University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

For a long time she lay without showing any signs of
life. Her passions rebelled against the restraint which her
mind had endeavoured to put upon them. Their concentrated
force breaking all bonds, so suddenly, was like the
terrific outburst of the boiling lava from the gorges of the
frozen mountain. Believing her dead, the mother rushed
headlong into the highway, rending the village with her
screams. She was for the time a perfect madwoman.
The neighbours gathered to her assistance. That much
abused woman, the widow Thackeray, was the first to
come. Never was woman's tenderness more remarkable

than hers—never was woman's watch by the bed of sickness
and suffering—that watch which woman alone knows
so well how to keep—more rigidly maintained than by
her! From the first hour of that agony under which
Margaret Cooper fell to earth insensible, to the last moment
in which her recovery was doubtful, that widow
Thackeray—whose passion for a husband had been described
by Mrs. Cooper as so very decided and evident—
maintained her place by the sick bed of the stricken girl
with all the affection of a mother. Widow Thackeray
was a woman who could laugh merrily, but she could shed
tears with equal readiness. These were equally the signs
of prompt feeling and nice susceptibility; and the proud
Margaret, and her invidious mother, were both humbled
by that spontaneous kindness for which, hitherto, they
had given the possessor so very little credit, and to which
they were now equally so greatly indebted.

Medical attendance was promptly secured. Charlemont
had a very clever physician of the old school. He combined,
as was requisite in the forest region of our country,
the distinct offices of the surgeon and mediciner. He was
tolerably skilful in both departments. He found his patient
in a condition of considerable peril. She had broken
a blood-vessel; and the nicest care and closest attendance
were necessary to her preservation. It will not need that
we should go through the long and weary details which
followed, to her cure. Enough, that she did recover.
But for weeks her chance was doubtful. She lay for that
space of time, equally in the arms of life and death. For
a long period, she herself was unconscious of her situation.
When she came to know, the skill of her attendants
derived very little aid from her consciousness. Her mind
was unfavourable to her cure; and this, by the way, is a
very important particular in the fortunes of the sick. To
despond, to have a weariness of life, to forbear hope as
well as exertion, is an hundred to one, to determine against
the skill of the physician. Margaret Cooper felt a willingness
to die. She felt her overthrow in the keenest
pangs of its shame; and, unhappily, the mother, in her
madness, had declared it. The story of her fall—of the
triumph of the serpent, was now the village property, and
of course put an end to all farther doubts on the score of
the piety of Brother Stevens; though, by way of qualification

of his offence, old Hinkley insisted that it was the
fault of the poor damsel. “She,” he said, “had tempted
him—had thrown herself in his way—had been brazen,”
and all that, of which so much is commonly said in all
similar cases. We, who know the character of the parties,
and have traced events from the beginning, very well
know how little of this is true. Poor Margaret was a
victim before she was well aware of those passions which
made her so. Never was woman more unsophisticated—
less moved by unworthy and sinister design. She had her
weaknesses—her pride, her vanity; and her passions,
which were tremendous, worked upon through these, very
soon effected her undoing. But, for deliberate purpose
of evil—of any evil of which her own intellect was conscious—the
angels are not more innocent.

But mere innocence of evil design, in any one particular
condition, is not enough for security. We are not
only to forbear evil; virtue requires that we should be
exercised for the purposes of good. She lacked the
moral strength which such exercises, constantly pursued,
would have assured her. She was a creature of impulse
only, not of reflection. Besides, she was ignorant of
her particular weaknesses. She was weak where she
thought herself strong. This is always the error of a
person having a very decided will. The will is constantly
mistaken for the power. She could not humble herself,
and in her own personal capacities—capacities which had
never before been subjected to any ordeal-trial—she relied
for the force which was to sustain her in every situation.
Fancy a confident country girl—supreme in her
own district over the Hobs and Hinnies thereabouts—in
conflict with the adroit man of the world, and you have
the whole history of Margaret Cooper, and the secret of
her misfortune. Let the girl have what natural talent you
please, and the case is by no means altered. She must
fall if she seeks or permits the conflict. She can only
escape by flight. It is in consideration of this human
weakness, that we pray God, nightly, not to suffer us to
be exposed to temptation.

