University of Virginia Library

32. CHAPTER XXXII.
PLAIN TALK.

Mary revolved the affairs of her friend in her
mind, during the night. The intensity of the
mental crisis through which she had herself just
passed had developed her in many inward respects,
so that she looked upon life no longer as a timid
girl, but as a strong, experienced woman. She
had thought, and suffered, and held converse with
eternal realities, until thousands of mere earthly
hesitations and timidities, that often restrain a
young and untried nature, had entirely lost their
hold upon her. Besides, Mary had at heart the
true Puritan seed of heroism, — never absent from
the souls of true New England women. Her essentially
Hebrew education, trained in daily converse
with the words of prophets and seers, and
with the modes of thought of a people essentially
grave and heroic, predisposed her to a kind of exaltation,
which, in times of great trial, might rise
to the heights of the religious-sublime, in which
the impulse of self-devotion took a form essentially

commanding. The very intensity of the repression
under which her faculties had developed seemed,
as it were, to produce a surplus of hidden strength,
which came out in exigencies. Her reading, though
restricted to a few volumes, had been of the kind
that vitalized and stimulated a poetic nature, and
laid up in its chambers vigorous words and trenchant
phrases, for the use of an excited feeling, —
so that eloquence came to her as a native gift.
She realized, in short, in her higher hours, the last
touch with which Milton finishes his portrait of
an ideal woman: —

The next morning, Colonel Burr called at the
cottage. Mary was spinning in the garret, and
Madame de Frontignac was reeling yarn, when
Mrs. Scudder brought this announcement.

“Mother,” said Mary, “I wish to see Mr. Burr
alone. Madame de Frontignac will not go down.”

Mrs. Scudder looked surprised, but asked no
questions. When she was gone down, Mary stood
a moment reflecting; Madame de Frontignac looked
eager and agitated.

“Remember and notice all he says, and just
how he looks, Mary, so as to tell me; and be sure
and say that I thank him for his kindness yesterday.

We must own, he appeared very well there;
did he not?”

“Certainly,” said Mary; “but no man could
have done less.”

“Ah! but, Mary, not every man could have
done it as he did. Now don't be too hard on
him, Mary; — I have said dreadful things to him;
I am afraid I have been too severe. After all,
these distinguished men are so tempted! we don't
know how much they are tempted; and who can
wonder that they are a little spoiled? So, my
angel, you must be merciful.”

“Merciful!” said Mary, kissing the pale cheek,
and feeling the cold little hands that trembled in
hers.

“So you will go down in your little spinning-toilette,
mimi? I fancy you look as Joan of Arc
did, when she was keeping her sheep at Domremy.
Go, and God bless thee!” and Madame de Frontignac
pushed her playfully forward.

Mary entered the room where Burr was seated,
and wished him good-morning, in a serious and
placid manner, in which there was not the slightest
trace of embarrassment or discomposure.

“Shall I have the pleasure of seeing your fair
companion this morning?” said Burr, after some
moments of indifferent conversation.

“No, Sir; Madame de Frontignac desires me
to excuse he to you.”

“Is she ill?” said Burr, with a look of concern.

“No, Mr. Burr, she prefers not to see you.”

Burr gave a start of well-bred surprise, and Mary
added, —

“Madame de Frontignac has made me familiar
with the history of your acquaintance with her;
and you will therefore understand what I mean,
Mr. Burr, when I say, that, during the time of her
stay with us, we should prefer not to receive calls
from you.”

“Your language, Miss Scudder, has certainly
the merit of explicitness.”

“I intend it shall have, Sir,” said Mary, tranquilly;
“half the misery in the world comes of
want of courage to speak and to hear the truth
plainly and in a spirit of love.”

“I am gratified that you add the last clause,
Miss Scudder; I might not otherwise recognize
the gentle being whom I have always regarded as
the impersonation of all that is softest in woman.
I have not the honor of understanding in the least
the reason of this apparently capricious sentence,
but I bow to it in submission.”

“Mr. Burr,” said Mary, walking up to him, and
looking him full in the eyes, with an energy that
for the moment bore down his practised air of
easy superiority, “I wish to speak to you for a
moment, as one immortal soul should to another,
without any of those false glosses and deceits

which men call ceremony and good manners.
You have done a very great injury to a lovely
lady, whose weakness ought to have been sacred
in your eyes. Precisely because you are what
you are, — strong, keen, penetrating, and able to
control and govern all who come near you, — because
you have the power to make yourself agreeable,
interesting, fascinating, and to win esteem
and love, — just for that reason you ought to hold
yourself the guardian of every woman, and treat
her as you would wish any man to treat your own
daughter. I leave it to your conscience, whether
this is the manner in which you have treated
Madame de Frontignac.”

“Upon my word, Miss Scudder,” began Burr,
“I cannot imagine what representations our mutual
friend may have been making. I assure you,
our intercourse has been as irreproachable as the
most scrupulous could desire.”

