With this determination our suspicious youth made rapid progress in getting out his horse. A few minutes saw him mounted, and putting some of his resolution into his heels, he sent the animal forward at a killing start, under the keen infliction of the spur. He had marked with his eye the general course which Stevens had taken up the hills, and having a nag of equal speed and bottom, did not scruple, in the great desire which he felt, to ascertain the secret of the stranger, to make him display the qualities of both from the very jump. Stevens had been riding with a free rein, but in consequence of these energetic measures on the part of Hinkley, the latter soon succeeded in overhauling him. Still he had already gone a space of five miles, and this, too, in one direction. He looked back when he found himself pursued, and his countenance very clearly expressed the chagrin which he felt. This he strove, but with very indifferent success, to hide from the keen searching eyes of his pursuer. He drew up to wait his coming, and there was a dash of bitterness in his tones as he expressed his “gratification at finding a companion where he least expected one.”
“And perhaps, parson, when you didn't altogether wish for one,” was the reply of the reckless fellow. “The truth is, I know I'm not the sort of company that a wise, sensible, learned, and pious young gentleman would like to keep, out the truth is what you said about taking a stretch, man and beast, seemed to me to be just about as wise a thing for me and my beast also. We've been lying by so long that I was getting a little stiff in my joints, and Flipflap, my nag here, was getting stiff in his neck, as they say was the case with the Jews in old times, so I took your idea and put after you, thinking that you'd agree with me that bad company's far better than none.”
There was a mixture of simplicity and archness in the manner of the speaker that put Stevens somewhat at fault; but he saw that it wouldn't do to show the dudgeon which he really felt; and smoothing his quills with as little obvious effort as possible, he expressed his pleasure at the coming of his companion. While doing so, he wheeled his horse about, and signified a determination to return.
“What! so soon? Why, Lord bless you, Flipflap has scarcely got in motion yet. If such a stir will do for your nag 'twont do for him.”
But Stevens doggedly kept his horse's head along the back track, though the animal himself exhibited no small restlessness and a disposition to go forward.
“Well, really, Parson Stevens, I take it as unkind that you turn back almost the very moment I join you. I seem to have scared ride out of you if not out of your creature; but do as you please. I'll ride on, now I'm out. I don't want to force myself on any man for company.”
Stevens disclaimed any feeling of this sort, but declared he had ridden quite as far as he intended; and while he hesitated, Hinkley cut the matter short by putting spurs to his steed, and going out of sight in a moment.
“What can the cur mean?” demanded Stevens of himself, the moment after they had separated. “Can he have any suspicions? Ha! I must be watchful! At all events, there's no going forward to-day. I must put it off for next week; and meanwhile have all my eyes about me. The fellow seems to have as much cunning as simplicity. He is disposed too, to be insolent I marked his manner at the lake, as well as that of his bull-headed cousin; but that sousing put anger out of me, and then, again, 'twill scarcely do in these good days for such holy men as myself to take up cudgels. I must bear it for awhile as quietly as possible. It will not be long. She at least is suspicionless. Never did creature so happily delude herself. Yet what a judgment in some things! What keen discrimination! What a wild, governless imagination! She would be a prize, if it were only to exhibit. How she would startle the dull, insipid, tea-table simperers on our Helicon—nay, with what scorn she would traverse the Helicon itself. The devil is that she would have a will in spite of her keeper. Such an animal is never tamed. There could be no prescribing to her the time when she should roar—no teaching her to fawn and fondle, and not to rend. Soul, and eye, and tongue, would speak under the one impulse, in the exciting moment; and when Mrs. Singalongohnay was squeaking out her eternal requiems—her new versions of the Psalms and Scriptures—her blank verse elegiacs—oh! how blank!—beginning, 'Night was upon the hills,'—or 'The evening veil hung low,' or, 'It slept,'—or after some other equally threatening form and fashion—I can fancy how the bright eye of Margaret would gleam with scorn; and while the Pollies and Dollies, the Patties and Jennies, the Corydons and Jemmy Jesamies, all round were throwing up hands and eyes in a sort of rapture, how she would look, with what equal surprise and contempt, doubting her own ears, and sickening at the stuff and the strange sycophancy which induced it. And should good old Singalongohnay, with a natural and patronizing visage, approach, and venture to talk to her about poetry, with that assured smile of self-excellence which such a venerable authority naturally employs, how she would turn upon the dame and exclaim—'What! do you call that poetry?' What a concussion would follow. How the simperers would sheer off; the tea that night might as well be made of aqua-fortis. Ha! ha! I can fancy the scene before me. Nothing could be more rich. I must give her a glimpse of such a scene. It will be a very good mode of operation. Her pride and vanity will do the rest. I have only to intimate the future sway—the exclusive sovereignty which would follow—the overthrow of the ancient idols, and the setting up of a true divinity in herself. But shall it be so, Master Stevens? Verily, that will be seen hereafter. Enough, if the delusion takes. If I can delude the woman through the muse, I am satisfied. The muse after that may dispose of the woman as she pleases.”
