University of Virginia Library

25. CHAPTER XXV.
CONQUEST.

The progress of events and our story necessarily brings
us back to Charlemont. We shall lose sight of William
Hinkley, henceforth Calvert, for some time; and here, par
parenthese, let us say to our readers, that this story being
drawn from veritable life, will lack some of that compactness
and close fitness of parts which make our novels too
much resemble the course of a common law case. Instead
of having our characters always at hand, at the proper moment,
to do the business of the artist, like so many puppets,
each working on a convenient wire, and waiting to be whistled
in upon the scene, we shall find them sometimes absent,
as we do in real life when their presence is most
seriously desired, and when the reader would perhaps prefer
that they should come in, to meet or make emergencies.
Some are gone whom we should rather see; some present,
whose absence, in the language of the Irishman, would be
the best company they could give us; and some, not forthcoming,
like the spirits of Owen Glendower, even when
most stoutly called for. The vast deeps of human progress
do not release their tenants at the beck and call of ordinary
magicians, and we, who endeavor to describe events as we
find them, must be content to take them and persons, too,
only when they are willing. Were we writing the dramatic
romance, we should be required to keep William Hinkley
always at hand, as a convenient foil to Alfred Stevens. He

should watch his progress; pursue his sinuosities of course;
trace him out in all his ill-favored purposes, and be ready,
at the first act — having, like the falcon, by frequent and
constantly-ascending gyrations, reached the point of command
— to pounce down upon the fated quarry, and end
the story and the strife together. But ours is a social narrative,
where people come and go without much regard to
the unities, and without asking leave of the manager. William
Hinkley, too, is a mere man and no hero. He has no
time to spare, and he is conscious that he has already wasted
too much. He has work to do and is gone to do it.
Let it console the reader, in his absence, to know that he
will do it — that his promise is a good one — and that we
have already been shown, in the dim perspective of the future,
glimpses of his course which compensate him for his
mishaps, and gladden the heart of his adopted father, by
confirming its prophecies and hopes.

The same fates which deny that he should realize the
first fancies of his boyhood, are, in the end, perhaps, not a
jot kinder to others whom they now rather seem to favor.
His absence did not stop the social machine of Charlemont
from travelling on very much as before. There was a
shadow over his mother's heart, and his disappearance
rather aroused some misgiving and self-reproachful sensations
in that of his father. Mr. Calvert, too, had his touch
of hypochondria in consequence of his increased loneliness;
and Ned Hinkley's fighting monomania underwent startling
increase; but, with the rest, the wheel went on without
much sensible difference. The truth is, that, however mortifying
the truth may be, the best of us makes but a very
small sensation in his absence. Death is a longer absence,
in which our friends either forget us, or recollect our vices.
Our virtues are best acknowledged when we are standing
nigh and ready to enforce them. Like the argumentative
eloquence of the Eighth Harry, they are never effectual until
the halberdiers clinch their rivets forcibly.

It does not necessarily impugn the benevolence or wisdom
of Providence to show that crime is successful for a season
in its purposes. Vice may prevail, and victims perish,
without necessarily disparaging the career, or impeding the
progress of virtue. To show that innocence may fall, is
sometimes to strengthen innocence, so that it may stand
against all assailants. To show vice, even in its moments
of success, is not necessarily to show that such success is
desirable. Far from it! As none of us can look very
deeply into the future, so it happens that the boon for which
we pray sometimes turns out to be our bane; while the
hardship and suffering, whose approach we deprecate in
sackcloth and ashes, may come with healing on their wings,
and afford us a dearer blessing than any ever yet depicted
in the loom of a sanguine and brilliant imagination.

We are, after all, humbling as this fact may be to our
clamorous vanity, only so many agents and instruments,
blind, and scuffling vainly in our blindness, in the perpetual
law of progress. As a soul never dies, so it is never useless
or unemployed. The Deity is no more profligate in the
matter of souls than he is in that of seeds. They pass, by
periodical transitions, from body to body; perhaps from
sphere to sphere; and as the performance of their trusts
have been praiseworthy or censurable, so will be the character
of their trusts in future. He who has shown himself
worthy of confidence in one state, will probably acquire a
corresponding increase of responsibility in another. He
who has betrayed his trusts or impaired them, will share
less of the privileges of the great moral credit system.

