 | CHAPTER XIII. A New England tale, and Miscellanies |  |
13. CHAPTER XIII.
But thou hast sworn against religion;
Therefore, thy latter vow against thy first
Is in thyself rebellion to thyself:
And better conquest never canst thou make
Than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts
Against these busy loose suggestions.
King John.
As Jane entered Mrs. Harvey's door, she met her kind hostess
just returning from a walk, her face flushed with recent
pleasure. “Where upon earth have you been?” she exclaimed.
“Ah! if you had gone with me, you would not have come
home with such a wo-begone face. Not a word! Well—
nothing for nothing is my rule, my dear; and so you need
not expect to hear where I have been, and what superb papers
have come from New York, for the front rooms; and beautiful
china, and chairs, and carpets, and a fine work-table, for an
industrious little lady, that shall be nameless; all quite too
grand for a sullen, silent, deaf and dumb school-mistress.”
She added, playfully, “If our cousin Elvira had been out in
such a shower of gold, we should have been favoured with
sweet smiles and sweet talk for one year at least. But there
comes he that will make the bird sing, when it won't sing to
atmosphere, or being melted in it, I shall make my escape.”
Jane would gladly have followed her, but she sat still,
after hastily throwing aside her hat, and seizing the first
book that she could lay her hands upon, to shelter her embarrassment.
She sat with her back to the door.
Edward entered, and walking up to her, looked over her
shoulder as if to see what book had so riveted her attention.
It chanced to be Penn's “Fruits of Solitude.” “Curse on all
Quakers and quakerism!” said he, seizing the book rudely
and throwing it across the room; “wherever I go, I am
crossed by them.”
He walked about, perturbed and angry. Jane rose to
leave him, for now, she thought, was not the time to come to
an explanation; but Erskine was not in a humour to be
opposed in any thing. He placed his back against the door,
and said, “No, Jane, you shall not leave me now. I have
much to tell you. Forgive my violence. There is a point
beyond which no rational creature can keep his temper. I
have been urged to that point; and, thank Heaven, I have
not learnt that smooth-faced hypocrisy that can seem what
it is not.”
Jane trembled excessively. Erskine had touched the
`electric chain;' she sunk into a chair, and burst into tears.
“I was right,” he exclaimed; “it is by your authority,
and at your instigation, that I am dogged from place to
place by that impertinent fellow; you have entered into a
holy league; but know, Miss Elton, there is a tradition in
our family, that no Erskine was ever ruled by his wife; and
the sooner the lady who is destined to be mine learns not to
interfere in my affairs, the more agreeable it will be to me,
and the more safe for herself.”
Jane's indignation was roused by this strange attack; and
resuming her composure, she said, “If you mean that I shall
understand you, you must explain yourself, for I am ignorant
and innocent of any thing you may suspect me of.”
“Thank heaven!” replied Erskine, “I believe you, Jane;
you know in the worst of times I have believed you; and it
was natural to be offended that you should distrust me. You
shall know the `head and front of my offending.' The sins
that have stirred up such a missionary zeal in that Quaker
saint, will weigh very light in the scales of love.”
“Perhaps,” said Jane gravely, “I hold a more impartial
balance than you expect.”
“Then you do not love me, Jane, for love is, and ought to
be, blind; but I am willing to make the trial; I will never
have it repeated to me, that `if you knew all, you would withdraw
your affections from me.' No one shall say that you
have not loved me, with all my youthful follies on my head.
I know you are a little puritanical; but that is natural to
one who has had so much to make her miserable; the unhappy
are driven to religion. But you are young and curable,
if you can be rescued from this Quaker influence.”
Edward still rattled on, and seemed a little to dread making
the promised communication; but at last, inferring from
Jane's seriousness that she was anxious, and impatient himself
to have it over, he went on to tell her—that from the
beginning of their engagement, Mr. Lloyd had undertaken
the surveillance of his morals; that certainly he had been
very civil to him, and possibly, if he had not been fortified by
his antipathy to Quakers, he should have surrendered his confidence
to him.
“No gentleman,” he said, “no man of honourable feeling
—no man of proper sensibility—would submit to the interference
matters that concerned himself alone; it was an intolerable
outrage. If Jane were capable of a fair judgment, she would
allow that it was so.”
