University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.

That evening, as she had promised, Janet Berkeley
indulged Captain Barsfield with the interview which he
desired; and while Rose Duncan was left to the task,
pleasant or otherwise, of entertaining the sentimental yet
laughter-loving lieutenant, the graver maiden, in an adjoining
apartment, was held to the severer trial of maintaining
the uniform complaisance of the lady and the
courteous consideration of the hostess, while listening
to one whose every movement she distrusted, and whose
whole bearing towards her and hers had been positively
injurious, if not always hostile. Barsfield, too, though
moved by contradictory feelings, was compelled to subject
them all beneath the easy deportment and conciliatory
demeanour of a gentleman in the presence of one
of the other sex. He rose to meet her upon her entrance,
and conducted her to a chair. A few moments
elapsed before he spoke, and his words were then
brought forth with the difficulty of one who is somewhat
at a loss where to begin. At length, as if ashamed of
his weakness, he commenced without preliminaries upon
the immediate subject which had prompted the desire
for the interview.

“My surgeon tells me, Miss Berkeley, that his patient—yours,
I should rather say—Mr. Mellichampe,
will soon be able to undergo removal.”

“Removal! sir,” was the momentary exclamation of
Janet, with a show of pain not less than of surprise in
her ingenuous countenance.

“My orders are to remove him to the city, as soon
as the surgeon shall pronounce him in a fit condition to
bear with the fatigue. He tells me that such will soon
be the case. Mr. Mellichampe now walks his chamber,
I understand, and is in every respect rapidly recovering
from his hurts.”

“He is certainly better than he was, Captain Barsfield;
but he is yet very, very feeble—too feeble quite
to bear with the fatigues of such a journey.”

“You underrate the strength of the young gentleman,
Miss Berkeley. He is a well-knit, hardy soldier for
one so youthful, and will suffer less than you imagine.
I trust that my surgeon does not report incorrectly
when he states that, in all probability, it will be quite
safe to remove him at the commencement of the ensuing
week.”

“So soon!” was the unaffected, the almost unconscious
exclamation.

“It is painful to me to deprive you, Miss Berkeley,
of any pleasure—of one, too, the loss of which, even in
anticipation, seems to convey so much anxiety and sorrow;
but the duties of the soldier are imperative.”

“I would not wish, sir, to interfere with yours, whatever
my own wishes may be, Captain Barsfield,” replied
the maiden, with a degree of dignity which seemed
provoked into loftiness by the air of sarcasm pervading
the previous speech of the tory.

“It is for you, sir,” she continued, “to do your duty,
if you so esteem it, without reference to the weaknesses
of a woman, and, least of all, of mine.”

“You mistake, Miss Berkeley—you mistake your
own worth, not less than my feelings and present objects.
Your weaknesses, if it so pleases you to call
them, are sacred in my sight; and, though my duty
as a soldier prompts me to take the course with the
prisoner which I have already made known to you, such
is my regard to your wishes, and for you, that I am not

unwilling, in some particulars, to depart from that
course with the desire to oblige you.”

The maiden looked up inquiringly.

“How am I to understand this, Captain Barsfield?”

“Oh, Miss Berkeley, there needs no long explanation.
If Mellichampe has loved you, you have been no
less beloved by me. I cannot now deceive myself on
the subject of your regards. I am not so self-blinded
as to mistake your feelings for him.”

“Nor I to deny them, Mr. Barsfield. There was a
time, sir, when I should have shrunk, as from death, from
such an avowal as this. It is now my pride, my boast
—now that he is deserted by friends, and in the hands
of enemies—”

“In your hands, Miss Berkeley,” he said, interrupting
her.

“How, sir?”

“In no other hands than yours. Let me show you
this. He is not in the hands of enemies, only as you
so decree it.”

“Proceed, sir, proceed,” she said, impatiently, seeing
that he paused in his utterance.

“A few words from you, Miss Berkeley, and, such
is your power over me, such my regard for you, that,
though Mellichampe be my deadly enemy—one who has
sought my life, and one whose life my own sense of
self-preservation prompts me with like perseverance
equally to seek, I am yet willing, in the face of my
pledges, my interest, my duty, to connive at his release
from this most unpleasant custody. I am willing to
place the key of his prison door in your hands, and to
give the signal myself when he shall fly in safety.”

“You speak fairly, sir—very fairly—very nobly,
indeed, if you have spoken all that you design—all
that you mean. But is it your regard for me alone
that prompts these sentiments—are there no conditions
which you deem of value to yourself? Let me hear

all—all that you have in reserve, Captain Barsfield, for
you will pardon me if, hitherto, I have not esteemed you
one to forfeit your pledges, your interest, your duty, to
serve, without conditions, a poor maiden like myself.”