In all these transitions, however, work is to be done.
The fact that there is a trust, implies duty and performance;
and the practice of virtue is nothing more than the
performance of this work to the best of our abilities. Well,
we do not do our work. We fail in our trusts. We abuse
them. Such a man as Alfred Stevens abuses them. Such
a woman as Margaret Cooper fails in them. What then?

Do we destroy the slave who fails in his duty, or chasten
him, and give him inferior trusts? Do you suppose that
the Deity is more profligate in souls than in seeds — that he
creates and sends forth millions of new souls, annually, in
place of those which have gone astray? Hardly so! He
is too good an economist for that. We learn this from all
the analogies. As a soul can not perish, so it never remains
unemployed. It still works, though its labors may be confined
to a treadmill.

The mere novel-reader may regard all this as so much
unnecessary digression. But let him not deceive himself.
It would be the most humiliating and painful thought, indeed,
could we believe that the genius which informs and
delights us — which guides the bark of state through a
thousand storms and dangers to its port of safety — which
conquers and commands — which sings in melodies that
make melodies in human hearts for thousands of succeeding
years — is suddenly to be suspended — to have no more
employment — to do no more work — guide no more states
— make no more melodies! Nay, the pang would be
scarcely less to believe that a fair intellect like that of Alfred
Stevens, or a wild, irregular genius, like that of Margaret
Cooper — because of its erring, either through perversity
or blindness, is wholly to become defunct, so far as
employment is concerned — that they are to be deprived of
all privilege of working up to the lost places — regaining
the squandered talents — atoning, by industry and humble
desire, the errors and deficiencies of the past! We rather
believe that heaven is a world where the labors are more
elevated, the necessities less degrading; that it is no more
permanent than what we esteem present life; nay, that it
is destined to other transitions; that we may still ascend,
on and on, and that each heaven has its higher heaven yet.
We believe that our immortality is from the beginning;
that time is only a periodical step in eternity — that transition
is the true meaning of life — and death nothing more

than a sign of progress. It may be an upward or a downward
progress, but it is not a toilsome march to a mere
sleep. Lavish as is the bounty of God, and boundless as
are his resources, there is nothing of him that we do know
which can justify the idea of such utter profligacy
of material.

We transgress. Our business is with the present doings
of our dramatis personæ and not with the future employment
of their souls. Still, we believe, the doctrine which
we teach not only to be more rational, but absolutely more
moral than the conjectures on this subject which are in ordinary
use. More rational as relates to the characteristics
of the Deity, and more moral as it affects the conduct and
the purposes of man himself. There is something grand
beyond all things else, in the conception of this eternal
progress of the individual nature; its passage from condition
to condition; sphere to sphere; life to life; always
busy, working for the mighty Master; falling and sinking
to mere menial toils, or achieving and rising to more noble
trusts; but, at all events, still working in some way in the
great world-plantation, and under the direct eye of the sovereign
World-Planter. The torture of souls on the one
hand, and the singing of psalms on the other, may be doctrines
infinitely more orthodox; but, to our mind, they
seem immeasurably inferior in grandeur, in propriety, in
noble conception of the appointments of the creature, and
the wondrous and lovely designs of the benignant Father.

The defeat of such a soul as that of Margaret Cooper, can
surely be a temporary defeat only. It will regain strength,
it must rise in the future, it must recover the lost ground,
and reassert the empire whose sway it has unwillingly
abandoned; for it is not through will, wholly, by which we
lose the moral eminence. Something is due to human
weaknesses; to the blindness in which a noble spirit is
sometimes suffered to grow into stature; disproportioned
stature — that, reaching to heaven, is yet shaken down and

