The disappearance of Margaret Cooper was succeeded by a shriek from above—a single shriek—a cry of terror and despair; and in the same instant the form of William Hinkley might have been seen cleaving the air, with the boldness of a bird, secure always of his wing, and descending into the lake as nearly as it was possible for him to come, to the spot where she had sunk. Our cooler fisherman looked up to the abrupt eminence, just above his own head, from which his devoted cousin had sprung.
“By gemini!” he exclaimed with an air of serious apprehension, “if William Hinkley hasn't knocked his life out by that plunge he's more lucky than I think him. It's well the lake's deep enough in this quarter else he'd have tried the strength of hard head against harder rock below. But there's no time for such nice calculations! We can all swim—that's a comfort.”
Thus speaking, he followed the example of his cousin, though more quietly, plunging off from his lowlier perch, and cleaving the water, headforemost, with as little commotion as a sullen stone would make sent directly downward to the deep. By this time, however, our former companion, Stevens, had done the same thing. Stevens was no coward, but he had no enthusiasm. He obeyed few impulses. His proceedings were all the result of calculation. He could swim as well as his neighbors. He had no apprehensions on that score; but he disliked cold water; and there was an involuntary shrug of the shoulder and shiver of the limbs before he committed himself to the water, which he did with all the deliberation of the cat, who, longing for fish, is yet unwilling to wet her own feet. His deliberation, and the nearness of his position to Margaret Cooper, were so far favorable to his design that he succeeded in finding her first. It must be understood that the events, which we have taken so much time to tell, occupied but a few seconds in the performance. Stevens was in the water quite as quickly as Ned Hinkley, and only not so soon as his more devoted and desperate cousin. If it was an advantage to him to come first in contact with the form of Margaret Cooper, it had nearly proved fatal to him also. In the moment when he encountered her, her outstretched and grasping arms, encircled his neck. They rose together, but he was nearly strangled, and but for the timely interposition of the two cousins, they must probably have both perished.
It was the fortune of our fisherman to relieve the maiden, whom he bore to the opposite shore with a coolness, a skill and spirit, which enabled him to save himself from her desperate but unconscious struggles, while supporting her with a degree of ease and strength which had been acquired while teaching some dozen of the village urchins how to practise an art in which he himself was reckoned a great proficient.
It was fortunate for Stevens that the charities of William Hinkley were more active and indulgent than his own, since, without the timely succor and aid which he afforded, that devout young gentleman would have been made to discontinue his studies very suddenly and have furnished a summary conclusion to this veracious narrative—a consummation which, if it be as devoutly wished by the reader as by the writer, will be a much greater source of annoyance to our publisher than it has proved already. Never had poor mortal been compelled to drink, at one time, a greater quantity of that celestial beverage, which the Reverend Mr. Pierpont insists is the only liquor drunk at the hotels of heaven. We should be sorry to misrepresent that very gentle gentleman, but we believe that this is substantially his idea. It was unfortunate for Stevens that, previously to this, he had never been accustomed to drink much of this beverage in its original strength anywhere. He had been too much in the habit of diluting it; and being very temperate always in his enjoyment of the creature comforts, he had never taken it, even when thus diluted, except in very moderate quantities.
In consequence of his former abstemiousness, the quantity which he now swallowed nearly strangled him. He was about to take his last draught with many wry faces, when the timely arms of the two cousins, by no very sparing application of force withdrew him from the grasp of the damsel; and without very well understanding the process, or any particulars of his extrication, he found himself stretched upon the banks over which he had lately wandered, never dreaming of any such catastrophe; discharging from his stomach by no effort of his own, a large quantity of foreign ingredients—the ordinary effect, we are given to understand, of every inordinate indulgence in strong waters.
Our excellent old friend, Mr. Calvert, was soon upon the spot, and while Ned Hinkley was despatched to the village for assistance, he took himself the charge of recovering the unconscious maiden. Half-forgetting his hostility, William Hinkley undertook the same good service to Stevens, who really seemed to need succor much more than his fair companion. While William Hinkley busied himself by rolling, friction, fanning, and other practices, employed in such cases, to bring his patient back to life, he could not forbear an occasional glance to the spot where, at a little distance, lay the object of his affections.
Her face was toward him, as she lay upon her side. Her head was supported on the lap of the old man. Her long hair hung dishevelled, of a more glossy black now when filled with water. Her eyes were shut, and the dark fringes of their lids lay like a pencil-streak across the pale, prominent orbs which they served to bind together. The glow of indignant pride with which she was wont to receive his approaches had all disappeared in the mortal struggle for life through which she had lately gone; and pure, as seemingly free from every passion, her pale beauties appeared to his doating eye the very perfection of human loveliness. Her breast now heaved convulsively—deep sighs poured their way through her parted lips. Her eyes alternately opened upon but shut against the light, and, finally, the exertions of the old man were rewarded as the golden gleam of expression began to relight and re-illumine those features which seemed never to be without it.
She recovered her consciousness, started up, made an effort to rise, but, reeling with inability, sunk down again into the paternal grasp of the old man.
“Mr. Calvert!” she murmured.
“You are safe, my daughter,” said the old man.
“But how did it happen?—where am I?”
“By the lake.”
“Ah! I remember. I was drowning. I felt it all—the choking—the struggle—the water in my ears and eyes! It was a dreadful feeling. How did I come here? Who saved me?”
“Ned Hinkley brought you to land, but he was helped by his cousin William, who assisted the stranger.”
“The stranger? ah! yes, I remember: but where is he?”
She looked around wildly and anxiously, and beholding William Hinkley at a little distance, busy with the still unconscious form of Stevens, a quick, fearful shudder passed over her frame. She almost crouched into the old man's arms as she asked, in husky accents—
“He is not dead—he lives?”
“I hope so. He breathes.”
