University of Virginia Library

37. CHAPTER XXXVII.

“What did Calvert mean, Anna, when he said he knew
your purpose?” was the inquiry of Beauchampe, when
she returned to his side—“what do you intend?—what
purpose have you?”

She put her hand upon her lips in sign of silence, then
looked up to the trap-door, which the guard was slowly
engaged in letting down. When this was done, she
approached him and drawing a phial from her bosom displayed
it cautiously before his eyes.

“For me!” he exclaimed—“poison!”

A sort of rapturous delight gathered in his eyes as he
clutched the phial.

“Enough for both of us!” was the answer. “It is
laudanum.”

“Enough for both, Anna! Surely you cannot mean—”

“To share it with you, my husband. To die with you,
as you die for me.”

“Not so! This must not be. Speak not—think not
thus, my wife. Such a thought makes me wretched.
There is no need that you should die.”

“Ay, but there is, Beauchampe. I should suffer much
worse were I to live. Where could I live? How could
I live? To be the scorned, and the slandered—to provoke
the brutal jest, or more brutal violence of the fopling
and the fool! For, who that knows my story, will believe
in my virtue; and who that doubts, will scruple to approach
me as if he knew that I had none! If I have
neither joy nor security in life, why should I live; and if
death keeps us together, Beauchampe, why should I fear
to die? Should I not rather rejoice, my husband?”

“Ah, but of that we know nothing. That is the doubt
—the curse, Anna!”

“I do not doubt—I cannot. Our crime, if crime it be, is
one—our punishment will doubtless be one also.”

“It were then no punishment. No, Anna, live!—you
have friends who will protect you—who will respect and
love you. There is Col. Calvert—”

“Do not speak of him, Beauchampe. Speak of none.
I am resolute to share with you the draught. We tread
the dark valley together.”

“You shall not! It is in my grasp,—no drop shall
pass your lips. It is enough for me only.”

“Ah, Beauchampe, would you be cruel?”

“Kind only, dear wife. I cannot think of you dying,
—so young, so beautiful, and born with such endowments
—so formed to shine, to bless—”

“To kill rather—to blight, Beauchampe; to darken the
days of all whom I approach. This has ever been my
fate; it shall be so no longer. Beauchampe, you cannot
baffle me in my purpose. See!—even if you refuse to
share with me the poison, I have still another resource.”

She drew a knife from her sleeve and held it up before
his eyes, but beyond the reach of his arm.

“Oh! why will you persist in this, my wife? Why
make these few moments, which are left me, as sad as they
are short and fleeting.”

“I seek not to do so, dear husband; nor should my
resolution have this effect. Would you have me live for
such sorrows, such indignities, as I have described to
you.”

“You would not suffer them! Give me the knife,
Anna.”

“No! my husband!” She restored it to her sleeve. “I
have sworn to die with you, and no power on earth shall
persuade me to survive.”

“Not my entreaties—my prayers, Anna!”

“No! Beauchampe!—not even your prayers shall
change my purpose.”

“Nay, then, I will call the guard!”

“And if you do, Beauchampe, the sound of your voice
shall be the signal for me to strike. Believe me, husband,
I do not speake idly!”

The knife was again withdrawn from her sleeve as she
spoke, and the bared point placed upon her bosom.

“Put it up, dearest; I promise not to call. Put it up,
from sight. Believe me,—I will not call!”

“Do not, Beauchampe; and do not, I implore you,
again seek to disturb my resolution. Move me you cannot.
I have reached it only by calmly considering what
I am, and what would be left me when you are gone. I
have seen enough in this examination to make me turn
with loathing from the prospect. I know that it cannot be
more so behind the curtain; and we will raise it together.”

“The assurance, Anna, is sweet to my soul, but I would
still implore you against this resolution. To be undivided
even in death conveys a feeling to my heart like rapture,
and brings back to it a renewed hope; yet I dare not
think of your suffering and pain. I dread the idea of death
when it relates to you.”

“Think rather, my husband, that I share the hope and
the rapture of which you speak. Believe me only, that
I joy also in the conviction that in death we shall not be
divided. The mere bitter of the draught or the pain of
the stroke, is not worthy of a thought. The assurance

that there will be no interruption in our progress together
—that death, with us, will be nothing but a joint setting
forth in company on a new journey and into another country—that
is worthy of every thought, and should be the
only one!”