The cheek of the tory grew to a deep crimson as
he spoke, and his words were crowded and uttered
chokingly when he replied,

“I am not now to learn for the first time, that, influenced
as she has been by the speech of others, unfriendly
and malignant, the opinions of Miss Berkeley have
done me at all times less than justice. The words of
old Max Mellichampe, the father of this boy, were thus
hostile ever: and they have not been poured into unwilling
ears, having you for an auditor, Miss Berkeley.
And yet—I had thought that one so gentle as yourself
would have shrunk from the language of hatred and denunciation,
and been the last so keenly to treasure up
its remembrance.”

“Can Captain Barsfield wonder that I should remember
the opinions of Colonel Mellichampe with
reference to himself, when after circumstances have so
completely confirmed their justice? Is not Captain
Barsfield an active and bloody enemy to the people of his
own land—fighting against them under the banner of
the invader—and proving himself most bloody and hostile
to those with whom he once dwelt, and by whose indulgence,
as I have heard, his own infancy was nurtured?
Can I forget, too, that by his own hands the
brave old colonel perished in a most unequal fight?”

“But still a fair one, Miss Berkeley—still a fair
fight, and one of his own seeking. But what you have
just said, Miss Berkeley, gives me a good occasion to
set you right on some matters, and to unfold to you the
truth in all. The taking arms under the flag of England,
which you style that of the invader, and the death
of Colonel Max Mellichampe, form but a single page
of the same drama. They are as closely related, Miss

Berkeley, as cause and effect, since it was Max Mellichampe
that made me—why should I blush to say it?
—a tory, in arms against my countrymen:—and to that
enrolment — fatal enrolment!—for even now I curse
the day on which it was recorded, and him no less that
moved it—he owes, and justly owes, his own defeat
and death.”

“I believe it not, sir. Colonel Mellichampe move
you to become a tory—to lift the sword against your
people? Never—never!”

“Hear me out, and you will believe—you cannot
else. He did not move me—did not argue with me to
become a tory—oh, no! He forced me to become
one. Would you hear?”

“Speak on.”

“When this cruel and unnatural war commenced in
South Carolina, I had taken no part on either side.
The violence of the whigs around me, Colonel Mellichampe
among them, and the most active among them,
towards all those not thinking with themselves, revolted
my feelings and my pride, if it did not offend my principles.
I was indignant that, while insisting upon all the
rights of free judgment for themselves, they should at
the same time deny a like liberty to others. And yet
they raved constantly of liberty. It was, in their
mouths, a perpetual word—and with them it signified
every thing and nothing. It was to give them a free
charter for any and every practice, and it was to deprive
all others of every right, natural and acquired. I dared
to disagree—I dared to think differently, and to speak
my opinions aloud, though I lifted no weapon, as yet, to
sustain them. Was I then a criminal, Miss Berkeley?
Was it toryism to think according to my understanding,
and to speak the opinions which I honestly
entertained? Do me justice and say, so far, I had
transgressed no law, either of morals or of the land.”

“Do not appeal to me, Captain Barsfield; I am but
a poor judge of such matters.”

“If you have not judged, Miss Berkeley, you, at
least, have sentenced upon the authority of others; and
it is your sentence, and their authority, that I seek now
to overthrow.”

“Go on, sir; I would not do you injustice, and I
would rejoice to think that you could relieve yourself
from the unfavourable opinions even of one so humble
as myself. But I fear me you will fail, sir.”

“I hope not, at least, Miss Berkeley; and the fear
that you have uttered encourages and strengthens my
hope. I now proceed with my narrative. I had, as I
have told you, my own opinions, and this was presumption
in the eyes of a dictatorial, proud man like Max
Mellichampe. I uttered them, and loudly too, and this
was the error of one so weak, so wanting in public influence
and wealth as myself. Would you hear how
this monstrous error was punished?—this part of the
story, perhaps, has never reached your ears.”

“Punished, sir!” replied the maiden, with some show
of astonishment in her countenance,—“what punishment?
I had not heard of any punishment.”

“I thought not,—the punishment was too light—too
trivial—too utterly disproportioned to the offence, to
make a part of the narrative. But I was punished, Miss
Berkeley, and, for a crime so monstrous as that of thinking
differently from my neighbour, even you will doubtlessly
conceive the penalty a slight one.”

He paused; bitter emotions seemed to gather in his
bosom, and he turned away hastily, and strode to the
opposite end of the room. In another moment he returned.

“You have heard of my offence—you should know
how it was dealt with—not by strangers, not by enemies—but
by those with whom I had lived—by whose
indulgence I had been nurtured. Would you hear, Miss
Berkeley?”

“Go on, sir.”

