Hugh Worthington

An unexpected turn in Hugh’s affairs made it no longer necessary for him to remain in the sultry climate of New Orleans, and just one week from his mother’s departure from Spring Bank he reached it, expressing unbounded surprise when he heard from Aunt Eunice where his mother had gone, and how she had gone.

“Fool and his money soon parted,” Hugh said,

“But who is that woman,—the one who sent the money?”

“A Mrs. Johnson, an old friend of your mother,” Aunt Eunice replied, while Hugh looked up quickly, wondering why the Johnsons should be so continually thrust upon him, when the only Johnson for whom he cared was dead years ago.

“And the young lady—what about her?” he asked, while Aunt Eunice told him the little she knew, which was that Mrs. Johnson wished her daughter to come to Spring Bank, but she did not know what they had concluded upon.

“That she should not come, of course,” Hugh said. “They had no right to give her a home without my consent, and I’ve plenty of young ladies at Spring Bank now. Oh, it was such a relief when I was gone to know that in all New Orleans there was not a single hoop annoyed on my account. I had a glorious time doing as I pleased,” and helping his aunt to mount the horse which had brought her to Spring Bank, Hugh returned to the house, which seemed rather lonely, notwithstanding that he had so often wished he could once more be alone, just as he was before his mother came.

On the whole, however, he enjoyed his freedom from restraint, and very rapidly fell back into his old loose way of living, bringing his dogs into the parlor, and making it a repository for both his hunting and fishing apparatus.

“It’s splendid to do as I’m a mind to,” he said, one hot August morning, nearly three weeks after his mother’s departure, as with his box of worms upon the music stool, in the little room which ’Lina claimed as exclusively her own, he sat mending his long fish line, whistling merrily, and occasionally thrusting back from his forehead the mass of curling hair, which somewhat obstructed his vision.

Around him upon the floor lay half a dozen dogs, some asleep, and others eyeing his movements curiously, as if they knew and appreciated what he was doing.

“There isn’t a finer lot of dogs in Kentucky,” soliloquized the young man, as he ran his eye over them; “but wouldn’t my lady at Saratoga rave if she knew I’d taken her boudoir for a kennel, and kept my bootjack, my blacking brush, and Sunday shirts all on her piano! Good place for them, so handy to get at, though I don’t suppose it’s quite the thing to live so like a savage. Halloo, Mug, what do you want?” he asked, as a little mulatto girl appeared in the door.

“Claib done buy you this yer,” and the child handed him the letter from his mother, which had been to New Orleans and was forwarded from there.

The first of it was full of affection for her boy, and Hugh felt his heart growing very tender as he read, but when he reached the point where poor, timid Mrs. Worthington tried to explain about Alice, making a wretched bungle, and showing plainly how much she was swayed by ’Lina, it began to harden at once.

“What the plague!” he exclaimed as he read on, “Supposes I remember having heard her speak of her old school friend, Alice Morton? I don’t remember any such thing. Her daughter’s name’s Alice—Alice Johnson,” and Hugh for an instant turned white, so powerfully that name always affected him.

Soon rallying, however, he continued, “Heiress to fifty thousand dollars. Unfortunate Alice Johnson! better be lying beside the Golden Haired; but what! actually coming to Spring Bank, a girl worth fifty thousand, the most refined, most elegant, most beautiful creature that ever was born, coming where I am, without my consent, too! That’s cool upon my word!” and for a moment Hugh went off in a towering passion, declaring “he wouldn’t stand it,” and bringing his foot down upon the little bare toes of Muggins, crouched upon the floor beside him.

Her loud outcry brought him to himself, and after quieting her as well as he could, he finished his mother’s letter, chafing terribly at the thought of a strange young lady being thrust upon him whether he would have her or not.

