The Duke of Stockbridge by Edward Bellamy (ebook and pdf reader TXT) 📕

but it's the back an not the coat that gits licked. Arter Pete has tuk orf ther coats thar won't be no odds."

The chuckle with which this was received, showed how fast the people were yielding to the awful charm of the thought.

"Dew yew s'pose Cap'n really dass dew it?" asked Obadiah.

"Dew it? Yes he'll dew it, you better b'lieve. Did yer see the set of his jaw w'en he wuz talkin so quiet-like baout lickin em? I wuz in the army with Perez, an I know his ways. W'en he sets his jaw that air way I don' keer to git in his way, big ez I be. He'll dew it ef he doos it with his own hands. He's pison proud, Perez is, an I guess the idee they wuz callatin tew hev him licked, hez kinder riled him."

As the people talked, their hearts began to burn. The more they thought of it, the more the idea fascinated them. Jests and hilarious comments, which betrayed a temper of delighted expectancy, soon began to be bandied about.

In ten minutes more, this very crowd which had received in shocked silence the first suggestion of whipping the gentlemen, had so set their fancy on that diversion that it would have been hard balking them. It must be remembered that this was a hundred years ago. The weekly spectacle of the cruel punishment of the lash, and the scarcely less painful and disgraceful infliction of the stocks and the pillory left in their minds no possibility for any revolt of mere humane sentiment against the proposed doings, such as a modern assembly would experience. To men and women who had learned from childhood to find a certain brutish titillation in beholding the public humiliation and physical anguish of their acquaintances and fellow-townsmen, the prospect of seeing the scourge actually applied to the backs of envied and hated social superiors, could not be otherwise than delightfully agitating.

Nor were there lacking supplies of Dutch courage for the timid. Among the town stores seized and conveyed to the Fennell house the night before, had been several casks of rum. One of these had been secretly sequestrated by some of the men and hidden in a neighboring barn. The secret of its whereabouts had been, in drunken confidence, conveyed from one man to another, with the consequence that pretty much all the men were rapidly getting drunk. Shortly after Perez had communicated his intention to the people, Paul Hubbard, with thirty or forty of the iron-workers, armed with bludgeons, arrived from West Stockbridge. Some rumor of the doings of the previous night had reached there, and he had hastily rallied his myrmidons and come down, not knowing but there might be some fighting to be done.

"Paul 'll be nigh tickled to death to hear of the whippin," said Abner, seeing him coming. "If he had his way he'd skin the silk stockins, an make whips out o' their own hides to whip em with. He don't seem to love em somehow 'nuther, wuth a darn." Nor was Paul's satisfaction at the news any less than Abner had anticipated. Presently he burst into the room in the Fennell house, which Perez had appropriated as a sort of headquarters, and wrung his rather indifferent hand with an almost tremulous delight.

"Bully for you, Hamlin, bully for you, by the Lord I didn't s'pose you had the mettle to do it. Little Pete is just the man for the business, but if he don't come, you can have one of my Welshmen. I s'pose most of the Stockbridge men wouldn't quite dare, but just wait till after the whipping. They won't be afraid of the bigwigs any longer. That'll break the charm. Little Pete's whip will do more to make us free and equal than all the swords and guns in Berkhire." And Hubbard went out exultant.

As he was leaving, he met no less an one than Parson West coming in, and wearing rather a discomfited countenance. The parson had been used, as parsons were in those days, to a good deal of deference from his flock, and the lowering looks and covered heads of the crowd about the door were disagreeable novelties. No institution in the New England of that day was, in fact, more strictly aristocratic than the pulpit. Its affiliations were wholly with the governing and wealthy classes, and its tone with the common people as arrogant and domineering as that of the magistracy itself. And though Parson West was personally a man of unusual affability toward the poor and lowly, it was impossible in a time like this that one of his class should not be regarded with suspicion and aversion by the popular party.

"I would have word with your captain," he said to the sentinel at the door.

"He's in thar," said the soldier, pointing to the door of the headquarters' room. Perez, who was walking to and fro, turned at the opening door and respectfully greeted the parson.

"Are you the captain of the armed band without?"

"I am."

"You have certain gentlemen in confinement, I have heard. I came to see you on account of an extraordinary report that you had threatened to inflict a disgraceful public chastisement upon their persons. No doubt the report is erroneous. You surely could not contemplate so cruel and scandalous a proceeding?"

"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