University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

It was no difficult matter, in carrying out the design
of Sharpe, to send Barnabas abroad the next morning in
charge of Beauchampe. Sharpe had a headache, and declined

the excursion; proposing, very deliberately, to the
husband, to console himself for his absence in the company
of the wife. The latter was not present when the
arrangement was made. It took place at the stables,
after breakfast, while they were engaged in the examination
of the injured horse of Mr. Barnabas, and this gentleman
with his cicerone set forth from the spot, leaving
Sharpe, at his own leisure, to return to the house. Having
seen them fairly off, he did so with the deliberation of
one having a settled purpose. For his reappearance,
alone, Mrs. Beauchampe was entirely unprepared. As
he entered the room where she was sitting, she rose to
leave it, though without any symptoms of haste or agitation.
He placed himself between her and the door, and
thus effectually prevented her egress. She fixed her eye
keenly and coldly upon him.

“Alfred Stevens,” she said, “you are trifling with your
fate.”

“Call it not trifling, dear Margaret;—you are my fate,
and I never was more earnest in my life. Do not show
yourself so inflexible. After so long a separation such
coldness is cruel—it is unnatural.”

“You say truly,” she replied—“I am your fate. I have
long felt the persuasion that I would be; and I had prepared
myself for it. Still, I would it were not so. I
would not have your blood either on mine or the hands
of Beauchampe. I implored you last night to spare me
this necessity. It is not yet too late. Trifle not with
your destiny—waste not the moments which are left you.
Persevere in this course of madness for a day longer, and
you are doomed. Hear me—believe me! I speak mildly
and with method. I am speaking to you the convictions
of five dreary years.”

The calm, even, almost gentle manner and subdued
accents of the woman, had the effect of encouragement
rather than of warning. He was deceived by her bearing.
He was not so profound a proficient as he fancied
himself in the secrets of a woman's heart; and firmly
persuaded of the notion that he had expressed to Barnabas,
in the conversation of the previous night, that women
are never so little dangerous as when they threaten,
he construed all that she said into a sort of ruse de
guerre, the more certainly to conceal her real weakness.

“Come, come, Margaret,” he said, “it is you that
trifle, not me. This is no time for crimination and complaint.
Let me atone to you for the past. Believe me
you wrong me if you suppose I meant to desert you. I
was the victim of circumstances as well as yourself;—
circumstances which I can easily explain to you, and
which will certainly excuse me for any seeming breach
of faith. If you ever loved me, dear Margaret, it will not
be difficult to believe what I am prepared to affirm.”

“I do not doubt, sir, that you are prepared to affirm any
thing; but I ask you neither for proofs nor oaths. Why
should you volunteer them unasked, undesired. I have no
wish to make you add a second perjury to the first.”

“It is no perjury, Margaret; and you must hear me. I
claim it for my own justification.”

“I will not hear you, sir. If you are so well assured
of your justification let that consciousness content you. I
do not accuse—I will not reproach you. Go your ways—
leave me to mine. Surely, surely, Alfred Stevens, it is the
least boon that I could solicit at your hands, that, having
trampled me to the dust in shame—having robbed me of
peace and pride for ever—you should now leave me without
farther persecution to the homely privacy which the
rest of my life requires.”

“Do not call it persecution, Margaret. It is love—love
only! You were my first love—you shall be my last. I
cannot be deceived, dear Margaret, when I assume that I
was yours. We were destined for each other; and when
I recall to your memory those happy hours—”

“Recall them at your peril, Alfred Stevens!” she exclaimed
vehemently, interrupting him in the speech.—
“Recall them at your peril! Too vividly black already
are those moments in my memory. Spare me—spare
yourself! Beware! Be warned in season! Oh! man!
man! blind and desperate, you know not how nearly you
stand on the brink of the precipice.”

He regarded her with eyes full of affected admiration.