When the personal resources of her own experience
and mind failed Margaret Cooper, as at some time or
other they must fail all who trust only in them, she had
no further reliance. She had never learned to draw equal

strength and consolation from the sweet counsels of the
sacred volume. Regarding the wild raving and the senseless
insanity, which is but too frequently the language of
the western preacher, as gross ignorance and debasing
folly, she committed the unhappy error of confounding the
preacher with his cause. She had never been taught to
make an habitual reference to religion; and her own experience
of life, had never forced upon her those sage reflections
which would have shown her that true religion
is all of life, and without it life has nothing. The humility
of the Psalmist, which was the real source of all the
strength allotted to the monarch minstrel, was an unread
lesson with her; and never having been tutored to refer
to God, and relying upon her own proud mind and daring
imagination, what wonder that these frail reeds should
pierce her side while giving way beneath her.

It was this very confidence in her own strength—this
fearlessness of danger (and we repeat the lesson here,
emphatically, by way of warning)—a confidence which
the possession of a quick and powerful mind naturally
enough inspires—that effected her undoing. It was not
by the force of her affections that she fell. The affections
are not apt to be strong in a woman whose mind leads her
out from her sex! The seducer triumphed through the medium
of her vanity. Her feeling of self-assurance had been
thus active from childhood, and conspicuous in all her sports
and employments. She led always in the pastimes of her
playmates, many of whom were older than herself. She
had no fears, when others trembled; and, if she did not,
at any time, so far transcend the bounds of filial duty as
to defy the counsels of her parents, it was certainly no
less true that she never sought for, and seldom seemed to
need them. It is dangerous when the woman, through
sheer confidence in her own strength, ventures upon the
verge of the moral precipice. The very experiment, where
the passions are concerned, proves her to be lost. Margaret
Cooper, confident in her own footsteps, soon learned
to despise every sort of guardianship. The vanity of her
mother had not only counselled and stimulated her own,
but was of that gross and silly order, as to make itself
offensive to the judgment of the girl herself. This had
the effect of losing her all the authority of a parent; and
we have already seen, in the few instances where this

authority took the shape of counsel, that its tendency was
to evil rather than to good.

The arts of Alfred Stevens had, in reality, been very
few. It was only necessary that he should read the character
of his victim. This, as an experienced worldling,—
experienced in such a volume,—he was soon very able
to do. He saw enough to discover, that, while Margaret
Cooper was endowed by nature with an extraordinary
measure of intellect, she was really weak because of its
possession. In due proportion to the degree of exercise
to which she subjected her mere mind—making that
busy and restless—was the neglect of her sensibilities—
those nice antennæ of the heart,

