University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.

Beauchampe and his wife sat together beside the open
window. It was night—a soft mellowing light fell upon
the trees and herbage, and the breeze mildly blew in pleasant
gushes about the apartment. In the room was no
light. Her hand was in his. Her manner was thoughtful,
and, when she spoke, her words were low and subdued as
if, in her abstract mood, it needed some effort of her lips
to speak. Beauchampe himself was more moody than his
wont. There is always, in the heart of one conscious of
the recent possession of a new and strongly desired object,
a feeling of uncertainty. Even the most sanguine temperament,
feels, at times, unassured of its own blessings. Perhaps,
such feelings of doubt and incertitude are intended to
give us a foretaste of those final privations to which life is
every where certainly subject; and to reconcile us, by natural
degrees, to the last dread separation in death. At all
events nothing can be more natural than such feelings.
Our hearts faint with fear in the very moment when we
are revelling in the sober certainty of waking bliss! When
love, hooded and fettered, refuses to quit his cage—when
every dream appears satisfied; when peace, fostered by
security, seems to smile in the conviction of a reality
which promises fullest permanence; and the imagination
knows nothing to crave, and even egotism loses its strong
passion for complaint; even then we shudder, as with an
instinct that teaches much more than any thought, and
knocks more loudly at the door of the heart, than any of
its more reasonable apprehensions.

This instinct was at work, at the same moment, in both
their bosoms.

“I know not why it is,” said Beauchampe, “but I feel
as if something were to happen. I feel unacconntably sad
and apprehensive. It is not a fear—scarcely a doubt, that
fills my mind—nay, for that matter my mind is silent—I
strive to think in vain. It is a sort of voice from the soul
—a presentiment of evil—more like a dream in its approaches,

and yet, in its influence, more real, more emphatic,
than any actual voice speaking to my outward ears.
Do you ever have such feelings, Anna?”

“I have them now!” she answered in low tones.

“Indeed! it is very strange!”

He put his arm about her waist as he spoke, and drew
her closer to himself. Her head sunk upon his shoulder.
He did not behold them, but her eyes were filled with
tears. How strange were such tears to her! How suddenly
had she undergone a change—and such a change!
She who had never known fear, was now timid as a child.
Love is, before all, the great subduer. It was in an unknown
condition of peace and pleasure that the wife of
Beauchampe had become softened. Apprehension necessarily
succeeds to conquest. There is no courage so cool
and collected as that which has nothing to lose; and timidity
naturally grows from a consciousness of large, valuable
and easily endangered possessions. Such was the origin
of the fear in the bosoms of both.

Certainly they had much to lose! Happiness is always
an unstable possession, and we know this by instinct. The
union of the two had perfected the union of the two families.
Mrs. Beauchampe, the elder, in the very obvious
and remarkable change of manner, which followed the
marriage of Miss Cooke with her son, had become reconciled—nay,
pleased with the match. Mary Beauchampe
was of course all joy and all tears; and even Jane, escaped
from the first danger of being swallowed up, was gradually
brought to see the intellectual beauties, and the personal
also, of her brother's wife, without beholding her sterner
aspects. For the present, Beauchampe lived with his
wife's mother, but the two families were together daily.
They walked, rode, sang, read and played together. They
made a little world to themselves, and they were so happy
in it. The tastes of Beauchampe gradually became more
and more refined and elevated under the nicer sway of feminine
taste, and those delicacies of direction which none
can so well impart as a highly intellectual woman. He no
longer dreamed of such ordinary distinctions as make up
the small hopes of witling politicians. To be the great
bellwether of a clamorous flock, for a season, did not
now constitute the leading object of his ambition. Far
from it. A short month of communion with an enthusiastic,

high-souled woman—unhappy, perhaps, that she was
so—had wrought as decided a change in his moral nature,
as the love which he brought had operated upon hers.
They were both changed. But it needs that we should
dwell upon the power of Love to tame, and subject, and
elevate the base and stubborn nature. Surely it is no
mere fable, rightly read, which makes him lead the lion
with a thread. Briefly, there is no human beast that he
cannot, with the same ease, subdue.

