Page 136. Sampson Low, Son & Co. June, 25th, 1859.Col. Burr amuses himself.
Col. Burr amuses himself.
‘I am very happy,’ said the lady, with a sweet lisping accentuation of English, which well became her lovely mouth. ‘Miss Scudder, I hope, is very well?’
Mary replied affirmatively, her eyes resting the while, with pleased admiration, on the brilliant speaking face and diamond-bright eyes which seemed looking her through.
‘Monsieur la trouve bien séduisante apparemment,’ said the stranger in a low, rapid voice to the gentleman, in a manner which showed a mingling of pique and admiration.
‘Petite jalouse, t’assure toi,’ he replied, with a look and manner into which, with that mobile force which was peculiar to himself, he threw the most tender and passionate devotion. ‘Ne suis-je pas à toi tout-à-fait?’ and as he spoke he offered her his other arm.
‘Allow me to be an unworthy link between the beauty of France and America.’
The lady swept a proud curtsy backward, bridled her beautiful neck, and signed for them to pass.
‘I am waiting here for a friend,’ she said.
‘Your will is always mine,’ replied Burr, bowing with proud humility, and passing on with Mary to the supper-room.
Here the company were fast assembling in that high tide of good-humour which generally sets in at this crisis of the evening. The scene, in truth, was a specimen of a range of society which in those times could have been assemblednowhere else but in Newport. There stood Dr. H., in the tranquil majesty of his lordly form, and by his side the alert, compact figure of his cotemporary and theological opponent, Dr. Styles, who, animated by the social spirit of the hour, was dispensing courtesies to the right and left with the debonair grace of the trained gentleman of the old school. Near by, and engaging from time to time in conversation with them, stood a Jewish Rabbi with one or two wealthy bankers of the same race, whose olive complexion, keen eyes, and aquiline profile spoke their descent, and gave a picturesque and foreign grace to the scene.
Colonel Burr, one of the most brilliant and distinguished of the rising men of the new republic, and Colonel de Frontignac, who had won for himself laurels in the corps of Lafayette during the recent revolutionary struggle, with his brilliant and accomplished wife, were all unexpected and distinguished additions to the circle.
Burr gently cleared the way for his fair companion, and purposely placing her where the full light of the wax chandeliers set off her beauty to the best advantage, devoted himself to her with a subserviency as deferential as if she had been a goddess.
For all that, he was not unobservant when, a few moments after, Madame de Frontignac was led in on the arm of a distinguished senator, with whom she was presently in full flirtation.
He observed, with a quiet, furtive smile, that, while she rattled and fanned herself, and listened with apparent attention to the flatteries addressed to her, she darted every now and then a glance keen as a steel blade towards him and his companion. He was perfectly adroit in playing off one woman against another, and it struck him with a pleasant sense of oddity, how perfectly unconscious his sweet and saintly neighbour was of the position in which she was supposed to stand by her rival.
And poor Mary all this while, in her simplicity, really thought she had seen traces of what she would have called ‘the strivings of the Spirit in his soul.’
Alas! that a phrase weighed down with such a mysterious truth and meaning should ever come to fall on the ear as mere empty cant: with Mary it was a living form, as were all her words, for in nothing was the Puritan education more marked than in the earnest reality and truthfulness which it gave to language. And even now, as she stands by his side, her large blue eye is occasionally fixed in dreamy reverie, as she thinks what a triumph of divine grace it would be if these inward movings of her companion’s mind should lead him, as all the pious of New England hoped, to follow in the footsteps of President Edwards.
She wishes that she could some time see him alone, where she could talk with him undisturbed. She was too humble, too modest, fully to accept the delicious flattery which he had breathed, in implying that her hand had power to unseal the fountains of good in his soul; but still it thrilled through all the sensitive strings of her nature, a tremulous flutter of suggestion.
She had read instances of striking and wonderful conversions from words dropped by children and women; and suppose some such thing should happen to her, that this so charming, distinguished, and powerful being should be called into the fold of Christ’s church by her means! No, it was too much to be hoped; but the very possibility was thrilling.
When, after supper, Mrs. Scudder and the Doctor made their adieus, Burr’s devotion was still unabated: with an enchanting mixture of reverence and fatherly protection, he waited on her to the last, shawled her with delicate care, and handed her into the small one-horse waggon as if it had been the coach of a duchess.
‘I have pleasant recollections connected with this kind of an establishment,’ he said, as, after looking carefully at the harness, he passed the reins into Mrs. Scudder’s hands; ‘it reminds me of school-days and old times. I hope your horse is quite safe, madam?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Mrs. Scudder; ‘I perfectly understand him.’
‘Pardon the suggestion,’ he replied, ‘what is there that a New England matron does not understand? Doctor, I mustcall by-and-by and have a little talk with you; my theologies, you know, need a little straightening.’
‘We should all be happy to see you, Colonel Burr,’ said Mrs. Scudder; ‘we live in a very plain way it is true.’
‘But can always find a place for a friend; that, I trust, is what you meant to say,’ he replied, bowing with his own peculiar grace as the carriage drove off.
‘Really, a most charming person is this Colonel Burr,’ said Mrs. Scudder.
‘He seems a very frank, ingenuous young person,’ said the Doctor; ‘one cannot but mourn that the son of such gracious parents should be left to wander into infidelity.’
‘Oh, he is not an infidel,’ said Mary: ‘he is far from it; though I think that his mind is a little darkened on some points.’
‘Ah!’ said the Doctor, ‘have you had any special religious conversation with him?’
‘A little,’ said Mary; ‘and it seems to me, that his mind is perplexed somewhat in regard to the doings of the unregenerate. I fear that it has rather proved a stumbling-block in his way; but he showed so much feeling! I could really see the tears in his eyes.’
‘His mother was a most godly woman, Mary,’ said the Doctor; ‘she was called from her youth, and her beautiful person became a temple for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Aaron Burr is a child of many prayers, and therefore there is hope that he may yet be effectually called. He studied awhile with Bellamy,’ he added, musingly; ‘I have often doubted whether Bellamy took just the right course with him.’
‘I hope he will call and talk with you,’ said Mary, earnestly. ‘What a blessing to the world if such talents as his could become wholly consecrated!’
‘Not many rich, not many mighty, not many noble are called,’ said the Doctor. ‘Yet, if it would please the Lord to employ my instrumentality and prayers, how much should I rejoice! I was struck,’ he added, ‘to-night, when I saw those Jews present, with the thought that it was, as it were, a type of that last ingathering, when both Jew and Gentile should sitdown lovingly together at the gospel feast. It is only by passing over and forgetting these present years, when so few are called, and the gospel makes such slow progress, and looking forward to that glorious time that I find comfort. If the Lord but use me as a dumb stepping-stone to that heavenly Jerusalem, I shall be content.’
Thus they talked while the waggon jogged slowly homeward, while the frogs and turtles and the distant ripple of the sea made a drowsy mingling concert in the summer-evening air.
Meanwhile Colonel Burr had returned to the lighted rooms; and it was not long before his quick eye sought out Madame de Frontignac, standing pensively in a window-recess, half hid by the curtain. He stole up softly behind her, and whispered something in her ear.
In a moment she turned on him a face glowing with anger, and drew back haughtily; but Burr remarked the glitter of tears, not quite dried even by the angry flash of her eyes.
‘In what have I had the misfortune to offend?’ he said, crossing his arms upon his breast. ‘I stand at the bar and plead not guilty.’
He spoke in French, and she replied in the same smooth accents—
‘It was not for her to dispute monsieur’s right to amuse himself.’