“At least, Margaret, whatever may be the falling off in
your love, your genius seems to be as fresh and vigorous
as ever. There is the same high poetical enthusiasm in
your words and thoughts, the same burning eloquence—”

“Col. Sharpe, these things deceive me no longer. I
regard them now as the disparaging mockeries of a subtle

and base spirit, meant to beguile and abuse the confidence
of a frank and unsuspecting one. I am no longer unsuspecting.
I am no longer the blind, vain country girl,
whom with ungenerous cunning, you could deceive and
dishonour. Shame and grief, which you brought to my
dwelling, have taught me lessons of truth and humiliation,
if not wisdom. What you say to me now, in the way of
praise, does not exhilarate—cannot deceive me, and may
exasperate! Once more I say to you, beware!”

“Ah, Margaret, are you sure that you do not deceive
yourself also in what you say. Allow that you care nothing
for praise—allow that your ear has become insensible
to the language of admiration—surely it cannot be insensible
to that of love.”

“Love!—your love!”

“Yes, Margaret—my love. You were not insensible
to it once.”

“I implore you not to remind me!”

“Ah, but I must, Margaret. Those moments were too
precious to me to be forgotten. The memory of those
joys too dear. Bitter was the grief which I felt when
compelled to fly from a region in which I had taught, and
been learned myself, the first true mysteries which I had
ever known of love. Think you that I could forget those
mysteries—those joys? Oh, never! nor could you! On
that conviction my hope is built. Wherever I fled, that
memory was with me still! It was my present solace
under every difficulty—the sweetening drop in every cup
which my lips were compelled to drink of bitter and annoyance.
Margaret, I cannot think that you did not love
me; I cannot think that you do not love me still. It is
impossible that you should have forgotten what we both
once knew of rapture in those dear moments at Charlemont.
And having loved me then—having given to me
the first youthful emotions of your bosom, you surely
cannot love this Beauchampe. No! no! love cannot be
so suddenly extinguished—the altar may have been deserted—the
fire untended—it may have grown dim, but it
is the sacred fire that can never utterly go out. I can understand,
dearest Margaret, that it is proper, that having
formed these new ties, you should maintain appearances,
but these appearances need not be fatal to love, though
they may require prudence at his hands. Have no fear

that my passion will offend against prudence. No, dearest
Margaret, the kiss will be the sweeter now, as it was
among the groves of Charlemont, from being stolen in
secret.”

She receded a few steps while he was yet speaking,
and at the close sunk into a chair. He approached her.
She waved him off in a manner that could not be set at
naught. A burning flush was upon her face, and the compression
of her lips denoted the strong working of a settled
but stifled resolution. She spoke at length.

“I have heard you to the close, Alfred Stevens. I understand
you. You speak with sufficient boldness now.
Would to God you had only declared yourself thus boldly
in the groves of Charlemont. Could I have seen then, as
I do now, the tongue of the serpent, and the cloven foot of
the fiend, I had not been what I am now, nor would you
have dared to speak these accursed words in my ears.”

“Margaret—”

“Stay, sir—I have heard you patiently. The shame
which follows guilt required thus much of me. You shall
now hear me!”

“Will I not, Margaret. Ah!—though your words
continue thus bitter, still it is a pleasure to hearken to
your words.”

A keen, quick flash of indignation brightened in her
eyes.

“I suppress,” she said, “I suppress much more than I
speak. I will confine my speech to that which seems
only necessary. Once more then, Col. Sharpe, I understand
your meaning. I do not disguise from you the fact
that nothing more is necessary to a full comprehension of
the foul purposes which fill your breast. But my reply is
ready. I cannot second them. I hate you with the most
bitter loathing. I behold you with scorn and detestation;
as a creature equally malignant and contemptible—as a
villain beyond measure—as a coward below contempt—
as a traitor to every noble sentiment of humanity; having
the malice of the fiend without his nobleness; and with
every characteristic of the snake but his shape. Judge
then for yourself, with what prospect you pursue your
purpose with me when such are the feelings I bear you,
when such are the opinions which I hold you in.”