She waited for no more, but, starting to her feet, she staggered to the spot where Stevens lay. The old man would have prevented her.
“You are feeble; you will do yourself harm. Better, if you are able to walk, hurry homeward with me, when you can change your clothes.”
“Would you have me ungrateful?” she exclaimed; “shall I neglect him when he risked his life for me?”
There was a consciousness in her mind that it was not all gratitude which moved her, for the deathly paleness of her cheek was now succeeded by a warm blush which denoted a yet stronger and warmer emotion. The keen eyes of William Hinkley understood the meaning of this significant but unsyllabling mode of utterance, and his eyes spoke the reproach to hers which his lips left unsaid:—
“Ah! did I not risk my life too, to prevent—to save? When would she feel such an interest in me? when would she look thus were my life at stake?”
“He will not be neglected,” said the old man, gently endeavoring to restrain her. Perhaps she would not have given much heed to the interruption, for hers was the strength of an unfettered will, one accustomed to have way, but that, at this moment, the eyes of Stevens unclosed and met her own. His consciousness had returned, and, under the increasing expression in his looks, she sunk back, and permitted the old man to lead her along the homeward path. More than once she looked back, but, with the assurance of Mr. Calvert that there was no more danger to be apprehended, she continued to advance; the worthy old man, as they went, seeking to divert her mind, by pleasant and choice anecdotes of which his memory had abundant stores, from dwelling upon the unpleasant and exciting event which had just taken place.
Margaret Cooper, whose habits previously had kept her from much intimacy with the village sage, was insensibly taken by his gentleness, the purity of his taste, the choiceness of his expression, the extent of his resources. She wondered how a mind so full should have remained unknown to her so long—committing the error, very common to persons of strong will and determined self-esteem, of assuming that she should, as a matter of inevitable necessity, have known everything and everybody of which the knowledge is at all desirable.
In pleasant discourse he beguiled her progress, until Ned Hinkley was met returning with horses—the pathway did not admit of a vehicle, and the village had none less cumbrous than cart and wagon—on one of which she mounted, refusing all support or assistance; and when, Mr. Calvert insisted upon walking beside her, she grasped the bough of a tree, broke off a switch, and, giving an arch but good-natured smile and nod to the old man, laid it smartly over the horse's flank, and in a few moments was out of sight.
“The girl is smart,” said Calvert, as he followed her retreating form with his eye—“too smart! She speaks well—has evidently read. No wonder that William loves her; but she will never do for him. She has no humility. Pride is the demon in her heart. Pride will overthrow her. These woods spoil her. Solitude is the natural nurse of self-esteem, particularly where it is strong at first, and is coupled with anything like talent. Better for such a one if sickness, and strife, and suffering, had taken her at the cradle, and nursed her with the milk of self-denial, which is the only humility worth having. And yet, why should I speak of her, when the sting remains in my own soul—when I yet feel the pang of my feebleness and self-reproach? Alas! I should school none. The voice speaks to me ever, 'Old man, to thy prayers! Thy own knees are yet stubborn as thy neck!'”
Leaving him to the becoming abasement of that delusive self-comfort which ministers to our vain-glory, and which this good old man had so happily succeeded in rebuking, we will return to the spot where we left our other parties. Ned Hinkley had already joined them. With his horse he had providently brought a suit of his own clothes for the stranger, which, though made of homespun, and not of the most modern fashion, were yet warm and comfortable, and as Stevens was compelled to think, infinitely preferable to the chilly and dripping garments which he wore. A few moments, in the cover of the woods, sufficed the neophyte to make the alteration; while the two cousins, to whom the exigencies of forester and fisherman life were more familiar prepared to walk the water out of their own habits, by giving rapid circulation to their blood and limbs. While their preparations were in progress, however, Ned Hinkley could not deny himself the pleasure of discoursing at length on the subject of the late disaster.
“Stranger,” he said, “I must tell you that you've had a souse in as fine a fishing-pond as you'll meet with from here to Salt river. I reckon, now, that while you were in, you never thought for a moment of the noble trout that inhabit it.”
“I certainly did not,” said the other.
“There, now! I could have sworn it. That a man should go with his eyes open into a country without ever asking what sort of folks lived there! Isn't it monstrous?”
“It certainly seems like a neglect of the first duty of a traveller,” said Stevens good-humoredly; “let me not show myself heedless of another. Let me thank you, gentlemen, for saving my life. I believe I owe it to one or both of you.”
“To him, not to me,” said Ned Hinkley, pointing to his cousin. William was at a little distance, looking sullenly upon the two with eyes which, if dark and moody, seemed to denote a thought which was anywhere else but in the scene around him.
“He saved you, and I saved the woman. I wouldn't have a woman drowned in this lake for all the houses in Charlemont.”
“Ah! why?”
“'Twould spoil it for fishing for ever.”
“Why would a woman do this more than a man?”
“For a very good reason, my friend. Because the ghost of a woman talks, and a man's don't, they say. The ghost of a man says what it wants to say with its eyes; a woman's with her tongue. You know there's nothing scares fish so much as one's talking.”
“I have heard so. But is it so clear that there is such a difference between ghosts? How is it known that the female does all the talking?”
“Oh, that's beyond dispute. There's a case that we all know about—all here in Charlemont—the case of Joe Barney's millpond. Barney lost one of his children and one of his negroes in the pond—drowned as a judgment, they say, for fishing a Sunday. That didn't make any difference with the fish: you could catch them there just the same as before. But when old Mrs. Prey fell in, crossing the dam, the case was altered. You might sit there for hours and days, night and day, and bob till you were weary; devil a bite after that! Now, what could make the difference but the tongue? Mother Frey had a tongue of her own, I tell you. 'Twas going when she fell in, and I reckon's been going ever since. She was a sulphury, spiteful body, to be sure, and some said she poisoned the fish if she didn't scare them. To my thinking, 'twas the tongue.”