Such was a portion of the soliloquy of the libertine as he rode slowly back to Charlemont. His further musings we need not pursue at present. It is enough to say that they were of the same family character. He returned to his room as soon as he reached his lodging-house, and drawing from his pocket a bundle of letters which he had intended putting in the postoffice at Ellisland, he carefully locked them up in his portable writing-desk which he kept at the bottom of his valise. When the devout Mrs. Hinkley tapped at his door to summon him to dinner, the meritorious young man was to be seen, seated at his table, with the massive Bible of the family conspicuously open before him. Good young man! never did he invoke a blessing on the meats with more holy unction than on that very day.
Meanwhile, let us resume our progress with William Hinkley, and inquire in what manner his wooing sped with the woman whom he so unwisely loved. We have seen him leaving the cottage of Mr. Calvert with the avowed purpose of seeking a final answer. A purpose from which the old man did not seek to dissuade him, though he readily conceived its fruitlessness. It was with no composed spirit that the young rustic felt himself approaching the house of Mrs. Cooper. More than once he hesitated and even halted. But a feeling of shame, and the efforts of returning manliness re-resolved him, and he hurried with an unwonted rapidity of movement toward the dwelling, as if he distrusted his own power, unless he did so, to conclude the labor he had begun.
He gathered some courage when he found that Margaret was from home. She had gone on her usual rambles. Mrs. Cooper pointed out the course which she had taken, and the young man set off in pursuit. The walks of the maiden were of course well known to a lover so devoted. He had sought and followed her a thousand times, and the general direction which she had gone, once known, his progress was as direct as his discoveries were certain. The heart of the youth, dilated with better hopes as he felt himself traversing the old familiar paths. It seemed to him that the fates could scarcely be adverse in a region which had always been so friendly. Often had he escorted her along this very route, when their spirits better harmonized—when, more of the girl struggling into womanhood, the mind of Margaret Cooper, ignorant of its own resources and unconscious of its maturer desires, was more gentle, and could rejoice in that companionship for which she now betrayed so little desire. The sheltered paths and well-known trees, even the little clumps of shrubbery that filled up the intervals, were too pleasant and familiar to his eye not to seem favorable to his progress, and with a hope that had no foundation, save in the warm and descriptive colors of a young heart's fancy, William Hinkley pursued the route which led him to one of the most lovely and love-haunted glades in all Kentucky.
So sweet a hush never hallowed the sabbath rest of any forest. The very murmur of a drowsy zephyr among the leaves was of slumberous tendency; and silence prevailed, with the least possible exertion of her authority, over the long narrow dell through which the maiden had gone wandering. At the foot of a long slope, to which his eye was conducted by a natural and lovely vista, the youth beheld the object of his search, sitting, motionless, with her back toward him. The reach of light was bounded by her figure which was seated on the decaying trunk of a fallen tree. She was deeply wrapped in thought, for she did not observe his approach, and when his voice reached her ears, and she started and looked round, her eyes were full of tears. These she hastily brushed away, and met the young man with a degree of composure which well might have put the blush upon his cheek, for the want of it.
“In tears!—weeping, Margaret?” was the first address of the lover who necessarily felt shocked at what he saw.
“They were secret tears, sir—not meant for other eyes,” was the reproachful reply.
“Ah, Margaret! but why should you have secret tears, when you might have sympathy—why should you have tears at all? You have no sorrows.”
“Sympathy!” was the exclamation of the maiden, while a scornful smile gleamed from her eyes; “whose sympathy, I pray?”
The young man hesitated to answer. The expression of her eye discouraged him. He dreaded lest, in offering his sympathies, he should extort from her lips a more direct intimation of that scorn which he feared. He chose a middle course.
“But that you should have sorrows, Margaret, seems very strange to me. You are young and hearty; endowed beyond most of your sex, and with a beauty which can not be too much admired. Your mother is hearty and happy, and for years you have had no loss of relations to deplore. I see not why you should have sorrows.”
“It is very likely, William Hinkley, that you do not see. The ordinary sorrows of mankind arise from the loss of wives and cattle, children and property. There are sorrows of another kind; sorrows of the soul; the consciousness of denial; of strife—strife to be continued—strife without victory—baffled hopes—defeated aims and energies. These are sorrows which are not often computed in the general account. It is highly probable that none of them afflict you. You have your parents, and very good people they are. You yourself are no doubt a very good young man—so everybody says—and you have health and strength. Besides, you have property, much more, I am told, than falls to the lot ordinarily of young people in this country. These are reasons why you should not feel any sorrow; but were all these mine and a great deal more, I'm afraid it would not make me any more contented. You, perhaps, will not understand this, William Hinkley, but I assure you that such, nevertheless is my perfect conviction.”
“Yes, I can, and do understand it, Margaret,” said the young man, with flushed cheek and a very tremulous voice, as he listened to language which, though not intended to be contemptuous, was yet distinctly colored by that scornful estimate which the maiden had long since made of the young man's abilities. In this respect she had done injustice to his mind, which had been kept in subjection and deprived of its ordinary strength and courage, by the enfeebling fondness of his heart.
“Yes, Margaret,” he continued, “I can and do understand it, and I too have my sorrows of this very sort. Do not smile, Margaret, but hear me patiently, and believe, that, whatever may be the error which I commit, I have no purpose to offend you in what I say or do. Perhaps, we are both of us quite too young to speak of the sorrows which arise from defeated hopes, or baffled energies, or denial of our rights and claims. The yearnings and apprehensions which we are apt to feel of this sort are not to be counted as sorrows, or confounded with them. I had a conversation on this very subject only a few days ago, with old Mr. Calvert, and this was his very opinion.”
