Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia

by William Gilmore Simms

How sad a subject for contemplation! The wreck of intellect, of genius, of humanity. Fortunate for mankind, if, under the decree of a saving and blessing Providence, there be no dark void on earth—when one bright star falls from its sphere, if there is another soon lighted to fill its place, and to shine more purely than that which has been lost. May we not believe this—nay, we must, and exult, on behalf of humanity—that, in the eternal progress of change, the nature which is its aliment no less than its element, restores not less than its destiny removes. Yet, the knowledge that we lose not, does not materially lessen the pang when we behold the mighty fall—when we see the great mind, which, as a star, we have almost worshipped, shooting with headlong precipitance through the immense void from its place of eminence, and defrauding the eye of all the glorious presence and golden promise which had become associated with its survey.

The intellect of Guy Rivers had been gigantic—the mistake—a mistake quite too common to society—consisted in an education limited entirely to the mind, and entirely neglectful of the morale of the boy. He was taught, like thousands of others; and the standards set up for his moral government, for his passions, for his emotions, were all false from the first. The capacities of his mind were good as well as great—but they had been restrained, while the passions had all been brought into active, and at length ungovernable exercise. How was it possible that reason, thus taught to be subordinate, could hold the strife long, when passion—fierce passion—the passion of the querulous infant, and the peevish boy, only to be bribed to its duty by the toy and the sugarplum—is its uncompromising antagonist?

But let us visit him in his dungeon—the dungeon so lately the abode of his originally destined, but now happily safe victim. What philosophy is there to support him in his reverse—what consolation of faith, or of reflection, the natural result of the due performance of human duties? none! Every thought was self-reproachful. Every feeling was of self-rebuke and mortification. Every dream was a haunting one of terror, merged for ever in the deep midnight cry of a fateful voice which bade him despair. "Curse God and die!"

In respect to his human fortunes, the voice was utterly without pity. He had summed up for himself, as calmly as possible, all his chances of escape. There was no hope left him. No sunlight, human or divine, penetrated the crevices of his dungeon, as in the case of Ralph Colleton, cheering him with promise, and lifting his soul with faith and resignation. Strong and self-relying as was his mind by nature, he yet lacked all that strength of soul which had sustained Ralph even when there seemed no possible escape from the danger which threatened his life. But Guy Rivers was not capable of receiving light or warmth from the simple aspects of nature. His soul, indurated by crime, was as insusceptible to the soothing influence of such aspects, as the cold rocky cavern where he had harbored, was impenetrable to the noonday blaze. The sun-glance through the barred lattice, suddenly stealing, like a friendly messenger, with a sweet and mellow smile upon his lips, was nailed as an angelic visiter, by the enthusiastic nature of the one, without guile in his own heart. Rivers would have regarded such a visiter as an intruder; the smile in his eyes would have been a sneer, and he would have turned away from it in disgust. The mind of the strong man is the medium through which the eyes see, and from which life takes all its color. The heart is the prismatic conductor, through which the affections show; and that which is seared, or steeled, or ossified—perverted utterly from its original make—can exhibit no rainbows—no arches of a sweet promise, linking the gloomy earth with the bright and the beautiful and the eternal heavens.

The mind of Guy Rivers had been one of the strongest make—one of large and leading tendencies. He could not have been one of the mere ciphers of society. He must be something, or he must perish. His spirit would have fed upon his heart otherwise, and, wanting a field and due employment, his frame must have worn away in the morbid repinings of its governing principles. Unhappily, he had not been permitted a choice. The education of his youth had given a fatal direction to his manhood; and we find him, accordingly, not satisfied with his pursuit, yet resolutely inflexible and undeviating in the pursuit of error. Such are the contradictions of the strong mind, to which, wondering as we gaze, with unreasonable and unthinking astonishment, we daily see it subject. Our philosophers are content with declaiming upon effects—they will not permit themselves or others to trace them up to their causes. To heal the wound, the physician may probe and find out its depth and extent; the same privilege is not often conceded to the physician of the mind or of the morals, else numberless diseases, now seemingly incurable, had been long since brought within the healing scope of philosophical analysis. The popular cant would have us forbear even to look at the history of the criminal. Hang the wretch, say they, but say nothing about him. Why trace his progress?—what good can come out of the knowledge of those influences and tendencies, which have made him a criminal? Let them answer the question for themselves!

The outlaw beheld the departing cavalcade of the Colletons from the grated window. He saw the last of all those in whose fortunes he might be supposed to have an interest. He turned from the sight with a bitter pang at his heart, and, to his surprise, discovered that he was not alone in the solitude of his prison. One ministering spirit sat beside him upon the long bench, the only article of furniture afforded to his dungeon.

The reader has not forgotten the young woman to whose relief, from fire, Ralph Colleton so opportunely came while making his escape from his pursuers. We remember the resignation—the yielding weakness of her broken spirit to the will of her destroyer. We have seen her left desolate by the death of her only relative, and only not utterly discarded by him, to whose fatal influence over her heart, at an earlier period, we may ascribe all her desolation. She then yielded without a struggle to his will, and, having prepared her a new abiding-place, he had not seen her after, until, unannounced and utterly unlooked-for, certainly uninvited, she appeared before him in the cell of his dungeon.

Certainly, none are utterly forgotten! There are some who remember—some who feel with the sufferer, however lowly in his suffering—some who can not forget. No one perishes without a tearful memory becoming active when informed of his fate; and, though the world scorns and despises, some one heart keeps a warm sympathy, that gives a sigh over the ruin of a soul, and perhaps plants a flower upon its grave.

Rivers had not surely looked to see, in his dungeon, the forsaken and the defrauded girl, for whom he had shown so little love. He knew not, at first, how to receive her. What offices could she do for him—what influence exercise—how lighten the burden of his doom—how release him from his chains? Nothing of this could she perform—and what did she there? For sympathy, at such a moment, he cared little for such sympathy, at least, as he could command. His pride and ambition, heretofore, had led him to despise and undervalue the easy of attainment. He was always grasping after the impossible. The fame which he had lost for ever, grew doubly attractive to his mind's eye from the knowledge of this fact. The society, which had expelled him from its circle and its privileges, was an Eden in his imagination, simply on that account. The love of Edith Colleton grew more desirable from her scorn;—and the defeat of hopes so daring, made his fierce spirit writhe within him, in all the pangs of disappointment, only neutralized by his hope of revenge. And that hope was now gone; the dungeon and the doom were all that met his eyes;—and what had she, his victim, to do in his prison-cell, and with his prison feelings—she whom Providence, even in her own despite, was now about to avenge? No wonder he turned away from her in the bitterness of the thought which her appearance must necessarily have inspired.

"Turn not away!—speak to me, Guy—speak to me, if you have pity in your soul! You shall not drive me from you—you shall not dismiss me now. I should have obeyed you at another time, though you had sent me to my death—but I can not obey you now. I am strong now, strong—very strong since I can say so much. I am come to be with you to the last, and, if it be possible, to die with you; and you shall not refuse me. You shall not—oh, you will not—you can not—"