Stevens had been something seduced from his gravity by the blunt humor and unexpected manner of Ned Hinkley; besides, having been served, if not saved, by his hands, something, perhaps, of attention was due to what he had to say; but he recollected the assumed character which he had to maintain—something doubtful, too, if he had not already impaired it in the sight and hearing of those who had come so opportunely but so unexpectedly to his relief, He recovered his composure and dignity; forbore to smile at the story which might otherwise have provoked not only smile but corresponding answer; and, by the sudden coolness of his manner, tended to confirm in Ned Hinkley's bosom the half-formed hostility which the cause of his cousin had originally taught him to feel.
“I'll lick the conceit out of him yet!” he muttered, as Stevens, turning away, ascended to the spot where William Hinkley stood.
“I owe you thanks, Mr. Hinkley,” he began.
The young man interrupted him.
“You owe me nothing, sir,” he answered hastily, and prepared to turn away.
“You have saved my life, sir.”
“I should have saved your dog's life, sir, in the same situation. I have done but an act of duty.”
“But, Mr. Hinkley—”
“Your horse is ready for you, sir,” said the young man, turning off abruptly, and darting up the sides of the hill, remote from the pathway, and burying himself in the contiguous forests.
“Strange!” exclaimed the neophyte—“this is very strange!”
“Not so strange, stranger, as that I should stand your groom, without being brought up to such a business for any man. Here's your nag, sir.”
“I thank you—I would not willingly trespass,” he replied, as he relieved our angler from his grasp upon the bridle.
“You're welcome without the thanks, stranger. I reckon you know the route you come. Up hill, follow the track to the top, take the left turn to the valley, then you'll see the houses, and can follow your own nose or your nag's. Either's straight enough to carry you to his rack. You'll find your clothes at your boarding-house about the time that you'll get there.”
“Nay, sir, I already owe you much. Let them not trouble you. I will take them myself.”
“No, no, stranger!” was the reply of our fisherman, as he stooped down and busied himself in making the garments into a compact bundle; “I'm not the man to leave off without doing the thing I begin to do. I sometimes do more than I bargain for—sometimes lick a man soundly when I set out only to tweak his nose; but I make it a sort of Christian law never to do less. You may reckon to find your clothes home by the time you get there. There's your road.”
“A regular pair of cubs!” muttered the horseman, as he ascended the hill.
“To purse up his mouth as if I was giving him root-drink, when I was telling him about Mother Frey's spoiling the fish! Let him take care—he may get the vinegar next time, and not the fish!”
And, with these characteristic commentaries, the parties separated for the time.
“You're not a fighter, Bill Hinkley, and that's about the worst fault that I can find against you.”
Such was the beginning of a dialogue between the cousins some three days after the affair which was narrated in our last chapter. The two young men were at the house of the speaker, or rather at his mother's house; where, a favorite and only son, he had almost supreme dominion. He was putting his violin in tune, and the sentences were spoken at intervals with the discordant scraps of sound which were necessarily elicited by this unavoidable musical operation. These sounds might be said to form a running accompaniment for the dialogue, and, considering the sombre mood of the person addressed, they were, perhaps, far more congenial than any more euphonious strains would have been.
“Not a fighter!” said the other; “why, what do you mean?”
“Why, just what I say—you are not a fighter. You love reading, and fiddling, and fishing sometimes, and sometimes dancing, and hunting, and swimming; but I'm pretty certain you don't love fighting. You needn't contradict, Bill—I've been thinking the matter over; and I'm sure of it. I recollect every battle or scrape you ever were in, from the time we went to old Chandler's, and I tell you, you're not a fighter—you don't love fighting!”
This was concluded with a tremendous scrape over the strings, which seemed to say as well as scrape could speak—“There can be no mistake on the subject—I've said it.”
“If I knew exactly what you were driving at,” said the other, “perhaps I might answer you. I never pretended to be a fighter; and as for loving it, as I love eating, drinking, books, fiddling, and dancing, why that needs no answer. Of course I do not, and I don't know who does.”
“There it is. I told you. I knew it. You'd sooner do almost anything than fight.”
“If you mean that I would submit to insult,” said the more peaceable cousin, with some displeasure in his tones and countenance, “sooner than resent it, you are very much mistaken. It wouldn't be advisable even for you to try the experiment.”
“Poh, poh, Bill, you know for that matter that it wouldn't take much trying. I'd lick you as easily now as I did when we were boys together.”
“We are boys no longer,” said the other gravely.
“I'm as much a boy as ever, so far as the licking capacity calls for boyhood. I've pretty much the same spirit now that I had then, and ten times the same strength and activity. But don't look so blue. I'm not going to try my strength and spirit and activity on you. And don't suppose, Bill Hinkley, that I mean to say you're anything of a coward, or that you'd submit to any open insult; but still I do say, you're not only not fond of fighting, but you're just not as much inclined that way as you should be.”
“Indeed! what more would you have? Do you not say that I would not submit to insult?—that I show the proper degree of courage in such cases?”
“Not the PROPER degree. That's the very question. You're not quick enough. You wait for the first blow. You don't step out to meet the enemy. You look for him to come to you.”
“Surely! I look upon fighting as brutal—to be waited for, not sought—to be resorted to only in compliance with necessity—to be avoided to the last!”
“No such thing—all a mistake. Fighting and the desire to get on the shoulders of our neighbors is a natural passion. We see that every day. The biggest boy licks the one just below him, he whips the next, and so down, and there's not one that don't lick somebody and don't stand licked himself—for the master licks the biggest. The desire to fight and flog is natural, and this being the case, it stands to reason that we must lick our neighbor or he'll be sure to lick us.”