The frankness with which William Hinkley declared the source of his opinions, though creditable to his sincerity, was scarcely politic—it served to confirm Margaret Cooper in the humble estimate which she had formed of the speaker.
“Mr. Calvert,” said she, “is a very sensible old man, but neither he nor you can enter into the heart of another and say what shall, or what shall not be its source of trouble. It is enough, William Hinkley, that I have my cares—at least I fancy that I have them—and though I am very grateful for your sympathies, I do not know that they can do me any good, and, though I thank you, I must yet decline them.”
“Oh, do not say so, Margaret—dear Margaret—it is to proffer them that I seek you now. You know how long I have sought you, and loved you: you can not know how dear you are to my eyes, how necessary to my happiness! Do not repulse me—do not speak quickly. What I am, and what I have, is yours. We have grown up together; I have known no other hope, no other love, but that for you. Look not upon me with that scornful glance—hear me—I implore you—on my knee, dear Margaret. I implore you as for life—for something more dear than life—that which will make life precious—which may make it valuable. Be mine, dear Margaret—”
“Rise, William Hinkley, and do not forget yourself!” was the stern, almost deliberate answer of the maiden.
“Do not, I pray you, do not speak in those tones, dear Margaret—do not look on me with those eyes. Remember before you speak, that the dearest hope of a devoted heart hangs upon your lips.”
“And what have you seen in me, or what does your vain conceit behold in yourself, William Hinkley, to make you entertain a hope?”
“The meanest creature has it.”
“Aye, but only of creatures like itself.”
“Margaret!” exclaimed the lover starting to his feet.
“Ay, sir, I say it. If the meanest creature has its hope, it relates to a creature like itself—endowed with its own nature and fed with like sympathies. But you—what should make you hope of me? Have I not long avoided you, discouraged you? I would have spared you the pain of this moment by escaping it myself. You haunt my steps—you pursue me—you annoy me with attentions which I dare not receive for fear of encouraging you, and in spite of all this, which everybody in the village must have seen but yourself, you still press yourself upon me.”
“Margaret Cooper, be not so proud!”
“I am what I am! I know that I am proud—vain, perhaps, and having little to justify either pride or vanity; but to you, William Hinkley, as an act of justice, I must speak what I feel—what is the truth. I am sorry, from my very soul, that you love me, for I can have no feeling for you in return. I do not dislike you, but you have so oppressed me that I would prefer not to see you. We have no feelings in common. You can give me no sympathies. My soul, my heart, my hope—every desire of my mind, every impulse of my heart, leads me away from you—from all that you can give—from all that you can relish. To you it would suffice, if all your life could be spent here in Charlemont—to me it would be death to think that any such doom hung over me. From this one sentiment judge of the rest, and know, for good and all, that I can never feel for you other than I feel now. I can not love you, nor can the knowledge that you love me, give me any but a feeling of pain and mortification.”
William Hinkley had risen to his feet. His form had put on an unusual erectness. His eye had gradually become composed; and now it wore an expression of firmness almost amounting to defiance. He heard her with only an occasional quiver of the muscles about his mouth. The flush of shame and pride was still red upon his cheek When she had finished, he spoke to her in tones of more dignity than had hitherto marked his speech.
“Margaret Cooper, you have at least chosen the plainest language to declare a cruel truth.”
The cheek of the girl became suddenly flushed.
“Do you suppose,” she said, “that I found pleasure in giving you pain? No! William Hinkley, I am sorry for you! But this truth, which you call cruel, was shown to you repeatedly before. Any man but yourself would have seen it, and saved me the pain of its frequent repetition. You alone refused to understand, until it was rendered cruel. It was only by the plainest language that you could be made to believe a truth that you either would not or could not otherwise be persuaded to hear. If cold looks, reserved answers, and a determined rejection of all familiarity could have availed, you would never have heard from my lips a solitary word which could have brought you mortification. You would have seen my feelings in my conduct, and would have spared your own that pain, which I religiously strove to save them.”
“I have, indeed, been blind and deaf,” said the young man; “but you have opened my eyes and ears, Margaret, so that I am fully cured of these infirmities. If your purpose, in this plain mode of speech, be such as you have declared it, then I must thank you; though it is very much as one would thank the dagger that puts him out of his pain by putting him out of life.”
There was so much of subdued feeling in this address—the more intense in its effect, from the obvious restraint put upon it, that the heart of the maiden was touched. The dignified bearing of the young man, also—so different from that which marked his deportment hitherto—was not without its effect.
“I assure you, William Hinkley, that such alone was my motive for what else would seem a most wanton harshness. I would not be harsh to you or to anybody; and with my firm rejection of your proffer, I give you my regrets that you ever made it. It gives me no pleasure that you should make it. If I am vain, my vanity is not flattered or quickened by a tribute which I can not accept; and if you never had my sympathy before, William Hinkley, I freely give it now. Once more I tell you, I am sorry, from the bottom of my heart, that you ever felt for me a passion which I can not requite, and that you did not stifle it from the beginning; as, Heaven knows, my bearing toward you, for a whole year, seemed to me to convey sufficient warning.”
