University of Virginia Library

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.

That weary night no sleep came to the eyelids of the
hapless Margaret Cooper. The garrulous language of
the mother had awakened far other emotions in her bosom
than those which she laboured to inspire; and the warning
of Mr. Calvert, for the first time impressed upon herself
the terrible conviction that she was lost. In the wild intoxicating
pleasures of that new strange dream, she had
been wofully unconscious of the truth. So gradual had
been the progress of passion, that it had never alarmed or
startled her. Besides, it had come to her under a disguise
afforded by the customary cravings of her soul. Her
vanity had been the medium by which her affections had
been won, by which her confidence had been beguiled, by
which the guardian watchers of her virtue had been laid
to sleep. What a long and dreadful night was that when
Margaret Cooper was first brought to feel the awful truth
in its true impressiveness of wo. Alas! how terribly do
the sorrows of sin torture us. The worst human foe is
guilt. The severest censure the consciousness of wrong
doing. Poverty may be endured—nay is—and virtue
still be secure; since the mind may be made strong to
endure the heaviest toil, yet cherish few desires; the loss
of kin may call for few regrets, if we feel that we have religiously
performed our duties towards them, and requited
all their proper claims upon us. Sickness and pain may
even prove benefits and blessings, if it shall so happen
that we resign ourselves without complaint, to the scourge
of the chastener, and grow patient beneath his stripes.
But that self-rebuke of one's own spirit from which we
may not fly—that remorseful and ever-vexing presence
which haunts us, and pursues with a wing even more
fleet than that of fear—which tells clamorously of what
we had, and scornfully of what we have lost—lost for ever!
that is the demon from which there is no escape, and
beyond which there is no torture. Vainly would we strive
with this relentless enemy. Every blow aimed at its

shadowy bosom recoils upon our own. In the crowd it
takes the place of other forms and dogs us with suspicious
glances; in the solitude it stalks boldly to our side, confronts
us with its audacious truths and terrible denunciations—leaves
no moment secure, waking or sleeping! It
is the ghost of murdered virtue, brooding over its grave
in that most dark and dismal of all sepulchres, the human
heart. And if we cry aloud, as did Margaret Cooper,
with vain prayer for the recall of a single day, with what
a yell of derisive mockery it answers to our prayer.

The night was passed in the delusive effort of the mind
to argue itself into a state of fancied security. She endeavoured
to recall those characteristics in Alfred Stevens,
by which her confidence had been beguiled. This task
was not a difficult one in that early day of her distress;
before experience had yet come to confirm the apprehensions
of doubt—before the intoxicating dream of a first
passion had yet begun to stale upon her imagination.
Her own elastic mind helped her in this endeavour.
Surely, she thought, where the mind is so noble and expansive,
where the feelings are so tender and devoted, the
features so lofty and impressive, the look so sweet, the
language so delicate and refined, there can be no falsehood.
“The devotion of such a man,” she erringly thought,
“might well sanction the weakness of a woman's heart—
might well persuade to the momentary error which none
will seek more readily to repair than himself. If he be
true to me, what indeed should I care for the scorn of
others.”

Alas! for the credulous victim. This was the soul of
her error. This scorn of others—of the opinions of the
world around her, is the saddest error of which woman,
who is the most dependant of all in the moral world, can
ever be guilty. But such philosophy did not now deceive
even the poor girl by whom it was uttered. It is a melancholy
truth, that where there is no principle the love
cannot be relied on; and the love of Alfred Stevens had
hitherto shown itself in selfishness. Margaret Cooper felt
this, but she did not dare to believe it.

“No! no!” she muttered—“I will not doubt—I will
not fear! He is too noble, too generous, too fond! I could
not be deceived.”

Her reliance was upon her previous judgment, not upon

his principles. Her self-esteem assisted to make this reference
sufficient for the purposes of consolation, and this
was all that she desired in this first moment of her doubt
and apprehension.