Burr drew nearer, and spoke in those persuasive, pleading tones which he had ever at command, and in that language whose very structure, in its delicate tu toi, gives such opportunity for gliding on through shade after shade of intimacy and tenderness, till gradually the haughty fire of the eyes was quenched in tears; and in the sudden revulsion of a strong impulsive nature, she poured out to him what she called words of friendship, but which carried with them all the warmth of that sacred fire which is given to woman to light and warm the temple of home, and which sears and scars when kindled for any other shrine; and yet this woman was the wife of his friend and associate.
Monsieur de Frontignac was a grave and dignified man of forty-five. Virginie de Frontignac had been given him towife when but eighteen; a beautiful, generous, impulsive, wilful girl.
She had accepted him gladly for very substantial reasons. First, that she might come out of the convent where she was kept for the very purpose of educating her in ignorance of the world she was to live in. Second, that she might wear velvet, lace, cashmere, and jewels. Third, that she might be a madame, free to go and come, ride, walk, and talk, without surveillance. Fourth, and consequent upon this, that she might go into company, and have admirers and adorers.
She supposed, of course, she loved her husband—whom else should she love? he was the only man except her father and brothers that she had ever seen; and in the fortnight that preceded their marriage, did he not send her the most splendid bons-bons every day, with bouquets of every pattern that ever taxed the brain of a Parisian artiste? Was not the corbeille de mariage a wonder and an envy to all her acquaintance? and after marriage had she not found him always a steady, indulgent friend, easy to be coaxed as any grave papa?
On his part, Monsieur de Frontignac cherished his young wife as a beautiful, though somewhat absurd little pet; and amused himself with her frolics and gambols, as the gravest person often will with those of a kitten.
It was not until she knew Aaron Burr that poor Virginie de Frontignac came to that great awakening of her being which teaches woman what she is, and transforms her from a careless child to a deep-hearted, thinking, suffering, human being.
For the first time, in his society, she became aware of the charm of a polished and cultivated mind; able, with exquisite tact, to adapt itself to hers; to draw forth her inquiries; to excite her tastes; to stimulate her observation. A new world awoke around her—the world of literature, of taste, of art, of sentiment. She felt somehow as if she had gained the growth of years in a few months. She felt within herself the stirring of dim aspiration—the uprising of a new power of self-devotion and self sacrifice; a trance of hero worship; a cloud of high ideal images; the lighting up, in short, of allthat God has laid ready to be enkindled in woman’s nature when the time comes to sanctify her as the pure priestess of a domestic temple.
But, alas! it was kindled by one who did it only for an experiment; because he felt an artistic pleasure in the beautiful light and heat which had burned a soul away.
Burr was one of those men, willing to play with any charming woman the game of those navigators who give to simple natives glass beads and feathers in return for gold and diamonds; to accept from a woman her heart’s blood in return for such odds, ends, and clippings as he could afford her from the serious ambitions of life.
Look in with us one moment, now that the party is over, and the busy hum of voices and blaze of lights have died down to midnight silence and darkness. We make you clairvoyant; and you may look through the walls of this stately old mansion, still known as that where Rochambeau held his headquarters, into this room, where two wax candles are burning on a toilette-table before an old-fashioned mirror.
The slumbrous folds of the curtains are drawn with stately gloom around a high bed, where Colonel de Frontignac has been for many hours quietly asleep. But opposite, resting with one elbow on the toilette-table, her long black hair hanging down over her night-dress, and the brush hanging listlessly in her hand, sits Virginie, looking fixedly into the dreamy depths of the mirror.
Scarcely twenty yet; all unwarned of the world of power and passion that lay slumbering in her girl’s heart; led, in the meshes of custom and society, to utter vows and take responsibilities of whose nature she was no more apprised than is a slumbering babe, and now at last fully awake, feeling the whole power of that mysterious and awful force which we call love, yet shuddering to call it by its name; yet by its light beginning to understand all she is capable of, and all that marriage should have been to her!
She struggles feebly and confusedly with her fate, still clinging to the name of duty, and baptizing as friendship the strange new feeling which makes her tremble through all herbeing. How can she dream of danger in such a feeling, when it seems to her the awakening of all that is highest and noblest within her? She remembers when she thought of nothing beyond an opera ticket or a new dress; and now she feels that there might be to her a friend for whose sake she would try to be noble and great and good; for whom all self-denial, all high endeavour, all difficult virtue, would become possible; who would be to her life, inspiration, order, beauty.
She sees him, as woman always sees the one she loves—noble, great, and good; for when did a loving woman ever believe a man otherwise? too noble, too great, too high, too good, she thinks for her, poor, trivial, ignorant coquette—poor, trifling, childish Virginie! Has he not commanded armies? she thinks; is he not eloquent in the senate? and yet, what interest he has taken in her, a poor, unformed, ignorant creature! She never tried to improve herself till since she knew him: and he is so considerate too; so respectful; so thoughtful and kind; so manly and honourable; and has such a tender friendship for her; such a brotherly, fatherly solicitude. And yet, if she is haughty, or imperious, or severe, how humbled and grieved he looks! How strange that she could have power over such a man!
It is one of the saddest truths of this sad mystery of life, that woman is often never so much an angel as just the moment before she falls into the bottomless depths of perdition; and what shall we say of the man who leads her up to this spot as an experiment? who amuses himself with taking woman after woman up these dazzling, delusive heights, knowing, as he certainly must, where they lead?
We have been told, in extenuation of the course of Aaron Burr, that he was not a man of gross passions or of coarse indulgence, but in the most consummate and refined sense a man of gallantry: this, then, is the descriptive name which polite society has invented for the man who does this thing.
Of old it was thought that one who administered poison in the sacramental bread and wine had touched the very height of impious sacrilege; but this crime is white by the side of hiswho poisons God’s eternal sacrament oflove, and destroys woman’s soul through her noblest and purest affections.
We have given you the after view of most of the actors of our little scene to-night, and therefore it is but fair that you should have a peep over the Colonel’s shoulder as he sums up the evening in a letter to a friend.
‘My dear——,‘As to the business, it gets on rather slowly: L—— and T—— are away, and the coalition cannot be formed without them; they set out a week ago from Philadelphia, and are yet on the road.‘Meanwhile, we have some providential alleviations; as, for example, a wedding-party to-night at the Wilcox’s, which was really quite an affair. I saw the prettiest little Puritan there that I have set eyes on for many a day. I really couldn’t help getting up a flirtation with her, though it was much like flirting with a small copy of the Assembly’s catechism, of which I had enough years ago, heaven knows. But really, such a naïve, earnest little saint, who has such a real, deadly belief, and opens such blue pitying eyes on one, is quite a stimulating novelty. I got myself well scolded by the fair madame (as angels scold), and had to plead like a lawyer to make my peace.‘After all,thatwoman really enchains me. Don’t shake your head wisely. “What is going to be the end of it?” I am sure I don’t know; we’ll see when the time comes.‘Meanwhile, push the business ahead with all your might. I shall not be idle.‘D—— must canvass the Senate thoroughly. I wish I could be in two places at once, and I would do it myself. Au revoir.‘Ever yours,‘Burr.’
‘My dear——,
‘As to the business, it gets on rather slowly: L—— and T—— are away, and the coalition cannot be formed without them; they set out a week ago from Philadelphia, and are yet on the road.
‘Meanwhile, we have some providential alleviations; as, for example, a wedding-party to-night at the Wilcox’s, which was really quite an affair. I saw the prettiest little Puritan there that I have set eyes on for many a day. I really couldn’t help getting up a flirtation with her, though it was much like flirting with a small copy of the Assembly’s catechism, of which I had enough years ago, heaven knows. But really, such a naïve, earnest little saint, who has such a real, deadly belief, and opens such blue pitying eyes on one, is quite a stimulating novelty. I got myself well scolded by the fair madame (as angels scold), and had to plead like a lawyer to make my peace.