“It should have done so! I can now very easily understand it, Margaret. Indeed, Mr. Calvert and others told me the same thing. But as I have said, I was blind and deaf. Once more, I thank you, Margaret—it is a bitter medicine which you have given me, but I trust a wholesome one.”
He caught her hand and pressed it in his own. She did not resist or withdraw it, and, after the retention of an instant only, he released it, and was about to turn away. A big tear was gathering in his eye, and he strove to conceal it. Margaret averted her head, and was about to move forward in an opposite direction, when the voice of the young man arrested her:—
“Stay, but a few moments more, Margaret. Perhaps we shall never meet again—certainly not in a conference like this. I may have no other opportunity to say that which, in justice to you, should be spoken. Will you listen to me, patiently?”
“Speak boldly, William Hinkley. It was the subject of which you spoke heretofore which I shrunk from rather than the speaker.”
“I know not,” said he, “whether the subject of which I propose to speak now will be any more agreeable than that of which we have spoken. At all events, my purpose is your good, and I shall speak unreservedly. You have refused the prayer of one heart, Margaret, which, if unworthy of yours, was yet honestly and fervently devoted to it. Let me warn you to look well when you do choose, lest you fall into the snares of one, who with more talent may be less devoted, and with more claims to admiration, may be far less honest in his purpose.”
“What mean you, sir?” she demanded hurriedly, with an increasing glow upon her face.
“This stranger—this man, Stevens!”
“What of him? What do you know of the stranger that you should give me this warning?”
“What does anybody know of him? Whence does he come—whither would he go? What brings him here to this lonely village?—”
A proud smile which curled the lips of Margaret Cooper arrested the speech of the youth. It seemed to say, very distinctly, that she, at least, could very well conjecture what brought the stranger so far from the travelled haunts.
“Ha! do you then know, Margaret?”
“And if I did not, William Hinkley, these base insinuations against the man, of whom, knowing nothing, you would still convey the worst imputations, would never move my mind a hair's breadth from its proper balance. Go, sir—you have your answer. I need not your counsel. I should be sorry to receive it from such a source. Failing in your own attempt, you would seek to fill my mind with calumnious impressions in order to prejudice the prospects of another. For shame! for shame, William Hinkley. I had not thought this of you. But go! go! go, at once, lest I learn to loathe as well as despise you. I thought you simple and foolish, but honorable and generous. I was mistaken even in this. Go, sir, your slanderous insinuations have no effect upon me, and as for Alfred Stevens, you are as far below him in nobleness and honest purpose, as you are in every quality of taste and intellect.”
Her face was the very breathing image of idealized scorn and beauty as she uttered these stinging words. Her nostrils were dilated, her eyes flashing fire, her lips slightly protruded and parted, her hand waving him off. The young man gazed upon her with wild looks equally expressive of anger and agony. His form fairly writhed beneath his emotions; but he found strength enough gaspingly to exclaim:—
“And even this I forgive you, Margaret.”
“Go! go!” she answered; “you know not what you say, or what you are. Go! go!”
And turning away, she moved slowly up the long avenue before her, till, by a sudden turn of the path she was hidden from the sight. Then, when his eye could no longer follow her form, the agony of his soul burst forth in a single groan, and staggering, he fell forward upon the sward, hopeless, reckless, in a wretched condition of self-abandonment and despair.
But this mood lasted not long. Youth, pride, anger, asserted themselves before the lapse of many minutes. Darker feelings got possession of his mind. He rose to his feet. If love was baffled, was there not revenge? Then came the recollection of his cousin's counsel. Should this artful stranger triumph in everything? Margaret Cooper had scarcely disguised the interest which she felt in him. Nay, had not that exulting glance of the eye declared that she, at least, knew what was the purpose of Stevens in seeking the secluded village? His own wrongs were also present to his mind. This usurper had possessed himself of the affections of all he loved—of all of whose love he had till then felt himself secure—all but the good old schoolmaster, and the sturdy schoolmate and cousin. And how soon might he deprive him even of these? That was a new fear! So rapid had been the stranger's progress—so adroitly had he insinuated himself into this Eden of the wilderness—bringing discontent and suffering in his train—that the now thoroughly-miserable youth began to fancy that nothing could be safe from his influence. In a short time his garden would all be overrun, and his loveliest plants would wither.
Was there no remedy for this? There was! and traversing the solemn recesses of that wood, he meditated the various modes by which the redress of wrong, and slight and indignity, were to be sought. He brooded over images of strife, and dark and savage ideas of power rioting over its victim, with entirely new feelings—feelings new at least to him. We have not succeeded in doing him justice, nor in our own design, if we have failed to show that he was naturally gentle of heart, rigidly conscientious, a lover of justice for its own sake, and solicitously sensitive on the subject of another's feelings. But the sense of suffering will blind the best judgment, and the feeling of injury will arouse and irritate the gentlest nature. Besides, William Hinkley, though meek and conscientious, had not passed through his youth, in the beautiful but wild border country in which he lived, without having been informed, and somewhat influenced, by those characteristic ideas of the modes and manner in which personal wrongs were to be redressed.