overthrown by the merest breath of storm that sweeps suddenly
beneath its skies. The very hopelessness of Margaret
Cooper's ambition, which led her to misanthropy, was
the source of an ever-fertile and upspringing confidence.
Thus it was that the favoring opinions which Alfred Stevens
expressed — a favoring opinion expressed by one whom she
soon discovered was well able to form one — accompanied
by an assurance that the dream of fame which her wild imagination
had formed should certainly be realized, gave him
a large power over her confidence. Her passion was sway
— the sway of mind over mind — of genius over sympathy
- of the syren Genius over the subject Love. It was this
passion which had made her proud, which had filled her
mind with visions, and yielded to her a world by itself, and
like no other, filled with all forms of worship and attraction;
chivalrous faith, unflagging zeal, generous confidence,
pure spirits, and the most unquestioning loyalty! Ignorant
of the world which she had not seen, and of those movements
of human passion which she had really never felt, she
naturally regarded Alfred Stevens as one of the noble representatives
of that imaginary empire which her genius continually
brought before her eyes. She saw in him the embodiment
of that faith in her intellect which it was the first
and last hope of her intellect to inspire; and seeing thus,
it will be easy to believe that her full heart, which, hitherto,
had poured itself forth on rocks, and trees, and solitary
places, forgetful of all prudence — a lesson which she had
never learned — and rejoicing in the sympathy of a being
like herself, now gushed forth with all the volume of its
impatient fullness. The adroit art of her companion led her
for ever into herself; she was continually summoned to
pour forth the treasures of her mind and soul; and, toiling
in the same sort of egoisme in which her life heretofore
had been consumed, she was necessarily diverted from all
doubts or apprehensions of the occult purposes of him who
had thus beguiled her over the long-frequented paths. As
the great secret of success with the mere worldling, is to
pry into the secret of his neighbor while carefully concealing
his own, so it is the great misfortune of enthusiasm to
be soon blinded to a purpose which its own ardent nature
neither allows it to suspect nor penetrate. Enthusiasm is
a thing of utter confidence; it has no suspicion; it sets no
watch on other hearts; it is too constantly employed in
pouring forth the treasures of its own. It is easy, therefore,
to deceive and betray it, to beguile it into confidence,
and turn all its revelations against itself. How far the
frequency of this usage in the world makes it honorable, is
a question which we need not discuss on this occasion.

Alfred Stevens had now been for some weeks in the village
of Charlemont, where, in the meantime, he had become
an object of constantly-increasing interest. The men shrank
from him with a feeling of inferiority; the women — the
young ones being understood — shrank from him also, but
with that natural art of the sex which invites pursuit, and
strives to conquer even in flight. But it was soon evident
enough that Stevens bestowed his best regards solely upon
Margaret Cooper. If he sought the rest, it was simply in
compliance with those seeming duties of his ostensible profession
which were necessary to maintain appearances.
Whether he loved Margaret Cooper or not, he soon found
a pleasure in her society which he sought for in no other
quarter of the village. The days, in spite of the strife with
William Hinkley, flew by with equal pleasantness and rapidity
to both. The unsophisticated mind of Margaret
Cooper left her sensible to few restraints upon their ordinary
intercourse; and, indeed, if she did know or regard
them for an instant, it was only to consider them as necessary
restraints for the protection of the ignorant and feeble
of her sex — a class in which she never once thought to include
herself. Her attachment to Alfred Stevens, though
it first arose from the pleasure which her mind derived from
its intercourse with his, and not from any of those nice and

curious sympathies of temperament and taste which are supposed
to constitute the essence and comprise the secret of
love, was yet sufficient to blind her judgment to the risks
of feeling, if nothing more, which were likely to arise from
their hourly-increasing intimacy; and she wandered with
him into the devious woods, and they walked by moonlight
among the solemn-shaded hills, and the unconscious girl
had no sort of apprehension that the spells of an enslaving
passion were rapidly passing over her soul.

How should she apprehend such spells? how break them?
For the first time in her life had she found intellectual sympathy
— the only moral response which her heart longed to
hear. For the first time had she encountered a mind which
could do justice to, and correspond on anything like equal
terms with, her own. How could she think that evil would
ensue from an acquisition which yielded her the only communion
which she had ever craved? Her confidence in
herself, in her own strength, and her ignorance of her own
passions, were sufficient to render her feelings secure; and
then she was too well satisfied of the superiority and nobleness
of his. But, in truth, she never thought upon the subject.
Her mind dwelt only on the divine forms and images
of poetry. The ideal world had superseded, not only the
dangers, but the very aspect, of the real. Under the magic
action of her fancy, she had come to dwell

she had come to speak only in the one language, and of
the one topic; and, believing now that she had an auditor
equally able to comprehend and willing to sympathize with
her cravings, she gave free scope to the utterance of her
fancies, and to the headlong impulse of that imagination
which had never felt the curb.

