Charlemont; Or, The Pride of the Village Part 22

"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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.serting--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 n.o.body. 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 G.o.d might suspend Napoleon over the very jaws of h.e.l.l--but 'Oh, Lord!' said he, 'dinna let him fa' in!' To my mind, mortal lips never uttered a more malignant prayer!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

TRAILING THE FOX.

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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 compa.s.s 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 Sat.u.r.day--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.