‘After all,thatwoman really enchains me. Don’t shake your head wisely. “What is going to be the end of it?” I am sure I don’t know; we’ll see when the time comes.
‘Meanwhile, push the business ahead with all your might. I shall not be idle.
‘D—— must canvass the Senate thoroughly. I wish I could be in two places at once, and I would do it myself. Au revoir.
‘Ever yours,‘Burr.’
‘Andnow, Mary,’ said Mrs. Scudder, at five o’clock the next morning, ‘to-day, you know, is the doctor’s fast, and so we won’t get any dinner, and it will be a good time to do up all our little odd jobs. Miss Prissy promised to come in for two or three hours this morning, to alter the waist of that black silk, and I shouldn’t be surprised if we could get it all done and ready to wear by Sunday.’
We will remark, by way of explanation to a part of this conversation, that our doctor, who was a specimen of life in earnest, made a practice through the greater part of his pulpit course of spending every Saturday as a day of fasting and retirement in preparation for the duties of the Sabbath.
Accordingly, the early breakfast things were no sooner disposed of than Miss Prissy’s quick footsteps might have been heard pattering in the kitchen.
‘Well, Miss Scudder, howdoyou do this morning? and howdoyou do, Mary? Well, if you aint the beaters! up just as early as ever, and everything cleared away! I was telling Miss Wilcox that there didn’t ever seem to be anything done in Miss Scudder’s kitchen, and I did verily believe you made your beds before you got up in the morning. Well, well; wasn’t that a party last night!’ she said, as she sat down with the black silk and prepared her ripping-knife. ‘I must rip this myself, Miss Scudder; for there’s a great deal in ripping silk, so as not to let anybody know where it has been sewed.
‘You didn’t know that I was at the party, did you? Well, I was. You see, I thought I’d just step round there to see about that money to get the doctor’s shirt with, and there I foundMiss Wilcox with so many things on her mind, and says she, “Miss Prissy, you don’t know how much it would help me if I had somebody like you just to look after things a little here;” and says I, “Miss Wilcox, you just go right to your room and dress, and don’t you give yourself one minute’s thought about anything, and you see if I don’t have everything just right.” And so there I was in for it, and I just stayed through; and it was well I did, for Dinah, she wouldn’t have put ne’er enough egg in the coffee if it hadn’t been for me. Why, I just went and beat up four eggs with my own hand, and stirred ’em into the grounds.
‘Well, but really; wasn’t I behind the door, and didn’t I peep into the supper-room! I saw who was a-waitin’ on Miss Mary. Well, they do say he’s the handsomest, most fascinating man; why, all the ladies in Philadelphia are in a perfect quarrel about him; and I heard he said that he hadn’t seen such a beauty, he didn’t remember when.’
‘We all know that beauty is of small consequence,’ said Mrs. Scudder. ‘I hope Mary has been brought up to feel that.’
‘Oh, of course,’ said Miss Prissy; ‘it’s just like a fading flower; all is to be good and useful, and that’s what she is; and I told ’em that her beauty was the least part of her, though I must say that dress did fit like a biscuit, if it was my own fitting. But, Miss Scudder, what do you think I heard ’em saying about the good old doctor?’
‘I am sure I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Scudder; ‘I only know they couldn’t say anything bad.’
‘Well, no, not bad exactly,’ said Miss Prissy; ‘but they say he’s getting such strange notions in his head; why, I heard some of ’em say he was going to come out and preach against the slave trade; and I’m sure I don’t know what Newport folks will do if that’s wicked; there aint hardly any money here that’s made any other way: it’ll certainly make a great noise and talk, and make everybody angry; and I hope the Doctor aint a-going to do anything of that sort.’
‘I believe he is, Miss Prissy,’ said Mrs. Scudder; ‘he thinks it’s a great sin that ought to be rebuked, and I think so too,’she said, bracing herself resolutely; ‘that was Mr. Scudder’s opinion when I first married him, and it’s mine.’
‘Oh, ah, yes. Well, if it’s a sin, of course,’ said Miss Prissy; ‘but then, dear me! Why, just think how many great houses are living on it. Why, there’s General Wilcox himself, and he’s a very nice man; and then there’s Major Seaforth; and why, I could count you off now a dozen—all our very first people. Why, Doctor Styles doesn’t think so, and I’m sure he’s a good Christian. Doctor Styles thinks it’s a dispensation for giving the light of the gospel to the Africans; why, now I’m sure, when I was a-working at Deacon Stebbins’, I stopped over Sunday once, ’cause Miss Stebbins she was weakly; ’twas when she was getting up after Samuel was born. No, on the whole, I believe ’twas Nehemiah, ’cause I remember he had curly hair; but any way, I remember I stayed there, and I remember as plain as if ’twas yesterday, just after breakfast, how a man went driving by in a chaise, and the Deacon, he went out and stopped him for travelling on the Lord’s day (’cause, you know, he was a justice of the peace), and who should it be but Tom Seaforth, and he told the Deacon his father had got a shipload of negroes just come in, and the Deacon he just let him go, ’cause I remember he saidthatwas a plain work of necessity and mercy.[A]Well now, who would have thought it? I believe the Doctor is better than most folks; but then the best people may be mistaken, you know.’
‘The Doctor has made up his mind that it’s his duty,’ said Mrs. Scudder. ‘I’m afraid it’ll make him very unpopular; but I, for one, shall stand by him.’
‘Oh, certainly, Miss Scudder, you’re doing just right, exactly. Well, there’s one comfort, he’ll have a great crowd to hear him preach, ’cause as I was going round through the entries last night, I heard ’em talking about it; and Colonel Burr said he should be there, and so did the General, and so did Mr. What’s-his-name there, that senator from Philadelphia. I tell you you’ll have a full house.’
It was to be confessed that Mrs. Scudder’s heart rather sank than otherwise at this announcement, and those whohave felt what it is to be almost alone in the right, in the face of all the ‘first families’ of their acquaintance, may perhaps find some compassion for her; since after all, truth is invisible, but ‘first families’ are very evident. First families are often very agreeable, undeniably respectable—fearfully virtuous; and it takes great faith to resist an evil principle which incarnates itself in the suavities of their breeding and amiability; and therefore it was that Mrs. Scudder felt her heart heavy within her, and could with a very good grace have joined the Doctor’s Saturday fast.
As for the Doctor, he sat the while tranquil in his study, with his great Bible and his Concordance open before him, culling, with that patient assiduity for which he was remarkable, all the terrible texts which that very unceremonious and old-fashioned book rains down so unsparingly on the sin of oppressing the weak. First families, whether in Newport or elsewhere, were as invisible to him as they were to Moses during the forty days that he spent with God on the Mount. He was merely thinking of his message, thinking only how he should shape it so as not to leave one word of it unsaid, not even imagining in the least what the result of it was to be: he was but a voice, but an instrument,—a passive instrument through which an Almighty will was to reveal itself: and the sublime fatalism of his faith made him as dead to all human considerations as if he had been a portion of the immutable laws of nature herself.
So the next morning, although all his friends trembled for him when he rose in the pulpit, he never thought of trembling for himself: he had come in the covered way of silence from the secret place of the Most High, and felt himself still abiding under the shadow of the Almighty. It was alike to him whether the house was full or empty. Whoever were decreed to hear the message would be there; whether they would hear or forbear was already settled in the counsels of a mightier will than his: he had the simple duty of utterance.