Before his meeting with his wife, however, Beauchampe
was superior in moral respects to his associates. This
must be understood. He had strength of mind and ambition;
he was generous, free in his impulses, and usually
more gentle in their direction than was the case with his
companions. His rudenesses were those of the rustic,
whose sensibilities yet sleep in his soul, like the undiscovered
gold in the dark places of the sullen mountain. It
was for Love to detect the slight vein leading to these recesses,
and to refine the treasure to which it led. Great,
in matters of this sort, is that grand alchemist. The model
of refiners is he! No Rosicrucian ever did so much to
turn the baser metal into gold. Unhappily, as in the case of
other seekers after projection, it is sometimes the case that
the grand experiment finishes in fumo, and possibly with
a loud explosion.

But it does not become us to jest in this stage of our
narrative. Too sad, too serious, are the feelings with
which we now must deal. If Beauchampe and his wife
are happy, they are so in the activity and excitement of
those sensibilities which are the most liable to overthrow.
In proportion to the exquisite sweetness of the sensation,
is its close approximation to the borders of pain. The
joy of the soul which is the source of all the raptures of
love, is itself a joy of sadness, and yearning and excessive
apprehension. Soon does this apprehension rise to cloud
the pleasure and oppress the hope. This is the origin of
those presentiments, which say what our thoughts cannot
say, and in spite of our thoughts. They grew in the
bosom of Beauchampe and his wife, along with the necessity
which he felt and had declared, of assuming vigorously
the duties of his profession. These duties required that
he should move into a more busy sphere, and this duty involved
the removal of his wife from that seclusion in which,

for the last five years, her sensibilities had found safety.
This, to her, was a source of terror; and she trembled
with a singular fear lest, in doing so—in going once more
out into the world she had left, she should encounter her
betrayer. Very different now were her feelings toward
Alfred Stevens. For five years had she treasured the one
vindictive hope of meeting him with the purpose of revenge.
For five years had she moulded the bullets, and addressed
them to the mark which symbolized his breast. Her chief
prayer in all this time, was, that she might behold him
with power to employ upon him the skill which she had
daily shown upon the insensible trees of the forest. To
kill him, and then to die, was all that she had prayed for—
and now the difference! In one little month all this had
undergone a change. Her feelings had once more been
humanized—perhaps we should say womanized; for, in
these respects, women are more capricious than men, and
the transitions of love to hate, and hate to love, are much
more rapid in the case of a grown woman than in that of
a grown man. As for boys, until twenty-five, they are
perhaps little more than girls in breeches—certainly they
are quite as capricious. The experience of five years
after twenty-five does more to harden the sensibilities of a
man, than any other ten years of his life.

Great, indeed, was the change in this respect which
Beauchampe's wife had undergone. Not to meet Stevens
was now her prayer. True, she had sworn her husband,
if they did meet, to take his life. But that had been the
condition of her hand;—that was before he had become
her husband,—before she well knew his value,—before
she could think upon the risks which she herself would
incur, by the danger which, in the prosecution of this
pledge, would necessarily accrue to him. Nor was her
change of character less decided in another grand essential.
In learning to forget and forgive, she had also
learned to forego the early dreams with which her ambitious
mind commenced its progress.

“You speak of fame, Beauchampe,” she said, even
while sitting as we have described, in the darkness, looking
forth upon the faint light which the stars shed upon
the garden-shrubbery:—“ you speak of fame, Beauchampe,—oh!
how I once dreamed of it! Now I care
for it nothing. Rather, indeed, should I prefer, if we

could remain here, out of the world's eye, living to ourselves,
and secure from that opinion which we are too
apt to seek; upon which we too much depend;—which
does not confer fame, and but too often robs us of happiness.
It is my presentiment on this very subject, which
makes me dread the removal to Frankfort which you contemplate.”

“And yet,” said he, “I know not how we can avoid
it. It seems necessary.”

“I believe it, and do not mean to urge you against it.
I only wish that it were not necessary. But, being so, I
will go with you cheerfully. I am not daunted by the
prospect, though it oppresses me. How much more
happy, if we could live here always!”