Jane mildly replied, that she could only judge from the
facts; as yet she had heard nothing but invectives. Erskine
said, he had imagined he was stating his case in a court of
love, and not of law; but he had no objection, since his judge
was as sternly just as an old Roman father, to state facts.
He could pardon Mr. Lloyd his eagerness to make him adopt
his plans of improvement in the natural and moral world: to
the first he might have been led by his taste for agriculture,
(which he believed was unaffected,) and to the second he was
pledged by the laws of meddling quakerism. Still he said
none but a Quaker would have thought of prying into the
affairs of people who were strangers to him—however, that
might be pardoned; as he said before, he supposed every
Quaker was bound to `bear his testimony,' that he believed
was their cant term for their impertinence. “But, my sweet
judge, you do not look propitious,” Erskine continued after
this misty preamble, from which Jane could gather nothing
but that his prejudices and pride had thrown a dark shadow
over all the virtues of Mr. Lloyd.
“I cannot, Erskine, look propitious on your sneers against
the principles of my excellent friend.”
“Perhaps,” replied Erskine tartly, “his practise will be
equally immaculate in your eyes. And now, Jane, I beseech
you for once to forget that Mr. Lloyd is your excellent friend;
a man who bestowed some trifling favours on your childhood,
and remember the rights of one to whom you at least owe
your love—though he would neither accept that, nor your
gratitude, as a debt.”
Jane assured him she was ready to hear any thing and
every thing impartially that he would tell her. He replied,
that he detested stoical impartiality; that he wished her to
enter into his loves and his hates, without asking a reason for
them. “But since,” he continued, “you must have the reason,
I will not withhold it. As I told you, I submitted to a thousand
vexations, little impertinences: he is plausible and gentlemanly
in his manners, so there was nothing I could resent,
till after a contemptible affair between John and the old
basket-maker and the Woodhulls, in which I used my humble
professional skill to extricate my friends, who had been
perhaps a little hasty in revenging the impertinence of the
foolish old man. Lloyd was present at the trial before the
justice: I fancied, from the expression of his face, that he
wished my friends to be foiled, and this stung me, and stimulated
my faculties. I succeeded in winning my cause in spite
of law and equity, for they were both against me; and this
you know is rather flattering to one's talents. The Woodhull's
overwhelmed me with praises and gratitude. I felt
sorry for the silly old man, whom they had very unceremoniously
unhoused, and I proposed a small subscription to enable
him to pay the bill of costs, &c., which was his only receipt
from the prosecution. I headed it, and it was soon
made up; but the old fellow declined it with as much dignity
as if he had been a king in disguise. It was an affair of
no moment, and I should probably never have thought of it
again, if Lloyd had not the next day made it the text upon
which he preached as long a sermon as I would hear, upon
the characters of the Woodhulls; he even went so far as to
presume to remonstrate with me upon my connection with
them; painted their conduct on various occasions in the blackest
colours; spoke of their pulling down the old hovel, which
years, as an act of oppression and cruelty; said their habits
were all bad; their pursuits all either foolish or dangerous.
I restrained myself as long as possible, and then I told him,
that I should not submit to hear any calumnies against my
friends; friends who were devoted to me, who would go to
perdition to serve me. If they had foibles, they were those
that belonged to open, generous natures; they were open-handed,
and open-hearted, and had not smothered their passions,
till they were quite extinguished. I told him they
were honourable young men, not governed by the fear that
`holds the wretch in order.' He might have known that I
meant to tell him they were what he was not; but he seemed
quite unmoved, and I spoke more plainly. I had never, I
told him, been accustomed to submit my conduct to the revision
of any one; that he had no right, and I knew not why
he presumed, to assume it, to haunt me like an external conscience;
that my `genius was not rebuked by his,' neither
would it be, if all the marvellous light of all his brethren was
concentrated in his luminous mind.”
“Oh, Erskine, Erskine!” exclaimed Jane, “was this your
return for his friendly warning?”
“Hear me through, Jane, before you condemn me. He
provoked me more than I have told you. He said that I
was responsible to you for my virtue; that I betrayed your
trust by exposing myself to be the companion, or the prey,
of the vices of others. Would you have had me borne
this, Jane? Would you thank me for allowing that he
was more careful of your happiness than I am?”—“Well,”
added he, after a moment's pause, “as you do not reply,
I presume you have not yet decided that point. We
separated, my indignation roused to the highest pitch,
was no difference in his manners to me that a stranger would
have observed; but I perceived his words were all weighed
and measured, as if he would not venture soon again to disturb
a lion spirit.”
