The Duke of Stockbridge by Edward Bellamy
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Edward Bellamy >> The Duke of Stockbridge
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURTH
THE BATTLE OF WEST STOCKBRIDGE
One day, three days before the end of January, as Perez, returning
from a walk, approached the guardhouse, he saw that it was in
possession of Deputy Sheriff Seymour and a posse. The rebel garrison
of three or four men only, having made no resistance, had been
disarmed and let go. Perez turned on his heel and went home. That same
afternoon about three o'clock, as he was sitting in the house, his
brother Reuben, who had been on the watch, came in and said that a
party of militia were approaching.
"I've saddled your horse, Perez, and hitched him to the fence. You've
got a good start, but it won't do to wait a minute." Then Perez rose
up, bade his father and mother and brother good-bye, and went out and
mounted his horse. The militia were visible descending the hill at the
north of the village, several furlongs off. Perez turned his horse in
the opposite direction, and galloped down to the green. He rode up in
front of the store, flung himself from his horse, ran up the steps and
went in. Dr. Partridge was in the store talking to Edwards, and
Jonathan was also there. As Perez burst in, pale, excited, yet
determined, the two gentlemen sprang to their feet and Jonathan edged
toward a gun that stood in the corner. Edwards, as if apprehending his
visitor's purpose, stepped between him and the door of the living-
rooms. But Perez' air was beseeching, not threatening, almost abject,
indeed.
"I am flying from the town," he said. "The hue and cry is out after
me. I beg you to let me have a moment's speech with Miss Desire."
"You impudent rascal," cried Edwards. "What do you mean by this. If
you do not instantly go, I will arrest you myself. See my daughter,
forsooth! Get out of here, fellow!" and he made a threatening step
forward, and then fell back again, for though Perez' attitude of
appeal was unchanged, he looked terribly excited and pertinacious.
"Only a word," he cried, his pleading eyes fixed on the storekeeper's
angry ones. "A sight of her, that's all I ask, sir. You shall stand
between us. Do you think I would harm her? Think, sir, I did not treat
you ill when I was master. I did not deny you what you asked."
There was something more terrifying in the almost whining appeal of
Perez' voice than the most violent threat could be, so intense was the
repressed emotion it indicated. But as Edwards' forbidding and angry
face plainly indicated that his words were having no effect, this
accent of abjectness suddenly broke off in a tremendous cry:
"Great God, I must see her!"
Edwards was plainly very much frightened, but he did not yield.
"You shall not," he replied between his teeth. "Jonathan! Dr.
Partridge! Will you see him murder me?"
Jonathan, gun in hand, pluckily rallied behind his father, while the
doctor laid his hand soothingly on Perez' shoulder, who did not notice
him. But at that moment the door into the living-rooms was flung open,
and Desire and her mother came in. The loud voices had evidently
attracted their attention and excited their apprehensions, but from
the start which Desire gave as she saw Perez, it was evident she had
not guessed he was there. At sight of her, his tense attitude and
expression instantly softened, and it was plain that he no longer saw
or took account of any one in the room but the girl.
"Desire," he said, "I came to see you. The militia are out after me at
last, and I am flying for my life. I couldn't go without seeing you
again."
Without giving Desire a chance to reply, which indeed she was much too
confused and embarrassed to do, her mother interposed.
"Mr. Edwards," she exclaimed indignantly, "can't you put the fellow
out? I'm sure you'll help, Doctor. This is an outrage. I never heard
of such a thing. Are we not safe in our own house from this impudent
loafer?" Perez had not minded the men, but even in his desperation,
Mrs. Edwards somewhat intimidated him, and he fell back a step, and
his eye became unsteady. Dr. Partridge walked to the window, looked
out, and then turning around, said coolly:
"I suppose it is our duty to arrest you, Hamlin, and hand you over to
the militia, but hang me if I wish you any harm. The militia are just
turning into the green, and if you expect to get away, you have not a
second to lose."
"Run! Run!" cried Desire, speaking for the first time.
Perez glanced out at the window and saw his pursuers not ten rods off.
"I will go," he said, looking at Desire. "I will escape, since you
tell me to, but I will come again some day," and opening the door and
rushing out, he leaped on his horse and galloped away on the road to
Lee, the baffled militiamen satisfying themselves with yelling and
firing one or two vain shots after him.