“Pshaw! you speak like a boy yet. This is schoolhouse philosophy.”
“And very good philosophy too. I'm thinking the schoolhouse and the play-ground is pretty much a sort of world to itself. It's no bad show of what the world without is; and one of its first lessons and that which I think the truest, is the necessity of having a trial of strength with every new-comer; until we learn where he's to stand in the ranks, number one or number nothing. You see there just the same passions, though, perhaps, on a small scale, that we afterward find to act upon the big world of manhood. There, we fight for gingerbread, for marbles, top and ball; not unfrequently because we venture to look at our neighbor's sweetheart; and sometimes, quite as often, for the love of the thing and to know where the spirit and the sinew are. Well, isn't that just what the big world does after us? As men, we fight for bigger playthings, for pounds, where before we fought for pence—for gold where before we fought for coppers—for command of a country instead of a schoolyard; for our wives instead of sweethearts, and through sheer deviltry and the love of the thing, when there's nothing else to fight about, just the same as we did in boyhood.”
“But even were you to prove, and I to admit, that it is so, just as you say, that would not prove the practice to be a jot more proper, or a jot less brutal.”
“Begging your pardon, Bill, it proves it to be right and proper, and accordingly, if brutal, a becoming brutality. If this is the natural disposition of boys and men, don't you see that this schoolboy licking and fighting is a necessary part of one's moral education? It learns one to use his strength, his limbs and sinews, as he may be compelled to use them, in self-defence, in every future day of his life. You know very well what follows a boy at school who doesn't show himself ready to bung up his neighbor's eye the moment he sees it at a cross-twinkle. He gets his own bunged up. Well, it's just the same thing when he gets to be a man. If you have a dispute with your enemy, I don't say that you shouldn't reason with him, but I do say that your reasoning will have very little effect upon him unless he sees that you are able and willing to write it in black and blue upon his sheepskin. And what better way could you find to show him THAT, unless by giving him word and blow, the blow first, as being the most impressive argument?”
“You must have been dreaming of these subjects last night.” said the grave cousin—“you seem to have them unusually well cut and dried.”
“I haven't been dreaming about it, Bill, but I confess I've been thinking about it very seriously all night, and considering all the arguments that I thought you would make use of against it. I haven't quite done with my discussion, which I took up entirely for your benefit.”
“Indeed! you are quite philanthropic before breakfast; but let us hear you?”
“You talk of the brutality of fighting—now in what does that brutality consist? Is it not in breaking noses, kicking shins, bunging up eyes, and making one's neighbor feel uncomfortable in thigh, and back, and arms, and face, and skin, and indeed, everywhere, where a big fist or a cowhide shoe may plant a buffet or a bruise?”
“Quite a definition, Ned.”
“I'm glad you think so: for if it's brutal in the boy to do so to his schoolmate, is it less so for the schoolmaster to do the same thing to the boy that's under his charge? He bruises my skin, makes my thighs, and arms, and back, and legs, and face, and hands, ache, and if my definition be a correct one, he is quite as brutal as the boys who do the same thing to one another.”
“He does it because the boys deserve it, and in order to make them obedient and active.”
“And when did a boy not deserve a flogging when he gets licked by his companion?” demanded the other triumphantly—“and don't the licking make him obedient, and don't the kicking make him active? By gemini, I've seen more activity from one chap's legs under the quick application of another's feet, than I think anything else could produce, unless it were feet made expressly for such a purpose and worked by a steam-engine. That might make them move something faster, but I reckon there would be no need in such a case of any such improvement.”
“What are you driving at, Ned Hinkley? This is by far the longest argument, I think, that you've ever undertaken. You must be moved by some very serious considerations.”
“I am, and you'll see what I'm driving at after a little while. I'm not fond of arguing, you know, but I look upon the fighting principle as a matter to be known and believed in, and I wish to make clear to you my reasons for believing in it myself. You don't suppose I'd put down the fiddle for a talk at any time if the subject was not a serious one?”
“Give way—you have the line.”
“About the brutality of fighting then, there's another thing to be said. Fighting produces good feeling—that is to say supposing one party fairly to have licked another.”
“Indeed—that's new.”
“And true too, Bill Hinkley. It cures the sulks. It lets off steam. It's like a thunderstorm that comes once in a while, and drives away the clouds, and clears the skies until all's blue again.”
“Black and blue.”
“No! what was black becomes blue. Chaps that have been growling at each other for weeks and months lose their bad blood—”
“From the nostrils!”
“Yes, from the nostrils. It's a sort of natural channel, and runs freely from that quarter. The one crows and the other runs and there's an end of the scrape and the sulks. The weaker chap, feeling his weakness, ceases to be impudent; the stronger, having his power acknowledged, becomes the protector of the weak. Each party falls into his place, and so far from the licking producing bad feeling it produces good feeling and good humor; and I conclude that one half of the trouble in the world, the squabbles between man and man, woman and woman, boy and boy—nay, between rival nations—is simply because your false and foolish notions of brutality and philanthropy keep them from coming to the scratch as soon as they should. They hang off, growling and grumbling, and blackguarding, and blaspheming, when, if they would only take hold, and come to an earnest grapple, the odds would soon show themselves—broken heads and noses would follow—the bad blood would run, and as soon as each party found his level, the one being finally on his back, peace would ensue, and there would be good humor for ever after, or at least until the blood thickened again. I think there's reason in my notion. I was thinking it over half the night. I've thought of it oftentimes before. I've never yet seen the argument that's strong enough to tumble it.”
“Your views are certainly novel, Ned, if not sound. You will excuse me if I do not undertake to dispute them this morning. I give in, therefore, and you may congratulate yourself upon having gained a triumph if not a convert?”
“Stop, stop, William Hinkley: you don't suppose I've done all this talking only to make a convert or to gain a triumph?”
