University of Virginia Library

37. CHAPTER XXXVII.
SHAME AND DEATH — THE OATH.

Margaret Cooper was at length permitted to emerge
from the place of her concealment. The voices of the lovers
were lost, as well as their forms, in the wooded distance.
Dreaming, like children as they were, of life and happiness,
they had wandered off, too happy to fancy for a moment
that the world contained, in its wide, vast bosom, one creature
half so wretched as she who hung above them, brooding,
like some wild bird of the cliff, over the storm which
had robbed her of her richest plumage.

She sank back into the woods. She no longer had the
heart to commit the meditated crime. This purpose had
left her mind. It had given place to another, however,
scarcely less criminal. We have seen her, under the first
impression that the stranger whose voice she heard was
Alfred Stevens, turning the muzzle of the pistol from her
breast to the path on which he was approaching. Though
she discovered her error, and laid the weapon down, the
sudden suggestion of her mind, at that moment, gave a new
direction to her mood.

Why should she not seek to avenge her wrong? Was
he to escape without penalty? was she to be a quiescent
victim? True, she was a woman, destined it would seem
to suffer — perhaps with a more than ordinary share of that
suffering which falls to her sex. But she had also a peculiar
strength — the strength of a man in some respects; and

in her bosom she now felt the sudden glow of one of his
fiercest passions. Revenge might be in her power. She
might redress her wrong by her own hand. It was a
weapon of death which she grasped. In her grasp it might
be made a weapon of power. The suggestion seemed to be
that of justice only. It was one that filled her whole soul
with a triumphant and a wild enthusiasm.

“I shall not be stricken down without danger to mine
enemy. For this — this, at least — strength is allotted me.
Let him tremble! In his place of seeming security let him
tremble! I shall pursue his steps. I will find him out.
There shall be a day of retribution! Alfred Stevens, there
is a power within me which tells me you are no longer
safe!

“And why may I not secure this justice — this vengeance?
Why? Because I am a woman. Ha! We shall
see. If I am a woman, I can be an enemy — and such an
enemy! An enemy not to be appeased, not to be overcome.
War always with my foe — war to the knife — war
to the last!”

Such a nature as that of Margaret Cooper needed some
such object to give it the passionate employment without
which it must recoil upon itself and end either in suicide
or madness. She brooded upon this new thought. She
found in it a grateful exercise. From the moment when
she conceived the idea of being the avenger of her own
wrong, her spirit became more elastic — she became less
sensible to the possible opinions upon her condition which
might be entertained by others. She found consolation,
in retreating to this one thought, from all the rest. Of the
difficulties in the way of her design, it was not in her impetuous
character to think. She never once suspected that
the name of Alfred Stevens had been an assumed one. She
never once asked how she was to pursue and hunt him up.
She thought of a male disguise for herself, it is true; but
of the means and modes of travel — in what direction to go,

and after what plan to conduct her pursuit, she had not the
most distant idea.

She addressed herself to her new design, however, in
one respect, with amazing perseverance. It diverted her
from other and more oppressive thoughts. Her pistols
she carried secretly to a very distant wood, where she
concealed them in the hollow of a tree. To this wood she
repaired secretly and daily. Here she selected a tree as
a mark. A small section of the bark, which she tore
away, at a given height, she learned to regard as the breast
of her seducer. This was the object of her aim. Without
any woman fears, she began her practice and continued
it, day by day, until, as we are told by one of the chroniclers
of her melancholy story, “she could place a ball with
an accuracy, which, were it universally equalled by modern
duellists, would render duelling much more fatal than it
commonly is.”

In secret she procured gunpowder and lead, by arts so
ingenious as to baffle detection. At midnight when her
mother slept she moulded her bullets. Well might the
thoughts and feelings which possessed her mind, while engaged
in this gloomy labor, have endowed every bullet
with a wizard spell to make it do its bidding truly. Bitter,
indeed, were the hours so appropriated; but they had their
consolations. Dark and terrible were the excited moods
in which she retired from her toils to that slumber which
she could not always secure. And when it did come, what
were its images! The tree, the mark, the weapon, the
deep, dim forest, all the scenes and trials of the day, were
renewed in her sleep. A gloomy wood filled her eyes —
a victim dabbled in blood lay before her; and, more than
once, her own fearful cry of vengeance and exultation
awakened her from those dreams of sleep, which strengthened
her in the terrible pursuit of the object which occasioned
them.

Such thoughts and practices, continued with religious

pertinacity, from day to day, necessarily had their effect
upon her appearance as well as her character. Her beauty
assumed a wilder aspect. Her eye shot forth a supernatural
fire. She never smiled. Her mouth was rigid and
compressed as if her heart was busy in an endless conflict.
Her gloom, thus nurtured by solitude and the continual
presence of a brooding imagination of revenge, darkened
into something like ferocity. Her utterance became brief
and quick — her tones sharp, sudden, and piercing. She
had but one thought which never seemed to desert her, yet
of this thought no ear ever had cognizance. It was of the
time when she should exercise the skill which she had now
acquired upon that destroyer of herself, whom she now felt
herself destined to destroy.