“Ay, but that country, Anna?”

“Cannot be more full of wo and bitter than this hath
been to us.”

“It may! I have read somewhere, my wife, a vivid description
of two fond lovers,—fondest among the fond—
born, as it were, for each other,—devoted, as few have
been to one another; who, by some cruel tyrant were
thrown into a dungeon, and ordered to perish by the gnawing
process of hunger. At first, they smiled at such a
doom. They believed that their tyrant lacked ingenuity
in his capacity for torture, for he had left them together!
Together, they were strong and fearless. Love made them
light-hearted even under restraint; and they fancied a
power or resistance in themselves, so united, to endure
the worst forms of torment. For a few days they did so.
They cheered each other. They spoke the sweetest,
soothing words. Their arms were linked in constant
embrace. She hung upon his neck, and he bore her head
upon his bosom. Never had they spoken such sweet
truths,—such dear assurances. Never had their tendernesses
been so all-compensating. Perhaps, they never had
been so truly happy together, at least for the first brief day
of their confinement. Their passion had been refined by
severity, and had acquired new vigour from the pressure
put upon it. But as the third day waned, they ceased to
link their arms together. They recoiled from the mutual
embrace. They shrunk apart. They saw in each other's
eyes, a something rather to be feared than loved. Famine
was there, glaring like a wolf. The god was transformed
into a demon; and in another day the instinct of hunger
proved itself superior to the magnanimous sentiment of
love. The oppressor looked in on the fourth day, through
the grated-window upon his victims;—and lo! the lips of
the man were dripping with the blond, drawn from the
veins of his beloved one. His teeth were clenched in her
white shoulder; and he grinned and growled above his
unconscious victim, even as the tiger, whom you have disturbed
ere he has finished with his prey.”

“Horrible! But she submitted—she repined not. Her
moans were unheard. She sought not, in like manner, to
pacify the baser, beastly cravings, at the expense of him
she loved. Hers was love, Beauchampe—his was passion.”

“Alas! my wife, what matters it by what name we seek
to establish a distinction between the sentiments and passions?
In those dreadful extremes of situation, from which
our feeble nature recoils, all passions and sentiments run
into one. We love!—Before Heaven, my wife, I conscientiously
say, and as conscientiously believe, that I love
you as passionately as I can love, and as truly as woman
ever was beloved by man. It is not our love that fails us,
in the hour of physical and mental torment. It is our
strength. Thought and principle, truth and purity, are
poor defences, when the frame is agonized with a torture
beyond what nature was intended to endure. Then the
strongest man deserts his faith and disavows his principles.
Then the purest becomes profligate, and the truest dilates
in falsehood. It is madness, not the man, that speaks.
It was madness, not the man, that drunk from the blue
veins of the beloved one, and clenched his dripping teeth
in her soft white shoulder. The very superior strength of
his blood, was the cause of his early overthrow of reflection.
As, in this respect, she was the weaker, so her
mind, and consequently, the sweet pure sentiments which
were natural to her mind, the longest maintained its and
their ascendency, and preserved her from the loathsome
frenzy to which the man was driven!—Ah, of this future,
dear wife! This awful, unknown future! Fancy some
penal doom like this—fancy some tiger rage in me—depriving
me of the reason, and the sentiments which have
made me love you, and made me what I am—fancy, in
place of the man, the frenzied beast, raging in his bloody
thirst, rending in his savage hunger—drinking the blood
from the beloved one's veins,—tearing the flesh from her
soft white shoulder! This thought—this fear, Anna—”