“She is going to Colonel Tiffton’s first, though they’ve all got the typhoid fever, I hear, and that’s no place for her. That fever is terrible on Northerners—terrible on anybody. I’m afraid of it myself, and I wish this horrid throbbing I’ve felt for a few days would leave my head. It has a fever feel that I don’t like,” and the young man pressed his hand against his temples, trying to beat back the pain which so much annoyed him.

Just then Colonel Tiffton was announced, his face wearing an anxious look, and his voice trembling as he told how sick his Nell was, how sick they all were, and then spoke of Alice Johnson.

“She’s the same girl I told you about the day I bought Rocket; some little kin to me, and that makes it queer why her mother should leave her to you. I knew she would not be happy at Saratoga, and so we wrote for her to visit us. She is on the road now, will be here day after to-morrow, and something must be done. She can’t come to us, without great inconvenience to ourselves and serious danger to her. Hugh, my boy, there’s no other way—she must come to Spring Bank,” and the old colonel laid his hand on that of Hugh, who looked at him aghast, but made no immediate reply.

He saw at a glance that Alice could not go to Moss Side with impunity, and if not there she must, of course come to Spring Bank.

“What can I do with her? Oh, Colonel, it makes me sweat like rain just to think of it, and my head thumps like a mill-hopper, but, I suppose, there’s no help for it. You’ll meet her at the depot. You’ll give her an inkling of what I am. You’ll tell her what a savage she may expect to find, so she won’t go into fits at sight of me.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll fix it; but, I thought, maybe, you’d have Aunt Eunice come over till your mother’s return. Women are gossipping things, and they’d’ talk if she was to live here alone with you. I tell you, she’s handsome; and if I’s you, I’d be a little good, that is, I wouldn’t walk the lots Sundays, but go to church instead.”

“I always do, sir,” and Hugh spoke quickly, for slowly, surely, Adah Hastings was influencing him for good, and more changes than one were already apparent in him.

“That’s right,” rejoined the colonel. “Going to church is well enough for them that like it, which I can’t say I do, but I’ll see her, I’ll meet her; I’ll tell her. Good-bye, my boy. Now, I think of it, you look mighty nigh sick. Your face is as red as a beetle, and eyes kind of blood shot. The very way my wife looked. Are you sick?”

“No, not sick, but this hot weather affects my head which feels much as if there were a snare-drum inside.”

“No, that ain’t the symptom. My wife’s felt like a bumble-bee’s nest. You are all right if you’ll take an emetic, a good big one, such as will turn your stomach inside out. Good-bye—Nelly’s awful sick. Struck to her brain last night. Good-bye. I wouldn’t lose Nell for a farm, if she is a little gritty,” and wringing Hugh’s hand, the colonel hurried off, leaving Hugh to his own reflections.

“A pretty state of things, and a pretty place to bring a young lady,” he muttered, glancing ruefully round the room, and enumerating the different articles he knew were out of place. “Fish-worms, fish-hooks, fish-lines, bootjack, boot-blacking, and rifle, to say nothing of the dogs—and ME!”

The last was said in a tone as if the me were the most objectionable part of the whole, as, indeed, Hugh thought it was.

“I wonder how I do look to persons wholly unprejudiced!” Hugh said, and turning to Muggins he asked what she thought of him.

“I thinks you berry nice. I likes you berry much,” the child replied, and Hugh continued, “Yes; but how do I look, I mean? What do I look like, a dandy or a scarecrow?”

Muggins regarded him for a moment curiously, and then replied, “I’se dunno what kind of thing that dandy is, but I ’members dat yer scarecrow what Claib make out of mars’r’s trouses and coat, an’ put up in de cherry tree. I thinks dat look like Mas’r Hugh—yes, very much like!”

Hugh laughed long and loud, pinching Mug’s dusky cheek, and bidding her run away.