Of course we are describing a madness — one of those
peculiar forms of the disease which seems to have its origin
in natural and justifiable suggestions of reason. Not the
less a madness for all that.

Succeeding in her practice at one distance, Margaret
Cooper changed it. From one point to another she constantly
varied her practice, until her aim grew certain at
almost any distance within the ordinary influence of the
weapon. To strike her mark at thirty feet became, in a
little while, quite as easy as to do so at five; and, secure
now of her weapon, her next object — though there was no
cessation of her practice — was how to seek and where to
find the victim.

In this new object she meditated to disguise herself in
the apparel of a man. She actually commenced the making
up of the several garments of one. This was also the
secret labor of the midnight hour, when her feeble-minded
mother slept. She began to feel some of the difficulties
lying in the way of this pursuit, and her mind grew troubled
to consider them, without however, relaxing in its determination.
That seemed a settled matter.

While she brooded over this new feature of her purpose

— as if fortunately to arrest the mad design — her mother
fell seriously sick, and was for some time in danger. The
duty of attending upon her, put a temporary stop to her
thoughts and exercises; though without having the effect
of expelling them from her mind.

But another event, upon her mother's recovery, tended
to produce a considerable alteration in her thoughts. A
new care filled her heart and rendered her a different being,
in several respects. She was soon to become a mother.
The sickness of soul which oppressed her under this conviction,
gave a new direction to her mood without lessening
its bitterness; and, in proportion as she found her vengeance
delayed, so was the gratification which it promised,
a heightened desire in her mind.

For the humiliating and trying event which was at hand,
Margaret Cooper prepared with a degree of silent firmness
which denoted quite as strongly the resignation of despair
as any other feeling.

The child is born.

Margaret Cooper has at length become a mother. She
has suffered the agony, without being able to feel the compensating
pride and pleasure of one. It was the witness
of her shame — could she receive it with any assurances of
love? It is doubtful if she did.

For some time after its birth, the hapless woman seemed
to be unconscious, or half-conscious only, of her charge.
A stupor weighed upon her senses. When she did awaken,
and her eyes fell upon the face and form of the infant with
looks of recognition, one long, long piercing shriek burst
from her lips. She closed her eyes — she turned away from
the little unoffending, yet offensive object with a feeling of
horror.

Its features were those of Alfred Stevens. The likeness
was indelible; and this identity drew upon the child a
share of that loathing hatred with which she now remembered
the guilty father.

It may very well be supposed that the innocent babe
suffered under these circumstances. The milk which it
drew from the mother's breast, was the milk of bitterness,
and it did not thrive. It imbibed gall instead of nutriment.
Day after day it pined in hopeless misery; and though
the wretched mother strove to supply its wants and soothe
its little sorrows, with a gradually increasing interest which
overcame her first loathing, there was yet that want of
sweetest sympathy which nothing merely physical could
well supply.

Debility was succeeded by disease — fever preyed upon its
little frame, which was now reduced to a skeleton. One
short month only had clapsed from its birth, and it lay,
in the silence of exhaustion upon the arm of its mother.
Its eyes, whence the flickering light was escaping fast,
looked up into hers, as she fancied, with an expression of
reproach. She felt, on the instant, the pang of the maternal
conscience. She forgot the unworthy father, as she
thought of the neglectful mother. She bent down, and,
for the first time, imprinted on its little lips the maternal
kiss.

A smile seemed to glimmer on its tiny features; and,
from that moment, Margaret Cooper resolved to forget her
injuries, for the time, at least, in the consideration of her
proper duties. But her resolution came too late. Even
while her nipple was within its boneless gums, a change
came over the innocent. She did not heed it. Her eyes
and thoughts were elsewhere; and thus she mused, gazing
vacantly upon the wall of her chamber until her mother
entered the room. Mrs. Cooper gave but a single glance
at the infant when she saw that its little cares were over.

“Oh, Margaret!” she exclaimed, “the child is dead.”

The mother looked down with a start and shudder. A
big tear fell from her eyes upon the cold cheek of the innocent.
She released it to her mother, turned her face upon
the couch, and uttered her thanks to Heaven that had so

decreed it — that had left her again free for that darker
purpose which had so long filled her mind.

“Better so,” she murmured to her mother. “It is at
peace. It will neither know its own nor its mother's griefs.
It is free from that shame for which I must live!”

“Come now, Margaret, no more of that,” said the mother
sharply. “There's no need of shame. There are other
things to live for besides shame.”

“There are — there are!” exclaimed the daughter, with
spasmodic energy. “Were there not, I should, indeed, be
desperate.”

