Of course we are describing a madness--one of those peculiar forms of the disease which seems to have its origin in natural and justifiable suggestions of reason. Not the less a madness for all that.
Succeeding in her practice at one distance, Margaret Cooper changed it.
From one point to another she constantly varied her practice, until her aim grew certain at almost any distance within the ordinary influence of the weapon. To strike her mark at thirty feet became, in a little while, quite as easy as to do so at five; and, secure now of her weapon, her next object--though there was no cessation of her practice--was how to seek and where to find the victim.
In this new object she meditated to disguise herself in the apparel of a man. She actually commenced the making up of the several garments of one. This was also the secret labor of the midnight hour, when her feeble-minded mother slept. She began to feel some of the difficulties lying in the way of this pursuit, and her mind grew troubled to consider them, without however, relaxing in its determination. That seemed a settled matter.
While she brooded over this new feature of her purpose--as if fortunately to arrest the mad design--her mother fell seriously sick, and was for some time in danger. The duty of attending upon her, put a temporary stop to her thoughts and exercises; though without having the effect of expelling them from her mind.
But another event, upon her mother"s recovery, tended to produce a considerable alteration in her thoughts. A new care filled her heart and rendered her a different being, in several respects. She was soon to become a mother. The sickness of soul which oppressed her under this conviction, gave a new direction to her mood without lessening its bitterness; and, in proportion as she found her vengeance delayed, so was the gratification which it promised, a heightened desire in her mind.
For the humiliating and trying event which was at hand, Margaret Cooper prepared with a degree of silent firmness which denoted quite as strongly the resignation of despair as any other feeling.
The child is born.
Margaret Cooper has at length become a mother. She has suffered the agony, without being able to feel the compensating pride and pleasure of one. It was the witness of her shame--could she receive it with any a.s.surances of love? It is doubtful if she did.
For some time after its birth, the hapless woman seemed to be unconscious, or half-conscious only, of her charge. A stupor weighed upon her senses. When she did awaken, and her eyes fell upon the face and form of the infant with looks of recognition, one long, long piercing shriek burst from her lips. She closed her eyes--she turned away from the little unoffending, yet offensive object with a feeling of horror.
Its features were those of Alfred Stevens. The likeness was indelible; and this ident.i.ty drew upon the child a share of that loathing hatred with which she now remembered the guilty father.
It may very well be supposed that the innocent babe suffered under these circ.u.mstances. The milk which it drew from the mother"s breast, was the milk of bitterness, and it did not thrive. It imbibed gall instead of nutriment. Day after day it pined in hopeless misery; and though the wretched mother strove to supply its wants and soothe its little sorrows, with a gradually increasing interest which overcame her first loathing, there was yet that want of sweetest sympathy which nothing merely physical could well supply.
Debility was succeeded by disease--fever preyed upon its little frame, which was now reduced to a skeleton. One short month only had elapsed from its birth, and it lay, in the silence of exhaustion upon the arm of its mother. Its eyes, whence the flickering light was escaping fast, looked up into hers, as she fancied, with an expression of reproach. She felt, on the instant, the pang of the maternal conscience. She forgot the unworthy father, as she thought of the neglectful mother. She bent down, and, for the first time, imprinted on its little lips the maternal kiss.
A smile seemed to glimmer on its tiny features; and, from that moment, Margaret Cooper resolved to forget her injuries, for the time, at least, in the consideration of her proper duties. But her resolution came too late. Even while her nipple was within its boneless gums, a change came over the innocent. She did not heed it. Her eyes and thoughts were elsewhere; and thus she mused, gazing vacantly upon the wall of her chamber until her mother entered the room. Mrs. Cooper gave but a single glance at the infant when she saw that its little cares were over.
"Oh, Margaret!" she exclaimed, "the child is dead."
The mother looked down with a start and shudder. A big tear fell from her eyes upon the cold cheek of the innocent. She released it to her mother, turned her face upon the couch, and uttered her thanks to Heaven that had secured it--that had left her again free for that darker purpose which had so long filled her mind.
"Better so," she murmured to her mother. "It is at peace. It will neither know its own nor its mother"s griefs. It is free from that shame for which I must live!"
"Come now, Margaret, no more of that," said the mother sharply. "There"s no need of shame. There are other things to live for besides shame."
"There are--there are!" exclaimed the daughter, with spasmodic energy.
"Were there not, I should, indeed, be desperate."
"To be sure you would, my child. You have a great deal to live for yet; and let a little time blow over, and when everything"s forgotten, you will get as good a husband as any girl in the country."
"For Heaven"s sake, mother, none of this?"