“No, no, Anna, you would soon sicken of this. You
would ask, why have I married this rustic? You will
hear of the great men around, and will say, `he might
have been one of them.' Your pride is greater than you
believe;—you are not so thoroughly cured of your ambition
as you think.”

“Oh, indeed, I am! I look back to the days when I
had a passion for fame as to a period when I was under
monomania. Truly, it was a monomania. Oh! Beauchampe,
had you known me then!”

“Why had I not! We had been so happy then,
Anna—we had saved so many days of bliss, and then—
but it is not too late! Anna, there is no good reason
why a genius such as yours, should be obscured—lost
for ever. The world must know it, and worship it!”

“The world! Oh, never!” she exclaimed, with a
shudder. “The world is my terror now! Would we
could never know it.”

“But why these scruples, dearest?”

“Why!—Can you ask, Beauchampe? Do you forget
what I have been—what I am!”

“You are my wife, and I am a man. Do you think
the world will venture to speak a word which shall shame
or annoy you?”

“It is not in its speech, but in its knowledge!”

“But what will it know? Nothing.”

“Unless we meet with him!”

“And if we do?”

“Ah!—let us speak of it no more, Beauchampe!”

“One word only! If we meet with him, he dies, and

is thus silenced! Will it be likely that he will speak of
that, which only incurs the penalty of death?”

“Enough! enough! The very inquiry—the conjecture
which you utter, Beauchampe,—is conclusive with
me, that I should not go into the world. With you, as
your wife, humble, shrinking out of sight, solicitous only
of obscurity, and toiling only for your applause and love,
—I shall be permitted to pass without indignity,—without
waking up that many-tongued slanderer, that lies
ever in wait, dogging the footsteps of ambition. Were
I now to seek the praises which you and others have
thought due to my genius, I should incur the hostility of
the foul-mouthed and the envious. No moment of my
life would be secure from suspicion; no movement of my
mind, safe from the assaults of the caviller. It is one
quality of error—nay, even of misfortune—to betray
itself wherever it goes. The proverb tells us, that murder
will have a tongue—it appears to me, that all crimes will
reveal themselves in some way, some day or other.
Better, Beauchampe, that I remain unseen, unknown,
than be known as I am!—”

“Better!—But this cannot be—you must be seen—
you will be known! The world will seek you, to admire.
Remember, Anna, that I have friends, numerous friends;
—among them are some of the ablest men of our profession—of
any profession. There is no man better able
than this very gentleman, Colonel Sharpe, to appreciate
a genius such as yours.”

“Do not mock me with such language, Beauchampe.
Instead of thinking of the world's admiration, I should be
thinking only of its possible discoveries. As for Colonel
Sharpe, somehow, I have an impression—gathered, I
know not how, but possibly from his letters, that he
lacks sincerity. There is a tone of scepticism and levity
about his language, which displeases and pains me. He
lacks heart. I only wonder how you should have sought
your professional knowledge at his hands.”

“You forget, Anna, that I sought nothing at his hands
but professional knowledge; and most persons will tell
you, that I could scarcely have sought it any where with
greater prospect of finding it. He is one of our best
lawyers. As a man, frankly I confess to you, he is not
one whom I admire. You seem to me to have hit his
right character. He has always seemed to lack sincerity;

and this impression, which he made upon me at a very
early period, has always kept me from putting more of
my heart within his power, than was absolutely unavoidable.”

“Ah, Beauchampe, a man of your earnest temperament
knows not how much he gives. You carry your heart
too much in your eyes, in your hand. This is scarcely
good policy.”

“With you, dearest, it was the only policy,” he said,
with a smile; while he pressed her closer to his bosom.

“Ah! with me!—But that is yet to be determined.
You know not yet.”

“What! are you not mine? Do I not feel you in my
arms? Do I not embrace you?”

“It may be that you embrace death, Beauchampe.”

“Speak not so gloomily, my love. Why should you
yield yourself to such vague and nameless apprehensions?
There is nothing to cloud our prospect, which,
when I think, seems all bright and cloudless as the night
we gaze on.”

“Ah! when you think, Beauchampe—but thought is
no seer, though an active speculator. You forget these
instincts, Beauchampe—these presentiments!”

