University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

That night, Gideon Badger encountered Rachel
Morrison, his cousin, as she wandered forth into the
shady grove of forest trees, which were allowed to
remain at the clearing, and conducted from the house
into the garden. The youth had evidently placed
himself in waiting, as he sprang from the deep
shadow of an oak at her approach, and presented
himself before her. She started at sight of him, with
a feeling of mixed indignation and surprise. Her
form, rather inclining to be tall and masculine,
seemed to rise in majesty beyond its wont, the moment
she recovered from her partial surprise, and
the tones of her voice, and the words she used, at
once indicated a condition of quasi warfare between
them.

“Why will you still pursue, still oppress me in this
manner, Gideon Badger?”

“Why will you still seek to avoid me in this manner,
Rachel Morrison?” was his reply.

“If it be true that I seek to avoid you, you, as a
man, should scorn to pursue me. Your own pride
should preserve me from your persecution, even if

your sense of generosity failed you. Will you not
suffer me to pass?”

“No! not yet—not for a while. I would speak further,
with you, Rachel, and you must bear with my
persecutions a little longer, for a very good reason.”

“Let me know the reason, Gideon Badger, and if
it be a good one, rest assured that I will remain and
hear you without reluctance. Until then, you must
forgive me if I say, I hear you with little pleasure.”

“I doubt not that, Rachel,” returned the young
man gloomily, “there is another whose speech and
presence have ever given you more pleasure than
mine. It is reason enough why you should remain,
that you cannot so easily escape, and that I am
resolved that you shall hear me; and yet, I would
that you were more yielding to other reasons, which
are enough, not only to persuade you to stay and
hear, but to do so with pleasure and content.”

“I know not these, Gideon,—I would that I did.
Heaven knows how willingly I should incline my
ears to the words of one so dear to my uncle as
yourself. But you well know what better reasons
I have for distrusting your speech and avoiding your
company.”

“By heavens, Rachel, but you do me wrong!
Because of one error,—one crime, if it please you
so to call it,—am I to forfeit all your regard, all
indulgence, all hope? You know that I have broken
off from all intimacy with the man Furst. From
that moment when you discovered our connexion,
and the offence of which we were guilty, I promised
you, and my promise has been kept rigidly.”

“And yet, Gideon, the fate of another of your
intimates alarms me—this unhappy man, Weston.”

“Rachel, Rachel! can it be that you would couple
me with that robber? Can you suppose me lost to
all reason as well as to all religion? Can it be that

you hold me a confederate of this unhappy wretch,
when you know that I have not been seen with him
for months?”

“You have!” was her stern and startling reply to
the warm and earnest asseverations of the youth,
given with all the seeming unaffectedness of truth.
“You have been seen with him, Gideon, within three
weeks.”

“Ha! who says it?—how know you?”

“Mother Kerrison saw you with him at the ferry,
three weeks ago.”

“Pshaw, Rachel, how anxious must you be to find
out faults in me, when you fall upon such idle tales
as these. For that matter, I have seen the man
almost weekly every month in the past year, but we
have had no intimacy, no communion together, we
have been in no wise associated.”

“Gideon, there again I must oppose the testimony
of a third person to your own. Who caught those
fish which you brought home with you last Saturday
was a week?”

A bitter scowl passed over the countenance of the
youth as he replied—

“Truly, Rachel, you are in no lack of spies upon
my actions. I suppose it will be in vain to deny
that they were caught by Weston.”

“It will, indeed, be vain to deny it, Gideon, and
my good reasons for seeking to avoid you, arise from
your having done so already. Your father was
under the persuasion that you caught them by your
own hands.”

“I never told him so,” said the young man
hastily.

“No, but your words justified his belief that such
was the case, and he spoke of your success in fishing
to your own ears, and you did not seek to set him
right.”

“And I am successful in fishing, Rachel, and his
compliments were just enough; as for my statement
misleading him, I can only say that I never intended
it should. But you know, I see, that the fish were
brought from Weston.”

“I know that you got them from him, but I heard
that they were given to you.”

“Now, in the name of all that is precious in a
spy, what old woman could have told you this?—
Mother Kerrison, again?”

“It was, indeed, no other.”

“That old hag ought to be carted through a cane-brake,
and drawn through the bog. The fish were
bought with money, Rachel Morrison, and I trust
there's no more harm in buying fish from a man
that turns out to be a rogue, than in buying them
from the best citizen in the county. That you hate
me, Rachel, is sufficiently clear from the collection
of authorities and arguments which you have got
together against me.”