“Is this all?” asked Jane.
“Not half,” replied Erskine; and after a little hesitation
he continued, “I perceive that it is impossible for you
to see things in the light I do. Your aunt with her everlasting
cant, your Methodist friend with her old maid notions,
and this precise Quaker, above all, have made you so
rigid, have so bound and stiffened every youthful indulgent
feeling, that I have little hope of a favourable judgment.”
“Then,” said Jane, rising, “it is as unnecessary as painful
for me to hear the rest.”
“No, you shall not go,” he replied; “I expect miracles
from the touch of love. I think I have an advocate in your
heart, that will plead for me against the whole `privileged
order' of professors—of every cast. Do not be shocked, my
dear Jane; do not, for your own sake, make mountains of
molehills, when I tell you, that the young men of the village
instituted a club, three or four months since, who meet once
a week socially, perhaps a little oftener, when we are all
about home: and”—he hesitated a moment, as one will when
he comes to a ditch, and is uncertain whether to spring over,
to retreat, or to find some other way; but he had too much
pride to conceal the fact, and though he feared a little to announce
it, yet he was determined to justify it. Jane was
still mute, and he went on—“We play cards; sometimes we
have played later and higher perhaps than we should if we
had all been in the leading-strings of prudence; all been bred
Quakers. Our club are men of honour and spirit, high-minded
arise now and then, as they will among people who do
not weigh every word, lest they should chance to have an
idle one to account for; but, till the last evening, we have,
in the main, spent our time together as whole-souled fellows
should, in mirth and jollity. As I said, last evening unfortunately—”
“Tell me nothing more, Mr. Erskine; I have heard
enough,” interrupted Jane.
“What! you will not listen to friend Lloyd's reproaches;
not listen to what most roused his holy indignation?”
“I have no wish to hear any thing further,” replied Jane.
“I have heard enough to make my path plain before me. I
loved you, Edward; I confessed to you that I did.”
“And you do not any longer?”
“I cannot; the illusion has vanished. Neither do you
love me.” Edward would have interrupted her; but she
begged him to hear her, with a dignified composure, that convinced
him this was no sudden burst of resentment, no girlish
pique that he might soothe with flattery and professions.
“A most generous impulse, Edward, led you to protect an
oppressed orphan; and I thought the devotion of my heart
and my life were a small return to you. It is but a few
months since. Is not love an engrossing passion? But what
sacrifices have you made to it? Oh, Edward! if in the
youth and spring of your affection I have not had more
power over you, what can I hope from the future?”
“Hope!—believe every thing, Jane. I will be as plastic
as wax, in your hands. You shall mould me as you will.”
“No, Edward; I have tried my power over you, and
found you wanting. Broken confidence cannot be restored.”
“Jane, you are rash; you are giving up independence—
aunt? Do you forget that you are still in her power?”
“No,” replied Jane; “but I have the defence of innocence,
and I do not fear her. It was not your protection, it
was not independence I sought, it was a refuge in your affection;—that
has failed me. Oh, Edward!” she continued,
rising, “examine your heart as I have examined mine, and
you will find the tie is dissolved that bound us; there can
be no enduring love without sympathy; our feelings, our pursuits,
our plans, our inclinations are all diverse.”
“You are unkind, ungrateful, Jane.”
“I must bear that reproach as I can; but I do not deserve
it, Mr. Erskine.”
Erskine imagined he perceived some relenting in the faltering
of her voice, and he said, “Do not be implacable,
Jane; you are too young, too beautiful, to treat the follies
of youth as if they were incurable; give me a few months'
probation, I will do any thing you require; abandon the
club, give up my associates.”
Jane paused for a moment, but there was no wavering in
her resolution—“No, Mr. Erskine; we must part now; if I
loved you, I could not resist the pleadings of my heart.”
Erskine entreated—promised every thing; till convinced
that Jane did not deceive him or herself, his vanity and
pride, mortified and wounded, came to his relief, and changed
his entreaties to sarcasms. He said the rigour that would
immolate every human feeling, would fit her to be the Elect
Lady of the Shaker society; he assured her that he would
emulate her stoicism.