“Why, that's your object in fighting, why not in arguing?”
“Well, that's the object of most persons when they dispute, I know; but it is not mine. I wish to make a practical application of my doctrine.”
“Indeed! who do you mean to fight now?”
“It's not for me to fight, it's for you.”
“Me!”
“Yes; you have the preference by rights, though if you don't—and I'm rather sorry to think, as I told you at the start, that the only fault I had to find with you is that you're not a fighter—I must take your place and settle the difference.”
William Hinkley turned upon the speaker. The latter had laid down the violin, having, in the course of the argument, broken all its strings; and he stood now, unjacketed, and still in the chamber, where the two young men had been sleeping, almost in the attitude of one about to grapple with an antagonist. The serious face of him whose voice had been for war—his startling position—the unwonted eagerness of his eye, and the ludicrous importance which he attached to the strange principle which he had been asserting—conquered for a moment the graver mood of his love-sick companion, and he laughed outright at his pugnacious cousin. The latter seemed a little offended.
“It's well you can laugh at such things, Bill Hinkley, but I can't. There was a time when every mother's son in Kentucky was a man, and could stand up to his rack with the best. If he couldn't keep the top place, he went a peg lower; but he made out to keep the place for which he was intended. Then, if a man disliked his neighbor he crossed over to him and said so, and they went at it like men, and as soon as the pout was over they shook hands, and stood side by side, and shoulder to shoulder, like true friends, in every danger, and never did fellows fight better against Indians and British than the same two men, that had lapped muscles, and rolled in the grain together till you couldn't say whose was whose, and which was which, till the best man jumped up, and shook himself, and gave the word to crow. After that it was all peace and good humor, and they drank and danced together, and it didn't lessen a man in his sweetheart's eyes, though he was licked, if he could say he had stood up like a man, and was downed after a good hug, because he couldn't help it. Now, there's precious little of that. The chap that dislikes his fellow, hasn't the soul to say it out, but he goes aside and sneers and snickers, and he whispers things that breed slanders, and scandals, and bad blood, until there's no trusting anybody; and everything is full of hate and enmity—but then it's so peaceful! Peaceful, indeed! as if there was any peace where there is no confidence, and no love, and no good feeling either for one thing or another.”
“Really, Ned, it seems to me you're indignant without any occasion. I am tempted to laugh at you again.”
“No, don't. You'd better not.”
“Ha! ha! ha! I can not help it, Ned; so don't buffet me. You forced me into many a fight when I was a boy, for which I had no stomach; I trust you will not pummel me yourself because the world has grown so hatefully pacific. Tell me, in plain terms, who I am to fight now.”
“Who! who but Stevens?—this fellow Stevens. He's your enemy, you say—comes between you and your sweetheart—between you and your own mother—seems to look down upon you—speaks to you as if he was wiser, and better, and superior in every way—makes you sad and sulky to your best friends—you growl and grumble at him—you hate him—you fear him—”
“Fear him!”
“Yes, yes, I say fear him, for it's a sort of fear to skulk off from your mother's house to avoid seeing him—”
“What, Ned, do you tell me that—do you begrudge me a place with you here, my bed, my breakfast?”
“Begrudge! dang it, William Hinkley, don't tell me that, unless you want me to lay heavy hand on your shoulder!”—and the tears gushed into the rough fellow's eyes as he spoke these words, and he turned off to conceal them.
“I don't mean to vex you, Ned, but why tell me that I skulk—that I fear this man?”
“Begrudge!” muttered the other.
“Nay, forgive me; I didn't mean it. I was hasty when I said so; but you also said things to provoke me. Do you suppose that I fear this man Stevens?”
“Why don't you lick him then, or let him lick you, and bring the matter to an ending? Find out who's the best man, and put an end to the growling and the groaning. As it now stands you're not the same person—you're not fit company for any man. You scarcely talk, you listen to nobody. You won't fish, you won't hunt: you're sulky yourself and you make other people so!”
“I'm afraid, Ned, it wouldn't much help the matter even if I were to chastise the stranger.”
“It would cure him of his impudence. It would make him know how to treat you; and if the rest of your grievance comes from Margaret Cooper, there's a way to end that too.”
“How! you wouldn't have me fight her?” said William Hinkley, with an effort to smile.
“Why, we may call it fighting,” said the advocate for such wholesale pugnacity, “since it calls for quite as much courage sometimes to face one woman as it does to face three men. But what I mean that you should do with her is to up and at her. Put the downright question like a man 'will you?' or 'won't you?' and no more beating about the bush. If she says 'no!' there's no more to be said, and if I was you after that, I'd let Stevens have her or the d—l himself, since I'm of the notion that no woman is fit for me if she thinks me not fit for her. Such a woman can't be worth having, and after that I wouldn't take her as a gracious gift were she to be made twice as beautiful. The track's before you, William Hinkley. Bring the stranger to the hug, and Margaret Cooper too, if she'll let you. But, at all events, get over the grunting and the growling, the sulky looks, and the sour moods. They don't become a man who's got a man's heart, and the sinews of a man.”
William Hinkley leaned against the fireplace with his head resting upon his hand. The other approached him.
“I don't mean to say anything, Bill, or even to look anything, that'll do you hurt. I'm for bringing your trouble to a short cut. I've told you what I think right and reasonable, and for no other man in Kentucky would I have taken the pains to think out this matter as I have done. But you or I must lick Stevens.”
“You forget, Ned. Your eagerness carries you astray. Would you beat a man who offers no resistance?”
“Surely not.”
“Stevens is a non-combatant. If you were to slap John Cross on one cheek he'd turn you the other. He'd never strike you back.”
“John Cross and Stevens are two persons. I tell you the stranger WILL fight. I'm sure of it. I've seen it in his looks and actions.”