Sedgwick, aware that in the ticklish state of public opinion, the
government party could not afford to provide the malcontents with any
martyrs, had postponed the attempt to arrest Perez until affairs were
fully ripe for it. The militia company of Captain Stoddard had been
quietly reorganized, so that the very night of Perez' flight, patrols
were established, and a regular military occupation of the town began.
The larger part of the old company having gone over to the insurgents,
the depleted ranks had been filled out by the enlistment as privates
of the gentlemen of the village. The two Dwights, Drs. Sergeant and
Partridge, Deacons Nash and Edwards, and many other silk stockinged
magnates carried muskets, and a dozen gentlemen besides had organized
themselves into a party of cavalry, with Sedgwick himself as captain.
Even then the difficulty in finding men enough to fill out the company
was so great that lads of sixteen and seventeen, gentlemen's sons,
were placed in line with the gray fathers of the settlement. There was
need indeed of every musket that could be mustered, for up at West
Stockbridge, only an hour's march away, Paul Hubbard had a hundred and
fifty men about him, from whom a raid might at any moment be expected.
But Stockbridge was now to become the center of military operations,
not only for its own protection, but for that of the surrounding
country. Hampshire County, as well as the eastern counties, had been
called on for quotas to swell General Lincoln's army, but upon
Berkshire no requisition had been made. The peculiar reputation of
that county for an independent and insubordinate temper, afforded
little reason to hope such a requisition would be regarded if made.
And indeed the county promptly showed itself quite equal to the
independent role which the Governor's course conceded to it. An
effective plan for the suppression of the rebellion in the county had
been concerted between Sedgwick and the leading men of the other
towns. It had been agreed upon to raise five hundred men, and
concentrate them at Stockbridge, using that town as a base of
operations against the rebel bands in Southern Berkshire. Captain
Stoddard's company had scarcely taken military possession of
Stockbridge, when it was reλnforced by companies from Pittsfield,
Great Barrington, Sheffield, Lanesboro, Lee and Lenox. It was under
escort of the Pittsfield company, that Jahleel Woodbridge returned to
Stockbridge, after an absence of nearly four months. General
Patterson, one of the major-generals of militia in the county, and an
officer of revolutionary service, assumed command of the battalion,
and promptly gave it something to do.
Far from appearing daunted by the presence of so large a body of
militia in Stockbridge, Hubbard's force at the ironworks had increased
to two hundred men who boldly threatened to come down and clean out
Patterson's "Tories," a feat to which, if joined by some of the
smaller insurgent bands in the neighborhood, they might ere long be
equal. For this Patterson wisely decided not to wait. And so at noon
of one of the first days of February, about three hundred of the
government troops, with half a dozen rounds of cartridges per man, set
out to attack Hubbard's camp.
There had been tearful farewells in the gentlemen's households that
morning. Most had sent forth father and sons together to the fray and
some families there were which had three generations in the ranks. For
this was the gentlemen's war. The mass of the people held sullenly
aloof and left them to fight it out. It was all that could be expected
of themselves if they did not actively join the other side. There were
more friends of theirs with Hubbard than with Patterson, and the
temper in which they viewed the preparations to march against the
rebels was so unmistakably ugly that as a protection to the families
and property in the village one company had to be left behind in
Stockbridge. It was a muggy overcast day, a poor day to give men
stomach for fighting; drum and fife were silent that the enemy might
have no unnecessary warning of their coming; and so with an ill-wishing
community behind their backs and the foe in front, the troops set out
under circumstances as depressing as could well occur. And as they went,
mothers and daughters and wives climbed to upper windows and looked out
toward the western mountain up whose face the column stretched, straining
their ears for the sound of shots with a more quaking apprehension than
if their own bosoms had been their marks. It is bad enough to send
friends to far-off wars, sad enough waiting for the slow tidings, but
there is something yet more poignant in seeing loved ones go out to
battle almost within sight of home.
The word was that Hubbard was encamped at a point where the road
running directly west over the mountain to West Stockbridge met two
other roads coming in from northerly and southerly directions.
