Chapter XLII: Under the Elms

Mrs. Arnold was in her chamber waiting with a heavy heart for the return of her husband, and for the first sight of her son.

But the two men did not return so promptly as she expected. Under one of the noble elms which shaded the college grounds they had paused in deep conversation. Both were agitated, and the voice of the old man was stern and deep, almost as if it had been uttering a malediction.

“Benedict,” he was saying, “before this girl shall be left to her ruin, I will tell that which shall destroy you.”

“What, the thing you hinted at when I was home! as if I gave it a thought.”

“Yes, Benedict, it is of your crime I speak.”

“‘Crime,’ sir!”

“The first great crime which brought distraction upon me,—hardness of heart on you.”

“Speak out, sir, you exasperate me with half-sayings. Of what crime am I guilty?”

“It is hard to speak of it. I have never uttered the awful words before, but you will have them. I speak of ARSON AND FRAUD.”

The old man spoke so sternly, and the words came out so like a denunciation, that Benedict staggered back and hid his face in the shadows. Conscience, after all, made a coward of him. His voice shook when he spoke.

“You charge these things on me. This suspicion, sir, is enough to separate father and son forever.”

“‘Suspicion!’ Benedict, I saw the act.”

“You!—you!”

“As God shall judge us, my son, I saw you.”

“Ha!”

“It was a stormy night. Do you remember it? Can you ever forget it? A wild, stormy night—not with rain or snow, but the wind blew awfully and the lightning flashed in and out through the clouds,—dry lightning, such as makes the air hot around you? I went home. Do you remember leaving the shutters open? You were to bar them and sleep in the store. It was a common thing, and when you asked it I had nothing to oppose. People say that when great evils threaten you, some presentiment warns you against them. It was not so with me. I went out very happy. We had done a good day’s business, and I was going home to a contented wife and pleasant fireside. It was not a presentiment that brought me back.”

“It must have been some infernal fiend,” hissed the young man through his clinched teeth.

“It did the work of a fiend for me and mine,” was the rejoinder. “The wind rose, and swelled, and rioted that night as I have never seen it before nor since. There was a long stretch of woods between the town and our homestead. The gale tore through the trees like a tornado. I could hear the great limbs crack and go crashing through the branches underneath, tearing them away to work new havoc. Just as I entered this wood, a great hemlock, hollow at the trunk, was lifted up by the roots and hurled across the road not twenty feet from where I stood. The crash frightened me.

“Any one of the great limbs, that were twisted off like straws, would have killed me in falling. I turned when the hemlock fell and ran out of the woods. It was surely unsafe to go home, so I made up my mind to hurry back and sleep with my son in the store.”

“An infernal piece of folly,” muttered the son.

“I reached the store and was going in, but one leaf of the shutters was open, and, thinking the wind had torn out the bolt, I stopped to fasten it—and looked in.”

“Well, sir, and you saw what?”

“I saw my own son standing over a mass of burning shavings, on which he was heaping pine-knots and pouring oil. The smoke already filled the store; flames leaped from the burning mass, and licked the ceiling. I strove to call out, but the sight struck me dumb. The words struggled in my throat like a death-rattle. I beat against the shutters with my hands. I tried the door. It was bolted inside. Then I shouted; agony unchained my voice as terror had chained it: but the wind swept the cries from my lips. Nothing could be heard that night above its fierce howls. Then the door was burst open and great waves of flame broke through. With them came a human form. Yours, yours, Benedict Arnold. I saw it clearly by the vivid light of the fire. I saw it leaping through the darkness and away into the woods I had not dared to pass. Ten thousand devils seemed howling a welcome to their fellow-sinner as you entered the shadows. I ran after you. I shouted furiously that you should turn back and help me put out the fire; but it was useless. You had plunged into the black chasms of the wood, and were gone. Then I went back to the store, panting for breath, bathed in sweat, faint and sick. The fire had broken out from every crevice; flames were leaping through the windows; and, curling upwards from the door, they lapped the shingled roof madly, as wolves drink blood. I was too late, too late.”

The old man took out his handkerchief and dashed it across his forehead, wiping great drops of agony away. The moonbeams fell on his head, and against the crimson folds of his handkerchief those rugged features were ghastly white.

Arnold was the first to speak. While this terrible narrative was poured forth, more like a last appeal than an accusation, his iron heart had resumed its hardness. The first shock of a conscience not quite dead had left him dumb. But when the old man stopped, trembling and exhausted, his audacious spirit came back.

“Old man, were you crazy then, or are you crazy now?”

“Almost, almost, I fear!” panted the unhappy parent.

“I should think so; to hunt an only son down with charges like this—why they are worthy of a romance.”

“How true they are, you and the God who shall hereafter judge us both know well,” was the solemn reply.

“I should think,” answered the son, still keeping in the shadow, however, for he could not face the old man even then, “I should think this wild scene sprang from a wish to frighten me into your measures, but that my own father cannot believe me quite a coward.”

“A coward! No. It is I that have been the coward.”

“In not having courage enough to denounce me, perhaps. A tender father to regret that!”

“I knew that the penalty was death.”

“And is still, father.”

The old man groaned. Arnold took courage.

“You saw this and did not inform. It is too late now: the insurance has been paid and spent long ago. I thought my own father knew me better than to suppose I would be frightened into any thing, especially with threats about a dead matter like this. You allowed the insurance to be paid without speaking.”

“True, true. I was a coward, and had no strength from that hour till the good God saw fit to call me back to his fold. I tried to drown it all out of my brain. But since then I have become a man, an honest man, for that debt of sin has been paid, every farthing.”

“Paid! What, the insurance?”

“Yes, Benedict, your sin has made me a poor man, but, thank God, I am free of that sin.”

“You have played the fool to this extent, and how?”

“I have mortgaged the farm. Your mother and I are working and saving every way to keep the old roof over our heads; but your debt is paid so far as man is concerned.”

“So you have given away the home from over my mother’s head, and now follow me with reproaches! It is doubtless the part of a good Christian to first disinherit and then pursue an only son with threats of ruin.”

“I do no such thing, Benedict. So far as the power lay in me I have atoned for your crime.”

“‘Crime,’ again!”

“‘Crime,’ I said; but another I will never see go unpunished. This girl, the daughter of my old friend—while it is time, she must be saved.”

“But I am pledged, openly pledged to marry another. You know that, yet come to me with this sort of preaching, as if faithlessness to one woman were not the same as desertion of another. I cannot marry both, that you must allow.”

“I will not argue this matter,” said the elder Arnold, “but my pledge is given to Joshua Leonard. It shall be fulfilled.”

“Not by me, sir. I am not to be coerced. If the girl has pursued me here, take her back again before she attempts mischief, or it’ll prove the worse for her. Tell her this.”

“No, I will not.”

“Then I will, and in words that shall make themselves felt in every nerve of her body. How dare she pursue me in this way!”

Arnold came out from the shadow of the elm, as he ceased speaking, and walked angrily across the green. The starlight shone on his face, and it was that of a demon.