“Do you think so?”
“I do; I'm sure of it. But you must recollect besides, that John Cross is a preacher, already sworn in, as I may say. Stevens is only a beginner. Besides, John Cross is an old man; Stevens, a young one. John Cross don't care a straw about all the pretty girls in the country. He works in the business of souls, not beauties, and it's very clear that Stevens not only loves a pretty girl, but that he's over head and heels in love with your Margaret—”
“Say no more. If he will fight, Ned Hinkley, he shall fight!”
“Bravo, Bill—that's all that I was arguing for—that's all that I want. But you must make at Margaret Cooper also.”
“Ah! Ned, there I confess my fears.”
“Why, what are you afraid of?”
“Rejection!”
“Is that worse than this suspense—this anxiety—this looking out from morning till night for the sunshine, and this constant apprehension of the clouds—this knowing not what to be about—this sulking—this sadding—this growling—this grunting—this muling—this moping—this eternal vinegar-face and ditchwater-spirit?”
“I don't know, Ned, but I confess my weakness—my want of courage in this respect!”
“Psho! the bark's worse always than the bite. The fear worse than the danger! Suspense is the very d—l! Did you ever hear of the Scotch parson's charity? He prayed that God might suspend Napoleon over the very jaws of hell—but 'Oh, Lord!' said he, 'dinna let him fa' in!' To my mind, mortal lips never uttered a more malignant prayer!”
This dialogue was broken by a summons to the breakfast-table. We have already intimated that while the hateful person of Stevens was an inmate of his own house, William Hinkley remained, the better portion of his time, at that of his cousin. It was not merely that Stevens was hateful to his sight, but such was the devotion of his father and mother to that adventurer, that the young man passed with little notice from either, or if he incurred their attention at all, it was only to receive their rebuke. He had not been able to disguise from them his dislike to Stevens. This dislike showed itself in many ways—in coldness, distance, silence—a reluctance to accord the necessary civilities, and in very unequivocal glances of hostility from the eyes of the jealous young villager.
Such offences against good-breeding were considered by them as so many offences against God himself, shown to one who was about to profess his ministry; and being prepared to see in Brother Stevens an object of worth and veneration only, they lacked necessarily all that keenness of discrimination which might have helped somewhat to qualify the improprieties of which they believed their son to be guilty. Of his causes of jealousy they had no suspicion, and they shared none of his antipathies. He was subject to the daily lecture from the old man, and the nightly exhortation and expostulation of the old woman. The latter did her spiriting gently. The former roared and thundered. The mother implored and kissed—the father denounced and threatened. The one, amidst the faults of her you which she reproved, could see his virtues; she could also see that he was suffering—she knew not why—as well as sinning; the other could only see an insolent, disobedient boy who was taking airs upon himself, flying in the face of his parents, and doomed to perish like the sons of Eli, unless by proving himself a better manager than Eli, he addressed himself in time to the breaking in of the unruly spirit whose offences promised to be so heinous. It was not merely from the hateful sight of his rival, or the monotonous expostulation of his mother, that the poor youth fled; it was sometimes to escape the heavily chastening hand of his bigoted father.
These things worked keenly and constantly in the mind of William Hinkley. They acquired additional powers of ferment from the coldness of Margaret Cooper, and from the goadings of his cousin. Naturally one of the gentlest of creatures, the young man was not deficient in spirit. What seemed to his more rude and elastic relative a token of imbecility, was nothing more than the softening influence of his reflective and mental over his physical powers. These, under the excitement of his blood were necessarily made subject to his animal impulses, and when he left the house that morning, with his Blackstone under his arm, on his way to the peaceful cottage of old Calvert, where he pursued his studies, his mind was in a perfect state of chaos. Of the chapter which he had striven to compass the previous night, in which the rights of persons are discussed with the usual clearness of style, but the usual one-sidedness of judgment of that smooth old monarchist, William Hinkley scarcely remembered a solitary syllable. He had read only with his eyes. His mind had kept no pace with his proceedings, and though he strove as he went along to recall the heads of topics, the points and principles of what he had been reading, his efforts at reflection, by insensible but sudden transitions, invariably concluded with some image of strife and commotion, in which he was one of the parties and Alfred Stevens another; the beautiful, proud face of Margaret Cooper being always unaccountably present, and seeming to countenance, with its scornful smiles, the spirit of strife which operated upon the combatants.
This mood had the most decided effect upon his appearance; and the good old man, Calvert, whose attention had been already drawn to the condition of distress and suffering which he manifested, was now more than ever struck with the seemingly sudden increase of this expression upon his face. It was Saturday—the saturnalia of schoolboys—and a day of rest to the venerable teacher. He was seated before his door, under the shadows of his paternal oak, once more forgetting the baffled aims and profitless toils of his own youthful ambition, in the fascinating pages of that historical romancer the stout Abbe Vertot. But a glance at the youth soon withdrew his mind from this contemplation, and the sombre pages of the present opened upon his eye, and the doubtful ones of the future became, on the instant, those which he most desired to peruse.
The study of the young is always a study of the past with the old. They seem, in such a contemplation, to live over the records of memory. They feel as one just returning from a long and weary journey, who encounters another, freshly starting to traverse the same weary but inviting track. Something in the character of William Hinkley, which seemed to resemble his own, made this feeling yet more active in the mind of Mr. Calvert; and his earnest desire was to help the youth forward on the path which, he soon perceived, it was destined that the other should finally take. He was not satisfied with the indecision of character which the youth displayed. But how could he blame it harshly? It was in this very respect that his own character had failed, and though he felt that all his counsels were to be addressed to this point, yet he knew not where; or in what manner, to begin. The volume of Blackstone which the youth carried suggested to him a course, however. He bade the young man bring out a chair, and taking the book in his hand, he proceeded to examine him upon parts of the volume which he professed to have been reading.