“Is neither thought nor fear of mine! God is good
and gracious. I am not bold to believe in my own purity
of heart, or propriety of conduct. I am a sinner, Beauchampe—a
proud, stern, fierce sinner. I feel that I am—
I would that I were otherwise, and I pray for Heaven's
help to become otherwise;—but, sinner as I am, I neither

fear nor believe, that such penal dooms are reserved for
any degree of sin. The love of physical torture is an
attribute with which man has dressed the Deity. As such
torture cannot be human, so it cannot be godlike. I can
believe that we may be punished by privation,—by denial
of trust,—by degradation to inferior offices,—but it is the
brutal imagination that ascribes to God a delight in brutal
punishments. Nowhere do we see in nature such a feelling
manifested. Life is every where a thing of beauty.
Smiles are in heaven, sweetness on earth, the winds bring
it, the airs breathe it, stars smile it, blossoms store and
diffuse it;—man, alone, defaces and destroys, usurps,
vitiates, and overthrows. It was man, not God, who, in
your story, was the oppressor. He made the prison, and
thrust the victims into it. It was not God! And shall
God be likened to such a monster? What idea can we
have of the Deity to whom such characteristics are ascribed!—”

—“I go yet farther,” she added, after a pause. “I do
not think, even if our sins incur the displeasure of God,
that his treatment of us, however harsh, will be meant as
punishment. That it will be punishment, I doubt not;
but this will be with him a secondary consideration. We
are his subjects, in his world, employed to carry out his
various purposes, and set to various tasks. Failing in
these, we are set to such as are inferior,—perhaps, not
employed at all, as being no longer worthy of trust. I
cannot think of a severer moral infliction. Where all are
busy,—triumphantly busy,—pressing forward in the glorious
tasks of a life which is all soul, to be the only idle
spirit—denied to share in any mighty consummation,—
pitied, but abandoned by the rest—the proffer of service
rejected,—the sympathy of joint action and enterprise
denied—a spirit without wings—a sluggish personification
of moral sloth, and that too, in such an empire as God's
own—in his very sight,—millions speeding beneath his
eye at his bidding,—all bid, all chosen, all beloved but one!
Ah! Beauchampe, to a soul like mine,—so earnest, so
ambitious as mine has been, and is—could there be a worse
doom?”

“No, dearest!—but the subject is dark, and such speculations
may be bold—too bold!”

“Why? Do I disparage God in them? Does it not

seem that such a future could alone be worthy of such a
present—of such a God, as has made a world so various
and so wondrous? methinks, the disparagement is in him
who ascribes to the Deity such tastes and passions as
preside over the Inquisitions and the thousand other plans
of mortal torture, which have made man the hateful
monster that we so frequently find him.”

“Let us speak no more of this, Anna. The subject
startles me. It is an awful one!”

Hers was the bolder spirit.

“And should not our thoughts be awful thoughts?
What other should we have? The future, alone, is ours
—will be ours in a short time. A few hours will bring
us to the entrance. A few hours will lift the curtain, and
the voice that we may not disobey will command us to
enter.”

“Not, you, Anna—oh! not you! Let me brave it
alone. I cannot bear to think that you too should be
cut off in your youth—with all that vigorous mind,—that
beauty—that noble heart—all crushed, blighted,—now,
when blooming brightest—buried in the dust,—no more
to speak, or sing, or feel.”

“But they do not perish, Beauchampe. I might grow
coward—I might cling to this life—could I fancy there
were no other. But this faith is one of my strongest convictions.
It is an instinct. No reasoning will reach the
point and establish it, if the feeling be not in our heart of
hearts. I know that I cannot perish quite. I know that
I must live; and that poison-draught, or the thrust of this
sudden knife, I regard as the plunge which one makes,
crossing a frail trembling bridge, or hurrying through
some dark and narrow passage. Do not waste the moments,
which are so precious, in the vain endeavour to
dissuade me from a sworn and settled purpose. Beauchampe,
we die together!”

“Lie down by me, Anna. You should sleep—you are
fatigued. You must be weary.”

“No! I am not weary. At such moments as these we
become all soul. We do not need sleep. With the passage
of this night we shall never need it again. Think of
that, Beauchampe! What a thought it is.”

“Terrible!”

“Glorious, rather! Sleep was God's gift to an animal,—to

restore limbs that could be wearied—to refresh
spirits that could be dull! What a godlike feeling to
know that we shall need it no longer!—no more yawning
—no more drowsiness—and that feebleness and blindness,
which, without any of the securities of death, has all
of its incompetencies—when the merest coward might
bind, and the commonest ruffian abuse, and trample on
us. Ah! the immunities of death! How numerous—
how great! What blindness to talk of its terrors—to
shrink from its glorious privileges of unimpeded space,—
of undiminishing time. Already, Beauchampe, it seems
to me as if my wings are growing. I fancy, I should not
feel any hurt from the knife—perhaps, not even taste the
poison on my lips.”

