Charlemont; Or, The Pride of the Village Part 24

"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 n.o.body knows--who may be the man in the moon for anything we know to the contrary--just dropped in upon us, n.o.body knows how, to do n.o.body 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, n.o.body 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 d.i.c.kens! 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."

CHAPTER XIX.

THE DOOM.

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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sured 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 ma.s.sive 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 s.e.x, 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 a.s.sure 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.