The young heart, not yet chilled by the world's denials,

will readily comprehend the beguiling influence of the
dreaming and enthusiastic nature of some dear spirit, in
whose faith it has full confidence, and whose tastes are kindred
with its own. How sweet the luxury of moonlight in
commerce with such a congenial spirit! how heavenly the
occasional breath of the sweet southwest! how gentle and
soothing fond the whispers of night — the twiring progress
of sad-shining stars — the gentle sway of winds among the
tree-tops — the plaintive moan of billows, as they gather
and disperse themselves along the shores! To speak of
these delights; to walk hand-in-hand along the gray sands
by the seaside, and whisper in murmuring tones, that seem
to gather sympathies from those of ocean; to guide the eye
of the beloved associate to the sudden object; to challenge
the kindred fancy which comments upon our own; to remember
together, and repeat, the happy verse of inspired
poets, speaking of the scene, and to the awakened heart
which feels it; and, more, to pour forth one's own inspirations
in the language of tenderness and song, and awaken
in the heart of our companion the rapture to which our own
has given speech — these, which are subjects of mock and
scorn to the worldling, are substantial though not enduring
joys to the young and ardent nature.

In this communion, with all her pride, strength, and confidence,
Margaret Cooper was the merest child. Without
a feeling of guile, she was dreaming of the greatness which
her ambition craved, and telling her dreams, with all the artless
freedom of the child who has some golden fancy of the
future, which it seeks to have confirmed by the lips of experience.
The wily Stevens led her on, gave stimulus to
her enthusiasm, made her dreams become reasonable in her
eyes, and laughed at them in his secret heart. She sung
at his suggestion, and sung her own verses with all that
natural tremor which even the most self-assured poet feels
on such an occasion.

“Beautiful!” the arch-hypocrite would exclaim, as if unconscious

of utteranee; “beautiful!” and his hand would
possess itself of the trembling fingers of hers. “But beautiful
as it is, Margaret, I am sure that it is nothing to what
you could do under more auspicious circumstances.”

“Ah! if there were ears to hear, if there were hearts to
feel, and eyes to weep, I feel, I know, what might be done.
No, no! this is nothing. This is the work of a child.”

“Nay, Margaret, if the work of a child, it is that of a
child of genius.”

“Ah! do not flatter me, Alfred Stevens, do not deceive
me. I am too willing to believe you, for it is so dear a
feeling to think that I too am a poet. Yet, at the first, I
had not the smallest notion of this kind: I neither knew
what poetry was, nor felt the desire to be a poet. Yet I
yearned with strange feelings, which uttered themselves in
that form ere I had seen books or read the verses of others.
It was an instinct that led me as it would. I sometimes
fear that I have been foolish in obeying it; for oh, what has
it brought me? What am I? what are my joys? I am
lonely even with my companions. I share not the sports
and feel not the things which delight my sex. Their
dances and frolics give me no pleasure. I have no sympathy
with them or their cares. I go apart — I am here on
the hills, or deep in the forests — sad, lonely, scarcely
knowing what I am, and what I desire.”

“You are not alone, nor are your pleasures less acute
than theirs. If they laugh, their laughter ends in sleep.
If you are sad, you lose not the slightest faculty of perception
or sensibility, but rather gain them in consequence.
Laughter and tears are signs neither of happiness nor grief,
and as frequently result from absolute indifference as from
any active emotion. If you are absent from them, you have
better company. You can summon spirits to your communion,
Margaret; noble thoughts attend you; eyes that
cheer, lips that assure you, and whispers, from unknown
attendants, that bid you be of good heart, for the good

time is coming. Ah! Margaret, believe me when I tell
you that time is at hand. Such a genius as yours, such
a spirit, can not always be buried in these woods.”

