Chapter XXXIII: The Tyrant and His Victim

Before Paul de Montreuil started for Norwich, and while the intended marriage of his sister was kept a secret in New Haven, the unhappy young man whose interview with Arnold in the pine woods we have already described, sat alone; and, oh, how wretched in the little room which had been a happy retreat to him before the painful events that put him in that bad man’s power! Perhaps upon the face of the earth there could not have been found a man on whom the burden of a secret could have fallen with more painful force; but, a sin,—a fraud,—an absolute wrong,—the very idea that he had been a party to sins like these crushed him to the earth.

The young man was thinner, paler, and far more feeble than he appeared that dim night under the pine-trees. A look of wild apprehension burned in his eyes, and on either cheek glowed the vivid scarlet of a restless spirit, if not of absolute disease. Many a hard struggle had this man endured in working his way through the college whose shadow lay almost around him up to the pulpit which he now filled; and, after all the privation and toil of his young life, what had it come to? The work of a single night, of which he was almost unconscious, had shipwrecked him on the very strand from which he was setting sail on his voyage of usefulness.

Intellectually, this man was strong. In order to gratify the craving of a hungry brain he had struggled through a world of difficulty; but in all other things he was depressed by that nervous weakness which clothes threatened evil with double power. In his conscience he was so sensitive that the least dereliction from duty was followed at once by bitter self-reproach, which might eat his very life out while he brooded silently over it.

He sat alone, as I have said, in a stiff, high-backed chair, whose wooden seat a kind landlady had covered with a patchwork cushion of red and blue cloth, cut in a small-diamond pattern. Shelves were on the walls, on which a few straggling old books leaned against each other, as if all the strength had been read out of them. A little spider-legged table stood before him, on which lay some sheets of paper and a pile of manuscript,—the first half of his farewell-sermon.

A deathly gloom filled the young man’s eyes as they fell upon this little heap of written paper; great drops hung on his forehead; and more than once he clasped his hands and wrung them together in passionate sorrow.

“Why should I do this,” he thought, looking despairingly around the room. “Must a single wrong drive me from my home,—from the people who love me. I—I am sure they do love me,” he broke out, in a passion of grief; and falling forward, with his face on the table, he wept aloud. He arose after a while and seized his hat.

“No, no,” he said. “I will not submit to this without a struggle. The man has a heart. He is young, and youth should be generous. I will appeal to him again. Why should he wish to ruin me? What good will it do him to bury me, body and soul, in a mission to those tropic islands. I have no heart for it,—no strength for it. If I go, long before the voyage is over they will leave me in mid-ocean, with an eternal booming of waters for my death-knell. I feel the waves curdling over me now. Oh, God forgive me,—God forgive me that I have brought myself to this,—I who so long held myself free from guile, and above reproach,—I who love one of the most pure and good of thy creatures; but, because of my sin, must carry this as another sorrow down into the deep waters.”

He sat down again; for in this outburst of passionate grief, all the strength left him, and he fell into his chair, trembling like a frightened child.

A door below opened, and the tread of a foot upon the stairs checked his breath. He listened, watching, as if he expected that some one would break in upon him.

The minister was not far from right. A quick step came close to the door. A knock, a sharp motion of the latch, and Arnold came in, the very picture of robust health.

The minister shuddered and shrunk back in his chair. The lamp shone on his forehead, and Arnold saw great drops glistening on its surface. For one instant a thrill of pity crept through his heart; but it was thrust away at once by rising contempt for a weakness he was not good enough to understand.

“What, all alone and gloomy as ever! Come, come, man, what is the use of fretting yourself into a skeleton? The doctors can get one at a cheaper rate.”

Arnold’s voice was rude and his manner almost insulting. He seemed to enjoy the anguish of his victim.

“I am not quite alone,” answered the minister, lifting a pale hand to his forehead and sweeping the moisture away. “The merciful God, who knows how I suffer and repent, hears us, Benedict Arnold, even in this poor room.”

“Be it so. While he permits the hawk to swoop on his prey in the face of Heaven, and the shark to fill his maw with helpless little fish, our interview will not be likely to draw his lightning from heaven; and, if it did, I can stand more than that.”