The ruinous old meeting-house was never so radiant with station and gentility as on that morning: a June sun shone brightly, the sea sparkled with a thousand little eyes, thebirds sang all along the way, and all the notables turned out to hear the Doctor.
Mrs. Scudder received into her pew, with dignified politeness, Colonel Burr, and Colonel and Madame de Frontignac.
General Wilcox and his portly dame, Major Seaforth, and we know not, what not of Vernons and De Wolfs, and other grand old names were present there. Stiff silks rustled, Chinese fans fluttered, and the last court fashion stood revealed in bonnets; everybody was looking fresh and amiable: a charming and respectable set of sinners come to hear what the Doctor would find to tell them about their transgressions.
Mrs. Scudder was calculating consequences, and, shutting her eyes on the too evident world about her, prayed that the Lord would overrule all for good: the Doctor prayed that he might have grace to speak the truth, and the whole truth.
We have yet on record, in his published works, the great argument of that day, through which he moved with that calm appeal to the reason, which made his results always so weighty.
‘If these things be true,’ he said, after a condensed statement of the facts of the case, ‘then the following terrible consequences, which may well make all shudder and tremble who realize them, force themselves upon us, that all who have had any hand in this iniquitous business, whether directly or indirectly, or have used their influence to promote it, or have consented to it, or even connived at it, or have not opposed it by all proper exertions of which they are capable—all these are in a greater or less degree chargeable with the injuries and miseries which millions have suffered and are suffering, and are guilty of the blood of millions who lost their lives by this traffic in the human species. Not only the merchants who have been engaged in this trade, and the captains who have been tempted by the love of money to engage in this cruel work, and the slaveholders of every description, are guilty of shedding rivers of blood, but all the legislatures who have authorized, encouraged, or even neglected to suppress it to the utmost of their power, and all the individuals in private stations who have in any way aidedin this business, consented to it, or have not opposed it to the utmost of their ability, have a share in this guilt. This trade in the human species has been the first wheel of commerce in Newport, on which every other movement in business has chiefly depended. This town has been built up and flourished in times past at the expense of the blood, the liberty, and the happiness of the poor Africans; and the inhabitants have lived on this, and by it have gotten most of their wealth and riches. If a bitter woe is pronounced on him who buildeth his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by wrong (Jer. xxii. 13), to him who buildeth a town by blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity (Hab. ii. 12), to the bloody city (Ezek. xxiv. 6), what a heavy, dreadful woe hangs over the heads of all those whose hands are defiled by the blood of the Africans—especially the inhabitants of this state and this town, who have had a distinguished share in this unrighteous and bloody commerce!’ He went over the recent history of the country; expatiated on the national declaration so lately made, that all men are born equally free and independent, and have a natural and inalienable right to liberty, and asked with what face a nation declaring such things could continue to hold thousands of their fellow-men in abject slavery.
He pointed out signs of national disaster which foreboded the wrath of heaven: the increase of public and private debts; the spirit of murmuring and jealousy of rulers among the people; divisions and contentions and bitter party alienations; the jealous irritation of England constantly endeavouring to hamper our trade; the Indians making war on the frontiers; the Algerines taking captive our ships, and making slaves of our citizens; all evident tokens of the displeasure and impending judgment of an offended justice.
The sermon rolled over the heads of the gay audience deep and dark as a thunder-cloud which in a few moments changes a summer sky into heaviest gloom. Gradually an expression of intense interest and deep concern spread over the listeners; it was the magnetism of a strong mind, which held them for a time under the shadow of his own awful sense of God’s almighty justice.
It is said that a little child once described his appearance in the pulpit by saying, ‘I saw God there, and I was afraid.’
Something of the same effect was produced on the audience now, and it was not till after sermon, prayer, and benediction were all over, that the respectables of Newport began gradually to unstiffen themselves from the spell, and to look into each other’s eyes for comfort, and to reassure themselves that after all they were the first families, eminently respectable, and going on in the good old way the world had always gone, and that the Doctor, of course, was a Radical and a fanatic.
When the audience streamed out, crowding the broad aisle, Mary descended from the singers’ seat, and stood with her psalm book in hand, waiting at the door to be joined by her mother and the Doctor. She overheard many hard words from people who an evening or two before had smiled so graciously upon them. It was, therefore, with no little determination of manner that she advanced and took the Doctor’s arm, as if anxious to associate herself with his well-earned unpopularity; and just at this moment she caught the eye and smile of Colonel Burr, as he bowed gracefully, yet not without a suggestion of something sarcastic in his eye.
FOOTNOTE:[A]A fact.
[A]A fact.
[A]A fact.
Wesuppose the heroine of a novel, among other privileges and immunities, has a prescriptive right to her own private boudoir, where, as a French writer has it, ‘she appears like a lovely picture in its frame.’
Well, our little Mary is not without this luxury, and to its sacred precincts we will give you this morning a ticket of admission. Know, then, that the garret of this gambrel-roofed cottage had a projecting window on the seaward side, which opened into an immensely large old apple-tree, and was a look-out as leafy and secluded as a robin’s nest.
Garrets are delicious places, in any case, for people of thoughtful, imaginative temperament. Who has not loved a garret in the twilight days of childhood, with its endless stores of quaint, cast-off, suggestive antiquity,—old worm-eaten chests,—rickety chairs,—boxes and casks full of old comminglings, out of which, with tiny, childish hands, we fished wonderful hoards of fairy treasure? What peep-holes, and hiding-places, and undiscoverable retreats we made to ourselves,—where we sat rejoicing in our security, and bidding defiance to the vague, distant cry which summoned us to school, or to some unsavoury every-day task! How deliciously the rain came pattering on the roof over head, or the red twilight streamed in at the window, while we sat snugly ensconced over the delicious pages of some romance, which careful aunts had packed away at the bottom of all things, to be sure we should never read it! If you have anything, beloved friends, which you wish your Charlie or your Susie to be sure and read, pack it mysteriously away at the bottom of a trunk of stimulating rubbish, in the darkest corner of yourgarret;—in that case, if the book be at all readable, one that by any possible chance can make its way into a young mind, you may be sure that it will not only be read, but remembered to the longest day they have to live.
Mrs. Katy Scudder’s garret was not an exception to the general rule. Those quaint little people who touch with so airy a grace all the lights and shadows of great beams, bare rafters, and unplastered walls, had not failed in their work there. Was there not there a grand easy-chair of stamped-leather, minus two of its hinder legs, which had genealogical associations through the Wilcoxes with the Vernons, and through the Vernons quite across the water with Old England? and was there not a dusky picture, in an old tarnished frame, of a woman of whose tragic end strange stories were whispered,—one of the sufferers in the time when witches were unceremoniously helped out of the world, instead of being, as now-a-days, helped to make their fortune in it by table-turning?
Yes, there were all these things, and many more which we will not stay to recount, but bring you to the boudoir which Mary has constructed for herself around the dormer-window which looks into the whispering old apple-tree.
The enclosure was formed by blankets and bed-spreads, which, by reason of their antiquity, had been pensioned off to an undisturbed old age in the garret,—notcommonblankets or bed-spreads, either,—bought, as you buy yours, out of a shop,—spun or woven by machinery,—without individuality or history. Every one of these curtains had its story. The one on the right, nearest the window, and already falling into holes, is a Chinese linen, and even now displays unfaded, quaint patterns of sleepy-looking Chinamen, in conical hats, standing on the leaves of most singular herbage, and with hands for ever raised in act to strike bells, which never are struck and never will be till the end of time. These, Mrs. Katy Scudder had often instructed Mary, were brought from the Indies by her great-great-grandfather, and were her grandmother’s wedding-curtains,—the grandmother who had blue eyes like hers, and was just about her height.