“Pretty good,” he exclaimed, when he was left alone. “That’s Mug’s opinion. Look like a scarecrow. I mean to see for myself,” and going into the sitting-room, where the largest mirror was hung, he scanned curiously the figure which met his view, even taking a smaller glass, and holding it so as to get a sight of his back. “Tall, broad-shouldered, straight, well built. My form is well enough,” he said. “It’s the clothes that bother. I mean to get some new ones. Then, as to my face,” and Hugh turned himself around, “I never thought of it before; but my features are certainly regular, teeth can’t be beaten, good brown skin, eyes to match, and a heap of curly hair. I’ll be hanged if I don’t think I’m rather good-looking!” and with his spirits proportionably raised, Hugh whistled merrily as he went in quest of Aunt Chloe, to whom he imparted the startling information that on the next day but one, a young lady was coming to Spring Bank, and that, in the meantime, the house must be cleaned from garret to cellar, and everything put in order for the expected guest.

With growing years, Aunt Chloe had become rather cross and less inclined to work than formerly, frequently sighing for the days when “Mas’r John didn’t want no clarin’ up, but kep’ things lyin’ handy.” With her hands on her fat hips she stood, coolly regarding Hugh, who was evidently too much in earnest to be opposed. Alice was coming, and the house must be put in order.

Accordingly, two hours afterwards, there was a strong smell of soap suds arising from one room, while from another a cloud of dust was issuing, as Hugh himself bent over the broom, wondering where all that dirt came from, inasmuch as his six dogs had only lain there for a few days!

Aunt Eunice, too, was pressed into the service, and greatly against her will, come to play the hostess for Hugh, who drove both herself and Aunt Chloe nearly distracted with his orders and counter orders.

Particularly was he interested in what was to be Alice’s room, sending for Adah to see if it were right, and would be likely to strike a young lady favorably.

The cleaning and arranging was finished at last, and everything within the house was as neat and orderly as Aunt Eunice and Adah could make it, even Aunt Chloe acknowledging that “things was tip-top,” but said “it was no use settin’ ’em to rights when Mas’r Hugh done on-sot ’em so quick,” but Hugh promised to do better. He would turn over a new leaf; so by way of commencement, on the morning of Alice’s expected arrival he deliberately rolled up his towel and placed it under his pillow instead of his night-shirt, which was hung conspicuously over the washstand. His boots were put behind the fireboard, his every day hat jammed into the bandbox where ’Lina kept her winter bonnet, and then, satisfied that so far as his room was concerned, every thing was in order, he descended the stairs and went into the garden to gather fresh flowers with which to adorn Alice’s room. Hugh was fond of flowers, and two beautiful bouquets were soon arranged and placed in the vases brought from the parlor mantel, while Muggins, who trotted beside him, watching his movements and sometimes making suggestions, was told to see that they were freshly watered, and not allowed to stand where the sun could shine on them, as they might fade before Miss Johnson came.

“You likes her?” and Mug looked inquiringly at him.

“I never saw her,” he replied, “but I mean to like her yes,” and Hugh spoke the truth.

He could not account for it, but now that it came so near, there was something enlivening in the prospect of Alice’s coming. He meant to like her—meant that she should like him. Not as the Golden Haired might have done had she lived, but as a friend, a sister. He’d try his best to win her respect before ’Lina came to prejudice her against him, if indeed she had not done so already and a pang shot through his heart as he thought how possible it was that Alice Johnson was prepared already to dislike him. But no, Ad could not be so mean as that, and Hugh went down to the breakfast which Aunt Eunice had prepared, and of which he could scarcely taste a morsel.

During the excitement of the last few days, the pain in his head had in a measure been forgotten, but it had come back this morning with redoubled force, and the veins upon his forehead looked almost like bursting with their pressure of feverish blood. Hugh did not think it possible for him to be sick, and he tried hard to forget the giddy, half blinding pain warning him of danger, and after forcing himself to sip a little coffee in which he would indulge this morning, he ordered Claib to bring out the covered buggy, as he was going up to Lexington, hoping thus to obtain a sight of Alice without being himself seen, or at least known as Hugh Worthington.