“I am no stoic,” replied Jane; and the tears gushed
from her eyes. “Oh, Erskine! I would make any exertions,
any sacrifices to render you what I once thought you. I
believed you loved me, I could still hope, for I know that
affection is self-devoting, and may overcome all things. Edward,”
she continued, with trembling voice, “there is one subject,
and that nearest to my heart, on which I discovered
soon after our engagement we were at utter variance. When
I first heard you trifle with the obligations of religion, and
express a distrust of its truths, I felt my heart chill. I reproached
myself bitterly for having looked on your insensibility
on this subject as the common carelessness of a gay
young man, to be expected and forgiven, and easily cured.
These few short months have taught me much; have taught
me, Erskine, not that religion is the only sure foundation of
virtue—that I knew before—but they have taught me, that
religion alone can produce unity of spirit; alone can resist
the cares, the disappointments, the tempests of life; that it
is the only indissoluble bond—for when the silver chord is
loosed, this bond becomes immortal. I have felt that my
most sacred pleasures and hopes must be solitary.” Erskine
made no reply; he felt the presence of a sanctified spirit.
“You now know all, Erskine. The circumstances you have
told me this evening, I partly knew before.”
“From Lloyd?” said Edward. “He then knew, as he
insinuated, why your `colour had faded.”'
“You do him wrong. He has never mentioned your name
since the morning I left my aunt's. I heard them by accident,
from John.”
“It is, in truth, time we should part, when you can give
your ear to every idle rumour;” he snatched his hat, and
was going.
Jane laid her hand on his arm, “Yes, it is time,” she said,
“that we should part; but not in anger. Let us exchange
For a few gracious moments his pride, his self-love, all melted
away, and he felt the value, the surpassing excellence of
the blessing he had forfeited. He pressed the hand Jane
had given him to his lips, fervently; “Oh, Jane,” he said,
“you are an angel; forget my follies, and think of me with
kindness.”
“I shall remember nothing of the past,” she said, with a
look that had `less of earth in it than heaven,' “but your
goodness to me—God bless you, Edward; God bless you!”
she repeated, and they separated—for ever!
For a few hours Erskine thought only of the irreparable
loss of Jane's affections. Every pure, every virtuous feeling
he possessed, joined in a clamorous tribute to her excellence,
and in a sentence of self condemnation that could not
be silenced. But Edward was habitually under the dominion
of self-love, and every other emotion soon gave place to
the dread of being looked upon as a rejected man. He had
not courage to risk the laugh of his associates, or what would
be much more trying, their affected pity; and to escape it
all, he ordered his servant to pack his clothes, and make the
necessary preparations for leaving the village in the morning,
in the mail-stage for New-York. He was urged to this step
too, by another motive, arising from a disagreeable affair in
which he had been engaged—the affair which had induced Mr.
Lloyd to make a second attempt to withdraw him from his
vicious associates. At a recent meeting of the club, the
younger Woodhull had introduced a gentleman who pretended
to be a Mr. Rivington, from Virginia. Woodhull had
met him at Saratoga Springs. They were kindred spirits,
and, forming a sudden friendship, Rivington promised Woodhull
that, after he had exhausted the pleasures of Springs
his return to Virginia. Rivington was a fit companion for
his new friend; addicted to a score of vices; gambling high,
and out-drinking, out-swearing, and out-bullying his comrades.
Edward was certainly far better than any other
member of this precious association. He was, from the first,
disgusted with the stranger, with his gross manners, and not a
little with the manifest indisposition to pay to him the deference
he was accustomed to receive from the rest of the company.
The club sat later than usual. Rivington's passions
became inflamed by the liquor he had drank. A dispute
arose about the play. Erskine and John Woodhull were
partners. Rivington accused Woodhull of unfair play. Edward
defended his partner. A violent altercation ensued between
them. The lie was given and retorted in so direct a
form as to afford ample ground for an honourable adjustment
of the dispute.
“Rivington said, “If he had to deal with a Virginan—a
man of honour—the quarrel might be settled in a gentlemanly
way; but a sniveling cowardly Yankee had no honour to defend.”