“`Irreproachable! — scrupulous!' — Mr. Burr, you
know that you have taken the very life out of
her. You men can have everything, — ambition,
wealth, power; a thousand ways are open to you:
women have nothing but their heart; and when
that is gone, all is gone. Mr. Burr, you remember
the rich man who had flocks and herds, but
nothing would do for him but he must have the
one little ewe-lamb which was all his poor neighbor
had. Thou art the man! You have stolen all

the love she had to give, — all that she had to
make a happy home; and you can never give her
anything in return, without endangering her purity
and her soul, — and you knew you could not. I
know you men think this is a light matter; but it
is death to us. What will this woman's life be?
one long struggle to forget; and when you have
forgotten her, and are going on gay and happy, —
when you have thrown her very name away as a
faded flower, she will be praying, hoping, fearing
for you; though all men deny you, yet will not
she. Yes, Mr. Burr, if ever your popularity and
prosperity should leave you, and those who now
flatter should despise and curse you, she will always
be interceding with her own heart and with
God for you, and making a thousand excuses
where she cannot deny; and if you die, as I fear
you have lived, unreconciled to the God of your
fathers, it will be in her heart to offer up her very
soul for you, and to pray that God will impute
all your sins to her, and give you heaven. Oh, I
know this, because I have felt it in my own heart!”
and Mary threw herself passionately down into a
chair, and broke into an agony of uncontrolled
sobbing.

Burr turned away, and stood looking through
the window; tears were dropping silently, unchecked
by the cold, hard pride which was the evil demon
of his life.

It is due to our human nature to believe that
no man could ever have been so passionately and
enduringly loved and revered by both men and
women as he was, without a beautiful and lovable
nature; — no man ever demonstrated more
forcibly the truth, that it is not a man's natural
constitution, but the use he makes of it, which
stamps him as good or vile.

The diviner part of him was weeping, and the
cold, proud demon was struggling to regain his
lost ascendency. Every sob of the fair, inspired
child who had been speaking to him seemed to
shake his heart, — he felt as if he could have fallen
on his knees to her; and yet that stoical habit
which was the boast of his life, which was the
sole wisdom he taught to his only and beautiful
daughter, was slowly stealing back round his heart,
— and he pressed his lips together, resolved that
no word should escape till he had fully mastered
himself.

In a few moments Mary rose with renewed
calmness and dignity, and, approaching him,
said, —

“Before I wish you good-morning, Mr. Burr, I
must ask pardon for the liberty I have taken in
speaking so very plainly.”

“There is no pardon needed, my dear child,”
said Burr, turning and speaking very gently, and
with a face expressive of a softened concern; “if

you have told me harsh truths, it was with gentle
intentions; — I only hope that I may prove, at
least by the future, that I am not altogether so
bad as you imagine. As to the friend whose
name has been passed between us, no man can go
beyond me in a sense of her real nobleness; I
am sensible how little I can ever deserve the sentiment
with which she honors me. I am ready,
in my future course, to obey any commands that
you and she may think proper to lay upon me.”

“The only kindness you can now do her,” said
Mary, “is to leave her. It is impossible that you
should be merely friends; — it is impossible, without
violating the holiest bonds, that you should be
more. The injury done is irreparable; but you
can avoid adding another and greater one to it.”

Burr looked thoughtful.

“May I say one thing more?” said Mary, the
color rising in her cheeks.

Burr looked at her with that smile that always
drew out the confidence of every heart.

“Mr. Burr,” she said, “you will pardon me, but
I cannot help saying this: You have, I am told,
wholly renounced the Christian faith of your
fathers, and build your whole life on quite another
foundation. I cannot help feeling that this
is a great and terrible mistake. I cannot help
wishing that you would examine and reconsider”

“My dear child, I am extremely grateful to you
for your remark, and appreciate fully the purity
of the source from which it springs. Unfortunately,
our intellectual beliefs are not subject to
the control of our will. I have examined, and the
examination has, I regret to say, not had the effect
you would desire.”

Mary looked at him wistfully; he smiled and
bowed, — all himself again; and stopping at the
door, he said, with a proud humility, —

“Do me the favor to present my devoted regard
to your friend; believe me, that hereafter you shall
have less reason to complain of me.”

He bowed, and was gone.

An eye-witness of the scene has related, that,
when Burr resigned his seat as President of his
country's Senate, an object of peculiar political
bitterness and obloquy, almost all who listened to
him had made up their minds that he was an
utterly faithless, unprincipled man; and yet, such
was his singular and peculiar personal power, that
his short farewell-address melted the whole assembly
into tears, and his most embittered adversaries
were charmed into a momentary enthusiasm of
admiration.

It must not be wondered at, therefore, if our
simple-hearted, loving Mary strangely found all
her indignation against him gone, and herself little
disposed to criticize the impassioned tenderness

with which Madame de Frontignac still regarded
him.

We have one thing more that we cannot avoid
saying, of two men so singularly in juxtaposition
as Aaron Burr and Dr. Hopkins. Both had a perfect
logic of life, and guided themselves with an
inflexible rigidity by it. Burr assumed individual
pleasure to be the great object of human existence;
Dr. Hopkins placed it in a life altogether
beyond self. Burr rejected all sacrifice; Hopkins
considered sacrifice as the foundation of all existence.
To live as far as possible without a disagreeable
sensation was an object which Burr proposed
to himself as the summum bonum, for which
he drilled down and subjugated a nature of singular
richness. Hopkins, on the other hand, smoothed
the asperities of a temperament naturally violent
and fiery by a rigid discipline which guided it entirely
above the plane of self-indulgence; and, in
the pursuance of their great end, the one watched
against his better nature as the other did against
his worse. It is but fair, then, to take their lives
as the practical workings of their respective ethical
creeds