teach the approach of the smallest forms of danger, however
inoffensive their shapes, however unobtrusive their
advance. When the sensibilities are neglected and suffered
to fall into disrepute, they grow idle first and finally
obtuse; even as the limb which you forbear to exercise
loses its muscle, and withers into worthlessness. When
Alfred Stevens discovered this condition, his plan was
simple enough. He had only to stimulate her mind into
bolder exercise—to conduct it to topics of the utmost
hardihood—to inspire that sort of moral recklessness
which some people call courage—which delights to sport
along the edge of the precipice, and to summon audacious
spirits from the great yawning gulfs which lie below.
This practice is always pursued at the expense of those
guardian feelings which keep watch over the virtues of
the tender heart. The analysis of subjects commonly
forbidden to the sex, necessarily tends to make dull those
habitual sentinels over the female conduct. These sentinels
are instincts rather than principles. Education can
take them away, but does not often confer them. When,
through the arts of Alfred Stevens, Margaret Cooper
was led to discuss, perhaps to despise, those nice and
seemingly purposeless barriers which society—having the
experience of ages for its authority—has wisely set up
between the sexes,—she had already taken a large stride
towards passing them. But of this, which a judicious
education would have taught her, she was wholly ignorant.
Her mind was too bold to be scrupulous; too adventurous
to be watchful; and if, at any moment, a
pause in her progress permitted her to think of the probable
danger to her sex of such adventurous freedom,
she certainly never apprehended it in her own case. Such
restraints she conceived to be essential only for the protection
of the weak among her sex. Her vanity led her
to believe that she was strong; and the approaches of the
sapper were conducted with too much caution, with a
progress too stealthy and insensible, to startle the ear or
attract the eye of the unobservant, yet keen-eyed guardian
of her citadel. An eagle perched upon a rock, with
wing outspread for flight, and an eye fixed upon the
rolling clouds through which it means to dart, is thus
heedless of the coiled serpent which lies beneath its feet.
The bold eye of Margaret Cooper was thus heedless.
Gazing upon the sun, she saw not the serpent at her feet.
It was not because she slept—never was eye brighter,
more far-stretching; never was mind more busy, more
active, than that of the victim at the very moment when
she fell. It was because she watched the remote, not the
near,—the region in which there was no enemy—nothing
but glory,—and neglected that post which is always in
danger. Her error is that of the general, who expends
his army upon some distant province, leaving his chief
city to the assault and sack of the invader.

We have dwelt somewhat longer upon the moral causes
which, in our story, have produced such cruel results,
than the mere story itself demands; but no story is perfectly
moral unless the author, with a wholesome commentary,
directs the attention of the reader to the true
weaknesses of his hero, to the point where his character
fails; to the causes of this failure, and the modes in which
it may be repaired or prevented. In this way, alone, may
the details of life and society be properly welded together
into consistent doctrine, so that instruction may keep pace
with delight, and the heart and mind be informed without
being conscious of any of those tasks which accompany
the lessons of experience.

To return now to our narrative.

Margaret Cooper lived! She might as well have died.
This was her thought, at least. She prayed for death.
Was it in mercy that her prayer was denied? We shall
see! Youth and a vigorous constitution, successfully resisted

the attacks of the assailant. They finally obtained
the victory. After a weary spell of bondage and suffering
she recovered. But she recovered only to the consciousness
of a new affliction. All the consequences of her
fatal lapse from virtue have not yet been told. She bore
within her an indelible witness of her shame. She was
destined to be a mother without having been a wife!

This, to her mother at least, was a more terrible discovery
than the former. She literally cowered and crouched
beneath it. It was the written shame, rather than the
actual, which the old woman dreaded. She had been so
vain, so criminally vain of her daughter. She had made
her so constantly the subject of her brag, that, unwitting
of having declared the whole melancholy truth, in the first
moment of her madness, she shrunk, with an unspeakable
horror, from the idea that the little world in which she lived
should become familiar with the whole cruel history of
her overthrow. She could scarce believe it herself, though
the daughter, with an anguish in her eyes that left little to
be told, had herself revealed the truth. Her pride, as
well as her life, was linked with the pride and the beauty
of her child. She had shared in her constant triumphs
over all around her; and overlooking, as a fond, foolish
mother is apt to do, all her faults of temper or of judgment,
she had learned to behold nothing but her superiority.
And now to see her fallen! a thing of scorn, which
was lately a thing of beauty!—the despised, which was
lately the worshipped and the wondered at! No wonder
that her weak, vain heart was crushed and humbled, and
her head bowed in sorrow to the earth. She threw herself
upon the floor, and wept bitter and scalding tears.

The daughter had none. Without sob or sigh, she
stooped down and tenderly assisted the old woman to
rise. Why had she no tears? She asked herself this
question, but in vain. Her external emotions promised
none. Indeed, she seemed to be without emotions. A
weariness and general indifference to all things was the
expression of her features. But this was the deceitful
aspect of the mountain, on whose breast contemplation
sits with silence, unconscious of the tossing flame which,
within, is secretly fusing the stubborn metal and the rock.
Anger was in her breast—feelings of hate mingled up with
shame—scorn of herself, scorn of all—feelings of defiance
and terror, striving at mastery; and, in one corner, a

brooding image of despair, kept from the brink of the precipice
only by the entreaties of some fiercer principle of
hate. She felt life to be insupportable. Why did she
live? This question came to her repeatedly. The demon
was again at work beside her.