“And if he be true—if he keep for ever the faith that his
lips and looks declare, then will I heed nothing of the
shame and the sin. The love of such a man is sufficient
recompense for the loss of all beside. What to me is the
loss of society? What should I care for the association
and opinions of these in Charlemont? And elsewhere—he
will bear me hence where none can know. Ah! I fear
not. He will be true.”

Her self-esteem was recovering considerably from its
first overthrow. Her mind was already preparing to do
battle with those, the scorn of whom she anticipated, and
whose judgments she had always hitherto despised. This
was an easy task. She was yet to find that it was not the
only task. Her thoughts are those of many, in like situations,
and it is for this reason, that we dwell upon them.
Our purpose is to show the usual processes of self-deception.
Margaret Cooper, like a large class of persons of
strong natural mind and sanguine temper, was only too apt
to confound the cause of virtue with its sometimes uncouth,
harsh and self-appointed professors. She overlooked
the fact that public opinion, though a moral object against
which woman dares not often offend, is yet no standard for
her government—that principles are determinable elsewhere,
and whatever the world may think of them, and
whatever may be their seeming unimportance under existing
circumstances, are the only real moral securities of
earth. She might fly from Charlemont, either into a
greater world, or into a more complete solitude, but she
would fly to no greater certainties than she now possessed.
Her securities were still based upon the principles of Alfred
Stevens, and of these she knew nothing. She knew
that he was a man of talent—of eloquence; alas! for her!
she had felt it; of skill—she had been its victim; of rare
sweetness of utterance, of grace and beauty; and as she
enumerated to herself these, his mental powers and personal
charms, she felt, however numerous the catalogue,
that none of these afforded her the guarantee she sought.

She arose the next day somewhat more composed, and
with a face which betrayed sleeplessness, but nothing

worse. This she ascribed to the headache with which
she had retired. She had not slept an instant, and she
arose entirely unrefreshed. But the stimulating thoughts
which had kept her wakeful, furnished her with sufficient
strength to appear as usual in the household and to go
through her accustomed duties. But it was with an impatience,
scarcely restrainable, that she waited for the approach
of evening which would bring her lover. Him,
she felt it now absolutely of the last necessity that she
should see—that she should once more go with him to
those secret places, the very thought of which inspired her
with terror—and laying bare her soul to his eyes, demand
of him the only restitution which he could make.

He came. Once more she descended the steps to meet
him. Her mother arrested her on the stairway. A cunning
leer was in her eye, as she looked into the woful,
impassive eyes of her daughter. She grinned with a sort
of delight expressive of the conviction that the advice she
had given the night before was to be put in execution
soon.

“Fix him, Margaret. He's mighty eager for you.
You've cut your eye-tooth—be quick, and you'll have a
famous parson for a husband yet.”

The girl shrunk from the counsellor as if she had been
a serpent. The very counsel was enough to show her
the humiliating attitude in which she stood to all parties.

“Remember,” said the old woman, detaining her—
“don't be too willing at first. Let him speak fairly out.
A young maiden can't be too backward, until the man
offers to make her a young wife!”

The last words went to her soul like an arrow.

“A young maiden!” she almost murmured aloud as
she descended the steps—“oh, God! how lovely now,
to my eyes, appears the loveliness of a young maiden!”

She joined Stevens in silence—the mother watching
them with the eyes of a maternal hawk as they went forth
together. They pursued a customary route, and, passing
through one of the gorges of the surrounding hills, they
soon lost sight of the village. When the forest shadows
had gathered thickly around them, and the silence of the
woods became felt, Stevens approached more nearly, and,
renewing a former liberty, put his arm about her waist.
She gently but firmly removed it, but neither of them

spoke a word. A dense copse appeared before them.
Towards it he would have led the way. But she resolutely
turned aside, and, while a shudder passed over her
frame, exclaimed—

“Not there—not there!”