The next spread was spun and woven by Mrs. Katy’s belovedAunt Eunice,—a mythical personage, of whom Mary gathered vague accounts that she was disappointed in love, and that this very article was part of a bridal outfit, prepared in vain, against the return of one from sea, who never came back,—and she heard of how she sat wearily and patiently at her work, this poor Aunt Eunice, month after month, starting every time she heard the gate shut, every time she heard the tramp of a horse’s hoof, every time she heard the news of a sail in sight,—her colour, meanwhile, fading and fading as life and hope bled away at an inward wound,—till at last she found comfort and reunion beyond the veil.
Next to this was a bed-quilt pieced in tiny blocks, none of them bigger than a sixpence, containing, as Mrs. Katy said, pieces of the gowns of all her grandmothers, aunts, cousins, and female relatives for years back,—and mated to it was one of the blankets which had served Mrs. Scudder’s uncle in his bivouac at Valley Forge, when the American soldiers went on the snows with bleeding feet, and had scarce anything for daily bread except a morning message of patriotism and hope from George Washington.
Such were the memories woven into the tapestry of our little boudoir. Within, fronting the window, stands the large spinning-wheel, one end adorned with a snowy pile of fleecy rolls,—and beside it, a reel and a basket of skeins of yarn,—and open, with its face down on the beam of the wheel, lay always a book, with which the intervals of work were beguiled.
The dusky picture of which we have spoken hung against the rough wall in one place, and in another appeared an old engraved head of one of the Madonnas of Leonardo da Vinci, a picture which to Mary had a mysterious interest, from the fact of its having been cast on shore after a furious storm, and found like a waif lying in the sea-weed; and Mrs. Marvyn, who had deciphered the signature, had not ceased exploring till she found for her, in an Encyclopædia, a life of that wonderful man, whose greatness enlarges our ideas of what is possible to humanity,—and Mary, pondering thereon, felt the sea-worn picture as a constant vague inspiration.
Here our heroine spun for hours, and hours with intervals, when, crouched on a low seat in the window, she pored over her book, and then, returning again to her work, thought of what she had read to the lulling burr of the sounding wheel.
By chance a robin had built its nest so that from her retreat she could see the five little blue eggs whenever the patient brooding mother left them for a moment uncovered. And sometimes, as she sat in dreamy reverie, resting her small, round arms on the window-sill, she fancied that the little feathered watcher gave her familiar nods and winks of a confidential nature,—cocking the small head first to one side and then to the other, to get a better view of her gentle human neighbour.
I dare say it seems to you, reader, that we have travelled, in our story, over a long space of time, because we have talked so much, and introduced so many personages and reflections; but, in fact, it is only Wednesday week since James sailed, and the eggs which were brooded when he went are still unhatched in the nest, and the apple-tree has changed only in having now a majority of white blossoms over the pink buds.
This one week has been a critical one to our Mary: in it she has made the great discovery that she loves; and she has made her first step into the gay world; and now she comes back to her retirement to think the whole over by herself. It seems a dream to her, that she who sits there now reeling yarn in her stuff petticoat and white short-gown is the same who took the arm of Colonel Burr amid the blaze of wax-lights, and the sweep of silks and rustle of plumes. She wonders dreamily as she remembers the dark, lovely face of the foreign madame, so brilliant under its powdered hair and flashing gems,—the sweet, foreign accents of the voice,—the tiny, jewelled fan, with its glancing pictures and sparkling tassels, whence exhaled vague and floating perfumes; then she hears again that manly voice, softened to tones so seductive, and sees those fine eyes with the tears in them, and wonders within herself thathecould have kissed her hand with such veneration, as if she had been a throned queen.
But here the sound of busy, pattering footsteps is heard onthe old, creaking staircase, and soon the bows of Miss Prissy’s bonnet part the folds of the boudoir drapery, and her merry, May-day face looks in.
‘Well, really, Mary, how do you do, to be sure? You wonder to see me, don’t you? but I thought I must just run in a minute on my way up to Miss Marvyn’s. I promised her at least a half a day, though I didn’t see how I was to spare it,—for I tell Miss Wilcox I just run and run till it does seem as if my feet would drop off; but I thought I must just step in to say, that I, for my part,do admirethe Doctor more than ever, and I was telling your mother we mus’n’t mind too much what people say. I ’most made Miss Wilcox angry, standing up for him; but I put it right to her, and says I, “Miss Wilcox, you know folksmustspeak what’s on their mind,—in particular ministers must; and you know, Miss Wilcox,” I says, “that the Doctorisa good man, and lives up to his teaching, if anybody in this world does, and gives away every dollar he can lay hands on to those poor negroes, and works over ’em and teaches ’em as if they were his brothers;” and says I, “Miss Wilcox, you know I don’t spare myself, night nor day, trying to please you and do your work to give satisfaction; but when it comes to my conscience,” says I, “Miss Wilcox, you know I always must speak out, and if it was the last word I had to say on my dying bed, I’d say that I think the Doctor is right.” Why! what things he told about the slave-ships, and packing those poor creatures so that they couldn’t move nor breathe!—why, I declare, every time I turned over and stretched in bed, I thought of it; and says I, “Miss Wilcox, I do believe that the judgments of God will come down on us, if something a’n’t done, and I shall always stand by the Doctor,” says I;—and if you’ll believe me, just then I turned round and saw the General; and the General, he just haw-hawed right out, and says he, “Good for you, Miss Prissy! that’s real grit,” says he, “and I like you better for it.”’—‘Laws,’ added Miss Prissy, reflectively, ‘I sha’n’t lose by it, for Miss Wilcox knows she never can get anybody to do the work for her that I will.’
‘Do you think,’ said Mary, ‘that there are a great many made angry?’
‘Why, bless your heart, child, haven’t you heard? Why, there never was such a talk in all Newport. Why, you know Mr. Simeon Brown is gone clear off to Doctor Stiles; and Miss Brown, I was making up her plum-coloured satin a’ Monday, and you ought to ’a’ heard her talk. But, I tell you, I fought her. She used to talk to me,’ said Miss Prissy, sinking her voice to a mysterious whisper, ‘’cause I never could come to it to say that I was willin’ to be lost, if it was for the glory of God; and she always told me folks could just bring their minds right up to anything they knew they must; and I just got the tables turned on her, for they talked and abused the Doctor till they fairly wore me out, and says I, “Well, Miss Brown, I’ll give in, that you and Mr. Browndoact up to your principles; you certainlyactas if you were willing to be damned;”—and so do all those folks who will live on the blood and groans of the poor Africans, as the Doctor said; and I should think, by the way Newport people are making their money, that they were all pretty willing to go that way, though, whether it’s for the glory of God, or not, I’m doubting. But you see, Mary,’ said Miss Prissy, sinking her voice again to a solemn whisper, ‘I never wasclearon that point; it always did seem to me a dreadful high place to come to, and it didn’t seem to be given to me; but I thought, perhaps, if itwasnecessary, it would be given, you know,—for the Lord always has been so good to me that I’ve faith to believe that, and so I just say, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want;”’—and Miss Prissy hastily whisked a little drop out of her blue eye with her handkerchief.
At this moment Mrs. Scudder came into the boudoir with a face expressive of some anxiety.