Perhaps, had his cousin said nothing to him on this subject, his feelings would have had very much the same tendency and general direction which they were taking now. A dark and somewhat pleasurable anxiety to be in conflict with his rival—a deadly conflict—a close, hard death-struggle—was now the predominant feeling in his mind;—but the feeling was not ALTOGETHER a pleasurable one. It had its pains and humiliations, also. Not that he had any fears—any dread of the issue. Of the issue he never thought. But it disturbed the long and peaceful order of his life. It conflicted with the subdued tastes of the student. It was at war with that gentle calm of atmosphere, which letters diffuse around the bower of the muse.
In the conflict of his thoughts and feelings, the judgment of the youth was impaired. He forgot his prudence. In fact, he knew not what he did. He entered the dwelling of his father, and passed into the dining-room, at that solemn moment when the grace before meat was yet in course of utterance by our worthy Brother Stevens. Hitherto, old Mr. Hinkley had religiously exacted that, whenever any of the household failed to be present in season, this ceremony should never be disturbed. They were required, hat in hand, to remain at the entrance, until the benediction had been implored; and, only after the audible utterance of the word “Amen,” to approach the cloth.
We have shown little of old Hinkley. It has not been necessary. The reader has seen enough, however, to understand that, in religious matters—at least in the forms and externals of religion—he was a rigid disciplinarian. Upon grace before and after meat he always insisted. His own prayers of this sort might have been unctuous, but they were never short; and the meats were very apt to grow cold, while the impatience of his hearers grew warm, before he finished. But through respect to the profession, he waived his own peculiar privilege in behalf of Brother Stevens; and this holy brother was in the middle of his entreaty, when William Hinkley appeared at the door. He paused for an instant without taking off his hat. Perhaps had his father been engaged in his office, William would have forborne, as usual, however long the grace, and have patiently waited without, hat off, until it had reached the legitimate conclusion. But he had no such veneration for Stevens; and without scruple he dashed, rather hastily, into the apartment, and flinging his hat upon a chair, strode at once to the table.
The old man did not once raise his eyes until the prayer was over. He would not have done so had the house been on fire. But at the close, he looked up at his son with a brow of thunder. The cloud was of serious and very unusual blackness. He had for some time been dissatisfied with his son. He had seen that the youth entertained some aversion for his guest. Besides, he had learned from his worthy consort, that, in an endeavor of Brother Stevens to bestow good counsel upon the youth, he had been repulsed with as little respect as ceremony. There was one thing that the stern old man had not seen, and could not see; and that was the altered appearance of the lad. As he knew of no reason why he should be unhappy, so he failed to perceive in his appearance any of the signs of unhappiness. He saw nothing but the violation of his laws, and that sort of self-esteem which produces fanaticism, is always the most rigid in the enforcement of its own ordinances. Already he regarded the youth as in a state of rebellion and for such an offence his feeling was very much that of the ancient puritan. No one more insists upon duty, than he who has attained authority by flinging off the fetters of obedience. Your toughest sinner usually makes the sourest saint.
“And is this the way, William Hinkley, that you show respect to God? Do you despise the blessing which Brother Stevens asks upon the food which sustains us?”
“I presume, sir, that God has already blessed all the food which he bestows upon man. I do not think that any prayer of Brother Stevens can render it more blessed.”
“Ha! you do not, do you? Please to rise from this table.”
“Nay, sir—” began Stevens.
“Rise, sir,” continued the old man, laying down knife and fork, and confronting the offender with that dogged look of determination which in a coarse nature is the sure sign of moral inflexibility.
“Forgive him, sir, this time,” said Stevens; “I entreat you to forgive him. The young man knows not what he does.”
“I will make him know,” continued the other.
“Plead not for me, sir,” said William Hinkley, glaring upon Stevens with something of that expression which in western parlance is called wolfish, “I scorn and spurn your interference.”
“William, William, my dear son, do not speak so—do not make your father angry.”
“Will you leave the table, sir, or not?” demanded the father, his words being spoken very slowly, through his teeth, and with the effort of one who seeks to conceal the growing agitation. The eyes of the mother fell upon the youth full of tears and entreaty. His fine countenance betrayed the conflicting emotions of his soul. There was grief, and anger, despair and defiance; the consciousness of being wrong, and the more painful consciousness of suffering wrong. He half started from his chair, again resumed it, and gazing upon Stevens with the hate and agony which he felt, seemed to be entirely forgetful of the words and presence of the father. The old man deliberately rose from the table and left the room. The mother now started up in an agony of fear.
“Run, my son—leave the room before your father comes back. Speak to him, Brother Stevens, and tell him of the danger.”
“Do not call upon him, mother, if you would not have me defy you also. If YOUR words will not avail with me, be sure that his can not.”
“What mean you, my son? You surely have no cause to be angry with Brother Stevens.”
“No cause! no cause!—but it matters not! BROTHER Stevens knows that I have cause. He has heard my defiance—he knows my scorn and hate, and he shall feel them!”
“William, my son, how—”
The steps of the father, approaching through the passageway, diverted her mind to a new terror. She knew the vindictive and harsh nature of the old man; and apprehensions for her son superseded the feeling of anger which his language had provoked.