Accordingly, in the hope of catching the insurgents in a trap the
government force was divided into three companies. One pushed straight
up the mountain by the direct road, while the others made respectively
a northern and a southern detour around the mountain intending to
strike the other two roads and thus come in on Hubbard's flanks while
he was engaged in front. The center company did not set out till a
little after the other two, so as to give them a start. When it
finally began to climb the mountain Sedgwick with his cavalry rode
ahead. A few rods behind them came a score or two of infantry as a
sort of advance guard, the rest of the company being some distance in
the rear. The gentlemen in that little party of horsemen had nearly
all seen service in the late war and knew what fighting meant, but
that was a war against their country's foes, invaders from over the
sea, not like this, against their neighbors. They had no taste for the
job before them, resolute as they were to perform it. The men they
were going to meet had most of them smelled powder, and knew how to
fight. They were angry and desperate and the conflict would be bloody
and of no certain issue. So far as they knew, it would be the first
actual collision of the insurrection, for the news of the battle at
Springfield had not yet reached them. No wonder they should ride along
soberly and engrossed in thought.
Suddenly a man stepped out from the woods into the road and firing his
musket at them turned and ran. Thinking to capture him the gentlemen
spurred their horses forward at a gallop. Other shots were fired
around them, indicating clearly that they had come upon the picket
line of the enemy. But their blood was up and they rode on pell-mell
after the fugitive sentry. There was a turn in the road a short
distance ahead. As they dashed around it, now close behind the flying
man, they found themselves in the clearing at the crossing of the
roads. Why do they rein in their plunging steeds so suddenly? Well
they may! Not six rods off the entire rebel line of two hundred men is
drawn up. They hear Hubbard give the order "Present!" and the muskets
of the men rise to their cheeks.
"We're dead men. God help my wife!" says Colonel Elijah Williams, who
rides at Sedgwick's side. Advance or retreat is alike impossible and
the forthcoming volley can not fail to annihilate them.
"Leave it to me," says Sedgwick, quietly, and the next instant he is
galloping quite alone toward the line of levelled guns. Seeing but one
man coming the rebels withhold their fire. Reining up his horse within
a yard of the muzzles of the guns he says in a loud, clear,
authoritative voice:
"What are you doing here, men? Laban Jones, Abner Rathbun, Meshech
Little, do you want to hang for murder? Throw down your arms. You're
surrounded on three sides. You can't escape. Throw down your arms and
I'll see you're not harmed. Throw away your guns. If one of them
should go off by accident in your hands, you couldn't be saved from
the gallows."
His air, evincing not the slightest perturbation or anxiety on his own
part, but carrying it as if they only were in peril, startled and
filled them with inquietude. His evident conviction that there was
more peril at their end of the guns than at his, impressed them. They
lowered their muskets, some threw them down. The line wavered.
"He lies. Shoot him! Fire! Damn you, fire!" yelled Hubbard in a panic.
"The first man that fires hangs for murder!" thundered Sedgwick.
"Throw down your arms and you shall not be harmed."
"Kin yew say that for sartin, Squire?" asked Laban, hesitatingly.
"No, he lies. Our only chance is to fight!" yelled Hubbard,
frantically. "Shoot him, I tell you."
But at this critical moment when the result of Sedgwick's daring
experiment was still in doubt, the issue was determined by the
appearance of the laggard infantry at the mouth of the Stockbridge
road, while simultaneously shots resounding from the north and south
showed that the flanking companies were closing in.
"We're surrounded! Run for your lives!" was shouted on every side, and
the line broke in confusion.
"Arrest that man!" said Sedgwick, pointing to Hubbard, and instantly
Laban Jones and others of his former followers had seized him. Many,
throwing down their arms, thronged around Sedgwick as if for
protection, while the rest fled in confusion, plunging into the woods
to avoid the troops who were now advancing in plain sight on all three
roads. A few scattered shots were exchanged between the fugitives and
the militia, and the almost bloodless conflict was over.
"Who'd have thought they were such a set of cowards?" said a young
militia officer, contemptuously.
"They are not cowards," replied Sedgwick reprovingly. "They're the
same men who fought at Bennington, but it takes away their courage to
feel they're arrayed against their own neighbors and the law of the
land."