“To be sure you would, my child. You have a great
deal to live for yet; and let a little time blow over, and
when everything's forgotten, you will get as good as husband
as any girl in the country.”

“For Heaven's sake, mother, none of this?”

“But why not! Though you are looking a little bad just
now — quite pale and broken — yet it's only because you
have been so ill; and this nursing of babies, and having
'cm too, is a sort of business to make any young woman
look bad; but in spite of all, there's not a girl in the village,
no matter how fresh she may be looking, that can hold
a candle to you.”

“For mercy, mother!—”

“Let me speak, I tell you! Don't I know? You're
young, and you'll get over it. You will get all your beauty
and good looks back, now that the baby's out of the way,
and there's no more nursing to be done. And what with
your beauty and your talents, Margaret—”

“Peace! mother! Peace — peace! You will drive me
to madness if you continue to speak thus.”

“Well, I'm sure there's no knowing what to say to please
you. I'm sure, I only want to cheer you up, and to convince
you that things are not so bad as you think them now.
The cloud will blow over soon, and everything will be forgotten,
and then, you see—”

The girl waved her hand impatiently.

“Death — death!” she exclaimed. “Oh! child of
shame, and bitterness, and wrath!” she murmured, kneeling
down beside the infant, “thou art the witness that I
have no future but storm, and cloud, and wrath, and—
Vengeance!”

The last word was inaudible to her mother's ears.

“It is an oath!” she cried; “an oath!” And her hands
were uplifted in solemn adjuration.

“Come — come, Margaret! none of this swearing. You
frighten me with your swearing. There's nothing that you
need to swear about! What's done can't be helped now,
by taking it so seriously. You must only be patient, and
give yourself time. Time's the word for us now; after a
little while you'll see the sky become brighter. It's a bad
business, it's true; but it needn't break a body's heart.
How many young girls I've known in my time, that's been
in the same fix. There was Janet Bonner, and Emma
Loring, and Mary Peters — I knew 'em all, very well.
Well, they all made a slip once in their lives, and they never
broke their hearts about it, and didn't look very pale and
sad in the face either; but they just kept quiet and behaved
decent for awhile, and every one of 'em got good husbands.
Janet Bonner, she married Dick Pyatt, who came from
Massachusetts, and kept the school down by Clayton's
Meadow; Emma Loring married a baptist-preacher from
Virginia, named Stokes. I never saw him to know him;
and as for Mary Peters, there never was a girl that had a
slip that was ever so fortunate, for she's been married no
less than three times since, and as she's a widow again,
there's no telling what may happen to her yet. So don't
you be so downcast. You're chance is pretty nigh as good
as ever, if you will only hold up your head, and put the
best face on it.”

“Oh! torture — torture! Mother, will you not be silent?

Let the dead speak to me only. I would hear but the voice
of this one witness—”

And she communed only with the dead infant, sitting or
kneeling beside it. But the communion was not one of
contrition or tears —not of humility and repentance — not
of self-reproach and a broken spirit. Pride and other passions
had summoned up deities and angels of terror and
of crime, before the eyes and thoughts of the wretched
mourner, and the demon who had watched with her and
waited on her, and had haunted her with taunt and bitter
mockeries, night and day, was again busy with terrible suggestions,
which gradually grew to be divine laws to her
diseased imagination.

“Yes!” she exclaimed unconsciously.

“I hear! I obey! Yet speak again. Repeat the lesson.
I must learn it every syllable, so that I shall not mistake
— so that I can not fail!”

“Who are you talking to, Margaret?” asked the mother
anxiously.

“Do you not see them, where they go? There — through
the doors; the open windows — wrapped in shadows, with
great wings at their shoulders, each carrying a dart in his
bony grasp.”

“Lord, have mercy! She's losing her senses again!”
and the mother was about to rush from the apartment to
seek assistance; but with the action, the daughter suddenly
arose, wearing a look of singular calmness, and motioning
to the child, she said: —

“Will you not dress it for the grave?”

“I'm going about it now. The poor lovely little creature.
The innocent little blossom. We must put it in
white, Margaret — virgin white — and put white flowers in
its little hands and on its breast, and under its head. Oh!
it will look so sweet in its little coffin!”

“God! I should go mad with all this!” exclaimed the
daughter, “were it not for that work which is before me!

I must be calm for that — calm and stern! I must not
hear — I must not think — not feel — lest I forget myself,
and the deed which I have to do. That oath — that oath!
It is sworn! It is registered in heaven, by the fatal angels
of remorse, and wrath, and vengeance!”

And again, a whisper at her ears repeated: —

“For this, Margaret, and for this only, must thou live?”

“I must! I will!” she muttered, as it were in reply,
and her eye glared upon the opened door, as she heard a
voice and footsteps without; and the thought smote her: —

“Should it be now! Come for the sacrifice! Ha!”