“I cannot believe you, Margaret!”

“God be witness that I speak the truth.”

“Margaret, it is you that trifle with your fate. If in
truth you despise my love, you cannot surely despise my
power. It is now my turn to give you warning. I do
not threaten, but—beware!”

She started to her feet and confronted him with eyes
that flashed the defiance of a spirit above all apprehension.

“Your power! your power! you give me warning—
you threaten! Do I rightly hear you? Speak out! I
would not now misunderstand you! No! no! never
again must I misunderstand you! What is it you threaten?”

“You do misunderstand me, Margaret—I do not threaten.
I seek to counsel only—to warn you that I have
power; and that there can be no good policy in making
me your enemy!”

“You are mine enemy—you have ever been my worst
enemy. Heaven forbid that I should again commit the
monstrous error of thinking you my friend.”

“I am your friend, and would be. Nay, more, in spite
of this scorn which you express for me, and which I cannot
believe, I love you, Margaret, better, far better, than I
have ever loved woman.”

“You have a wife, Col. Sharpe?”

“Yes—but—”

“And children?”

“Yes—”

“For their sakes—I do not plead for myself—nor for
you—for their sakes, once more, I implore you to forbear
this pursuit. Persecute me no longer. Do not deceive
yourself with the vain belief that I have any feeling for
you but that which I now express. I hate and loathe you
—nay, am sworn, and again swear, to destroy you, unless
you desist—unless you leave me and leave me for ever.”

Her subdued tones again deceived him. He caught her
hand as she waved it in the utterance of the last sentence.
He carried it to his lips; but hastily withdrawing it from
his grasp, she smote him upon the mouth in the next instant,
and as he darted towards her threw open the drawer
of a table which stood within arm's length of her position,
and drawing from it a pistol, confronted him with its muzzle.
He recoiled, more perhaps with surprise than alarm.
She cocked the weapon, thrust it towards him with all the

manner of one determined upon its use, and with the ease
and air of one to whom the use of the weapon is familiar.
There was a pause of a single instant in which it was
doubtful whether she would draw the trigger or not—
doubtful even to Sharpe himself. But, with that pause, a
more human feeling came to her bosom. Her arm sunk—
the weapon was suffered to fall by her side, and she said,
with faltering voice—

“Go, I spare you for the sake of the unhappy woman,
your wife. Go, sir—it is well for you that I remembered
her.”

“Margaret!—this from you?”

“And from whom with more propriety! Know, Alfred
Stevens, that this weapon was prepared for you last night
—nay, more, that mine is no inexpert hand in its use.
For five years, day by day, have I practised this very
weapon at a mark, thinking of you only as the object upon
whom it was necessary I should use it. Think you, then,
what you escape, and return thanks to Heaven that brought
to my thought, in the very moment when your life hung
upon the smallest movement of my finger, the recollection
of your wife and innocent children. Judge for yourself
who has most to fear—you or myself.”

“Still, Margaret, there is a cause of fear which you do
not seem to see.”

“What is that?”

“Not the loss of life, perhaps—that, I can readily imagine
is not likely to be a cause of much fear with a proud,
strong-minded woman like yourself. But there are subjects
of apprehension infinitely more great than this—particularly
to a woman, a wife, and, to you more than all.
Your husband!”

“What of my husband!”

“A single word from me to him, and where is your
peace, your security? Ha! am I now understood? Do
you not see, Margaret, do you not feel, that I have power,
with a word, more effectually to destroy than even pistol-bullet
could do it.”

“And this is your precious thought!” she said with a
look of bitter, smiling contempt—“and with the baseness
which so completely makes your nature, you would lay
bare to my husband the unhappy guilt, in which, through

your own foul arts, my girlish innocence was lost! What
a brave treachery would this be!”

“Nay, Margaret, but I do not threaten this. I only declare
what might be the effect of your provoking me beyond
patience.”

