Charlemont

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"Cousin William don't love Susan any more, mamma," was the burden
of her complaint.

"Why do you say so, Susan?"

"He don't kiss me, mamma; he don't keep me in his lap. He don't say
good things to me, and call me his little sweetheart. I'm afraid
Cousin William's got some other sweetheart. He don't love Susan."

It was while the little prattler was pouring forth her infantile
sorrows in her mother's ear, that the voice of William Hinkley was
heard, calling her name from the chamber.

"There, he's calling you now, Susan. Run to him and kiss him, and
see what he wants. I'm sure he loves you just as much as ever. He's
got no other sweetheart."

"I'll run, mamma--that I will. I'm so glad! I hope he loves me!"
and the little innocent scampered away to the chamber. Her artless
tongue, as she approached, enabled him to perceive what had been
her grievances.

"Do you call me to love me, and to kiss me, Cousin William, and to
make me your sweetheart again?"

"Yes, Susan, you shall be my only sweetheart. I will kiss nobody
but you."

"You'll forget--you will--you'll put me out of your lap, and go
away shaking your head, and looking so!--" and here the observant
little creature attempted a childish imitation of the sad action
and the strange, moody gestures with which he had put her down when
he was retiring from the room--gestures and looks which the less
quick eyes of her mother had failed utterly to perceive.

"No, no!" said he, with a sad smile; "no, Susan. I'll keep you in
my lap for an hour whenever I come, and you shall be my sweetheart
always."

"Your LITTLE sweetheart, your LITTLE Susan, Cousin William."

"Yes, my dear little Susan, my dearest little sweetheart Susan."

And he kissed the child fondly while he spoke, and patted her rosy
cheeks with a degree of tenderness which his sad and wandering
thoughts did not materially diminish.

"But now, Susan," said he, "if I am to be your sweetheart, and to
love you always, you must do all that I bid you. You must go where
I send you."

"Don't I, Cousin William? When you send me to Gran'pa Calvert,
don't I go and bring you books, and didn't I always run, and come
back soon, and never play by the way?"

"You're a dear Susan," said he; "and I want you to carry a paper
for me now. Do you see this little paper? What is it?"

"A note--don't I know?"

"Well, you must carry this note for me to uncle's, but you mustn't
give it to uncle, nor to aunty, nor to anybody but the young man
that lives there--young Mr. Stevens."

"Parson Stevens," said the little thing, correcting him.

"Ay, ay, Parson Stevens, if you please. You must give it to him,
and him only; and he will give you a paper to bring back to me.
Will you go now, Susan?"

"Yes, I'll go: but, Cousin William, are you going to shoot the
little guns? Don't shoot them till I come back, will you?"

The child pointed to a pair of pistols which lay upon the table
where William Hinkley had penned the billet. A flush of consciousness
passed over the young man's cheek. It seemed to him as if the
little innocent's inquiry had taken the aspect of an accusation.
He promised and dismissed her, and, when she had disappeared,
proceeded to put the pistols in some condition for use. In that
time and region, duels were not often fought with those costly and
powerful weapons, the pistols of rifle bore and sight. The rifle,
or the ordinary horseman's pistol, answered the purposes of hate.
The former instrument, in the hands of the Kentuckian, was a
deadly weapon always; and, in the grasp of a firm hand, and under
the direction of a practised eye, the latter, at ten paces, was
scarcely less so. This being the case, but few refinements were
necessary to bring about the most fatal issues of enmity; and
the instruments which William Hinkley was preparing for the field
were such as would produce a smile on the lips of more civilized
combatants. They were of the coarsest kind of holster-piotols,
and had probably seen service in the Revolution. The stocks were
rickety, the barrels thin, the bore almost large enough for grape,
and really such as would receive and disgorge a three-ounce bullet
with little straining or reluctance. They had been the property
of his own grandfather, and their value for use was perhaps rather
heightened than diminished by the degree of veneration which, in
the family, was attached to their history.

William Hinkley soon put them in the most efficient order. He was
not a practised hand, but an American forester is a good shot almost
by instinct; he naturally cleaves to a gun, and without instruction
learns its use. William, however, did not think much of what he
could hit, at what distance, and under what circumstances. Nothing,
perhaps, could better show the confidence in himself and weapon than
the inattention which the native-born woodman usually exhibits to
these points. Let his weapon be such as he can rely upon, and his
cause of quarrel such as can justify his anger, and the rest seems
easy, and gives him little annoyance. This was now the case with
our rustic. He never, for a moment, thought of practising. He had
shot repeatedly, and knew what he could do. His simple object was
to bring his enemy to the field, and to meet him there. Accordingly,
when he had loaded both pistols, which he did with equal care, and
with a liberal allowance of lead and powder, he carefully put them
away without offering to test his own skill or their capacities.
On this subject, his indifference would have appeared, to a regular
duellist, the very extreme of obtuseness.