"But why not! Though you are looking a little bad just now--quite pale and broken--yet it"s only because you have been so ill; and this nursing of babies, and having "em too, is a sort of business to make any young woman look bad; but in spite of all, there"s not a girl in the village, no matter how fresh she may be looking, that can hold a candle to you."
"For mercy, mother!--"
"Let me speak, I tell you! Don"t I know? You"re young, and you"ll get over it. You will get all your beauty and good looks back, now that the baby"s out of the way, and there"s no more nursing to be done. And what with your beauty and your talents, Margaret--"
"Peace! mother! Peace--peace! You will drive me to madness if you continue to speak thus."
"Well, I"m sure there"s no knowing what to say to please you. I"m sure, I only want to cheer you up, and to convince you that things are not so bad as you think them now. The cloud will blow over soon, and everything will be forgotten, and then, you see--"
The girl waved her hand impatiently.
"Death--death!" she exclaimed. "Oh! child of shame, and bitterness, and wrath!" she murmured, kneeling down beside the infant, "thou art the witness that I have no future but storm, and cloud, and wrath, and--Vengeance!"
The last word was inaudible to her mother"s ears.
"It is an oath!" she cried; "an oath!" And her hands were uplifted in solemn adjuration.
"Come--come, Margaret! none of this swearing. You frighten me with your swearing. There"s nothing that you need to swear about! What"s done can"t be helped now, by taking it so seriously. You must only be patient, and give yourself time. Time"s the word for us now; after a little while you"ll see the sky become brighter. It"s a bad business, it"s true; but it needn"t break a body"s heart. How many young girls I"ve known in my time, that"s been in the same fix. There was Janet Bonner, and Emma Loring, and Mary Peters--I knew "em all, very well.
Well, they all made a slip once in their lives, and they never broke their hearts about it, and didn"t look very pale and sad in the face either; but they just kept quiet and behaved decent for awhile, and every one of "em got good husbands. Janet Bonner, she married d.i.c.k Pyatt, who came from Ma.s.sachusetts, and kept the school down by Clayton"s Meadow; Emma Loring married a baptist-preacher from Virginia, named Stokes. I never saw him to know him; and as for Mary Peters, there never was a girl that had a slip that was ever so fortunate, for she"s been married no less than three times since, and as she"s a widow again, there"s no telling what may happen to her yet. So don"t you be so downcast. You"re chance is pretty nigh as good as ever, if you will only hold up your head, and put the best face on it."
"Oh! torture--torture! Mother, will you not be silent? Let the dead speak to me only. I would hear but the voice of this one witness--"
And she communed only with the dead infant, sitting or kneeling beside it. But the communion was not one of contrition or tears--not of humility and repentance--not of self-reproach and a broken spirit. Pride and other pa.s.sions had summoned up deities and angels of terror and of crime, before the eyes and thoughts of the wretched mourner, and the demon who had watched with her and waited on her, and had haunted her with taunt and bitter mockeries, night and day, was again busy with terrible suggestions, which gradually grew to be divine laws to her diseased imagination.
"Yes!" she exclaimed unconsciously.
"I hear! I obey! Yet speak again. Repeat the lesson. I must learn it every syllable, so that I shall not mistake--so that I can not fail!"
"Who are you talking to, Margaret?" asked the mother anxiously.
"Do you not see them, where they go? There--through the doors; the open windows--wrapped in shadows, with great wings at their shoulders, each carrying a dart in his bony grasp."
"Lord, have mercy! She"s losing her senses again!" and the mother was about to rush from the apartment to seek a.s.sistance; but with the action, the daughter suddenly arose, wearing a look of singular calmness, and motioning to the child, she said:--
"Will you not dress it for the grave?"
"I"m going about it now. The poor lovely little creature. The innocent little blossom. We must put it in white, Margaret--virgin white--and put white flowers in its little hands and on its breast, and under its head.
Oh! it will look so sweet in its little coffin!"
"G.o.d! I should go mad with all this!" exclaimed the daughter, "were it not for that work which is before me! I must be calm for that-calm and stern! I must not hear--I must not think--not feel--lest I forget myself, and the deed which I have to do. That oath--that oath! It is sworn! It is registered in heaven, by the fatal angel of remorse, and wrath, and vengeance!"
And again, a whisper at her ears repeated:--
"For this, Margaret, and for this only, must thou live".
"I must! I will!" she muttered, as it were in reply, and her eye glared upon the opened door, as she heard a voice and footsteps without; and the thought smote her:--
"Should it be now! Come for the sacrifice! Ha!"
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.
THE PALL UPON THE COFFIN.