It was in such artful language as this that the arch-hypocrite
flattered and beguiled her. They were wandering
along the edge of the streamlet to which we have more than
once conducted the footsteps of the reader. The sun was
about setting. The autumn air was mild with a gentle
breathing from the south. The woods were still and meek
as the slumbers of an infant. The quiet of the scene harmonized
with the temper of their thoughts and feelings.
They sat upon a fragment of the rock. Margaret was silent,
but her eyes were glistening bright — not with hope only,
but with that first glimmering consciousness of a warmer
feeling, which gives a purple light to hope, and makes the
heart tremble, for the first time, with its own expectations.
It did not escape Alfred Stevens that, for the first time,
her eye sank beneath his glance; for the first time there
was a slight flush upon her cheek. He was careful not to
startle and alarm the consciousness which these signs indicated.
The first feeling which the young heart has of its
dependence upon another is one little short of terror; it
is a feeling which wakens up suspicion, and puts all the
senses upon the watch. To appear to perceive this emotion
is to make it circumspect; to disarm it, one must wear
the aspect of unconsciousness. The wily Stevens, practised
in the game, and master of the nature of the unsuspecting
girl, betrayed in his looks none of the intelligence which
he felt. If he uttered himself in the language of admiration,
it was that admiration which would be natural to a
profound adorer of literature and all its professors. His
words were those of the amateur:—

“I can not understand, Margaret, how you have studied
— how you have learned so much — your books are few —
you have had no masters. I never met in my life with so
remarkable an instance of unassisted endeavor.”

“My books were here in the woods — among these old
rocks. My teacher was solitude. Ah! there is no teacher
like one's own heart. My instinct made me feel my deficiencies
— my deficiencies taught me contemplation — and
from contemplation came thoughts and cravings, and you
know, when the consciousness of our lack is greatest, then,
even the dumb man finds a voice. I found my voice in
consequence of my wants. My language you see is that of
complaint only.”

“And a sweet and noble language it is, Margaret; but
it is not in poetry alone that your utterance is so distinct
and beautiful — you sing too with a taste as well as power
which would prove that contemplation was as happy in
bringing about perfection in the one as in the other art.
Do sing me, Margaret, that little ditty which you sang here
the other night?”

His hand gently detained and pressed hers as he urged
the request.

“I would rather not sing to-night,” she replied, “I do
not feel as if I could, and I trust altogether to feeling. I
will sing for you some other time when you do not ask, and,
perhaps would prefer not to hear me.”

“To hear you at all, Margaret, is music to my ears.”

She was silent, and her fingers made a slight movement
to detach themselves from his.

“No, Margaret, do not withdraw them! Let me detain
them thus — longer — for ever! My admiration of you has
been too deeply felt not to have been too clearly shown.
Your genius is too dear to me now to suffer me to lose it.
Margaret — dear Margaret!”

She spoke not — her breathing became quick and hard.

“You do not speak, let me hope that you are not angry
with me?”

“No, no!” she whispered faintly. He continued with
more boldness, and while he spoke, his arm encircled her
waist.

“A blessed chance brought me to your village. I saw
you and returned. I chose a disguise in which I might
study you, and see how far the treasures of your mind confirmed
the noble promise of your face. They have done
more. Like him who finds the precious ore among the
mountains, I can not part with you so found. I must tear
you from the soil. I must bear you with me. You must
be mine, Margaret — you must go with me where the world
will see, and envy me my prize.”

He pressed her to his bosom. She struggled slightly.

“Do not, do not, Alfred Stevens, do not press me — do
not keep me. You think too much of me. I am no treasure
— alas! this is all deception. You can not — can not
desire it?”

“Do I not! Ah! Margaret, what else do I desire now?
Do you think me only what I appear in Charlemont?”

“No! no!”

“I have the power of a name, Margaret, in my profession
— among a numerous people — and that power is growing
into wealth and sway. I am feared and honored, loved
by some, almost worshipped by others; and what has led
me from this sway, to linger among these hills — to waste
hours so precious to ambition — to risk the influence which
I had already secured — what, but a higher impulse — a
dearer prospect — a treasure, Margaret, of equal beauty
and genius.”

Her face was hidden upon his bosom. He felt the beating
of her heart against his hand.

“If you have a genius for song, Margaret Cooper, I, too,
am not without my boast. In my profession, men speak of
my eloquence as that of a genius which has few equals, and
no superior.”