Edward was provoked to challenge him; and arrangements
were made for the meeting at daylight in the morning,
in a neighbouring wood, which had never been disturbed by
harsher sound than a sportsman's gun. The brothers were to
act as seconds.
The parties were all punctual to their appointment. The
morning, of which they were going to make so unhallowed a
use, was a most beautiful one. The mist took a poet's liberty
and played with realities. The place of rendezvous was on
a hill-side. Below it the valley appeared a lake over which
floated a tremulous veil of vapor. Dotting it here and there
were green spires of Lombardy poplar, branches of sugar
of the drooping elm—that queen of beauty.
“Jocund day stood tip-toe on the summit of monument,”
brightened the green hill-tops, and shone all along the wavy
outline of the mountains. But this lovely aspect of nature
was unheeded and unnoticed by these rash young men. Her
sacred volume is a sealed book to those who are inflamed by
passion, or degraded by vice.
The ground was marked out, the usual distance prescribed
by the seconds, and the principals were just about to take
their stations, when they were interrupted by Mr. Lloyd,
who in returning from his morning walk, passed through this
wood, which was within a short distance of his house. On
emerging from the thick wood, into the open space selected
by the young men, they were directly before him, so that it
was impossible for him to mistake the design of their meeting.
“Confusion!” exclaimed Edward; mortified that Mr.
Lloyd, of all men living, should have witnessed this scene;
and then turning to him, “To what, sir,” said he haughtily,
“do we owe the favour of your company?”
“Purely to accident, Mr. Erskine, or, I should say, to
Providence, if I may be so happy as to prevent a rash violation
of the laws of God and man.”
“Stand off, sir!” said Edward, determined now to brave
Mr. Lloyd's opposition, “and witness, if you will, for you
shall not prevent, our brave encounter.”
Mr. Lloyd had interposed himself between Edward and
his adversary, and he did not move from his station. “A
brave encounter, truly!” he replied, pointing with a smile of
contempt at Rivington, who was shaking as if he had an
ague; “that young man's pale cheeks and trembling limbs
Erskine.”
“The devil take the impertinent fellow!” exclaimed the
elder Woodhull (Edward's second); “proceed to your business,
gentlemen.”
Erskine placed himself in an attitude to fire, and raised
his arm. Mr. Lloyd remained firm and immovable. “Do
you mean to take my fire, sir?” asked Erskine. “If you
continue to stand there, the peril be upon yourself; the fault
rests with you.”
“I shall risk taking the fire, if thou dare risk giving it,”
replied Mr. Lloyd, coolly.
“Curse him!” said Woodhull, “he thinks you are afraid
to fire.”
This speech had the intended effect upon Erskine. “Give
us the signal,” he said, hastily.
The signal was given, and Edward discharged his pistol.
The ball grazed Mr. Lloyd's arm, and passed off without any
other injury. “It was bravely done,” said he, with a contemptuous
coolness, that increased, if any thing could increase
the shame Erskine felt, the moment he had vented his
passion by the rash and violent act. “We have been singularly
fortunate,” he continued, “considering thou hast all the
firing to thyself, and two fair marks. Poor fellow!” he
added, turning to Rivington, “so broad a shield as I furnished
for thee, I should have hoped would have saved some of
this fright.”
John Woodhull had perceived that his friend's courage,
which, the preceding evening, had been stimulated by the
liquor, had vanished with the fog that clouded his reason;
and ever since they came on the battle-ground, he had been
vainly endeavouring to screw him up to the sticking point,
might operate upon him; but all his efforts were ineffectual.
Rivington was, to use a vulgar expression, literally `scared
out of his wits.' When the signal was given for firing, he
had essayed to raise his arm, but it was all unstrung by fear,
and he could not move it. The sound of Erskine's pistol
completed his dismay; he dropped his pistol, said he was
willing to own he was no gentleman; he would beg Mr.
Erskine's pardon, and all the gentlemen's pardon; he would
do any thing almost the gentlemen would say.
John Woodhull felt his own reputation implicated by his
principal's cowardice; and passionate and reckless, he seized
the pistol, and would have discharged the contents at Rivington;
but Mr. Lloyd seeing his intention, caught hold of his
arm, wrenched the pistol from him, fired it in the air, and
threw it from him. “Shame on thee, young man!” he exclaimed,
“does the spirit of murder so possess thee, that it
matters not whether thy arm is raised against friend or foe?”