“Hear me, then. My neighbours came to me at
midnight—not as neighbours, but armed, and painted,
and howling—at midnight. They broke into my dwelling—a
small exercise of their newly-gotten liberty;—
they tore me from the bed where I was sleeping;—they
dragged me into the highway, amid a crowd of my
brethren—my countrymen—all cheering, and most of
them assisting in the work of punishment.”

“They surely did not this?” was her exclamation.

“They surely did!—but this was not all. An offence
so horrible as mine—free thinking in a free country—
was yet to have its punishment. What was that punishment,
do you think, Miss Berkeley?”

His eyes glared upon her with a ghastly stare as he
put this question, from which her own shrank involuntarily
as she replied—

“I cannot think,—I know not.”

“They bound me to a tree—fast—immoveable. I
could only see their proceedings, I could only endure
their tortures,—I could stir neither hand nor foot to resist
them—”

He shivered, as with a convulsion, while recalling
these memories, though the sympathizing and pitying
expression of her face brought, a moment after, a smile
into his own. He continued—

“There, bound hand and foot—a victim—at their
mercy, and hopeless of any plea, and incapable of any
effort to avoid their judgment, I bore its tortures. You
will ask, what more?—”

He paused, but she spoke not, and he went on almost
instantly—

“The lash—the scourge!—rods from the neighbouring
woods were brought, and I suffered until I fainted
under their blows.”

She clasped her hands, and closed her eyes, as if the
horrible spectacle were before her.

“I came to life to suffer new tortures. They poured
the seething tar over me—”

“Horrible!—horrible!”

“Then, hurrying me to the neighbouring river—your
own Santee,—they plunged me into its bosom, and
more than once, more merciful than the waters, which
did not ingulf me, they thrust me back into their depths,
when with feeble struggles I had gained the banks.
I was saved by one—more tender than the rest—and
left at midnight, exhausted, by the river's side, despairing
of life and imploring death, which yet came not to
my relief.”

“Dreadful—dreadful!” exclaimed the maiden, with
emotions of uncontrolled horror, while her ghastly cheeks
and streaming eyes attested the deep pain which the
cruel narrative had imparted to her soul.

Quivering in every limb with the agonizing recollection
which his own horrible narrative had awakened in
his mind, Barsfield strode the floor to and fro, his hands
clinched in his hair, and his eyes almost starting from
their sockets.

In another moment Janet, recovering herself, with
something of desperation in her manner, hurried and
breathless, thus addressed him:—

“But the father of Ernest Mellichampe—he was not
one of these men?—he had no part in this dreadful
crime? You have not said that, Mr. Barsfield?”

“No!” was his bitter and almost fierce exclamation.

“Thank God!—thank God!” she exclaimed, breathlessly.
He rapidly crossed the floor,—he approached
her, and his finger rested upon her arm—

“Stay!” he exclaimed,—“be not too fast. The
father of your—of Ernest Mellichampe, did, indeed, lift
no hand—he was not even present on the occasion,—
but he was not the less guilty—the deed was not the
less executed by him.”

“How!—speak!”

“He was the most guilty. The mere instruments of
the crime—the miserable, and howling, and servile
wretches, who would have maimed and mangled a creature
formed in their own, not less than in the image of
God—were not the criminals; but he who set them on
—he whose daily language was that of malignant scorn
and hostility,—he was its author,—he was the doer of
the deed, and to him I looked for vengeance.”

“But how know you that he set them on? Did you
hear?”

“Oh, Miss Berkeley, I say not that he told them,
`Go, now, and do this deed;' I know not that he did;
but had not Max Mellichampe pronounced me deserving
of Lynching,—had he not said that I was a tory, and
that tar and feathers were the proper desert of the tory,
—had he not approved of those tortures, and of others
which degrade humanity—the torture of the rail—the
suffocation of the horse-pond,—would these wretches,
think you, who take their colour and their thoughts always
from the superior,—would they have been prompted,
by their own thoughts, to such a crime? No!—
they were prompted by him. He approved the deed—
he smiled upon its atrocities—and he perished in consequence.
Hence my hate to him and his, and it is the
hatred of justice which pursues even to the third and
fourth generations; for crimes and their penalties, like
diseases, are entailed to son and to son's son,—all
guilty, and all doomed, alike. Hence it is, that I am
a tory. Hence it is, that I lift the sword, unsparingly
to the last, against the wretches who taught me in that
night of terror—of blistering agony—of manhood's shame
—and a suffering worse infinitely than death—of what
nature was that boon of liberty which they promised,
and which it was in the power of such monsters to bestow.
Can you wonder now, Miss Berkeley—not that
I am what I am—but that I am not worse? You cannot.
I were either more or less than human to be other

than I am. Whether these things may excuse my conduct,
I do not now ask: all that I may claim from you
is, that you will, at least, spare your sarcasms in future
upon what you are pleased to call the unnatural warfare
which I wage against my countrymen.”