“Sit by me, at least, if you will not sleep, Anna.”

“I will sit by you, Beauchampe,—nay, I wish to do so,
but you must promise not to attempt to dispossess me of
the knife. I suspect you, my husband.”

“Why suspect me?”

“I perceive it in the tones of your voice; I know what
you intend. But, believe me, I have taken my resolution
from which nothing will move me. Even were you now
to deprive me of the weapon, nothing would keep me
from it long. I should follow you soon, my husband,
and the only effect of present denial would be to deprive
me of the pleasure of dying with you!”

“Come to me, my wife. I will not attempt to disarm
you. I promise you.”

“On your love, Beauchampe?”

“With my full heart, dearest. You shall die with me.
It will be a sweet moment instead of a bitter one. For
your sake only, my wife, would I have disarmed you—
But my selfish desires triumph. I will no longer oppose
you.”

“Thanks! thanks!”

She sprang to him and clung to his embrace.

“Will you sleep?” he asked as her head seemed to sink
upon his bosom.

“No, no! I had not thought of that! I thought only
of the moment—the moment when we should leave this
prison.”

“Leave it?”

“By death! I am tired, very tired, of these walls—

these walls of life,—that keep us in bonds,—put us at the
mercy of the false and the cruel, the base and the malicious—oh!
my husband, we have tried them long enough.”

“There is time enough!” he said. “I would see the
daylight once more.”

“You can only see it through those bars.”

“Still, I would see it. We can free ourselves a moment
after.”

Even while they spoke together, Beauchampe sunk into
a pleasant slumber. She pillowed his head upon her
bosom, but had no feeling or thought of sleep. Through
the grated bars, she saw a few flitting stars. One by
one, they came into her sphere of vision, gleamed a little
while, and passed, like the bright spiritual eyes of the
departed dear ones. When she ceased to behold them,
then she knew that the day was at hand, and the interval
of time between the disappearance of the stars, and the
approach of dawn, though brief was dark.

“Such,” she mused, “will be that brief period of transition,
when, passing from the dim, deceptive starlight of
this life, we enter into the perfect day. That will be momentarily
dark, perhaps. It must be. There may be a
state of childhood—an imperfect consciousness of the
things around us—of our own wants,—and among these,
possibly, a lack of utterance. Strange, indeed, that the
inevitable, should still be the inscrutable. But of what
use the details. The great fact is clear to me. Even now
things are becoming clearer while I gaze. My whole soul
seems to be one great thought. How strange that he
should sleep,—so soundly too—so like an infant! He
does not fear death, that is certain, but he loves life. I,
too, love life, but it is not this. Oh, of that other! Could
I get some glimpses,—but this is childish. I shall see it
all very soon!”

Beauchampe slept late, and bearing his head still on
her bosom, the sleepless wife did not seek to awaken
him. Through the intensity of her thought, she acquired
an entire independence of bodily infirmities. The physical
nature, completely controlled by the spiritual, was passive
at her mood. But the soundness of Beauchampe's sleep,
continued as it was after day had fairly dawned, awakened
her suspicions. She searched for the phial of laudanum

where she had seen him place it. It was no longer there.
She found it beside him on the couch—it was empty!

But his breathing was not suspended. His sleep was
natural, and while she anxiously bent over him in doubt
whether to strike at once, or wait to see what farther
effects might be produced on him by the potion, he
awakened. His first words at awakening, betrayed the
still superior feelings of attachment with which he regarded
her. His voice was that of exultation.

“It is over, and we are still together. We are not
divided!”

“No! but the hour is at hand!”

“What mean you, my love! I have swallowed the
laudanum! where am I?”

His question was answered as his eyes encountered
the bleak walls of his dungeon and beheld the light
through the iron bars of his window.

“God! the poison has failed of its effect.” His look
was that of consternation. Her glance and words reassured
him.