“He is no friend of mine,” replied Woodhull, vainly endeavouring
to extricate himself from Mr. Lloyd's manly
grasp; he is a coward, and by my life and sacred honour!”—
“Oh, Mr. Woodhull! sir,” interrupted Rivington, “I am
your friend, sir, and all the gentlemen's friend, sir. I am
much obliged to you, sir,” turning to Mr. Lloyd, who could
not help laughing at the eagerness of his cowardice; “I am
sorry for the disturbance, gentlemen, and I wish you all a
good morning, gentlemen!” and so saying, he walked off the
ground as fast as his trembling limbs could take him.
Mr. Lloyd now released young Woodhull from his hold;
and winding his handkerchief around his arm, which was
slightly bleeding, he said, “I perceive there is no further
occasion for my interposition. I think the experience of this
of the peace of this community.”
The party were all too thoroughly mortified to attempt a
reply, and they separated. Erskine felt a most humiliating
consciousness of his disgrace; but he had not sufficient
magnanimity to confess it, nor even to express a regret that
he had wounded a man, who exposed his life to prevent him
from committing a crime. The Woodhulls were deprived of
the pitiful pleasure of sneering at Mr. Lloyd's want of courage.
The younger brother's arm still ached from his experience
of Mr. Lloyd's physical strength; and they all felt the
inferiority of their boastful, passionate, and reckless foolhardiness,
to the collected, disinterested courage of a peaceful
man, who had risked his life in their quarrel.
To fill up the measure of their mortification, Rivington
had not left the village two hours, before several persons
arrived there in pursuit of him. They informed his new
friends, that he was not a Virginian, a name that passes among
our northern bloods as synonymous with high-breeding, highmindedness,
noble daring, &c., &c., but that he was a countryman
of their own, a celebrated swindler, who had lived by
his wits, ascending by regular gradations through the professions
of hostler, dancing-master, and itinerate actor; and that
having lately, by cleverness in managing the arts of his vocation,
possessed himself of a large sum of money, he had made
his debût as gentleman at the Springs.
After the events of the morning, Mr. Lloyd felt more
anxiety than ever on Jane Elton's account; and never weary
in well-doing, he determined to make one more effort to rescue
Erskine from the pernicious society and influence of the
Woodhulls. He solicited an interview with him; and without
alluding to the events of the morning, he remonstrated
and the danger were too evident to need pointing out.
He trusted himself to speak of Jane, of her innocence, her
purity, her trustful affection, her solitariness, her dependence.
At any other time, we cannot think Edward would have
been unmoved by the eloquence of his appeal; but now he
was exasperated by the mortifications of the morning; and
when Mr. Lloyd said, “Erskine, if Jane Elton knew all, would
she not withdraw her affections from thee?” he replied,
angrily, “She shall know all. I have a right to expect she
will overlook a few foibles; such as belong to every young man
of spirit. She owes me, at least, so much indulgence. She
is bound to me by ties that cannot be broken—that she certainly
cannot break.” He burst away from Mr. Lloyd, and
went precipitately to Mrs. Harvey's, where the explanation
we have related ensued, and put a final termination to their
unequal alliance.
The speculations of villagers are never at rest till they
know the wherefore of the slightest movements of the prominent
personages that figure on their theatre. Happily for
our heroine, who was solicitous for a little while to be sheltered
from the scrutiny and remarks of her neighbours, the
affair of the duel soon became public, and sufficiently accounted
for Erskine's abrupt departure.
Jane would have communicated to Mary, her kind, constant
friend Mary Hull, the issue of her engagement; but it so
happened, that she was at this time absent on a visit to her
blind sister. She felt it to be just, that she should acquaint
Mr. Lloyd with the result of an affair, in which he had manifested
so benevolent and vigilant a care for her happiness.
Perhaps she felt a natural wish, that he should know his
confidence in her had not been misplaced. She could not
suspended of late; and besides, she was habitually reserved
about speaking of herself. She sat down to address a note
to him; and, after writing a dozen, each of which offended
her in some point—either betrayed a want of delicacy towards
Erskine, or a sentiment of self-complacency—either expressed
too much, or two little—she threw them all into the fire, and
determined to leave the communication to accident.
| CHAPTER XIII. A New England tale, and Miscellanies | |