His little courier conveyed his billet to Stevens in due season.
As she had been instructed, she gave it into the hands of Stevens
only; but, when she delivered it, old Hinkley was present, and she
named the person by whom it was sent.

"My son! what does he say?" demanded the old man, half-suspecting
the purport of the billet.

"Ah!" exclaimed Stevens, with the readiness of a practised actor,
"there is some hope, I am glad to tell you, Mr. Hinkley, of his
coming to his senses. He declares his wish to atone, and invites me
to see him. I have no doubt that he wishes me to mediate for him."

"I will never forgive him while I have breath!" cried the old man,
leaving the room. "Tell him that!"

"Wait a moment, my pretty one," said Stevens, as he was about
retiring to his chamber, "till I can write an answer."

The billet of Hinkley he again read. We may do so likewise. It was
to the following effect:--

"Sir: If I understood your last assurance on leaving you this day,
I am to believe that the stroke of my whip has made its proper
impression on your soul--that you are willing to use the ordinary
means of ordinary persons, to avenge an indignity which was not
CONFINED TO YOUR CLOTH. If so, meet me at the lake with whatever
weapons you choose to bring. I will be there, provided with pistols
for both, at any hour from three to six. I shall proceed to the
spot as soon as I receive your answer. "W. H."

"Short and sharp!" exclaimed Stevens as he read the billet. "'Who
would have thought that the YOUNG man had so much blood in him!'
Well, we will not balk your desire, Master Hinkley. We will meet
you, in verity, though it may compel me to throw up my present hand
and call for other cards. N'importe: there is no other course."

While soliloquizing, he penned his answer, which was brief and to
the purpose:--

"I will meet you as soon as I can steal off without provoking
suspicion. I have pistols which I will bring with me. "A. S."

"There, my little damsel," said he, re-entering the dining-room,
and putting the sealed paper into the hands of the child, "carry
that to Mr. Hinkley, and tell him I will come and speak with him
as he begs me. But the note will tell him."

"Yes, sir."

"So----"

Mrs. Hinkley entered tho room at this moment. Her husband had
apprized her of the communication which her son had made, and the
disposition to atonement and repentance which he had expressed.
She was anxious to confirm this good disposition, to have her son
brought back within the fold, restored to her own affections and
the favor of his father. The latter, it is true, had signified his
determined hostility, even while conveying his intelligence; but
the mother was sanguine--when was a mother otherwise?--that all
things would come right which related to her only child. She now
came to implore the efforts of Stevens; to entreat, that, like a
good Christian, he would not suffer the shocking stripes which her
son, in his madness, had inflicted upon him to outweigh his charity,
to get the better of his blessed principles, and make him war upon
the atoning spirit which had so lately, and so suddenly wakened
up in the bosom of the unruly boy. She did not endeavor to qualify
the offence of which her son had been guilty. She was far from
underrating the indignity to which Stevens had been subjected; but
the offender was her son--her only son--in spite of all his faults,
follies, and imperfections, the apple of her eye--the only being
for whom she cared to live!

Ah! the love of a mother!--what a holy thing! sadly wanting
in judgment--frequently misleading, perverting, nay, dooming the
object which it loves; but, nevertheless, most pure; least selfish;
truest; most devoted!

And the tears gushed from the old woman's eyes as she caught the
hand of Stevens in her own, and kissed it--kissed HIS hand--could
William Hinkley have seen THAT, how it would have rankled, how he
would have writhed! She kissed the hands of that wily hypocrite,
bedewing them with her tears, as if he were some benign and blessing
saint; and not because he had shown any merits or practised any
virtues, but simply because of certain professions which he had
made, and in which she had perfect faith because of the professions,
and not because of any previous knowledge which she had of the
professor. Truly, it behooves a rogue monstrous much to know what
garment it is best to wear; the question is equally important to
rogue and dandy.

Stevens made a thousand assurances in the most Christian spirit--we
can not say that he gave her tear for tear--promised to do his best
to bring back the prodigal son to her embrace, and the better to
effect this object, put his pistols under his belt! Within the hour
he was on his way to the place of meeting.