“We have still the knife, my husband!”

“Ah! we shall defeat them still!”

“On the morning of the fifth of June, eighteen hundred
and twenty-six;” says the chronicle, “the drums were
heard beating in the streets of Frankfort, and a vast multitude
was hurrying toward the gibbet which was erected
on a hill without the town.”

At the sound of this ominous music, and the clamours
of that hurrying multitude, Beauchampe smiled sadly.

“Strange! that men should delight in such a spectacle
—the cruel death—the miserable exposure,—of a fellow
man. That they should look on his writhings—his distortions—his
shame, and pain, with composure and desire.
It will be cruel to disappoint them, Anna! Will it not?”

“I think not of them, my husband. Oh! my husband,
could we crowd the few remaining moments with thoughts

of goodness, with prayers of penitence! Oh! that I had
not urged you to the death of Stevens!”

“It was right!” he answered sternly. “I tell you,
Anna, the wives and daughters of Kentucky will bless the
name of Beauchampe!”

“They should, my husband, for your blow has saved
many from shame and suffering,—has terrified many a
wrongdoer from his purpose. But though right in you to
strike, I feel that it was wrong in me to counsel.”

“That cannot be! Do not speak thus, my wife. Let
not our last moments be embittered by reproach. Let us
die in prayer rather. Hark! I hear visiters—voices—
some one approaches.”

“It is William Hinkley,” she exclaimed.

The guard was heard about to remove the trap door.
Beauchampe looked up, and, a moment after, he heard
his wife sigh deeply. She then spoke to him, faintly but
quickly,

“Take it, my husband. It is not painful.”

He turned to her, while a sudden coldness seized upon
his heart. She presented him the knife.

“Have you struck?” he asked in a husky whisper.
The wet blade of the knife, already clotty with the coagulating
blood, answered his question.

“Take me in your arms,—quickly, quickly, dear husband,—do
not leave me. I lose you,—oh! I lose you.”

“No, never! I come! I am with you. Nothing shall
part us. This unites us for ever!”

And with the words he struck the fatal blow, laid his
lips on hers, and covered her and himself with the blanket.

“This is sweet;”—she murmured. “I feel you, but I
cannot see you, husband. Who is it comes?”

“Calvert!”

The young man descended a moment after. His apprehensions
were realized. Margaret Cooper was dying—
dying by her own hands.

“Was this well done, Margaret?” he asked reproachfully.

“Ay, William,” she answered, firmly, but in feeble
tones. “It was well done. It could not be otherwise,
and I find dying sweeter than living. You will forgive
me, William?”

“But God, Margaret?”

“Ah! Pray for me—pray for me. Husband—I am
losing you. I feel you not. This is death!—it was for
me,—it was all for me! Oh! Beauchampe!”

“She is gone!”—cried the husband.

Calvert, who had assisted to support her, now laid the
inanimate form softly upon the couch. He was dumb.
But the cry of Beauchampe had drawn the attention of
the guard.

“What is this—what's the matter?” he demanded.

“Ha! ha! we laugh at you—we defy you!” was the
exclamation of Beauchampe, holding up the bloody knife
with which he had inflicted upon himself a second wound.
“We have slain ourselves.”

“God forbid!” cried the officer, wresting the weapon
from the hands of the criminal.

“You are too late, my friend;—we shall spoil your
sport. You shall enjoy no agonies of mine to-day.”

They brought relief,—surgical help,—stimulants and
bandages. They succoured the fainting man, cruelly
kind, in order that the stern sentence of the laws might
be carried into effect. The hour of execution, meanwhile,
had arrived. They brought him forth in the sight of the
assembled crowd. The fresh air revived the dying man,
awakening him into full but momentary consciousness.
He looked up, and beheld where the windows of some of
the neighbouring houses were filled with female forms.
He lifted his hands to them with a graceful but last effort,
while he murmured—

“Daughters of Kentucky, you, at least, will bless the
name of Beauchampe!”—

This was all. He then sunk back as they strove to
lift him into the cart. Before his feet had pressed the
felon-vehicle his eyes closed. He was unconscious of
the rest. Earth and its little life was nothing more to
him. He had also passed behind the curtain.