“Oh, my son, be submissive, or fly. Jump out of the window, and leave Brother Stevens and me to pacify him. We will do all we can.”
The unlucky allusion to Brother Stevens only increased the young man's obstinacy.
“I ask you not, mother. I wish you to do nothing, and to say nothing. Here I will remain. I will not fly. It will be for my father and mother to say whether they will expel their only son from their home, to make room for a stranger.”
“It shall not be said that I have been the cause of this,” said Stevens, rising with dignity from his chair; “I will leave your house, Mrs. Hinkley, only regretting that I should be the innocent cause of any misunderstanding or discontent among its members. I know not exactly what can be the meaning of your son's conduct. I have never offended him; but, as my presence does offend him, I will withdraw myself—”
“You shall not!” exclaimed old Hinkley, who re-entered the room at this moment, and had heard the last words of the speaker. “You shall not leave the house. Had I fifty sons, and they were all to behave in the manner of this viper, they should all leave it before you should stir from the threshold.”
The old man brought with him a cowskin; and the maternal apprehensions of his wife, who knew his severe and determined disposition, were now awakened to such a degree as to overcome the feeling of deference, if not fear, with which the authority of her liege lord had always inspired her.
“Mr. Hinkley, you won't strike William with that whip—you must not—you shall not!” and, speaking thus, she started up and threw herself in the old man's way. He put her aside with no measured movement of his arm, and approached the side of the table where the young man sat.
“Run, William, run, if you love me!” cried the terrified mother.
“I will not run!” was the answer of the youth, who rose from his seat, however, at the same moment and confronted his father.
“Do not strike me, father! I warn you—do not strike me. I may be wrong, but I have suffered wrong. I did not mean, and do not mean, to offend you. Let that content you, but do not strike me.”
The answer was a blow. The whip descended once, and but once, upon the shoulders of the young man. His whole frame was in a convulsion. His eyes dilated with the anguish of his soul; his features worked spasmodically. There was a moment's hesitation. The arm that smote him was again uplifted—the cruel and degrading instrument of punishment a second time about to descend; when, with the strength of youth, and the determination of manhood, the son grasped the arm of the father, and without any more than the degree of violence necessary to effect his object, he tore the weapon from the uplifted hand.
“I can not strike YOU.'” he exclaimed, addressing the old man. “That blow has lost you your son—for ever! The shame and the dishonor shall rest on other shoulders. They are better deserved here, and here I place them!”
With these words, he smote Stevens over the shoulders, once, twice, thrice, before the latter could close with him, or the father interfere to arrest the attempt. Stevens sprang upon him, but the more athletic countryman flung him off, and still maintained his weapon. The father added his efforts to those of Stevens; but he shook himself free from both, and, by this time, the mother had contrived to place herself between the parties. William Hinkley then flung the whip from the window, and moved toward the door. In passing Stevens, he muttered a few words:—
“If there is any skin beneath the cloak of the parson, I trust I have reached it.”
“Enough!” said the other, in the same low tone. “You shall have your wish.”
The youth looked back once, with tearful eyes, upon his mother; and making no other answer but a glance more full of sorrow than anger to the furious flood of denunciation which the old man continued to pour forth, he proceeded slowly from the apartment and the dwelling.
The whole scene passed in very few minutes. No time was given for reflection, and each of the parties obeyed his natural or habitual impulses. Old Hinkley, except when at prayers, was a man of few words. He was much more prompt at deeds than words—a proof of which has already been shown; but the good mother was not so patient, and made a freer use of the feminine weapon than we have been willing to inflict upon our readers. Though she heartily disapproved of her son's conduct toward Stevens, and regarded it as one of the most unaccountable wonders, the offender was still her son. She never once forgot, or could forget, that. But the rage of the old man was unappeasable. The indignity to his guest, and that guest of a calling so sacred, was past all forgiveness, as it was past all his powers of language fitly to describe. He swore to pursue the offender with his wrath to the end of the world, to cut him off equally from his fortune and forgiveness; and when Brother Stevens, endeavoring to maintain the pacific and forgiving character which his profession required, uttered some commonplace pleading in the youth's behalf, he silenced him by saying that, “were he on the bed of death, and were the offender then to present himself, the last prayer that he should make to Heaven would be for sufficient strength to rise up and complete the punishment which he had then begun.”
As for Stevens, though he professed a more charitable spirit, his feelings were quite as hostile, and much more deadly. He was not without that conventional courage which makes one, in certain states of society, prompt enough to place himself in the fields of the duello. To this condition of preparedness it has hitherto been the training of the West that every man, at all solicitous of public life, must eventually come. As a student of divinity, it was not a necessity with Alfred Stevens. Nay, it was essential to the character which he professed that he should eschew such a mode of arbitrament. But he reasoned on this subject, as well with reference to past habits as to future responsibilities. His present profession being simply a ruse d'amour (and, as he already began to perceive, a harmless one in the eyes of the beauty whom he sought, and whose intense feelings and unregulated mind did not suffer her to perceive the serious defects of a character which should attempt so impious a fraud), he was beginning to be somewhat indifferent to its preservation; and, with the decline of his caution in this respect, arose the natural inquiry as to what would be expected of him in his former relations to society. Should it ever be known hereafter, at a time when he stood before the people as a candidate for some high political trust, that he had tamely submitted to the infliction of a cowskin, the revelation would be fatal to all his hopes of ambition, and conclusive against all his social pretensions. In short, so far as society was concerned, it would be his social death.
