, Margaret, as
with yourself—”

“Oh! more so, I trust!” she ejaculated.

“Do not distress yourself with this. Understand me.
It was to gather from Mr. Beauchampe the whole truth,
that I desired to see him. To do him justice, I must

know from him, what may be known by others, and which
might do him hurt. It is to prepare for the worst, that I
would seek to know the worst. I will return with you to
Frankfort. I will see him. He, as a lawyer, will better
understand my purpose than yourself.”

“Ah!—I thank you—I thank you, William Hinkley—I
feel that I do not deserve this at your hands. You are
avenged—amply avenged—for all the past!”

She covered her face with her hands. Memories, bitter
memories, were rushing in upon her soul.

“Speak not thus, Margaret;” replied the youth in subdued
and trembling accents. “I need no such atonement
as this. Believe me, to know what you were and should
have been, Margaret, and see you thus, brings to me no
feelings but those of shame and sorrow. Such promise,—
such pride of promise, Margaret—”

“Ah! indeed! such pride,—such pride!—and what a
fall!—there could not be a worse, William—surely not
a worse!—”

“But there is hope still, Margaret—there is hope.”

“You will save him!” she said, eagerly.

“I trust,” said he; “that there is hope for him. I will
try to save him.”

“I know you will. I know you will! But, even then,
there is no hope. I feel like a wreck. Even if we founder
not in this storm—even if you save us, William,—it will
be as if some once good ship, shattered and shivered, was
carried into port by some friendly prow—only to be abandoned
as then no longer worth repair. These storms have
shattered me, William—shattered me quite. I am no
longer what I was,—strong, proud, confident. I fear,
sometimes, that my brain will go wild. I feel that my
mind is failing me. I speak now with an erring tongue.
I scarce know what I say. But I speak with a faith in
you. I believe, William, you were always true.”

“Ah! had you but believed so then, Margaret.”

“I did! I did believe so.”

“Ah! could it have been, Margaret—could you have
only thought—”

“No more—say no more,” she exclaimed hurriedly,
with a sort of shudder. “Say no more!”

“Had it been,” he continued, musingly—“could it

have been, there had been now no wreck. Neither of us
had felt these storms. We had both been happy!—”

“No, no! speak not thus, William Hinkley!” she exclaimed,
rising, and putting on a stern look and freezing
accent. “The past should be—is—nothing now to us.
Nor could it have been as you say. There was a fate to
humble me; and I am here now to sue for your succour.
You have nothing to deplore. You have fortune which you
could not hope, fame which you did not seek—every thing
to make you proud, and keep you happy.”

“I am neither proud nor happy, Margaret. You—”

“Enough!” she exclaimed. “You have promised to
strive in his behalf. Save him, William Hinkley—and if
prayer of mine can avail before Heaven, you will feel this
want no longer. You must be happy!”

“Happy, Margaret—I do not hope for it.”

She extended him her hand. He took it and instantly
released it, though not before a scalding tear had fallen
from his eyes upon it. Farther farewell than this they had
none. She locked round for old Mr. Calvert, but he was
no longer in the apartment.