Breathlessly she spoke. He well enough understood
her. They pursued an opposite direction, and, in the
shade of a wood which before they had never traversed,
they at length paused. Stevens conducting her to the
trunk of a fallen tree, seated her, and placed himself beside
her. Still they were silent. There was a visible
constraint upon both. The thoughts and feelings of both,
were alike active—but very unlike in character. With
him, passion, reckless passion, was uppermost; selfish in
all its phases, and resolute on its own indulgence at every
hazard. In her bosom was regreat if not remorse, mingled
with doubts and hopes in pretty equal proportion.
Yet had she, even then, but little doubt of him. She accused
him of no practice. She fancied, foolish girl, that
his error like her own, had been that of blind impulse,
availing itself of a moment of unguarded reason, to take
temporary possession of the citadel of prudence. That he
was calculating, cunning—that his snares had been laid
beforehand—she had not the least idea. But she was to
grow wiser in this and other respects in due season. How
little did she then conjecture the coldness and calmness of
that base and selfish heart, which had so fanned the consuming
flame in hers.

Her reserve and coolness were unusual. She had been
the creature, heretofore, of the most uncalculating impulse.
The feeling was spoken, the thought uttered, as soon as
conceived. Now she was silent. He expected her to
speak—nay, he expected reproaches, and was prepared to
meet them. He had his answer for any reproaches which
she might make. But for that stony silence of her lips he
was not prepared. The passive grief which her countenance
betrayed—so like despair—repelled and annoyed
him. Yet, wherefore had she come, if not to complain
bitterly, and, after exhaustion, be soothed at last? Such
had been his usual experience in all such cases. But the
unsophisticated woman before him had no language for
such a situation as was hers. Her pride, her ambition—

the very intensity of all her moods—rendered the effort at
speech a mocking, and left her dumb.

“You are sad, Margaret—silent and very cold to me,”
he said, at last breaking the silence. His tones were subdued
to a whisper, and how full of entreating tenderness!
She slowly raised her eyes from the ground, and fixed
them upon him. What a speech was in that one look!
There was no trace of excitement—scarcely of expression,
in her face. There was no flush upon her cheeks. She
was pale as death. She was still silent. Her eye alone
had spoken; and from its searching but stony glance, his
own fell in some confusion to the ground. There was a
dreary pause which he at length broke.

“You are still silent, Margaret—why do you not speak
to me?”

“It is for you to speak, Alfred,” was her reply. It was
full of significance, understood but not felt by her companion.
What, indeed, had she to say—what could she
say—while he said nothing? She was the victim. With
him lay the means of rescue and preservation. She but
waited the decision of one whom in her momentary madness,
she had made the arbiter of her destiny. Her reply
confused him. He would have preferred to listen to the
ordinary language of reproach. Had she burst forth into
tears and lamentations—had she cried, “you have wronged
me—you must do me justice!” he would have been better
pleased than with the stern, unsuggestive character that
she assumed. To all this, his old experience would have
given him an easy answer. But to be driven to condemn
himself—to define his own doings with the name due to
his deserts—to declare his crime, and proffer the sufficient
atonement, was an unlooked for necessity.

“You are displeased with me, Margaret.” He dared
not meet her glance while uttering this feeble and purposeless
remark. It was so short of all that he should have
said—of all that she expected—that her eye glistened with
a sudden expression of indignation which was new to
them in looking upon him. There was a glittering sarcasm
in her glance which showed the intensity of her
feelings in the comment which they involuntarily made
on the baldness and poverty of his. Displeasure, indeed!
That such an epithet should be employed to describe the

withering pang, the vulturous gnawing torture in her bosom—and
that fiery fang which thought, like some winged
serpent, was momentarily darting into her brain.

“Displeased!” she exclaimed, in low, bitter tones,
which she seemed rather desirous to suppress—“no, no!
sir—not displeased. I am miserable, most miserable—
any thing but displeased. I am too wretched to feel displeasure!”