“Blasphemer!” broke from the white lips of the minister.

“Do you think so? I did not mean to be irreverent,—only truthful. Has it never struck you, however, how all through life the strong prey upon the weak? Man and beast, both are alike in this.”

“You talk of nature in its savage state. Christianity is given to subdue and refine nature. A good man, following the example of Christ, protects the weaker brother, works for him, bears with him,—sometimes is ready to die for him.”

The minister spoke with trembling energy. He sat upright in his stiff chair, and the lamplight fell upon his face, purifying it.

Arnold drew a seat to the table, and sat down upon it, saying, carelessly,

“Well, well, you shall be the Christian, and I will play the shark. While there are plenty of little fish in this great sea of life, I am content with that role.”

The minister shuddered, and covered his eyes with one hand, sighing heavily. When his hand dropped, Arnold had drawn the manuscript sermon across the table, and was reading it. With a sensitive thrill, as if the man were searching his heart, the minister reached forth his hand with a sharp effort to rescue his thoughts so sacred, as an emanation of his own life, from the desecration of those mocking eyes.

“No; let me read it,” said Arnold, grasping the loose leaves tightly with one hand while he gently repulsed the minister’s effort with the other. “If it is the farewell-sermon, of course I should hear it with the rest,—so what’s the difference?”

What was the difference? I wonder if common men ever dream of the shrinking reluctance with which a being who writes sees his warm thoughts, just as they come fresh from the brain, given over to criticism, perhaps unfriendly criticism, before his face. It is like playing with the strings of one’s heart while they are vibrating.

Those who feel this will know how to pity that sensitive man; when he saw the pages over which he had wept and prayed, under the eye and in the grasp of his enemy.

“For mercy’s sake give them back. You are torturing me,” he pleaded.

This pathetic cry of a soul that felt itself robbed had no effect upon the hard man.

“Directly, directly,” he said, keeping one hand heavily on the papers. “There is genius in this, absolute, downright genius! Why, man, go down on your knees, and thank me for giving you occasion for a sermon like this. You never would have produced any thing like it in a whole lifetime without my help.”

“Without your help!” repeated the minister, drearily. “Without your help!”

“Why, yes, if, as you say, I have made you suffer. Bruise a flower, if you want its perfect fragrance.”

The minister groaned aloud, muttering drearily, “But it kills the flower! It kills the flower!”

“Sometimes,” answered Arnold, fastening his eyes again on the sermon. “Sometimes.”

He read on, while the very soul of his victim writhed and quivered under this coarseness.

“That will be a powerful sermon. I did not know that you had so much in you,” said Arnold, at length, giving the manuscript a push toward its author. “But when will you preach it? Next Sunday, I hope, for to own the truth I am very anxious to have you get off.”

“What is the reason of this haste,” inquired the minister, with some energy, “so long as I remain silent? Why wish me away?”

“It is safer and pleasanter,” answered Arnold, dryly.

The poor man, thus ruthlessly driven from his home and the people he loved, sat for a moment mute and pale. Then clasping his thin hands in pathetic anguish, he flung them clenched together upon the table.

“What have I done to you, Arnold, that you should persecute me so? Have some mercy on me. I love my people: I have worked some good among them, unworthy as I am to serve my God in any thing. I have tried so hard to atone for that one wrong,—a wrong I scarcely remember, and would not believe but for the proof you hold. I do not even know why that wretched note was given. All that I do know of a certainty is, that a day of oblivion left me in your power,—left me with a shameful debt, as I was told, acknowledged under my own hand. If this oblivion came, as you persist it did, from the wine-cup,—if this debt was made at a gambling-table,—then, for one unholy day and night, I, God’s sworn servant, was a drunkard and a gambler.”

“‘If!’” said Arnold, “‘if!’ I was not the only witness.”

“Where is the other man? Bring him face to face with me before I am bound hand and foot and given up to death!”

There was something in the wretched man’s face that startled Arnold. The anguish in his voice thrilled even his stony heart. There was more strength and resistance here than he had supposed possible. But while this thought was striking him with terror, the minister changed, the energy in his face died out, tears leaped to his eyes, filling them with liquid anguish. His hands, that had been lifted from the table, fell down, clasped imploringly, and his voice was one wail of pain.