These considerations were felt in their fullest force. Indeed, their force can not well be conceived by the citizen of any community where the sense of individual responsibility is less rigid and exacting. They naturally outweighed all others in the mind of Alfred Stevens; and, though no fire-eater, he not only resolved on fighting with Hinkley, but, smarting under the strokes of the cowskin—heavily laid on as they had been—his resolution was equally firm that, in the conflict, they should not separate until blood was drawn. Of course, there were some difficulties to be overcome in bringing about the meeting, but, where the parties are willing, most difficulties are surmounted with tolerable ease. This being the case at present, it followed that both minds were busy at the same moment in devising the when, the how, and the where, of the encounter.
William Hinkley went from the house of his father to that of his cousin; but the latter had not yet returned from that ride which he had taken in order to discover the course usually pursued by Stevens. Here he sat down to dinner, but the sister of Ned Hinkley observed that he ate little, and fancied he was sick. That he should come to dine with his cousin was too frequent a matter to occasion question or surprise. This lady was older than her brother by some seven years. She was a widow, with an only child, a girl. The child was a prattling, smiling, good-natured thing, about seven years old, who was never so happy as when on Cousin William's knee. Poor William, indeed, was quite a favorite at every house in the village except that of Margaret Cooper, and, as he sometimes used bitterly to add, his own. On this occasion, however, the child was rendered unhappy by the seeming indifference of Cousin William. The heart of the young man was too full of grief, and his mind of anxiety, to suffer him to bestow the usual caresses upon her; and when, putting her down, he passed into the chamber of Ned Hinkley, the little thing went off to her mother, to complain of the neglect she had undergone.
“Cousin William don't love Susan any more, mamma,” was the burden of her complaint.
“Why do you say so, Susan?”
“He don't kiss me, mamma; he don't keep me in his lap. He don't say good things to me, and call me his little sweetheart. I'm afraid Cousin William's got some other sweetheart. He don't love Susan.”
It was while the little prattler was pouring forth her infantile sorrows in her mother's ear, that the voice of William Hinkley was heard, calling her name from the chamber.
“There, he's calling you now, Susan. Run to him and kiss him, and see what he wants. I'm sure he loves you just as much as ever. He's got no other sweetheart.”
“I'll run, mamma—that I will. I'm so glad! I hope he loves me!” and the little innocent scampered away to the chamber. Her artless tongue, as she approached, enabled him to perceive what had been her grievances.
“Do you call me to love me, and to kiss me, Cousin William, and to make me your sweetheart again?”
“Yes, Susan, you shall be my only sweetheart. I will kiss nobody but you.”
“You'll forget—you will—you'll put me out of your lap, and go away shaking your head, and looking so!—” and here the observant little creature attempted a childish imitation of the sad action and the strange, moody gestures with which he had put her down when he was retiring from the room—gestures and looks which the less quick eyes of her mother had failed utterly to perceive.
“No, no!” said he, with a sad smile; “no, Susan. I'll keep you in my lap for an hour whenever I come, and you shall be my sweetheart always.”
“Your LITTLE sweetheart, your LITTLE Susan, Cousin William.”
“Yes, my dear little Susan, my dearest little sweetheart Susan.”
And he kissed the child fondly while he spoke, and patted her rosy cheeks with a degree of tenderness which his sad and wandering thoughts did not materially diminish.
“But now, Susan,” said he, “if I am to be your sweetheart, and to love you always, you must do all that I bid you. You must go where I send you.”
“Don't I, Cousin William? When you send me to Gran'pa Calvert, don't I go and bring you books, and didn't I always run, and come back soon, and never play by the way?”
“You're a dear Susan,” said he; “and I want you to carry a paper for me now. Do you see this little paper? What is it?”
“A note—don't I know?”
“Well, you must carry this note for me to uncle's, but you mustn't give it to uncle, nor to aunty, nor to anybody but the young man that lives there—young Mr. Stevens.”
“Parson Stevens,” said the little thing, correcting him.
“Ay, ay, Parson Stevens, if you please. You must give it to him, and him only; and he will give you a paper to bring back to me. Will you go now, Susan?”
“Yes, I'll go: but, Cousin William, are you going to shoot the little guns? Don't shoot them till I come back, will you?”
The child pointed to a pair of pistols which lay upon the table where William Hinkley had penned the billet. A flush of consciousness passed over the young man's cheek. It seemed to him as if the little innocent's inquiry had taken the aspect of an accusation. He promised and dismissed her, and, when she had disappeared, proceeded to put the pistols in some condition for use. In that time and region, duels were not often fought with those costly and powerful weapons, the pistols of rifle bore and sight. The rifle, or the ordinary horseman's pistol, answered the purposes of hate. The former instrument, in the hands of the Kentuckian, was a deadly weapon always; and, in the grasp of a firm hand, and under the direction of a practised eye, the latter, at ten paces, was scarcely less so. This being the case, but few refinements were necessary to bring about the most fatal issues of enmity; and the instruments which William Hinkley was preparing for the field were such as would produce a smile on the lips of more civilized combatants. They were of the coarsest kind of holster-pistols, and had probably seen service in the Revolution. The stocks were rickety, the barrels thin, the bore almost large enough for grape, and really such as would receive and disgorge a three-ounce bullet with little straining or reluctance. They had been the property of his own grandfather, and their value for use was perhaps rather heightened than diminished by the degree of veneration which, in the family, was attached to their history.