“Gideon, God knows, and you ought to know,
that I have had, in the kindness of your father to the
poor orphan of his brother's wife, every reason to
make me try to love and to esteem you; and I know,
however little you may be disposed to believe it, how
much I have tried to love you. But you have not
suffered me to do this. Your own wilfulness, your
harshness,—shall I say your cold, calculating artfulness
of conduct in relation to your father, myself,
and others, but your father chiefly—have baffled the
desires of my heart. I cannot love, I cannot honour
you—nay, I cannot look on you without shrinking
and shuddering—when I know how prone you have
shown yourself to speak the thing which is not, and
to do the thing which you are commanded by God
and man not to do. But if these reasons were not
wanting, Gideon, to make me desirous to shun you,

there were others, sufficient for my justification, in
your caprice and violence of temper. You have
striven to use me as your plaything; you have tried
to abuse my ignorance, to take advantage of me as
a child, and when you have failed in this, you have
railed at me in ruffianly terms, as if I, too, were a
ruffian. It were conclusive against your claim to
manliness, that you have pursued this course of
conduct, even while I have been in your father's
house, protected by his favour, and almost dependant
on his bounty. Be assured, Gideon Badger, that it
was in my necessity, only, that I have remained and
endured this treatment in silence. I could not have
done so, had the dwelling of any other relative been
open to my entrance, where I might have escaped
such persecution.”

“Ay, ay, Rachel Morrison, this is all very strong,
and very emphatic,” said the youth, with mocking
bitterness; “it is, as the old man, my venerable
father, would call it, a searching and soul-harrowing
discourse; but it may be that you have still left unspoken
some of the grounds which induced your
hatred of Gideon Badger.”

“I hate you not, Gideon,” said the maiden, mournfully.
“Alas! it is my great sorrow that you will not
suffer me to love you.”

“Nay, nay, Rachel, these sounds do not delude
me. As I was saying, some of your reasons for
rating me so humbly—so scornfully, should be the
word—were unexpressed. You love another, Rachel
Morrison, you love this swaggering fellow,
Rawlins; deny it if you can.”

“I seek not to deny it, Gideon.”

“It were in vain to do so. I have seen you together;
your heads and hands mingling, your forms
linked,—ay, you may well shrink and blush while I
say it, Rachel Morrison—your mutual lips glued to

each other as if they were never more destined to
undergo separation.”

The maiden did blush at the description of these
scenes of secret tenderness which she had fancied
utterly unseen by any eyes but those of heaven, and
which, in the purity of her heart and its emotions,
she had neither shame nor scruple that heaven should
behold; but when her accuser spoke of her blushes,
and counselled her to shame, her lofty spirit rose in
majesty, her heart swelled with the pride of innocence,
her form dilated in towering beauty, and she
retorted the insolence of the speaker with well-deserved
scorn.

“And if I blush, Gideon Badger, at these scenes,
it is not because they have been witnessed, but that
such as you should have witnessed them. You,
without sympathy for truth and virtue, would only
mock the sincere heart by your jest, or offend it by
your presence. A noble witness had gone from the
spot in silence, and in his secret soul had locked up
the remembrance of what his eyes had beheld unwittingly.
Certainly, he would never have laboured
as you have done, to make a woman regret that she
had yielded herself to those feelings which, while
they are pure in the sight of God, should be held no
less sacred in the sight of man. To Walter Rawlins
I am pledged—betrothed—it needs but the sanction
of religion to make us one. We are already one in
spirit and in truth—with God's blessing we shall
soon be one in law.”

“Never, never!” cried the youth impetuously,
with choking accents, and the fierce gesticulation of
one threatening an enemy. “Hear me, Rachel
Morrison, you shall never wed this man. One or
both of us shall first perish. I hate him now, as I
have ever hated him, but with a hatred that will no

longer brood and slumber over baffled hopes, and
ineffectual purposes. If you resolve as you declare,
then shall my equal resolution follow hard upon your
declaration. Be sure that no peace which I can
disturb shall dwell with you—no hope that I can
banish shall warm your dwelling—no happiness
follow your marriage with this man. Nay, there
shall be no security. I will pursue you to the uttermost
ends of the earth, but I will wrest you from his
grasp; I will pursue him to the uttermost ends of the
earth, but I will paralyze his embrace; and, if I cannot
triumph in love, at least I will do so in the exercise
of the most despotic hate. You know what I can do—
you know my powers and my passions. Beware
how you drive me to desperation—beware how you
compel me to hate, when you know how heartily I
can love.”