‘I suppose Miss Prissy has told you,’ she said, ‘the news about the Browns. That’ll make a great falling off in the Doctor’s salary; and I feel for him, because I know it will come hard to him not to be able to help and do, especially for these poor negroes, just when he will. But then we must put everything on the most economical scale we can, and just try,all of us, to make it up to him. I was speaking to Cousin Zebedee about it, when he was down here, on Monday, and he is all clear;—he has made out three papers for Candace and Cato and Dinah, and they couldn’t, one of ’em, be hired to leave him; and he says, from what he’s seen already, he has no doubt but they’ll do enough more to pay for their wages.’
‘Well,’ said Miss Prissy, ‘I haven’t got anybody to care for but myself. I was telling sister Elizabeth, one time (she’s married and got four children), that I could take a storm a good deal easier than she could, ’cause I hadn’t near so many sails to pull down; and now, you just look to me for the Doctor’s shirts, ’cause, after this, they shall all come in ready to put on, if I have to sit up till morning. And I hope, Miss Scudder, you can trust me to make them; for if I do say it myself, I a’n’t afraid to do fine stitching ’longside of anybody,—and hemstitching ruffles, too; and I haven’t shown you yet that French stitch I learned of the nuns;—but you just set your heart at rest about the Doctor’s shirts. I always thought,’ continued Miss Prissy, laughing, ‘that I should have made a famous hand about getting up that tabernacle in the wilderness, with the blue and the purple and fine-twined linen; it’s one of my favourite passages, that is;—different things, you know, are useful to different people.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Scudder, ‘I see that it’s our call to be a remnant small and despised, but I hope we sha’n’t shrink from it. I thought, when I saw all those fashionable people go out Sunday, tossing their heads and looking so scornful, that I hoped grace would be given me to be faithful.’
‘And what does the Doctor say?’ said Miss Prissy.
‘He hasn’t said a word; his mind seems to be very much lifted above all these things.’
‘La, yes,’ said Miss Prissy, ‘that’s one comfort; he’ll never know where his shirts come from; and besides that, Miss Scudder,’ she said, sinking her voice to a whisper, ‘as you know, I haven’t any children to provide for,—though I was telling Elizabeth t’other day, when I was making up frocks for her children, that I believed old maids, first and last, did more providing for children than married women: but still Ido contrive to slip away a pound-note, now and then, in my little old silver teapot that was given to me when they settled old Mrs. Simpson’s property (I nursed her all through her last sickness, and laid her out with my own hands), and, as I was saying, if ever the Doctor should want money, you just let me know.’
‘Thank you, Miss Prissy,’ said Mrs. Scudder; ‘we all know where your heart is.’
‘And now,’ added Miss Prissy, ‘what do you suppose they say? Why, they say Colonel Burr is struck dead in love with our Mary; and you know his wife’s dead, and he’s a widower; and they do say that he’ll get to be the next President. Sakes alive! Well, Mary must be careful, if she don’t want to be carried off; for they do say that there can’t any woman resist him, that sees enough of him. Why, there’s that poor Frenchwoman, Madame —— what do you call her, that’s staying with the Vernons?—they say she’s over head and ears in love with him.’
‘But she’s a married woman,’ said Mary; ‘it can’t be possible!’
Mrs. Scudder looked reprovingly at Miss Prissy, and for a few moments there was great shaking of heads and a whispered conference between the two ladies, ending in Miss Prissy’s going off, saying, as she went down stairs,—
‘Well, if women will do so, I, for my part, can’t blame the men.’
In a few moments Miss Prissy rushed back as much discomposed as a clucking hen who has seen a hawk.
‘Well, Miss Scudder, what do you think? Here’s Colonel Burr come to call on the ladies!’
Mrs. Scudder’s first movement, in common with all middle-aged gentlewomen, was to put her hand to her head and reflect that she had not on her best cap; and Mary looked down at her dimpled hands, which were blue from the contact with mixed yarn she had just been spinning.
‘Now, I’ll tell you what,’ said Miss Prissy,—‘wasn’t it lucky you had me here? for I first saw him coming in at the gate, and I whipped in quick as a wink and opened the bestroom window-shutters, and then I was back at the door, and he bowed to me as if I’d been a queen, and says he, “Miss Prissy, how fresh you’re looking this morning!” You see, I was in working at the Vernons’, but I never thought as he’d noticed me. And then he inquired in the handsomest way for the ladies and the Doctor, and so I took him into the parlour and settled him down, and then I ran into the study, and you may depend upon it I flew round lively for a few minutes. I got the Doctor’s study-gown off, and got his best coat on, and put on his wig for him, and started him up kinder lively,—you know it takes me to get him down into this world,—and so there he’s in talking with him; and so you can just slip down and dress yourselves,—easy as not.’
Meanwhile Colonel Burr was entertaining the simple-minded Doctor with all the grace of a young neophyte come to sit at the feet of superior truth. There are some people who receive from Nature as a gift a sort of graceful facility of sympathy by which they incline to take on, for the time being, the sentiments and opinions of those with whom they converse, as the chameleon was fabled to change its hue with every surrounding. Such are often supposed to be wilfully acting a part, as exerting themselves to flatter and deceive, when in fact they are only framed so sensitive to the sphere of mental emanation which surrounds others that it would require an exertionnotin some measure to harmonize with it. In approaching others in conversation, they are like a musician who joins a performer on an instrument,—it is impossible for them to strike a discord; their very nature urges them to bring into play faculties according in vibration with those which another is exerting. It was as natural as possible for Burr to commence talking with the Doctor on scenes and incidents in the family of President Edwards, and his old tutor, Dr. Bellamy,—and thence to glide on to the points of difference and agreement in theology, with a suavity and deference which acted on the good man like a June sun on a budding elm-tree. The Doctor was soon wide awake, talking with fervent animation on the topic of disinterested benevolence,—Burrthe meanwhile studying him with the quiet interest of an observer of natural history, who sees a new species developing before him. At all the best possible points he interposed suggestive questions, and set up objections in the quietest manner for the Doctor to knock down, smiling ever the while as a man may who truly and genuinely does not care asoufor truth on any subject not practically connected with his own schemes in life. He therefore gently guided the Doctor to sail down the stream of his own thoughts till his bark glided out into the smooth waters of the Millennium, on which, with great simplicity, he gave his views at length.
It was just in the midst of this that Mary and her mother entered. Burr interrupted the conversation to pay them the compliments of the morning,—to inquire for their health, and hope they suffered no inconvenience from their night ride from the party; then, seeing the Doctor still looking eager to go on, he contrived with gentle dexterity to tie again the broken thread of conversation.
‘Our excellent friend,’ he said, ‘was explaining to me his views of a future Millennium. I assure you, ladies, that we sometimes find ourselves in company which enables us to believe in the perfectibility of the human species. We see family retreats, so unaffected, so charming in their simplicity, where industry and piety so go hand in hand! One has only to suppose all families such, to imagine a Millennium!’
There was no disclaiming this compliment, because so delicately worded, that, while perfectly clear to the internal sense, it was, in a manner, veiled and unspoken.
Meanwhile, the Doctor, who sat ready to begin where he left off, turned to his complaisant listener and resumed an exposition of the Apocalypse.
‘To my mind, it is certain,’ he said, ‘as it is now three hundred years since the fifth vial was poured out, there is good reason to suppose that the sixth vial began to be poured out at the beginning of the last century, and has been running for a hundred years or more, so that it is run nearlyout; the seventh and last vial will begin to run early in the next century.’
‘You anticipate, then, no rest for the world for some time to come?’ said Burr.
‘Certainly not,’ said the Doctor, definitively; ‘there will be no rest from overturnings till He whose right it is shall come.’