William Hinkley soon put them in the most efficient order. He was not a practised hand, but an American forester is a good shot almost by instinct; he naturally cleaves to a gun, and without instruction learns its use. William, however, did not think much of what he could hit, at what distance, and under what circumstances. Nothing, perhaps, could better show the confidence in himself and weapon than the inattention which the native-born woodman usually exhibits to these points. Let his weapon be such as he can rely upon, and his cause of quarrel such as can justify his anger, and the rest seems easy, and gives him little annoyance. This was now the case with our rustic. He never, for a moment, thought of practising. He had shot repeatedly, and knew what he could do. His simple object was to bring his enemy to the field, and to meet him there. Accordingly, when he had loaded both pistols, which he did with equal care, and with a liberal allowance of lead and powder, he carefully put them away without offering to test his own skill or their capacities. On this subject, his indifference would have appeared, to a regular duellist, the very extreme of obtuseness.
His little courier conveyed his billet to Stevens in due season. As she had been instructed, she gave it into the hands of Stevens only; but, when she delivered it, old Hinkley was present, and she named the person by whom it was sent.
“My son! what does he say?” demanded the old man, half-suspecting the purport of the billet.
“Ah!” exclaimed Stevens, with the readiness of a practised actor, “there is some hope, I am glad to tell you, Mr. Hinkley, of his coming to his senses. He declares his wish to atone, and invites me to see him. I have no doubt that he wishes me to mediate for him.”
“I will never forgive him while I have breath!” cried the old man, leaving the room. “Tell him that!”
“Wait a moment, my pretty one,” said Stevens, as he was about retiring to his chamber, “till I can write an answer.”
The billet of Hinkley he again read. We may do so likewise. It was to the following effect:—
“Sir: If I understood your last assurance on leaving you this day, I am to believe that the stroke of my whip has made its proper impression on your soul—that you are willing to use the ordinary means of ordinary persons, to avenge an indignity which was not CONFINED TO YOUR CLOTH. If so, meet me at the lake with whatever weapons you choose to bring. I will be there, provided with pistols for both, at any hour from three to six. I shall proceed to the spot as soon as I receive your answer.
“W. H.”
“Short and sharp!” exclaimed Stevens as he read the billet. “'Who would have thought that the YOUNG man had so much blood in him!' Well, we will not balk your desire, Master Hinkley. We will meet you, in verity, though it may compel me to throw up my present hand and call for other cards. N'importe: there is no other course.”
While soliloquizing, he penned his answer, which was brief and to the purpose:—
“I will meet you as soon as I can steal off without provoking suspicion. I have pistols which I will bring with me.
“A. S.”
“There, my little damsel,” said he, re-entering the dining-room, and putting the sealed paper into the hands of the child, “carry that to Mr. Hinkley, and tell him I will come and speak with him as he begs me. But the note will tell him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So——”
Mrs. Hinkley entered the room at this moment. Her husband had apprized her of the communication which her son had made, and the disposition to atonement and repentance which he had expressed. She was anxious to confirm this good disposition, to have her son brought back within the fold, restored to her own affections and the favor of his father. The latter, it is true, had signified his determined hostility, even while conveying his intelligence; but the mother was sanguine—when was a mother otherwise?—that all things would come right which related to her only child. She now came to implore the efforts of Stevens; to entreat, that, like a good Christian, he would not suffer the shocking stripes which her son, in his madness, had inflicted upon him to outweigh his charity, to get the better of his blessed principles, and make him war upon the atoning spirit which had so lately, and so suddenly wakened up in the bosom of the unruly boy. She did not endeavor to qualify the offence of which her son had been guilty. She was far from underrating the indignity to which Stevens had been subjected; but the offender was her son—her only son—in spite of all his faults, follies, and imperfections, the apple of her eye—the only being for whom she cared to live!
Ah! the love of a mother!—what a holy thing! sadly wanting in judgment—frequently misleading, perverting, nay, dooming the object which it loves; but, nevertheless, most pure; least selfish; truest; most devoted!
And the tears gushed from the old woman's eyes as she caught the hand of Stevens in her own, and kissed it—kissed HIS hand—could William Hinkley have seen THAT, how it would have rankled, how he would have writhed! She kissed the hands of that wily hypocrite, bedewing them with her tears, as if he were some benign and blessing saint; and not because he had shown any merits or practised any virtues, but simply because of certain professions which he had made, and in which she had perfect faith because of the professions, and not because of any previous knowledge which she had of the professor. Truly, it behooves a rogue monstrous much to know what garment it is best to wear; the question is equally important to rogue and dandy.
Stevens made a thousand assurances in the most Christian spirit—we can not say that he gave her tear for tear—promised to do his best to bring back the prodigal son to her embrace, and the better to effect this object, put his pistols under his belt! Within the hour he was on his way to the place of meeting.