This examination, as it had the effect of compelling the mind of the student to contract itself to a single subject of thought, necessarily had the further effect of clearing it somewhat from the chaos of clouds which had been brooding over it, obscuring the light, and defeating the warmth of the intellectual sun behind them; and if the examination proved the youth to have been very little of a student, or one who had been reading with a vacant mind, it also proved that the original powers of his intellect were vigorous and various—that he had an analytical capacity of considerable compass; was bold in opinion, ingenious in solution, and with a tendency to metaphysical speculation, which, modified by the active wants and duties of a large city-practice, would have made him a subtle lawyer, and a very logical debater. But the blush kept heightening on the youth's cheeks as the examination proceeded. He had answered, but he felt all the while how much his answer had sprung from his own conjectures and how little from his authorities. The examination convinced him that the book had been so much waste-paper under his thumb. When it was ended the old man closed the volume, laid it on the sward beside him, and looked, with a mingled expression of interest and commiseration, on his face. William Hinkley noted this expression, and spoke, with a degree of mortification in look and accent, which he did not attempt to hide:—
“I am afraid, sir, you will make nothing of me. I can make nothing of myself. I am almost inclined to give up in despair. I will be nothing—I can be nothing. I feared as much from the beginning, sir. You only waste your time on me.”
“You speak too fast, William—you let your blood mingle too much with your thoughts. Let me ask you one question. How long will you be content to live as you do now—seeking nothing—performing nothing—being nothing?”
The youth was silent.
“I, you see, am nothing,” continued the old man—“nay, do not interrupt me. You will tell me, as you have already told me, that I am much, and have done much, here in Charlemont. But, for all that I am, and have done here, I need not have gone beyond my accidence. My time has been wasted; my labors, considered as means to ends, were unnecessary; I have toiled without the expected profits of toil; I have drawn water in a sieve. It is not pleasant for me to recall these things, much less to speak of them; but it is for your good that I told you my story. You have, as I had, certain defects of character—not the same exactly, but of the same family complexion. To be something, you must be resolved. You must devote yourself, heart and mind, with all your soul and with all your strength, to the business you have undertaken. Shut your windows against the sunshine, your ears to the song of birds, your heart against the fascinations of beauty; and if you never think of the last until you are thirty, you will be then a better judge of beauty, a truer lover, a better husband, a more certain candidate for happiness. Let me assure you that, of the hundred men that take wives before they are thirty, there is scarcely one who, in his secret soul, does not repent it—scarcely one who does not look back with yearning to the days when he was free.”
There was a pause. The young man became very much agitated. He rose from his chair, walked apart for a few moments, and then, returning, resumed his seat by the old man.
“I believe you are right, sir—nay, I know you are; but I can not be at once—I can not promise—to be all that you wish. If Margaret Cooper would consent, I would marry her to-morrow.”
The old man shook his head, but remained silent. The young one proceeded:—
“One thing I will say, however: I will take to my studies after this week, whatever befalls, with the hearty resolution which you recommend. I will try to shut out the sunshine and the song. I will endeavor to devote soul and strength, and heart and mind, to the task before me. I KNOW that I can master these studies—I think I can”—he continued, more modestly, modifying the positive assertion—“and I know that it is equally my interest and duty to do so. I thank you sir, very much for what you have told me. Believe me, it has not fallen upon heedless or disrespectful ears.”
The old man pressed his hand.
“I know THAT, my son, and I rejoice to think that, having given me these assurances, you will strive hard to make them good.”
“I will, sir!” replied William, taking up his cap to depart.
“But whither are you going now?”
The youth blushed as he replied frankly:—
“To the widow Cooper's. I'm going to see Margaret.”
“Well, well!” said the old man, as the youth disappeared, “if it must be done, the sooner it's over the better. But there's another moth to the flame. Fortunately, he will be singed only; but she!—what is left for her—so proud, yet so confiding—so confident of strength, yet so artless? But it is useless to look beyond, and very dismal.”
And the speaker once more took up Vertot, and was soon lost amid the glories of the knights of St. John. His studies were interrupted by the sudden and boisterous salutation of Ned Hinkley:—
“Well, gran'pa, hard at the big book as usual? No end to the fun of fighting, eh? I confess, if ever I get to love reading, it'll be in some such book as that. But reading's not natural to me, though you made me do enough of it while you had me. Bill was the boy for the books, and I for the hooks. By-the-way, talking of hooks, how did those trout eat? Fine, eh? I haven't seen you since the day of our ducking.”
“No, Ned, and I've been looking for you. Where have you been?”
“Working, working! Everything's been going wrong. Lines snapped, fiddle-strings cracked, hooks missing, gun rusty, and Bill Hinkley so sulky, that his frown made a shadow on the wall as large and ugly as a buffalo's. But where is he? I came to find him here.”
While he was speaking, the lively youth squatted down, and deliberately took his seat on the favorite volume which Mr. Calvert had laid upon the sward at his approach.
“Take the chair, Ned,” said the old man, with a smaller degree of kindness in his tone than was habitual with him. “Take the chair. Books are sacred things—to be worshipped and studied, not employed as footstools.”
“Why, what's the hurt, gran'pa?” demanded the young man, though he rose and did as he was bidden. “If 'twas a fiddle, now, there would be some danger of a crash, but a big book like that seems naturally made to sit upon.”
The old man answered him mildly:—
“I have learned to venerate books, Ned, and can no more bear to see them abused than I could bear to be abused myself. It seems to me like treating their writers and their subjects with scorn. If you were to contemplate the venerable heads of the old knights with my eyes and feelings, you would see why I wish to guard them from everything like disrespect.”