"You'd have had your stomach full of fighting, young man," added
Colonel Williams, "if Squire Sedgwick had not taken them just as he
did. Squire," he added, "my wife shall thank you that she's not a
widow, when we get back to Stockbridge. I honor your courage, sir. The
credit of this day is yours."
Those standing around joining heartily in this tribute, Sedgwick
replied quietly:
"You magnify the matter over much, gentlemen. I knew the men I was
dealing with. If I could get near enough to fix them with my eye
before they began to shoot I knew it would be easy to turn their
minds."
The reλntry of the militia into Stockbridge was made with screaming
fifes, and resounding drums, while nearly one hundred prisoners graced
the triumph of the victors. The poor fellows looked glum enough, as
they had reason to do. They had scorned the clemency of the government
and been taken with arms in their hands. Imprisonment and stripes was
the least they could expect, while the leaders were in imminent danger
of the gallows. But considerations other than those of strict justice
according to law determined their fate, and made their suspense of
short duration. It was well enough to use threats to intimidate
rebels, but in an insurrection with which so large a proportion of the
people sympathized partly or fully, severity to the conquered would
have been a fatal policy. As a merely practical point, moreover, there
was not jail room in Stockbridge for the prisoners. They must be
either forthwith killed or set free. The upshot of it was that
excepting Hubbard and two or three more they were offered release that
very afternoon, upon taking the oath of allegiance to the state. The
poor fellows eagerly accepted the terms. A line of them being formed
they passed one by one before Justice Woodbridge, with uplifted hand
took the oath, slunk away home, free men, but very much crestfallen.
As if to add a climax to the exultation of the government party, news
was received, during the evening, of the rout of the rebels under
Shays at Springfield, in their attack on the militia defending the
arsenal there, the last day of January.
Now it must be understood that not alone in Captain Stoddard's
Stockbridge company had gentlemen filled up the places of the
disaffected farmers in the ranks, but such was equally the case with
the companies which had come in from the other towns, the consequence
of which was that the present muster represented the wealth, the
culture, and aristocracy of all Berkshire. There are far more people
in Berkshire now than then; far more aggregate wealth, and far more
aggregate culture, but with the decay of the aristocratic form of
society which prevailed in the day of which I write, passed away the
elements of such a gathering as this, which stands unique in the
social history of Stockbridge. The families of the county gentry here
represented, though generally living at a day or two's journey apart,
were more intimate with each other than with the farmer folk, directly
surrounded by whom, they lived. They met now like members of one
family, the sense of unity heightened by the present necessity of
defending the interests of their order, sword in hand, against the
rabble. The gentlemen's families of Stockbridge had opened wide their
doors to these gallant and genial defenders, whose presence in their
households, far from being regarded as a burden, required by the
public necessity, was rather a social treat of rare and welcome
character; and, unless tradition deceives, more than one happy match
was the issue of the intimacies formed between the fair daughters of
Stockbridge and the knights who had come to their rescue.
Previous to the conflict at West Stockbridge and the news of the
battle at Springfield, the seriousness of the situation availed indeed
to put some check upon the spirits of the young people. But no sooner
had it become apparent that the suppression of the rebellion was not
likely to involve serious bloodshed than there was such a general
ebullition of fun and amusement as might be expected from the collection
of such a band of spirited youths. Not to speak of dances, teas, and
indoor entertainments, gay sleighing parties, out to the scene of
"battle" of West Stockbridge, as it was jokingly called, were of daily
occurrence, and every evening Mahkeenac's shining face was covered with
bands of merry skaters, and screaming, laughing sledge-loads of youths
and damsels went whizzing down Long Hill to the no small jeopardy of
their own lives and limbs, to say nothing of such luckless wayfarers
as might be in their path. To provide partners for so many gentlemen
the cradle was almost robbed, and many a farmer's daughter of Shayite
proclivities found herself, not unwillingly, conscripted to supply the
dearth of gentlemen's daughters, and provided with an opportunity for
contrasting the merits of silk-stockinged and worsted-stockinged
adorers, an experience possibly not redounding to their after
contentment in the station to which Providence had called them.