“And to me you owe this wretchedness, dear Margaret
—that—that is what you would say. Is it not, Margaret?
I have wronged—I have ruined you! From me comes this
misery! You hate, you would denounce me.”

He put his arm about her waist—he sank upon his knee
beside her—his eye, now that he had found words, could
once more look courageously into hers.

“Wronged—ruined!” she murmured, using a part of
his words, and repeating them as if she did not altogether
realize their perfect sense.

“Ay, you would accuse me, Margaret,” he continued—
“you would reproach and denounce me—you hate me—
I deserve it—I deserve it.”

She answered with some surprise—

“No, Alfred Stevens, I do not accuse—I do not denounce
you. I am wretched—I am miserable. It is for
you to say if I am wronged and ruined. I am not what I
was—I know that!—What I am—what I will be!—”

She paused! Her hands were clasped suddenly and
violently—she looked to heaven, and, for the first time,
the tears, streamed from her eyes like rain,—a sudden,
heavy shower, which was soon over.

“Ah, Margaret, you would have me accuse myself,—
and I do,—the crime is mine! I have done you this
wrong—”

She interrupted him.

“No, Alfred Stevens, I have done wrong! I feel that
I have done wrong. That I have been feeble and criminal,
I know. I will not be so base as to deny what I
cannot but feel. As for your crime, you know best what
it is. I know mine. I know that my passions are evil
and presumptuous; and though I blush to confess their
force, it is yet due to the truth that I should do so, though
I sink into the earth with my shame. But neither your
self-reproaches nor my confession will acquit us. Is there

nothing, Alfred Stevens, that can be done? Must I fall
before you, here, amidst the woods which have witnessed
my shame, and implore you to save me? I do! Behold
me! I am at your feet—my face is in the dust. Oh!
Alfred Stevens—when I called your eyes to watch, in the
day of my pride, the strong-winged eagle of our hills, did
I look as now? Save me from this shame! save me! For,
though I have no reproaches, yet God knows, when we
looked on that eagle's flight together, my soul had no such
taint as fills it now. Whatever were my faults, my follies,
my weaknesses, Heaven knows, I felt not, feared not this!
a thought,—a dream of such a passion, then,—never
came to my bosom. From you it came! You put it
there! You woke up the slumbering emotion—you—but
no!—I will not accuse you! I will only implore you to
save me! Can it be done?—can you do it,—will you—
will you not?”

“Rise, dearest Margaret—let me lift you!” She had
thrown herself upon the earth, and she clung to it.

“No, no! your words may lift me, Alfred Stevens,
when your hands cannot. If you speak a hope, a promise
of safety, it will need no other help to make me rise!
If you do not!—I would not wish to rise again. Speak!
let me hear, even as I am, what my doom shall be? The
pride which has made me fall shall be reconciled to my
abasement.”

“Margaret, this despair is idle. There is no need for
it. Do I not tell you that there is no danger?”

“Why did you speak of ruin?” she demanded.

“I know not—the word escaped me. There is no ruin.
I will save you. I am yours—yours only. Believe me, I
will do you right. I regard you as sacredly my wife
as if the rites of the church had so decreed it.”

“I dare not disbelieve you, Alfred! I have no hope else.
Your words life me!—Oh! Alfred Stevens, you did not
mean the word, but how true it was;—what a wreck,
what a ruin do I feel myself now—what a wreck have I
become!”

“A wreck, a ruin! no, Margaret, no! never were you
more beautiful than at this very moment. These large,
sad eyes—these long, dark lashes seem intended to bear
the weight of tears. These cheeks are something paler
than their wont, but not less beautiful, and these lips—”

He would have pressed them with his own—he would
have taken her into his arms, but she repulsed him.

“No, no! Alfred—this must not be. I am yours. Let
me prove to you that I am firm enough to protect your
rights from invasion.”

“But why so coy, dearest? Do you doubt me?”