“But if it is so, Arnold, you are a man, and I once thought you my friend. Have mercy upon me, and let this poor soul work out its own redemption before the Lord. He knows how I have repented, how I have wept, how I have implored forgiveness on my knees for this great fault. Why should you, a man like myself, be less merciful than God? He has forgiven me. I know it,—I feel it in the depths of my soul. Why, then, are you so cruel?”

Arnold was disturbed. This pathetic address would have softened hate itself. The minister saw it, and went on with more touching energy.

“I will tell you another thing, Arnold,—a secret that has never passed my lips, but which has been the very life of my life for many a day. As you loved the sweet girl who came with you that night, I love a creature good and pure as she is.”

“‘Is!’” cried Arnold, savagely. “‘Is!’ Why the girl is dead! You must know that!”

The falsehood was a sudden impulse. Could he make the minister believe it, half the peril that encompassed him was conquered.

“Dead!” cried the unhappy man. “Dead, and so young! Then, in the grief of this bereavement, you will find some compassion for one who gave her to you at the expense of his conscience. If you loved her, think of another quite as worthy. Week after week I have watched her soft eyes lifted to mine; these hands have given the holy bread and wine to her lips; she smiles upon me as I pass her window in the calm twilight. We love each other, Arnold. I feel that truth in every pulse of my heart. For her sake let me remain in peace. Your young wife being dead, makes secrecy innocent. I will never mention the marriage, if you wish it kept secret. She is now beyond the reach of all harm. I was only afraid of committing a new sin when I opposed your wishes,—afraid of wronging that poor trusting girl. Now that she is with God, you will let me rest, for her sake.”

Arnold turned impatiently from this appeal. Spite of himself it wrung his hard heart, but he was too far committed for retreat. A few weeks of delay, and this man pleading so forcibly for a respite from ruin might change places with him. Because his own heart was relenting he goaded it into more cutting cruelty.

“You doubt my word!” he said; “doubt your own handwriting! ask for an interview with the person whom from delicacy I have kept from your presence! But you shall see him,—talk with him,—receive the blasting assurance from his own lips. But remember, he did not know the worst. I kept him in ignorance that you were one of God’s holy ministers. When that is revealed to him he will not outrage his conscience, as I have done, by keeping your great transgression a secret. Besides, he is a ruthless man, and without pity, especially for weaknesses among the clergy. There is great danger that he may discover your identity with the holy professor by accident. At any time he may enter your church and find the man he believes to be so degraded dispensing God’s sacred word from the pulpit. Up to this time I have managed to keep him away; but last week he sent me a letter, saying that I might expect him in a few days.”

The minister bent his head to the table and moaned aloud. Arnold went round to his chair, and laid a hand, with seeming kindness, on his shoulder.

“If I have seemed unkind, it was for your own good,” he said. “I hated to say all this in plain terms; but cannot you see that it is best you should leave this place, for a time at least? It need not be forever. Let the congregation vote you leave of absence. In a few months this unhappy affair can be settled. The day you sail I will give up the note. Just keep out of the way while the person we dread comes and goes, then we shall have nothing to fear.”

The minister lifted a hand to his forehead, and arose from his chair.

“Yes; I will go,” he said. “If that poor girl is in her grave, it is neither leaving her to suffer, or taking sin upon my own soul. I have thought you harsh, Arnold, and suspected you of things that I begin to think never entered your mind. Let us forgive each other before we part.”

Arnold wrung his hand out of that honest grasp. It was like touching fire. He went down-stairs mattering to himself,—

“There is no help for it. The fellow will come back again, if he lives so long; but I shall be out of the country long before that. Besides, how is he to find out whether a girl, whose home is so distant, is living or dead? Thank heaven his cousin has moved away.”

The minister sat down pale and exhausted. His doom seemed less dreary than it had an hour before. The idea that he was aiding in a concealment which might bring shame or sorrow on the fair girl whom he had united to the man whose steps rang in his ear, had lifted a burden from his conscience. He would trust himself to the sea now that no fresh wrong went with him.