‘The passage,’ he added, ‘concerning the drying up of the river Euphrates, under the sixth vial, has a distinct reference, I think, to the account in ancient writers of the taking of Babylon, and prefigures, in like manner, that the resources of that modern Babylon, the Popish power, shall continue to be drained off, as they have now been drying up for a century or more, till, at last, there will come a sudden and final downfall of that power. And after that will come the first triumphs of truth and righteousness,—the marriage-supper of the Lamb.’
‘These investigations must undoubtedly possess a deep interest for you, sir,’ said Burr; ‘the hope of a future as well as the tradition of a past age of gold seems to have been one of the most cherished conceptions of the human breast.’
‘In those times,’ continued the Doctor, ‘the whole earth will be of one language.’
‘Which language, sir, do you suppose will be considered worthy of such pre-eminence?’ inquired his listener.
‘That will probably be decided by an amicable conference of all nations,’ said the Doctor; ‘and the one universally considered most valuable will be adopted; and the literature of all other nations being translated into it, they will gradually drop all other tongues. Brother Stiles thinks it will be the Hebrew. I am not clear on that point. The Hebrew seems to me too inflexible, and not sufficiently copious. I do not think,’ he added, after some consideration, ‘that it will be the Hebrew tongue.’
‘I am most happy to hear it, sir,’ said Burr, gravely; ‘I never felt much attracted to that language. But, ladies,’ he added, starting up with animation, ‘I must improve this fine weather to ask you to show me the view of the sea from thislittle hill beyond your house, it is evidently so fine;—I trust I am not intruding too far on your morning?’
‘By no means, sir,’ said Mrs. Scudder, rising; ‘we will go with you in a moment.’
And soon Colonel Burr, with one on either arm, was to be seen on the top of the hill beyond the house,—the very one from which Mary, the week before, had seen the retreating sail we all wot of. Hence, though her companion contrived, with the adroitness of a practised man of gallantry, to direct his words and looks as constantly to her as if they had been in atête-à-tête, and although nothing could be more graceful, more delicately flattering, more engaging, still the little heart kept equal poise; for where a true love has once bolted the door, a false one serenades in vain under the window.
Some fine, instinctive perceptions of the real character of the man beside her seemed to have dawned on Mary’s mind in the conversation of the morning;—she had felt the covert and subtile irony that lurked beneath his polished smile, felt the utter want of faith or sympathy in what she and her revered friend deemed holiest, and therefore there was a calm dignity in her manner of receiving his attentions which rather piqued and stimulated his curiosity. He had been wont to boast that he could subdue any woman, if he could only see enough of her: in the first interview in the garden, he had made her colour come and go, and brought tears to her eyes in a manner that interested his fancy, and he could not resist the impulse to experiment again. It was a new sensation to him, to find himself quietly studied and calmly measured by those thoughtful blue eyes; he felt, with his fine instinctive tact, that the soul within was enfolded in some crystalline sphere of protection, transparent, but adamantine, so that he could not touch it. What was that secret poise, that calm, immutable centre on which she rested, that made her, in her rustic simplicity, so unapproachable and so strong?
Burr remembered once finding in his grandfather’s study, among a mass of old letters, one in which that great man, inearly youth, described his future wife, then known to him only by distant report. With his keen natural sense of everything fine and poetic, he had been struck with this passage, as so beautifully expressing an ideal womanhood, that he had in his earlier days copied it in his privaterecueil.
‘They say,’ it ran, ‘that there is a young lady who is beloved of that Great Being who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with such exceeding sweet delight, that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate on Him; that she expects, after a while, to be received up where He is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven, being assured that He loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from Him always. Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards it. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affections; and you could not persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful, if you should give her all the world. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind, especially after this great God has manifested Himself to her mind. She will sometimes go from place to place singing sweetly, and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in fields and groves, and seems to have some invisible one always conversing with her.’
A shadowy recollection of this description crossed his mind more than once, as he looked into those calm and candid eyes. Was there, then, a truth in that inner union of chosen souls with God, of which his mother and her mother before her had borne meek witness,—their souls shining out as sacred lamps through the alabaster walls of a temple?
But then, again, had he not logically met and demonstrated, to his own satisfaction, the nullity of the religious dogmas on which New England faith was based? There could be no such inner life, he said to himself,—he had demonstrated it as an absurdity. What was it, then,—this charm, so subtile andso strong, by which this fair child, his inferior in age, cultivation, and knowledge of the world, held him in a certain awe, and made him feel her spirit so unapproachable? His curiosity was piqued. He felt stimulated to employ all his powers of pleasing. He was determined that, sooner or later, she should feel his power.
With Mrs. Scudder his success was immediate: she was completely won over by the deferential manner with which he constantly referred himself to her matronly judgments; and, on returning to the house, she warmly pressed him to stay to dinner.
Burr accepted the invitation with a frank and almost boyishabandon, declaring that he had not seen anything for years that so reminded him of old times. He praised everything at table,—the smoking brown bread, the baked beans steaming from the oven, where they had been quietly simmering during the morning walk, and the Indian pudding, with its gelatinous softness, matured by long and patient brooding in the motherly old oven. He declared that there was no style of living to be compared with the simple, dignified order of a true New England home, where servants were excluded, and everything came direct from the polished and cultured hand of a lady. It realized the dreams of Arcadian romance. A man, he declared, must be unworthy the name, who did not rise to lofty sentiments and heroic deeds, when even his animal wants were provided for by the ministrations of the most delicate and exalted portion of the creation.
After dinner he would be taken into all the family interests. Gentle and pliable as oil, he seemed to penetrate every joint of theménageby a subtile and seductive sympathy. He was interested in the spinning, in the weaving,—and, in fact, nobody knows how it was done, but before the afternoon shadows had turned, he was sitting in the cracked arm-chair of Mary’s garret-boudoir, gravely giving judgment on several specimens of her spinning, which Mrs. Scudder had presented to his notice.
With that ease with which he could at will glide into the character of the superior and elder brother, he had, withoutseeming to ask questions, drawn from Mary an account of her reading, her studies, her acquaintances.
‘You read French, I presume?’ he said to her, with easy negligence.
Mary coloured deeply, and then, as one who recollects one’s self, answered, gravely,—
‘No, Mr. Burr, I know no language but my own.’
‘But you should learn French, my child,’ said Burr, with that gentle dictatorship which he could at times so gracefully assume.
‘I should be delighted to learn,’ said Mary, ‘but have no opportunity.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Scudder, ‘Mary has always had a taste for study, and would be glad to improve in any way.’
‘Pardon me, madam, if I take the liberty of making a suggestion. There is a most excellent man, the Abbé Léfon, now in Newport, driven here by the political disturbances in France; he is anxious to obtain a few scholars, and I am interested that he should succeed, for he is a most worthy man.’
‘Is he a Roman Catholic?’
‘He is, madam; but there could be no manner of danger with a person so admirably instructed as your daughter. If you please to see him, madam, I will call with him some time.’
‘Mrs. Marvyn will, perhaps, join me,’ said Mary. ‘She has been studying French by herself for some time, in order to read a treatise on astronomy, which she found in that language. I will go over to-morrow and see her about it.’
Before Colonel Burr departed, the doctor requested him to step a moment with him into his study. Burr, who had had frequent occasions during his life to experience the sort of paternal freedom which the clergy of his country took with him in right of his clerical descent, began to summon together his faculties of address for the avoidance of a kind of conversation which he was not disposed to meet. He was agreeably disappointed, however, when, taking a paper from the table, and presenting it to him, the Doctor said,—
‘I feel myself, my dear sir, under a burden of obligation for benefits received from your family, so that I never see a memberof it without casting about in my own mind how I may in some measure express my good-will towards him. You are aware that the papers of your distinguished grandfather have fallen into my hands, and from them I have taken the liberty to make a copy of those maxims by which he guided a life which was a blessing to his country and to the world. May I ask the favour that you will read them with attention? and if you find anything contrary to right reason or sober sense, I shall be happy to hear of it on a future occasion.’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Burr, bowing, ‘I shall always be sensible of the kindness of the motive which has led you to take this trouble on my account. Believe me, sir, I am truly obliged to you for it.’