“I have forgotten mine,” he answered, livelily.

“Ah! but mine depart not so soon. They rise still,
and will continue to rise.”

“You brood over—you encourage them.”

“No! but they seem a part of me. I have always had
them, even in the days of my greatest exultation; when,
in truth, I had no cares to suggest them. They have
marked and preceded, like omens, all my misfortunes.
Should I not fear them then?”

“Not now: it is only the old habit of your mind which
is now active. Gloomy thoughts and complaining accents
become habitual; and, even when the sun shines, the eye,
long accustomed to the cloud, still fancies that it beholds
it gathering blackly in the distance. Now you are secure.
Your cloud is gone, dearest, never, never to return.”

“See where it rises, Beauchampe, an image on the
night. How ominous, were these days of superstition,
would that dark image be of our fortunes. Even as
you spoke with such confident assurance, the evening
star grew faint. Love's own star waned in the growing

darkness of the west. Love's own star seemed to shroud
itself in gloom at the prediction which so soon may be
rendered false. Look how fast is the ascent of that
gloomy tabernacle of the storm. Not one of the lovely
lights in that quarter of the sky remains to cheer us.
Even thus, have the lights of my hope for ever gone out.
That first light of my soul, which was the morning star
of my being—its insane passion for fame, was thus obscured;—then,
the paler gleams of evening which denoted
love; and how fast after, followed all that troop of
smaller lights which betokened the dreams and hopes of
a warm and throbbing heart. Ah! Beauchampe! faded,
stricken out, not one by one, as the joys and hopes of
others, but with a sudden eclipse that swept all their delusive
legions at a moment out of sight,—never, never to
return!”

“Say not, never!”

“Ah! it is my fear that speaks—the long sense of desolation
and dread which has made up so many years of
my life!—It is this which makes me speak, from a conviction
of the past, with a dark prophetic apprehension of
the future. True, that the love blesses me now, a delusive
image of which defrauded me before,—but how
with the sudden rising of that cloud before my eyes,
even in the hour of your boastful speech, and perhaps,
my no less boastful hope,—how can I else than believe
that another delusion, no less fatal than the past, though
now untouched with shame, has found its way to my
heart, beguiling me with hope, only to sink me in despair?”

“Arouse, my love is no delusion;” said the husband,
reproachfully.

“I meant not that, Beauchampe—I believe not that.
Heaven knows I hold it as a truth—and the sweetest
truth that my soul has ever known in its human experience.
But for its permanence I feared. I doubted not
that the light was pure and perfect; but, alas! I knew
not how soon it might go out. I felt that it was a bright
star shining down upon my soul; but I also feel that
there is a gloomy storm rising to obscure the star, and
leave me in a darkness more complete than ever. Oh!
Beauchampe, if we should ever meet that man!”

“He dies, Anna!”

“Oh, no! I mean not that.”

“Have I not sworn?”

“Yes! but the exaction of that oath was in my madness—it
was impious: I shudder but to think of it. May
you never, never meet with him.”

“Amen! I trust that we may never!”

“Could I but be sure of that!”

“Let it not trouble you, dearest: we may never meet
with him.”

“Ay, but we may; and the doubt of that dreadful
possibility, flings a gloomy shadow over the dear, sweet
reality of the present.”

“Be of better cheer, my heart. You are mine. You
know that nothing is left for me to learn. You look to
me for love—you depend not upon the world, but upon
me. That world, as it can teach me nothing of your
value that can make the smallest approach to the certainties
which I feel, so it can report nothing in your disparagement
which your own lips have not already spoken.
Why then should you fear? At the worst, we can only
sink out of the world's sight when its looks irk, or its
tones annoy us.”