“I know it — it must be so!”

“Move me not to boast, dear Margaret; it is in your
ears only that I do so — and only to assure you that, in
listening to my love, you do not yield to one utterly obscure,

and wanting in claims, which, as yours must be finally, are
already held to be established and worthy of the best
admiration of the intelligent and wise. Do you hear me,
Margaret?”

“I do, I do! It must be as you say. But of love I
have thought nothing. No, no! I know not, Alfred Stevens,
if I love or not — if I can love.”

“You mistake, Margaret. It is in the heart that the
head finds its inspiration. Mere intellect makes not genius.
All the intellect in the world would fail of this divine consummation.
It is from the fountains of feeling that poetry
drinks her inspiration. It is at the altars of love that the
genius of song first bends in adoration. You have loved,
Margaret, from the first moment when you sung. It did
not alter the case that there was no object of sight. The
image was in your mind — in your hope. One sometimes
goes through life without ever meeting the human counterpart
of this ideal; and the language of such a heart will
be that of chagrin — distaste of life — misanthropy, and a
general scorn of his own nature. Such, I trust, is not your
destiny. No, Margaret, that is impossible. I take your
doubt as my answer, and unless your own lips undeceive
me, dearest Margaret, I will believe that your love is willing
to requite my own.”

She was actually sobbing on his breast. With an effort
she struggled into utterance.

“My heart is so full, my feelings are so strange — oh!
Alfred Stevens, I never fancied I could be so weak.”

“So weak — to love! surely, Margaret, you mistake the
word. It is in loving only that the heart finds its strength.
Love is the heart's sole business; and not to exercise it in
its duties is to impair its faculties, and deprive it equally
of its pleasures and its tasks. Oh, I will teach you of the
uses of this little heart of yours, dear Margaret — ay, till
it grow big with its own capacity to teach. We will inform
each other, every hour, of some new impulses and

objects. Our dreams, our hopes, our fears, and our desires,
ah! Margaret — what a study of love will these afford us.
Nor to love only. Ah! dearest, when your muse shall have
its audience, its numerous watching eyes and eager ears,
then shall you discover how much richer will be the strain
from your lips once informed by the gushing fullness of this
throbbing heart.”

She murmured fondly in his embrace, “Ah! I ask no
other eyes and ears than yours.”

In the glow of a new and overpowering emotion, such
indeed was her feeling. He gathered her up closer in his
arms. He pressed his lips upon the rich ripe beauties of
hers, as some hungering bee, darting upon the yet unrifled
flower which it first finds in the shadows of the forest,
clings to, and riots on, the luscious loveliness, as if appetite
could only be sated in its exhaustion. She struggled
and freed herself from his embrace: but, returning home
that evening her eye was cast upon the ground; her step
was set down hesitatingly; there was a tremor in her
heart; a timid expression in her face and manner! These
were proofs of the discovery which she then seems to have
made for the first time, that there is a power stronger than
mere human will — a power that controls genius; that
mocks at fame; feels not the lack of fortune, and is independent
of the loss of friends! She now first knew her
weakness. She had felt the strength of love! Ah! the
best of us may quail, whatever his hardihood, in the day
when love asserts his strength and goes forth to victory.

Margaret Cooper sought her chamber, threw herself on
the bed, and turned her face in the pillow to hide the burning
blushes which, with every movement of thought and
memory, seemed to increase upon her cheek. Yet, while
she blushed and even wept, her heart throbbed and trembled
with the birth of a new emotion of joy. Ah! how
sweet is our first secret pleasure — shared by one other only
— sweet to that other as to ourself — so precious to him

also. To be carried into our chamber — to be set up ostentatiously
— there, where none but ourselves may see — to
be an object of our constant tendance, careful idolatry,
keen suspicion, delighted worship!

Ah! but if the other makes it no idol — his toy only —
what shall follow this desecration of the sacred thing!
What but shame, remorse, humiliation, perhaps death! —
alas! for Margaret Cooper, the love which had so suddenly
grown into a precious divinity with her, was no divinity
with him. He is no believer. He has no faith in such
things, but like the trader in religion, he can preach deftly
the good doctrines which he can not feel and is slow to
practise.