And thus the interview terminated.
That night, the Doctor, before retiring, offered fervent prayers for the grandson of his revered master and friend, praying that his father’s and mother’s God might bless him and make him a living stone in the Eternal Temple.
Meanwhile, the object of these prayers was sitting by a table in dressing-gown and slippers, thinking over the events of the day. The paper which Dr. H. had handed him contained the celebrated ‘Resolutions’ by which his ancestor led a life nobler than any mere dogmas can possibly be. By its side lay a perfumed note from Madame de Frontignac,—one of those womanly notes, so beautiful, so sacred in themselves, but so mournful to a right-minded person who sees whither they are tending. Burr opened and perused it,—laid it by,—opened the document which the Doctor had given, and thoughtfully read the first of the ‘Resolutions’:—
‘Resolved, That I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God’s glory, and my own good profit and pleasurein the whole of my duration, without any consideration of time, whether now or never so many myriad ages hence.
‘Resolved, To do whatever I think to be my duty and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general.
‘Resolved, To do this, whatsoever difficulties I meet with, and how many and how great soever.’
Burr read the whole paper through attentively once ortwice, and paused thoughtfully over many parts of it. He sat for some time after, lost in reflection; the paper dropped from his hand, and then followed one of those long, deep seasons of fixed reverie, when the soul thinks by pictures and goes over endless distances in moments. In him, originally, every moral faculty and sensibility was as keenly strung as in any member of that remarkable family from which he was descended, and which has, whether in good or ill, borne no common stamp. Two possible lives flashed before his mind at that moment, rapidly as when a train sweeps by with flashing lamps in the night. The life of worldly expediency, the life of eternal rectitude,—the life of seventy years, and that life eternal in which the event of death is no disturbance. Suddenly he roused himself up, picked up the paper, filed and dated it carefully, and laid it by; and in that moment was renewed again that governing purpose which sealed him, with all his beautiful capabilities, as the slave of the fleeting and the temporary, which sent him, at last, a shipwrecked man, to a nameless, dishonoured grave.
He took his pen and gave to a friend his own views of the events of the day.
‘My dear——,‘We are still in Newport, conjugating the verbs’ennuyer, which I, for one, have put through all the moods and tenses.Pour passer le temps, however, I havela belle Françaiseand my sweet little Puritan. I visited there this morning. She lives with her mother, a little walk out toward the sea-side in a cottage quite prettily sequestered among blossoming apple-trees, and the great hierarch of modern theology, Dr. H., keeps guard over them. No chance here for any indiscretions, you see.‘By-the-by, the good Doctor astonished ourmondehere on Sunday last, by treating us to a solemn onslaught on slavery and the slave-trade. He had all the chief captains and counsellors to hear him, and smote them hip and thigh, and pursued them even unto Shur.‘He is one of those great, honest fellows, without the smallest notion of the world we live in, who think, in dealingwith men, that you must go to work and prove the right and wrong of a matter; just as if anybody cared for that! Supposing he is right,—which appears very probable to me,—what is he going to do about it? No moral argument, since the world began, ever prevailed over twenty-five per cent. profit.‘However, he is the spiritual director ofla belle Puritaine, and was a resident in my grandfather’s family, so I did the agreeable with him as well as such an uncircumcised Ishmaelite could. I discoursed theology,—sat with the most docile air possible while he explained to me all the ins and outs in his system of the universe, past, present, and future,—heard him dilate calmly on the Millennium, and expound prophetic symbols, marching out before me his whole apocalyptic menagerie of beasts and dragons with heads and horns innumerable, to all which I gave edifying attention, taking occasion now and then to turn a compliment in favour of the ladies,—never lost, you know.‘Really, he is a worthy old soul, and actually believes all these things with his whole heart, attaching unheard-of importance to the most abstract ideas, and embarking his whole being in his ideal view of a grand Millennialfinaleto the human race. I look at him and at myself, and ask, Can human beings be made so unlike?‘My little Mary to-day was in a mood of “sweet austere composure” quite becoming to her style of beauty; hernaïve nonchalanceat times is rather stimulating. What a contrast between her andla belle Française!—all the difference that there is between a diamond and a flower. I find the little thing has a cultivated mind, enriched by reading, and more by a still, quaint habit of thinking, which is new and charming. But a truce to this.‘I have seen our friends at last. We have had three or four meetings, and are waiting to hear from Philadelphia,—matters are getting in train. If Messrs. T. and S. dare to repeat what they said again, let me know; they will find in me a man not to be trifled with. I shall be with you in a week or ten days at farthest. Meanwhile, stand to your guns.‘Ever yours,‘Burr.’
‘My dear——,
‘We are still in Newport, conjugating the verbs’ennuyer, which I, for one, have put through all the moods and tenses.Pour passer le temps, however, I havela belle Françaiseand my sweet little Puritan. I visited there this morning. She lives with her mother, a little walk out toward the sea-side in a cottage quite prettily sequestered among blossoming apple-trees, and the great hierarch of modern theology, Dr. H., keeps guard over them. No chance here for any indiscretions, you see.
‘By-the-by, the good Doctor astonished ourmondehere on Sunday last, by treating us to a solemn onslaught on slavery and the slave-trade. He had all the chief captains and counsellors to hear him, and smote them hip and thigh, and pursued them even unto Shur.
‘He is one of those great, honest fellows, without the smallest notion of the world we live in, who think, in dealingwith men, that you must go to work and prove the right and wrong of a matter; just as if anybody cared for that! Supposing he is right,—which appears very probable to me,—what is he going to do about it? No moral argument, since the world began, ever prevailed over twenty-five per cent. profit.
‘However, he is the spiritual director ofla belle Puritaine, and was a resident in my grandfather’s family, so I did the agreeable with him as well as such an uncircumcised Ishmaelite could. I discoursed theology,—sat with the most docile air possible while he explained to me all the ins and outs in his system of the universe, past, present, and future,—heard him dilate calmly on the Millennium, and expound prophetic symbols, marching out before me his whole apocalyptic menagerie of beasts and dragons with heads and horns innumerable, to all which I gave edifying attention, taking occasion now and then to turn a compliment in favour of the ladies,—never lost, you know.
‘Really, he is a worthy old soul, and actually believes all these things with his whole heart, attaching unheard-of importance to the most abstract ideas, and embarking his whole being in his ideal view of a grand Millennialfinaleto the human race. I look at him and at myself, and ask, Can human beings be made so unlike?
‘My little Mary to-day was in a mood of “sweet austere composure” quite becoming to her style of beauty; hernaïve nonchalanceat times is rather stimulating. What a contrast between her andla belle Française!—all the difference that there is between a diamond and a flower. I find the little thing has a cultivated mind, enriched by reading, and more by a still, quaint habit of thinking, which is new and charming. But a truce to this.
‘I have seen our friends at last. We have had three or four meetings, and are waiting to hear from Philadelphia,—matters are getting in train. If Messrs. T. and S. dare to repeat what they said again, let me know; they will find in me a man not to be trifled with. I shall be with you in a week or ten days at farthest. Meanwhile, stand to your guns.
‘Ever yours,‘Burr.’