“Oh! you are moderate—very moderate. I look on
you, Alfred Stevens, from head to foot, and doubt my eyes
that tell me I behold a man. The shape is there—the
outside of that noble animal, but it is sure a fraud. The
beast-fiend has usurped the nobler carcass, himself being
all the while unchanged.”

“Margaret, this scorn—”

“Is due, not less to your folly than your baseness, as
you will see when I have told you all. Know then, that
when I gave this hand to Orville Beauchampe—nay, before
it was given to him, and while he was yet at liberty to
renounce it—I told him that it was a dishonoured hand.”

“You did not! You could not!”

“By the God that hears me, I did. I told him the
whole story of my folly and my shame. Oh! Alfred
Stevens, if in truth you had loved me as you professed,
you would have known that it was not in my nature to
stoop to fraud and concealment at such a time. Could
you think that I would avail myself of the generous ardour
of that noble youth to suffer him, unwittingly, to link
himself to possible shame? No! no! His magnanimity,
his love, the warmth of his affections, the loftiness of his
soul, his genius—all—all demanded of me the most perfect
confidence; and I gave it him. I withheld nothing,
except, it seems, the true name of my deceiver!”

“I cannot believe it, Margaret—Beauchampe never
would have married you with this knowledge.”

“On my life, he did. Every syllable was spoken in
his ears. Nay, more, Colonel Sharpe,—and let this be
another warning to you to forbear and fly—I swore
Beauchampe on the Holy Evangelists, ere he made my
hand his own, to avenge my dishonour on my betrayer.
I made that the condition of my hand!”

“And why now would you forbear prosecuting this
vengeance? Why, if you were so resolved upon it,—
why do you counsel me to fly from the danger? Do you
mean to declare the truth to Beauchampe when I am
gone?”

“No! not if you leave me, and promise me never
again to seek either me or him.”

“No! no! Margaret, this story lacks probability. I
cannot believe it. I am a lawyer, you must remember.
These inconsistencies are too strong. You swear your
husband on the Holy Evangelists to take my life, and the
next moment shield me from the danger? Now, the ferocious
hate which induced the first proceeding cannot be
so easily quieted, as in a little month after, to effect the
second. The whole story is defective, Margaret—it lacks
all probability.”

“Be it so! You are a lawyer, and no doubt a wise
one. The story may seem improbable to you, but it is
true nevertheless. However strange and inconsistent, it
is yet not unnatural. The human ties which bind me to
earth have grown stronger since my marriage, and, for
this reason, if for no other, I would have the hands of my
husband free from the stain of human blood, even though
that blood be yours! For this reason I have condescended
to expostulate with you—to implore you! For
this reason do I still implore and expostulate. Leave
me,—leave this house the moment your friend returns.
Avoid Beauchampe as well as myself. There are a thousand
easy modes for breaking off an intimacy. Adopt
any one of these which shall seem least offensive. Spare
me the necessity of declaring to my husband that the
victim he is sworn to slay, is the person who has pretended
to be his friend.”

The philosophical poet tells us, that he whom God
seeks to destroy he first renders a lunatic. In the conceit
of his soul, in the plenitude of his legal subtlety, and
with that blinding assurance that he could not lose, by
any process, the affections he had once won, Sharpe persisted
in believing that the story to which he listened,
was, in truth, nothing more than an expedient of the
woman to rid herself of the presence and the attentions
which she rather feared than disliked. He neither believed
that she had told the truth to Beauchampe, nor
that she loathed him as she had declared. Himself of a
narrow and slavish mind, he could not conceive the magnanimity
of soul, which, in such a case as that of Margaret
Cooper, would declare her dishonour to a lover seeking
her hand;—still less was he willing to believe in the farther

