The Duke of Stockbridge: A Romance of Shays' Rebellion by Edward Bellamy (diy ebook reader TXT) 📗

“The report is entirely true, reverend sir. I am but waiting for a certain Hessian drummer who will wield the lash.”

“But man,” exclaimed the parson, “you have forgotten that these are the first men in the county. They are gentlemen of distinguished birth and official station. You would not whip them like common offenders. It is impossible. You are beside yourself. Such a thing was never heard of. It is most criminal, most wicked. As a minister of the gospel I protest! I forbid such a thing,” and the little parson fairly choked with righteous indignation.

“These men, if they had succeeded in their plan last night, would have whipped me, and a score of others to-day. Would you have protested against that?”

“That is different. They would have proceeded against you as criminals, according to law.”

“No doubt they would have proceeded according to law,” replied Perez, with a bitter sneer. “They have been proceeding according to law for the past six years here in Berkshire, and that's why the people are in rebellion. I'm no lawyer, but I know that Perez Hamlin is as good as Jahleel Woodbridge, whatever the parson may think, and what he would have done to me, shall be done to him.”

“That is not the rule of the gospel,” said the minister, taking another tack. “Christ said if any man smite you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

“If that is your counsel, take it to those who are likely to need it. I am going to do the smiting this time, and it's their time to do the turning. They need not trouble themselves, however. Pete will see that they get it on both sides.”

“And now sir,” he added, “if you would like to see the prisoners to prepare them for what's coming, you are welcome to,” and opening the door of the room he told the sentinel in the corridor to let the parson into the guard room, and the silenced and horrified man of God mechanically acting upon the hint went out and left him alone.

The imagination of the reader will readily depict the state of mind in which the families of the arrested gentlemen were left after the midnight visit of Perez' band. That there was no more sleep in those households that night will be easily understood. In the Edwards family the long hours till morning passed in praying and weeping by Mrs. Edwards and Desire, and the younger children. They scarcely dared to doubt that the husband and father was destined to violence or death at the hands of these bloody and cruel men. At dawn Jonathan, who, on trying to follow his father when first arrested, had been driven back with blows, went out again, and the tidings which he brought back, that the prisoners were confined in the Fennell house and as yet had undergone no abuse, somewhat restored their agitated spirits. An hour or two later the boy came tearing into the house, with white face, clenched fists and blazing eyes.

“What is it?” cried his mother and sister, half scared to death at his looks.

“They're going,”—Jonathan choked.

“They're going to have father whipped,” he finally made out to articulate.

“Whipped!” echoed Desire, faintly and uncomprehendingly.

“Yes!” cried the boy hoarsely, “like any vagabond, stripped and whipped at the whipping-post.”

“What do you mean?” said Mrs. Edwards, as she took Jonathan by the shoulder.

“They're going to whip father, and uncle, and all the others,” he repeated, beginning to whimper, stout boy as he was.

“Whip father? You're crazy, Jonathan, you didn't hear right. They'd never dare! It can't be! Run and find out,” cried Desire, wildly.

“There ain't any use. I heard the Hamlin fellow say so himself. They're going to do it. They said it's no worse than whipping one of them, as if they were gentlemen,” blubbered Jonathan.

“Oh no! no! They can't, they won't,” cried the girl in an anguished voice, her eyes glazed with tears as she looked appealingly from Jonathan to her mother, in whose faces there was little enough to reassure her.

“Don't, mother, you hurt,” said Jonathan, trying to twist away from the clasp which his mother had retained upon his arm, unconsciously tightening it till it was like a vise.

“Whip my husband!” said she, slowly, in a hollow tone. “Whip him!” she repeated. “Such a thing was never heard of. There must be some mistake.”

“There must be. There must be,” exclaimed Desire again. “It can never be. They are not so wicked. That Hamlin fellow is bad enough, but oh he isn't bad enough for that. They would not dare. God would not permit it. Some one will stop them.”

“There is no one to stop them. The people are all against us. They are glad of it. They are laughing. Oh! how I hate them. Why don't God kill them?” and with a prolonged, inarticulate roar of impotent grief and indignation, the boy threw himself flat on the floor, and burying his face in his arms sobbed and rolled, and rolled and sobbed, like one in a fit.

“I will go and have speech with this Son of Belial, Hamlin. It may be the Lord will give me strength to prevail with him,” said Mrs. Edwards. “And if not, they shall not put me from my husband. I will bear the stripes with him, that he may never be ashamed before the wife of his bosom,” and with a calm and self-controlled demeanor, she bestirred herself to make ready to go out.

“Let me go mother,” said Desire, half hesitatingly.

“It is not your place my child. I am his wife,” replied Mrs. Edwards.

“Yes mother, but Desire's so pretty, and this Hamlin fellow stopped the horse-fiddles just to please her, the other time,” whimpered Jonathan. “Perhaps he'd let father off if she went. Do let her go mother.”

The allusion to the stopping of the horse-fiddle was Greek to Mrs. Edwards, to whose ears the story had never come. But the present was not a time for general inquiries. It sufficed that she saw the main point, the persuasive power of beauty over mankind.

“It may be that you had better go,” she said. “If you fail I will go myself to my husband, and meantime I shall be in prayer, that this cup may pass from us.”

Hastily the girl gathered her beautiful disheveled hair into a ribbon behind, removed the traces of tears from her wild and terror-stricken eyes, and not stopping even for her hat, in her fear that she might be too late, left the house and made her way through the throng before the Fennell house. At sight of her pallid cheeks and set lips, the ribald jeer died on the lips even of the drunken, and the people made way for her in silence. It was not that they had ever liked her, or now sympathized with her. She had always held herself too daintily aloof from speech or contact with them for that, but they guessed her errand, and had a certain rude sense of the pathos of such a humiliation for the haughty Desire Edwards.