“Well, I beg their pardon—a thousand pardons! I meant no offence, gran'pa—and can't help thinking that it's all a notion of yours, your reverencing such old Turks and Spaniards that have been dead a thousand years. They were very good people, no doubt, but I'm thinking they've served their turn; and I see no more harm in squatting upon their histories than in walking over their graves, which, if I were in their country of Jericho—that was where they lived, gran'pa, wa'n't it?—I should be very apt to do without asking leave, I tell you.”
Ned Hinkley purposely perverted his geography and history. There was a spice of mischief in his composition, and he grinned good-naturedly as he watched the increasing gravity upon the old man's face.
“Come, come, gran'pa, don't be angry. You know my fun is a sort of fizz—there's nothing but a flash—nothing to hurt—no shotting. But where's Bill Hinkley, gran'pa?”
“Gone to the widow Cooper's, to see Margaret.”
“Ah! well, I'm glad he's made a beginning. But I'd much rather he'd have seen the other first.”
“What other do you mean?” demanded the old man; but the speaker, though sufficiently random and reckless in what he said, saw the impolicy of allowing the purpose of his cousin in regard to Stevens to be understood. He contrived to throw the inquirer off.
“Gran'pa, do you know there's something in this fellow Stevens that don't altogether please me? I'm not satisfied with him.”
“Ah, indeed! what do you see to find fault with?”
“Well, you see, he comes here pretending to study. Now, in the first place, why should he come here to study? why didn't he stay at home with his friends and parents?”
“Perhaps he had neither. Perhaps he had no home. You might as well ask me why I came here, and settled down, where I was not born—where I had neither friends nor parents.”
“Oh, no, but you told us why,” said the other. “You gave us a reason for what you did.”
“And why may not the stranger give a reason too?”
“He don't, though.”
“Perhaps he will when you get intimate with him. I see nothing in this to be dissatisfied with. I had not thought you so suspicious, Ned Hinkley—so little charitable.”
“Charity begins at home, gran'pa. But there's more in this matter. This man comes here to study to be a parson. How does he study? Can you guess?”
“I really can not.”
“By dressing spruce as a buck—curling his hair backward over his ears something like a girl's, and going out, morning, noon, and night, to see Margaret Cooper.”
“As there is no good reason to suppose that a student of divinity is entirely without the affections of humanity, I still see nothing inconsistent with his profession in this conduct.”
“But how can he study?”
“Ah! it may be inconsistent with his studies though not with his profession. It is human without being altogether proper. You see that your cousin neglects his studies in the same manner. I presume that the stranger also loves Miss Cooper.”
“But he has no such right as Bill Hinkley.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Why, Bill is a native here, has been loving her for the last year or more. His right certainly ought to be much greater than that of a man whom nobody knows—who may be the man in the moon for anything we know to the contrary—just dropped in upon us, nobody knows how, to do nobody knows what.”
“All that may be very true, Ned, and yet his right to seek Miss Cooper may be just as good as that of yourself or mine. You forget that it all depends upon the young lady herself whether either of them is to have a right at all in her concerns.”
“Well, that's a subject we needn't dispute about, gran'pa, when there's other things. Now, isn't it strange that this stranger should ride off once a week with his valise on his saddle, just as if he was starting on a journey—should be gone half a day—then come back with his nag all in a foam, and after that you should see him in some new cravat, or waistcoat, or pantaloons, just as if he had gone home and got a change?”
“And does he do that?” inquired Mr. Calvert, with some show of curiosity.
“That he does, and he always takes the same direction; and it seems—so Aunt Sarah herself says, though she thinks him a small sort of divinity on earth—that the day before, he's busy writing letters, and, according to her account, pretty long letters too. Well, nobody sees that he ever gets any letters in return. He never asks at the post-office, so Jacob Zandts himself tells me, and that's strange enough, too, if so be he has any friends or relations anywhere else.”
Mr. Calvert listened with interest to these and other particulars which his young companion had gathered respecting the habits of the stranger; and he concurred with his informant in the opinion that there was something in his proceedings which was curious and perhaps mysterious. Still, he did not think it advisable to encourage the prying and suspicious disposition of the youth, and spoke to this effect in the reply which finally dismissed the subject. Ned Hinkley was silenced not satisfied.
“There's something wrong about it,” he muttered to himself on leaving the old man, “and, by dickens! I'll get to the bottom of it, or there's no taste in Salt-river. The fellow's a rascal; I feel it if I don't know it, and if Bill Hinkley don't pay him off, I must. One or t'other must do it, that's certain.”
With these reflections, which seemed to him to be no less moral than social, the young man took his way back to the village, laboring with all the incoherence of unaccustomed thought, to strike out some process by which to find a solution for those mysteries which were supposed to characterize the conduct of the stranger. He had just turned out of the gorge leading from Calvert's house into the settlement, when he encountered the person to whom his meditations were given, on horseback; and going at a moderate gallop along the high-road to the country. Stevens bowed to him and drew up for speech as he drew nigh. At first Ned Hinkley appeared disposed to avoid him, but moved by a sudden notion, he stopped and suffered himself to speak with something more of civility than he had hitherto shown to the same suspected personage.
“Why, you're not going to travel, Parson Stevens,” said he—“you're not going to leave us, are you?”
“No, sir—I only wish to give myself and horse a stretch of a few miles for the sake of health. Too much stable, they say, makes a saucy nag.”
“So it does, and I may say, a saucy man too. But seeing you with your valise, I thought you were off for good.”
Stevens said something about his being so accustomed to ride with the valise that he carried it without thinking.
“I scarcely knew I had it on!”
“That's a lie all round,” said Ned Hinkley to himself as the other rode off. “Now, if I was mounted, I'd ride after him and see where he goes and what he's after. What's to hinder? It's but a step to the stable, and but five minutes to the saddle. Dang it, but I'll take trail this time if I never did before.”