But even with these conscripts there was still such an excess of beaux
that every girl had half a dozen. As for Desire Edwards, she had the
whole army. If I have hitherto spoken of her in a manner as if she
were the only "young lady" in Stockbridge, that is no more than the
impression which she gave. Although there were several families in the
village which had a claim to equal gentility, their daughters somehow
felt that they failed to make good that claim in Desire's presence.
They owned, though they found less flattering terms in which to
express it, the same air of distinction and dainty aloofness about
her, which the farmers' daughters, too humble for jealousy, so
admiringly admitted. The young militia officers and gentlemen privates
found her adorable, and the three or four young men whom Squire
Edwards took into his house, as his share in quartering the troops,
were the objects of the most rancorous envy of the entire army. These
favored youths had too much appreciation of their fortune to be absent
from their quarters save when military duty required, and what with
the obligation of entertaining and being entertained by them, and
keeping in play the numerous callers who dropped in from other
quarters in the evening, Desire had mighty little time to herself. It
was of course very exciting for her and very agreeable to be the sole
queen of so gallant and devoted a court. She enjoyed it as any sprightly,
beautiful girl fond of society and well nigh starved for it might be
expected to. Provided here so unexpectedly in remote winter-bound
Stockbridge, it was like a table spread in the wilderness, whereof the
Psalmist speaks.
And in this whirl of gayety, did she quite forget Perez, did she so
soon forget the secret flame she had cherished for the Shayite
captain? Be sure she had not forgotten, but she would have been
willing to give anything in the world if she could.
After the conventual seclusion and mental vacancy of the preceding
months, the sudden, almost instantaneous change in her surroundings,
had been like a burst of air and sunlight which dissipates the
soporific atmosphere of a sleeping-room. It had brought back her
thoughts and feelings all at once to their normal standards, making
her recollection of that infatuation seem like a fantastic, grotesque
dream; unreal, impossible, yet shamefully real. Every time she entered
her chamber, and her eye caught sight of the little hole in the
curtain whence she had spied upon Perez, shame and self-contempt
overcame her like a flood. How could she, how ever could she be left
to do such a thing! What would the obsequious, admiring gallants she
had left in her parlor say if they but knew what that little pin-hole
in her curtain reminded her of? She could not believe it possible
herself that the girl whose fine-cut haughty beauty confronted her
gaze from the mirror could have so lost her self-respect, could have
actually--Oh! and tears of self-despite would rush into her eyes as
her remorseless memory set before her those scenes. And had she been
utterly beside herself that day in the store, when she gave him that
look and that hand-clasp? But for that the only fruit of her folly
would have been the loss of her own self-respect, but now she was
guilty toward him. This wretched business was dead earnest to him, if
not to her. With what a pang of self-contemptuous self-reproach she
recalled his white, anguished face as he rushed into the store to bid
her farewell when the soldiers were coming to take him. If he at
first, by his persecution of her, had left her with a right to complain,
she had given him such a right by that glance. She writhed as she
admitted to herself that by that she had given him a sort of claim on
her.
The village gossip about Perez' infatuation for her, although of her
own weakness none guessed, had naturally come to the ears of the
visitors, and some of the young men at Edwards' good naturedly chaffed
her about it, speaking of it as an amusing joke. She had to bear this
without wincing, and worse still, she had to play the hypocrite so far
as to reply in the same jesting tone, joining in turning the laugh on
the poor, shabby mob captain, when she knew in her heart it ought to
be turned against her.
There was nothing else she could do, of course. She could not confess
to these gay bantering young gentlemen the incredible weakness of
which she had been guilty. But if the self-contempt of the doer can
avenge a wrong done to another, Perez was amply avenged for this. And
the worst of it was that the thought that she had wronged him here
also, and meanly taken advantage of him, added to that horrid sense of
his claim on her. He began to occupy her mind to a morbid and most
painful extent, really much affecting her enjoyment. His sad and
shabby figure, with its mutely reproachful face, haunted her. All that
might have been to his disadvantage compared with the refined and
cultivated circle about her, was overcome by the pathos and dignity
with which her sense of having done him wrong invested him. Such was
her unenviable state of mind, when one evening, a week or ten days
after the affair at West Stockbridge, one of the young men at the
house said to her gayly:
"May I hope, Miss Edwards, not to be wholly forgotten if I should fall
on the gory field to-morrow?"
"What do you mean?" she asked.
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