Charlemont

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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 carne 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."

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 space of five miles, and this, too, in one direction.
He looked back when he found himself pursued, and his countenance
very clearly expressed the chagrin which he felt. This he strove,
but with very indifferent success, to hide from the keen searching
eyes of his pursuer. He drew up to wait his coming, and there was
a dash of bitterness in his tones as he expressed his "gratification
at finding a companion where he least expected one."

"And perhaps, parson, when you didn't altogether wish for one,"
was the reply of the reckless fellow. "The truth is, I know I'm
not the sort of company that a wise, sensible, learned, and pious
young gentleman would like to keep, out the truth is what you said
about taking a stretch, man and beast, seemed to me to be just
about as wise a thing for me and my beast also. We've been lying
by so long that I was getting a little stiff in my joints, and
Flipflap, my nag here, was getting stiff in his neck, as they say
was the case with the Jews in old times, so I took your idea and
put after you, thinking that you'd agree with me that bad company's
far better than none."

There was a mixture of simplicity and archness in the manner of
the speaker that put Stevens somewhat at fault; but he saw that it
wouldn't do to show the dudgeon which he really felt; and smoothing
his quills with as little obvious effort as possible, he expressed
his pleasure at the coming of his companion. While doing so, he
wheeled his horse about, and signified a determination to return.

"What! so soon? Why, Lord bless you, Flipflap has scarcely got in
motion yet. If such a stir will do for your nag 'twont do for him."

But Stevens doggedly kept his horse's head along the back track,
though the animal himself exhibited no small restiffness and a
disposition to go forward.

"Well, really, Parson Stevens, I take it as unkind that you turn
back almost the very moment I join you. I seem to have scared ride
out of you if not out of your creature; but do as you please. I'll
ride on, now I'm out. I don't want to force myself on any man for
company."

Stevens disclaimed any feeling of this sort, but declared he had
ridden quite as far as he intended; and while he hesitated, Hinkley
cut the matter short by putting spurs to his steed, and going out
of sight in a moment.

"What can the cur mean?" demanded Stevens of himself, the moment
after they had separated. "Can he have any suspicions? Ha! I must
be watchful! At all events, there's no going forward to-day. I
must put it off for next week; and meanwhile have all my eyes about
me. The fellow seems to have as much cunning as simplicity. He is
disposed too, to be insolent I marked his manner at the lake, as
well as that of his bull-headed cousin; but that sousing put anger
out of me, and then, again, 'twill scarcely do in these good days
for such holy men as myself to take up cudgels. I must bear it for
awhile as quietly as possible. It will not be long. She at least is
suspicionless. Never did creature so happily delude herself. Yet
what a judgment in some things! What keen discrimination! What
a wild, governless imagination! She would be a prize, if it were
only to exhibit. How she would startle the dull, insipid, tea-table
simperers on our Helicon--nay, with what scorn she would traverse
the Helicon itself. The devil is that she would have a will in
spite of her keeper. Such an animal is never tamed. There could be
no prescribing to her the time when she should roar--no teaching
her to fawn and fondle, and not to rend. Soul, and eye, and tongue,
would speak under the one impulse, in the exciting moment; and when
Mrs. Singalongohnay was squeaking out her eternal requiems--her new
versions of the Psalms and Scriptures--her blank verse elegiacs--oh!
how blank!--beginning, 'Night was upon the hills,'--or 'The evening
veil hung low,' or, 'It slept,'--or after some other equally
threatening form and fashion--I can fancy how the bright eye of
Margaret would gleam with scorn; and while the Pollies and Dollies,
the Patties and Jennies, the Corydons and Jemmy Jesamies, all
round were throwing up hands and eyes in a sort of rapture, how
she would look, with what equal surprise and contempt, doubting
her own ears, and sickening at the stuff and the strange sycophancy
which induced it. And should good old Singalongohnay, with a natural
and patronizing visage, approach, and venture to talk to her about
poetry, with that assured smile of self-excellence which such a
venerable authority naturally employs, how she would turn upon the
dame and exclaim--'What! do you call that poetry?' What a concussion
would follow. How the simperers would sheer off; the tea that night
might as well be made of aqua-fortis. Ha! ha! I can fancy the scene
before me. Nothing could be more rich. I must give her a glimpse of
such a scene. It will be a very good mode of operation. Her pride
and vanity will do the rest. I have only to intimate the future
sway--the exclusive sovereignty which would follow--the overthrow
of the ancient idols, and the setting up of a true divinity in
herself. But shall it be so, Master Stevens? Verily, that will
be seen hereafter. Enough, if the delusion takes. If I can delude
the woman through the muse, I am satisfied. The muse after that
may dispose of the woman as she pleases."