“Ah! that is not so easy, Beauchampe. Once out of
the world's eye, nothing is so easy as to remain so. But
the world pursues the person who has challenged its regard;
and haunts the dwelling where it fancies it may
find a spot of shame. Besides, is not your fame precious
to me as well as to yourself. This profession of yours,
more than any other in our country, is that which concentrates
upon itself the public gaze. When you have
won this gaze, Beauchampe, when you have controlled
the eager ears of an audience, and commanded the admiration
of an admiring multitude—if, at this moment, some
slanderous finger should guide the eye of the spectator
from the commanding eminence of the orator to the form
of her who awaits him at home, and say—`what pity!'—
ah! Beauchampe!—”

“Speak of it no more,” said Beauchampe, and there
was a faintness in his accents while he spoke, that made
it certain that he felt annoyance from the suggestion. Unwittingly,
she sighed, as her keen instinct detected the
feeling which her words had inspired. Beauchampe drew
her closer to him, forced her upon his knee, and sought,
by the adoption of a tone and words of better assurance, to

do away with the gloomy presentiments under which her
mood was evidently and painfully struggling.

“I tell you, Anna, these are childish fancies!—at the
worst, mere womanish fears! Believe me, when I tell
you, that the days shall now be bright before you. You
have had your share of the cloud. There is no lot utterly
void and dark. God balances our fortunes with singular
equality. None are all prosperous—none are all unfortunate.
If the youth be one of gloom and trial, the manhood
is likely to be bright and cheerful; while he, who in
youth has known sunshine only, will, in turn, most probably
be compelled to taste the cup of bitterness for which
he is wholly unprepared. It is perhaps fortunate for all
to whom the bitterness of this cup becomes, in youth,
familiar. At the worst, if still compelled to drink of it,
the taste is more certainly reconciled to its ungracious
flavour. That you have had this poisoned chalice commended
to your lips in youth, is perhaps something of a
guarantee that you shall escape the draught hereafter. So
far from the past, therefore, flinging its huge dark shadow
upon the future, it should be regarded as a solemn background,
which, by contrast, shall reflect more brightly
than were it not, the gay, gladdening lights which shall
gather and burn about your pathway. I tell you, dearest,
I know this shall be the case. You have outlived the
storm—you shall now have sunny skies, and smooth seas.
Neither this beauty which I call my own, nor these talents
which are so certainly yours, shall be doomed to the obscurity
to which your unnecessary fears would assign
them. I tell you I shall yet behold you, glowing among,
and above, the ambitious circle. I shall yet hear the rich
words of your song floating through the charmed assembly,
at once startling the soul and soothing the stilled ear of
admiration. Come, come—fling aside this shadow from
your heart, and let it show itself in all its glory. Look
your best smiles, my love—and—will you not sing me
now one of those proud songs, which you sang for me the
other night—one of those which tell me how proud, how
ambitious was your genius in the days of your girlhood?
Do not deny me, Anna. Sing for me—sing for me one
of those songs.”

She began a strain, though with reluctance, which declared
all the audacious egotism which is usually felt, if

not always expressed, by the ardent and conscious poet.
The fame for which she had once yearned—the wild
dreams which once possessed her imagination and influenced
her hope—were poured forth in one of those irregular
floods of harmony—at once abrupt and musical—
which never issue from the lips of the mere instructed
minstrel. Truly, it might have awakened the soul under
the ribs of death; and the heart of Beauchampe bounded
and struggled within him, not capable of action, yet full,
as it seemed, of a most impatient discontent. Wrought
up to that enthusiasm of which his earnest nature was
easily susceptible, he caught her in his arms ere the strain
was ended, and the thought which filled his mind, arising
from the admiration which he felt, was that which told
him what a sin it would be, if such genius should be kept
from its fitting utterance before admiting thousands. The
language of eulogism which he had used to her a few moments
before was no longer that of hyperbole: and, releasing
her from his grasp, while she concluded the strain,
he paced the floor of the apartment, meditating with the
vain pride of an adoring lover, upon the sensation which
such a song, and so sung, would occasion in the souls of
any audience.

The strain ceased. The silence which followed, though
deep and breathless, was momentary only. A noise of
approaching horses was heard at the entrance; and the
prescient heart of the wife sunk within her. She felt as
if this visit were a foretaste of that world which she feared;
and hurrying up to her chamber, while Beauchampe went
to the entrance, she endeavoured, by a brief respite from
the trials of reception—and in solitude—to prepare her
mind for an encounter, the anticipated annoyance from
which was, however, of a very different character from
that to which she was really destined.