CHAPTER XXII.

FOOT TO FOOT.

William Hinkley was all impatience until, his little messenger
returned, which she did with a speed which might deserve commendation
in the case of our professional Mercuries--stage-drivers and mail
contractors, hight! He did not withhold it from the little maid,
but taking her in his arms, and kissing her fondly, he despatched
her to her mother, while he wrapped up his pistols and concealing
them in the folds of his coat, hurried from the house with the anxious
haste of one who is going to seek his prey. He felt somewhat like
that broad-winged eagle which broods on the projecting pinnacle of
yonder rocky peak in waiting for the sea-hawk who is stooping far
below him, watching when the sun's rays shall glisten from the
uprising fins of his favorite fish. But it was not a selfish desire
to secure the prey which the terror of the other might cause him
to drop. It was simply to punish the prowler. Poor William could
not exactly tell indeed why he wished to shoot Alfred Stevens; but
his cause of hostility was not less cogent because it had no name.
The thousand little details which induce our prejudices in regard
to persons, are, singly, worth no one's thought, and would possibly
provoke the contempt of all; but like the myriad threads which
secured the huge frame of Gulliver in his descent upon Lilliput,
they are, when united, able to bind the biggest giant of us all.

The prejudices of William Hinkley, though very natural in such a
case as his, seemed to him very much like instincts. It seemed to
him, if he once reasoned on the matter, that, as he had good cause
to hate the intruder, so there must be justification for shooting
him. Were this not so, the policy of hating would be very questionable,
and surely very unprofitable. It would be a great waste of a very
laudable quantity of feeling--something like omitting one's bullet
in discharging one's piece--a profligacy only justifiable in a
feu de joie after victory, where the bullets have already done all
necessary mischief, and will warrant a small subsequent waste of
the more harmless material.

Without designing any such child's play, our rustic hero, properly
equipped with his antique pistols, well charged, close rammed,
three-ounce bullets, or nearabouts, in each, stood, breathing fire
but without cooling, on the edge of the lake, perched on an eminence
and looking out for the coming enemy. He was playing an unwonted
character, but he felt as if it were quite familiar to him. He
had none of that nice feeling which, without impugning courage, is
natural enough to inexperience in such cases. The muzzles of the
pistols did not appear to him particularly large. He never once thought
of his own ribs being traversed by his three-ounce messengers. He
had no misgivings on the subject of his future digestion. He only
thought of that blow from his father's hand--that keen shaft from
the lips of Margaret Cooper--that desolation which had fallen upon
his soul from the scorn of both; and the vengeance which it was in
his power to inflict upon the fortunate interloper to whose arts
he ascribed all his misfortunes! and with these thoughts his fury
and impatience increased, and he ascended the highest hill to look
out for his foe; descended, in the next moment, to the edge of the
lake, the better to prepare for the meeting.

In this state of excitement the meekness had departed from his
countenance; an entire change of expression had taken place: he
stood up, erect, bold, eagle-eyed, with the look of one newly made
a man by the form of indomitable will, and feeling, for the first
time, man's terrible commission to destroy. In a moment, with the
acquisition of new moods, he had acquired a new aspect. Hitherto,
he had been tame, seemingly devoid of spirit--you have not forgotten
the reproaches of his cousin, which actually conveyed an imputation
against his manliness?--shrinking, with a feeling of shyness akin
to mauvaise honte, and almost submitting to injustice, to avoid
the charge of ill-nature. The change that we have described in his
soul, had made itself singularly apparent in his looks. They were
full of a grim determination. Had he gazed upon his features, in
the glassy surface of the lake beside him, he had probably recoiled
from their expression.

We have seen Mrs. Hinkley sending Stevens forth for the purpose
of recalling her son to his senses, receiving his repentance, and
bringing him once more home into the bosom of his flock. We have
not forgotten the brace of arguments with which he provided himself
in order to bring about this charitable determination. Stevens was
a shot. He could snuff his candle at ten paces, sever his bamboo,
divide the fingers of the hand with separate bullets without grazing
the skin--nay, more, as was said in the euphuistic phraseology of
his admirers, send his ball between soul and body without impairing
the integrity of either.