“And know me also,” replied the woman with
tremulous but measured and subdued accents, “know,
Gideon Badger, that you can no more terrify Rachel
Morrison than you can terrify the man who is pledged
to be her husband. In God is my trust, and with
a proper confidence in his power to save, I bid defiance
to all your powers to wrong and to destroy.
He hath strengthened me to bear with many afflictions,
with poverty, with evil tongues,—even with
dangers that might have stricken and destroyed—
he will sustain me in flight, he will defend me
against the pursuer, even if earthly powers should
not avail for my protection. Yet, let me warn you,
Gideon Badger, against this evil resolution. A word
from me to Walter Rawlins, and his foot were upon
your neck the instant after it was spoken.”

“What! would you so soon threaten me with
your bully, Rachel Morrison?—But I fear him not—”

“Enough!” she exclaimed, interrupting the farther

course of his insolent speech—“let us part, Gideon.
You can say nothing more that can move me
now.”

“Nay, Rachel,—you madden me. Why provoke
me thus when you know my passions?”

“Your passions shall never be my tyrants, Gideon
Badger; and you, who know so well how to conceal
them in the presence of your father, exhibit but a
poor sort of manliness when you refuse to restrain
them in the presence of a woman. Let us separate,
since it seems impossible for you to forbear language
which it gives me pain to hear. Let us separate,
but not in anger. I forgive you, Gideon; and if
there be one thing more productive than another of
sorrow in my heart, it is that you should so sinfully
and perversely cast your good mind and better nature
beneath the trampling foot of passions which
first degrade and afterwards destroy. Why, Gideon,
why,—son of my second father—why will you profligately
cast away the noblest gift of God, the noble
reason, and madden thus in a hopeless pursuit of that
which it is beyond your power to procure?”

“Be not certain of that! It is not beyond my
power, Rachel Morrison—once more I tell you, you
shall never wed this man.”

“What mean you? Twice, Gideon, have you
spoken in this strange, wild manner. Do you
threaten his life or mine? Can it be that you mean
to murder us?”

“Murder, indeed!” he responded with a hollow
laugh. “Who said that? Not I, Rachel, not I—
your fancy is at work, and upon this slender stock you
will get up a pretty tale before morning. No! no!
I have no design to murder. I have no idea of
shedding blood; but—ha!”

The bay of the beagle arose faintly from the forest,
swelled over the garden, and tremblingly fell

upon their ears through the umbrageous tree-tops
that sheltered them in their conference. A pause
ensued, broken by neither for an instant. He then
continued:—

“Enough for warning, Rachel,—enough. You
will think upon it and be wise. You know it is the
wish of my father that you should be my wife, and
my own love should move you to yield willingly to
his wishes.”

“Your love, Gideon Badger! Speak of the love
of the storm for the flower which it rends in its rude
embrace;—speak of the love of the ocean for the
poor bark which it swallows up;—speak of any thing
which makes a sport, a victim, of the object which
it destroys, and you then speak of your love for me.
Your passions, not your love, are busy in all this. It
is they who would be my master, as they are your
own. But they never shall. I will convince you,
Gideon, though I weep for you with a sad sickness
of heart all the while, that when you are most ungovernable
in your rage, I can be calm and unmoved
by your fury; when you are most angry, I shall be
least moved; and when, to others and to yourself, you
seem most fearful, then shall you behold the orphan
of your father's bounty most fearless and secure. I
praise God that he has given me a strength of soul
which enables me, whatever may be the terror and
the danger, to keep in the way which my heart tells
me is right. With this consciousness, you cannot
affright me, you can no more drive me from my resolution,
than you can persuade me from the truth.”

“You speak boldly, but you know me not. The
time will come when you shall know more. But not
yet—not now. Hark! I hear the whistle of your lover
—he is summoning you to your old place of meeting.
Make the most of your time, Rachel Morrison, for,

by the dim lights that will look down upon your endearments,
they are destined not to last.”

In another instant the maiden, stunned and oppressed
with painful emotions and troubling fears,
found herself utterly alone. Slowly she made her
way to the garden, where, in a little time, she was
joined by her lover. Gideon Badger, meanwhile,
leaping the little worm-fence that ran along the lower
limits of the enclosure, was lost from view in the
forest, where his own voice, a moment after the
woods had enshrouded him, might have been heard
in responsive echoes to those mysterious bayings of
the beagle which had summoned him to a meeting
of his confederates.