stretch of magnanimity, on the part of Beauchampe, in
marrying any woman in the teeth of such a revelation.
We may add, that, with such a prodigious degree of self-esteem
as he himself possessed, the improbability was
equally great that Margaret should ever cease to regard
him with t devotedness of love. He had taken for
granted that it was through the medium of her affections
that she became his victim, though all his arts were made
to bear upon other characteristics of her moral nature,
entirely different from those which belong to the tender
passion. A vain man finds it easy to deceive himself, if
he deceives nobody else. Here then, was a string of improbabilities
which it required the large faith of a liberal
spirit to overcome. Sharpe was not a man of liberal spirit,
and such men are usually incredulous where the magnanimity
of noble soul is the topic. Small wits are always
of this character. Scepticism is their shield and even
sevenfold coat of mail, and incredulity is the safe wisdom
of timidity and self-esteem. Such men neither believe in
their neighbours or in the novel truths which they happen
to teach. They pay the penalty in most cases by dying
in their blindness.

Will this be the case with the party before us? Time
will show. At all events, the earnest adjurations of the
passionate and full-souled woman were entirely thrown
away upon him. What she had said had startled him
at first; but with the usual obduracy of self-esteem, he
had soon recovered from his momentary discomposure.
He shook his head slowly, while a smile on his lips declared
his doubts.

“No, Margaret, it is impossible that you should have
told these things to Beauchampe. I know you better,
and I know well that he could never have married you,
having a knowledge of the truth. You cannot deceive
me, Margaret; and wherefore should you try? Why
would you reject the love which was so dear to you in
Charlemont; and if you can do this, I cannot? I love
you too well, Margaret—remember too keenly the delights
of our first union, and will not believe in the necessity
that denies that we should meet. No! no! Once
found, I will not lose you again, Margaret. You are too
precious in my sight. We must see and meet each other
often. Beauchampe shall still be my friend—his marriage

with you has made him doubly dear to me. So far
from cutting him, I shall find occasions for making his
household a place of my constant pilgrimage; and do
not sacrifice yourself by vain opposition to this intimacy.
It will do no good and may do harm. I can make his
fortune; and I will, if you will hear reason. But you must
remove to Frankfort—be a dutiful wife in doing so; and,
—for this passion of revenge,—believe that I was quite
as much afflicted as yourself by the necessity that tore
us asunder—as was the truth—and you will forgive the
involuntary crime, and forget every thing but the dear
delights of that happy period. Do you hear me, Margaret—you
do not seem to listen!”

She regarded him with a countenance of melancholy
scorn, which seemed also equally expressive of hopelessness
and pity. It seemed as if she was at a loss which
sentiment most decidedly to entertain. Looking thus,
but in perfect silence, she rose, and taking the pistol from
the table where it had lain, she advanced towards the
door of the apartment. He would have followed her, but
she paused when at the door, and turning, said to him—

“If I knew, Colonel Sharpe, by what form of oath I
could make you believe what I have said, I would asseverate
solemnly its truth. I am anxious for your sake,
for my sake, and the sake of my husband, that you should
believe me. As God will judge us all, I have spoken nothing
but the truth. I would save you, and spare myself
the necessity of any farther revelations. Life is still dear
to me—peace is every thing to me now. It is to secure
this peace that I suppress my feelings—that I still implore
you to listen to me and to believe. Be merciful. Spare
me! Spare yourself. Propose any form of oath which
you consider most solemn, most binding, and I will repeat
it on my knees, in confirmation of what I have said! for
on my soul I have spoken nothing but the truth!”

He laughed and shook his head, as he advanced to
where she stood.

“Nay, nay, Margaret,—the value of oaths in such
cases is but small. No form of oath can be very binding.
Jove, you know, laughs at the perjuries of lovers; and if
we are lovers no longer,—which I cannot easily believe,
—the business between us, is so certainly a lover's business,
that Jove will laugh none the less at the vows we

violate in carrying it on. You took it too seriously,
Margaret—it is you that are not wise. You cannot deceive
me—you are wasting labour.”

She turned from him, mournfully, with a single look,
and in another moment was gone from sight.