But men may do much shooting at candle or bamboo, who would do
precious little while another is about to shoot at them. There is
a world of difference between looking in a bull's-eye, and looking in
the eye of man. A pistol, too, looks far less innocent, regarded
through the medium of a yawning muzzle, than the rounded and
neatly-polished butt. The huge mouth seems to dilate as you look
upon it. You already begin to fancy you behold the leaden mass--the
three-ounce bullet--issuing from its stronghold, like a relentless
baron of the middle ages, going forth under his grim archway,
seeking only whom he may devour. The sight is apt to diminish the
influence of skill. Nerves are necessary to such sportsmen, and
nerves become singularly untrue when frowned upon through such a
medium.

Under this view of the case, we are not so sure that the excellence
of aim for which Alfred Stevens has been so much lauded, will make
the difference very material between the parties; and now that he
is fairly roused, there is a look of the human devil about William
Hinkley, that makes him promise to be dangerous. Nay, the very pistols
that he wields, those clumsy, rusty, big-mouthed ante-revolutionary
machines, which his stout grandsire carried at Camden and Eutaw,
have a look of service about them--a grim, veteran-like aspect,
that makes them quite as perilous to face as to handle. If they
burst they will blow on all sides. There will be fragments enough
for friend and foe; and even though Stevens may not apprehend so
much from the aim of his antagonist, something of deference is due
to the possibility of such a concussion, as will make up all his
deficiencies of skill.

But they have not yet met, though Stevens, with praiseworthy
Christianity, is on his way to keep his engagements, as well to mother
as to son. He has his own pistols--not made for this purpose--but
a substantial pair of traveller's babes--big of mouth, long of
throat, thick of jaw, keen of sight, quick of speech, strong of
wind, and weighty of argument. They are rifled bores also, and,
in the hands of the owner, have done clever things at bottle and
sapling. Stevens would prefer to have the legitimate things, but
these babes are trustworthy; and he has no reason to suppose that
the young rustic whom he goes to meet can produce anything more
efficient. He had no idea of those ancient bull-pups, those solemn
ante-revolutionary barkers, which our grandsire used upon harder
heads than his, at Camden and the Eutaws. He is scarcely so confident
in his own weapons when his eye rests on the rusty tools of his
enemy.

But it was not destined that this fight should take place without
witnesses. In spite of all the precautions of the parties, and they
were honest in taking them, our little village had its inklings
of what was going on. There were certain signs of commotion and
explosion which made themselves understood. Our little maid, Susan
Hinkley, was the first, very innocently, to furnish a clue to the
mystery. She had complained to her mother that Cousin William had
not shot the little guns for her according to his promise.

"But, perhaps, he didn't want to shoot them, Susan."

"Yes, mamma, he put them in his pockets. He's carried them to shoot;
and he promised to shoot them for me as soon as I carried the note."

"And to whom did you carry the note, Susan?" asked the mother.

"To the young parson, at Uncle William's."

The mother had not been unobservant of the degree of hostility which
her brother, as well as cousin, entertained for Stevens. They had
both very freely expressed their dislike in her presence. Some
of their conferences had been overheard and were now recalled, in
which this expression of dislike had taken the form of threats,
vague and purposeless, seemingly, at the time; but which now, taken
in connection with what she gathered from the lips of the child,
seemed of portentous interest. Then, when she understood that
Stevens had sent a note in reply--and that both notes were sealed,
the quick, feminine mind instantly jumped to the right conclusion.

"They are surely going to fight. Get my bonnet, Susan, I must run
to Uncle William's, and tell him while there's time. Which way did
Cousin William go?"

The child could tell her nothing but that he had taken to the hills.

"That brother Ned shouldn't be here now! Though I don't see the good
of his being here. He'd only make matters worse. Run, Susan--run
over to Gran'pa Calvert, and tell him to come and stop them from
fighting, while I hurry to Uncle William's. Lord save us!--and let
me get there in time."

The widow had a great deal more to say, but this was quite enough
to bewilder the little girl. Nevertheless, she get forth to convey
the mysterious message to Grand'pa Calvert, though the good mother
never once reflected that this message was of the sort which assumes
the party addressed to be already in possession of the principal
facts. While she took one route the mother pursued another, and
the two arrived at their respective places at about the same time.
Stevens had already left old Hinkley's when the widow got there,
and the consternation of Mrs. Hinkley was complete. The old man
was sent for to the fields, and came in only to declare that some
such persuasion had filled his own mind when first the billet of
his son had been received. But the suspicion of the father was of
a much harsher sort than that of the widow Hinkley. In her sight
it was a duel only--bad enough as a duel--but still only a duel,
where the parties incurring equal risks, had equal rights. But the
conception of the affair, as it occurred to old Hinkley, was very
different.