“Die!” said he. “It is but a blow—a moment's pang
—the driving a needle into an artery—the prick of a pin
upon the heart. Die! it will save you from exposure!
the shame of bringing into the world an heir of shame!
What would you live for? The doors of love, and fame,
even of society, are shut against you for ever. What is
life? a long denial—a protracted draught of bitterness—
the feeling of a death-spasm carried on through sleepless
years; perhaps, under a curse of peculiar bitterness, carried
on even into age! Die! You cannot be so base
as to wish for longer life!”

The arguments of the demon were imposing. His suggestions
seemed to promise the relief she sought. Hers
seemed the particular case where the prayer is justified
which invokes the mountains and the rocks upon the head
of the guilty. But the rock refused to fall, the mountain
to cover her shame, and its exposure became daily more
and more certain. Death was the only mode of escape
from the mountain of pain which seemed to rest upon
her heart. The means of self-destruction were easy.
With a spirit so impetuous as hers, to imagine was to
determine. She did determine. Yet, even while making
so terrible a resolve, a singular calm seemed to overspread
her soul. She complained of nothing—wished for
nothing—sought for nothing—trembled at nothing. A
dreadful lethargy, which made the old mother declaim as
against a singular proof of hardihood, possessed her spirit.
Little did the still idolizing mother conjecture how much
that lethargy concealed.

The moment that Margaret Cooper conceived the idea
of suicide, it possessed all her mind. It became the one
only thought. There were few arguments against it, and
these she rapidly dismissed or overcame. To leave her
mother in her old age was the first; but this became a
small consideration when she reflected that the latter could
not, under any circumstances require her assistance very
long; and to spare her the shame of public exposure was
another consideration. The evils of the act to herself,

were reduced, with equal readiness to the transition from
one state to another by a small process, which, whether
by the name of stab or shot, was productive only of a
momentary spasm, for, though as fully persuaded of the
soul's immortality as the best of us, the unhappy girl, like
all young free-thinkers, had persuaded herself that, in dying
by her own hands, she was simply exercising a discretionary
power under the conviction that her act in doing
so, was rendered by circumstances a judicious one. The
arguments by which she deceived herself are sufficiently
commonplace, and too easy of refutation, to render necessary
any discussion of them here. Enough to state the
fact. She deliberately resolved upon the fatal deed which
was to end her life and agony together; and save her from
that more notorious exposure which must follow the birth
of that child of sin, whom she deemed it no more than a
charity to destroy.

There was an old pair of pistols in the house which had
been the property of her father. She had often, with a
boldness not common to the sex, examined these pistols.
They were of brass; well made; of English manufacture;
with common muzzles, and a groove for a sight instead of
the usual drop. They were not large, but, in a practised
hand, were good travelling pistols, being capable of bringing
down a man at twelve paces, provided there was any
thing like deliberation in the holder. Often and again had
she handled these weapons, poising them and addressing
them at objects as she had seen her father do. On one
occasion she had been made to discharge them, under his
own instruction. She had done so without terror. She
recalled these events. She had seen the pistols loaded.
She did not exactly know what quantity of powder was
necessary for a charge,—but she was in no mood to calculate
the value of a thimblefull. Availing herself of the
temporary absence of her mother, she possessed herself of
these weapons. Along with them in the same drawer, she
found a horn which still contained a certain quantity of
powder. There were bullets in the bag with the pistols
which precisely fitted them. There, too, was the mould
—there were flints—the stock was sufficiently ample for
all her desires; and she surveyed the prize, in her own
room, with the look of one who congratulates himself in
the conviction that he holds in his hand the great medicine

which is to cure his disease. In her chamber she loaded
the weapons, and, with such resignation as belonged to
her philosophy, she waited for the propitious moment
when she might complete the deed.