“Heaven forbid.”

“Ah! but you do. Why do you shrink from me—
why this coldness? If you are mine, if these charms are
mine, why not yield them to me? I fear, Margaret, that
you doubt me still?”

“I do not—dare not doubt you, Alfred Stevens. My
life bangs upon this faith.”

“Why so cold then?”

“I am not cold. I love you—I will be your wife; and
never was wife more faithful, more devoted, than I will be
to you; but,—if you knew the dreadful agony which I
have felt, since that sad moment of my weakness, you
would forbear and pity me.”

“Hear me, Margaret; to-morrow is Saturday. John
Cross is to be here in the evening. He shall marry us on
Sunday. Are you willing?”

“Oh, yes! thankful, happy! Ah! Alfred, why did I
distrust you for an instant?”

“Why, indeed! But you distrust me no longer—you
have no more misgivings!”

“No, none!”

“You will be no longer cold, no longer coy, dear Margaret—here
in the sweet evening, among these pleasant
shades, love, alone, has supremacy. Here, in the words
of one of your favourites—

concluding this quotation, he would have taken her in his
embrace—he would have renewed those dangerous endearments
which had already proved so fatal; but she repulsed
the offered tenderness, firmly, but with gentleness.

“Margaret, you still doubt me,” he exclaimed reproachfully.

“No, Alfred, I doubt you not. I believe you. I have

only been too ready and willing to believe you. Ah!
have you not had sufficient proof of this? Leave me the
consciousness of virtue—the feeling of strength still to
assert it, now that my eyes are open to my previous
weakness.”

“But there is no reason to be so cold. Remember you
are mine by every tie of the heart—another day will make
you wholly mine. Surely, there is no need for this frigid
bearing. No, no! you doubt—you do not believe me,
Margaret!”

“If I did not believe you, Alfred Stevens,” she answered
gravely, “my prayer would be for death, and I should
find it. These woods which have witnessed my fault
should have witnessed my expiation. The homes which
have known—me should know me no more.”

The solemnity of her manner rather impressed him, but
having no real regard for her, he was unwilling to be baffled
in his true desires.

“If you doubt me not—if you have faith in me, Margaret,
why this solemnity, this reserve? Prove to me, by
your looks, by your actions, by the dear glances, the sweet
murmurs, and the fond embrace, what these cold assurances
do not say.”

His hand rested on her neck. She gently raised and
removed it.

“I have already proved to you my weakness. I will
now prove my strength. It is better so, Alfred. If I have
won your love, let me now command your esteem, or
maintain what is left me of my own. Do not be angry
with me if I insist upon it. I am resolute now to be worthy
of you and of myself.”

“Ah! you call this love?” said he bitterly. “If you
ever loved, indeed, Margaret—”

“If I ever loved,—and have I given you no proofs?”
she exclaimed in a burst of passion; “all the proofs that
a woman can give, short of her blood; and that, Alfred
Stevens,—that too, I was prepared to give, had you not
promptly assured me of your faith.”

She drew a small dagger from her sleeve, and bared it
beneath his glance.

“Think you I brought this without an object? No!
Alfred Stevens,—know me better! I came here prepared
to die, as well as a frail and erring woman could be prepared.

You disarmed the dagger. You subdued the
determination when you bid me live for you. In your
faith, I am willing to live. I believe you and am resolved
to make myself worthy of your belief also. I have promised
to be your wife, and here before heaven, I swear to
be your faithful wife; but, until then, you shall presume
in no respect. Your lip shall not touch mine; your arms
shall not embrace me; you shall see, dear Alfred, that, with
my eyes once opened fully upon my own weakness, I have
acquired the most certain strength.”

“Give me the dagger,” he said.

She hesitated.

“You doubt me still?”

“No, no!” she exclaimed handing him the weapon—
“no, no! I do not doubt you. I dare not. Doubt you,
Alfred?—that were death even without the dagger!”