"Base serpent!" he exclaimed--"he has sent for the good young man
only to murder him. He implores him to come to him, in an artful
writing, pretending to be sorely sorrowful and full of repentance;
and he prepares the weapon of murder to slay him when he comes. Was
there ever creature so base!--but I will hunt him out. God give me
strength, and grant that I may find him in season."

Thus saying, the old man seized his crab-stick, a knotty club,
that had been seasoned in a thousand smokes, and toughened by the
use of twenty years. His wife caught up her bonnet and hurried with
the widow Hinkley in his train. Meanwhile, by cross-examining the
child, Mr. Calvert formed some plausible conjectures of what was
on foot, and by the time that the formidable procession had reached
his neighborhood he was prepared to join it. Events thickened with
the increasing numbers. New facts came in to the aid of old ones
partially understood. The widow Thackeray, looking from her window,
as young and handsome widows are very much in the habit of doing,
had seen William Hinkley going by toward the hill, with a very rapid
stride and a countenance very much agitated; and an hour afterward
she had seen Brother Stevens following on the same route--good
young man!--with the most heavenly and benignant smile upon his
countenance--the very personification of the cherub and the seraph,
commissioned to subdue the fiend.

"Here is some of your treachery, Mr. Calvert. You have spoiled
this boy of mine; turning his head with law studies; and making
him disobedient--giving him counsel and encouragement against
his father--and filling his mind with evil things. It is all your
doing, and your books. And now he's turned out a bloody murderer,
a papist murderer, with your Roman catholic doctrines."

"I am no Roman catholic, Mr. Hinkley," was the mild reply--"and as
for William becoming a murderer, I think that improbable. I have
a better opinion of your son than you have."

"He's an ungrateful cub--a varmint of the wilderness--to strike the
good young man in my own presence--to strike him with a cowskin--what
do you think of that, sir? answer me that, if you please."

"Did William Hinkley do this?" demanded the old teacher earnestly.

"Ay, that he did, did he!"

"I can hardly understand it. There must have been some grievous
provocation?"

"Yes; it was a grievous provocation, indeed, to have to wait for
grace before meat."

"Was that all? can it be possible!"

The mother of the offender supplied the hiatus in the story--and
Calvert was somewhat relieved. Though he did not pretend to justify
the assault of the youth, he readily saw how he had been maddened by
the treatment of his father. He saw that the latter was in a high
pitch of religious fury--his prodigious self-esteem taking part
with it, naturally enough, against a son, who, until this instance,
had never risen in defiance against either. Expostulation and
argument were equally vain with him; and ceasing the attempt at
persuasion, Calvert hurried on with the rest, being equally anxious
to arrest the meditated violence, whether that contemplated the
murderous assassination which the father declared, or the less
heinous proceeding of the duel which he suspected.

There was one thing which made him tremble for his own confidence
in William Hinkley's propriety of course. It was the difficulty
which he had with the rest, in believing that the young student of
divinity would fight a duel. This doubt, he felt, must be that, of
his pupil also: whether the latter had any reason to suppose that
Stevens would depart from the principles of his profession, and
waive the securities which it afforded, he had of course, no means
for conjecturing; but his confidence in William induced him to
believe that some such impression upon his mind had led him to the
measure of sending a challenge, which, otherwise, addressed to a
theologian, would have been a shameless mockery.

There was a long running fire, by way of conversation and commentary,
which was of course maintained by these toiling pedestrians, cheering
the way as they went; but though it made old Hinkley peccant and
wrathy, and exercised the vernacular of the rest to very liberal
extent, we do not care to distress the reader with it. It may have
been very fine or not. It is enough to say that the general tenor
of opinion run heavily against our unhappy rustic, and in favor of
the good young man, Stevens. Mrs. Thackeray, the widow, to whom
Stevens had paid two visits or more since he had been in the village,
and who had her own reasons for doubting that Margaret Cooper had
really obtained any advantages in the general struggle to find favor
in the sight of this handsome man of God--was loud in her eulogy
upon the latter, and equally unsparing in her denunciations of the
village lad who meditated so foul a crime as the extinguishing so
blessed a light. Her denunciations at length aroused all the mother
in Mrs. Hinkley's breast, and the two dames had it, hot and heavy,
until, as the parties approached the lake, old Hinkley, with a
manner all his own, enjoined the most profound silence, and hushed,
without settling the dispute.

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