Such was a portion of the soliloquy of the libertine as he rode
slowly back to Charlemont. His further musings we need not pursue
at present. It is enough to say that they were of the same family
character. He returned to his room as soon as he reached his
lodging-house, and drawing from his pocket a bundle of letters
which he had intended putting in the postoffice at Ellisland, he
carefully locked them up in his portable writing-desk which he kept
at the bottom of his valise. When the devout Mrs. Hinkley tapped at
his door to summon him to dinner, the meritorious young man was to
be seen, seated at his table, with the massive Bible of the family
conspicuously open before him. Good young man! never did he invoke
a blessing on the meats with more holy unction than on that very
day.

Meanwhile, let us resume our progress with William Hinkley, and
inquire in what manner his wooing sped with the woman whom he so
unwisely loved. We have seen him leaving the cottage of Mr. Calvert
with the avowed purpose of seeking a final answer. A purpose from
which the old man did not seek to dissuade him, though he readily
conceived its fruitlessness. It was with no composed spirit that
the young rustic felt himself approaching the house of Mrs. Cooper.
More than once he hesitated and even halted. But a feeling of shame,
and the efforts of returning manliness re-resolved him, and he
hurried with an unwonted rapidity of movement toward the dwelling,
as if he distrusted his own power, unless he did so, to conclude
the labor he had begun.

He gathered some courage when he found that Margaret was from home.
She had gone on her usual rambles. Mrs. Cooper pointed out the
course which she had taken, and the young man set off in pursuit.
The walks of the maiden were of course well known to a lover so
devoted. He had sought and followed her a thousand times, and the
general direction which she had gone, once known, his progress was
as direct as his discoveries were certain. The heart of the youth,
dilated with better hopes as he felt himself traversing the old
familiar paths. It seemed to him that the fates could scarcely be
adverse in a region which had always been so friendly. Often had
he escorted her along this very route, when their spirits better
harmonized--when, more of the girl struggling into womanhood, the
mind of Margaret Cooper, ignorant of its own resources and unconscious
of its maturer desires, was more gentle, and could rejoice in that
companionship for which she now betrayed so little desire. The
sheltered paths and well-known trees, even the little clumps
of shrubbery that filled up the intervals, were too pleasant and
familiar to his eye not to seem favorable to his progress, and with
a hope that had no foundation, save in the warm and descriptive
colors of a young heart's fancy, William Hinkley pursued the route
which led him to one of the most lovely and love-haunted glades in
all Kentucky.

So sweet a hush never hallowed the sabbath rest of any forest. The
very murmur of a drowsy zephyr among the leaves was of slumberous
tendency; and silence prevailed, with the least possible exertion
of her authority, over the long narrow dell through which the maiden
had gone wandering. At the foot of a long slope, to which his eye
was conducted by a natural and lovely vista, the youth beheld the
object of his search, sitting, motionless, with her back toward
him. The reach of light was bounded by her figure which was seated
on the decaying trunk of a fallen tree. She was deeply wrapped in
thought, for she did not observe his approach, and when his voice
reached her ears, and she started and looked round, her eyes were
full of tears. These she hastily brushed away, and met the young
man with a degree of composure which well might have put the blush
upon his cheek, for the want of it.

"In tears!--weeping, Margaret?" was the first address of the lover
who necessarily felt shocked at what he saw.

"They were secret tears, sir--not meant for other eyes," was the
reproachful reply.

"Ah, Margaret! but why should you have secret tears, when you
might have sympathy--why should you have tears at all? You have no
sorrows."

"Sympathy!" was the exclamation of the maiden, while a scornful
smile gleamed from her eyes; "whose sympathy, I pray?"

The young man hesitated to answer. The expression of her eye
discouraged him. He dreaded lest, in offering his sympathies, he
should extort from her lips a more direct intimation of that scorn
which he feared. He chose a middle course.

"But that you should have sorrows, Margaret, seems very strange
to me. You are young and hearty; endowed beyond most of your sex,
and with a beauty which can not be too much admired. Your mother is
hearty and happy, and for years you have had no loss of relations
to deplore. I see not why you should have sorrows."

"It is very likely, William Hinkley, that you do not see. The
ordinary sorrows of mankind arise from the loss of wives and cattle,
children and property. There are sorrows of another kind; sorrows
of the soul; the consciousness of denial; of strife--strife to be
continued--strife without victory--baffled hopes--defeated aims
and energies. These are sorrows which are not often computed in the
general account. It is highly probable that none of them afflict
you. You have your parents, and very good people they are. You
yourself are no doubt a very good young man--so everybody says--and
you have health and strength. Besides, you have property, much
more, I am told, than falls to the lot ordinarily of young people
in this country. These are reasons why you should not feel any
sorrow; but were all these mine and a great deal more, I'm afraid
it would not make me any more contented. You, perhaps, will
not understand this, William Hinkley, but I assure you that such,
nevertheless is my perfect conviction."

"Yes, I can, and do understand it, Margaret," said the young man,
with flushed cheek and a very tremulous voice, as he listened to
language which, though not intended to be contemptuous, was yet
distinctly colored by that scornful estimate which the maiden had
long since made of the young man's abilities. In this respect she
had done injustice to his mind, which had been kept in subjection
and deprived of its ordinary strength and courage, by the enfeebling
fondness of his heart.

"Yes, Margaret," he continued, "I can and do understand it, and I
too have my sorrows of this very sort. Do not smile, Margaret, but
hear me patiently, and believe, that, whatever may be the error
which I commit, I have no purpose to offend you in what I say or do.
Perhaps, we are both of us quite too young to speak of the sorrows
which arise from defeated hopes, or baffled energies, or denial
of our rights and claims. The yearnings and apprehensions which we
are apt to feel of this sort are not to be counted as sorrows, or
confounded with them. I had a conversation on this very subject
only a few days ago, with old Mr. Calvert, and this was his very
opinion."

The frankness with which William Hinkley declared the source
of his opinions, though creditable to his sincerity, was scarcely
politic--it served to confirm Margaret Cooper in the humble estimate
which she had formed of the speaker.

"Mr. Calvert," said she, "is a very sensible old man, but neither
he nor you can enter into the heart of another and say what shall,
or what shall not be its source of trouble. It is enough, William
Hinkley, that I have my cares--at least I fancy that I have them--and
though I am very grateful for your sympathies, I do not know that
they can do me any good, and, though I thank you, I must yet decline
them."

"Oh, do not say so, Margaret--dear Margaret--it is to proffer them
that I seek you now. You know how long I have sought you, and loved
you: you can not know how dear you are to my eyes, how necessary
to my happiness! Do not repulse me--do not speak quickly. What I
am, and what I have, is yours. We have grown up together; I have
known no other hope, no other love, but that for you. Look not upon
me with that scornful glance--hear me--I implore you--on my knee,
dear Margaret. I implore you as for life--for something more dear
than life--that which will make life precious--which may make it
valuable. Be mine, dear Margaret--"

"Rise, William Hinkley, and do not forget yourself!" was the stern,
almost deliberate answer of the maiden.

"Do not, I pray you, do not speak in those tones, dear Margaret--do
not look on me with those eyes. Remember before you speak, that
the dearest hope of a devoted heart hangs upon your lips."

"And what have you seen in me, or what does your vain conceit behold
in yourself, William Hinkley, to make you entertain a hope?"

"The meanest creature has it."

"Aye, but only of creatures like itself."

"Margaret!" exclaimed the lover starting to his feet.

"Ay, sir, I say it. If the meanest creature has its hope, it relates
to a creature like itself--endowed with its own nature and fed with
like sympathies. But you--what should make you hope of me? Have
I not long avoided you, discouraged you? I would have spared you
the pain of this moment by escaping it myself. You haunt my steps
--you pursue me--you annoy me with attentions which I dare not
receive for fear of encouraging you, and in spite of all this,
which everybody in the village must have seen but yourself, you
still press yourself upon me."

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