Charlemont

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"So! so! There are bones enough for you to crunch, you professional
bandog. I had not meant to tell you half so much. There is some
danger that one may lose his game altogether, if he suffers his
nose to point unnecessarily to the cover where it lies. I know what
keen scents are in the club, some of which would be on my track
in no time if they knew where to find me; but I shall baffle you,
you villains. My post-town is fifty miles from the place where I pursue
my theological studies; you are too wise to attempt a wild-goose
chase. You may smack your chaps, Barney, with envy; bite them
too if you please, and it will only whet my own sense of pleasure
to fancy your confusion, and your hopeless denunciations in the
club. I shall be back in time for term--meanwhile get the papers
in readiness. Write to me at the post-town of Ellisland, and remember
to address me as Alfred Stevens--nay, perhaps, you may even say,
'Rev. Alfred Stevens,' it will grace the externals of the document
with a more unctuous aspect, and secure the recipient a more wholesome
degree of respect. Send all my letters to this town under envelope
with this direction. I wrote you twice from Somerville. Did I tell
you that old Hunks has been deused liberal? I can laugh at the
small terms, yet go to Murkey's and shine through the smoke with
the best of you. I solicit the prayers of the Round Table.

"Faithfully, yours, &c."

So far our profligate had written to his brother profligate, when
a tap was heard at the entrance of his chamber. Thrusting the
written papers into his portfolio, he rose, and opening the door
discovered his hostess at the entrance.

"I came, Brother Stevens," said the old lady, "if you not too busy
in your studies, to have a little talk with you, and to get your
counsel upon a subject that a little distresses me. But you look
as if you were busy now--"

"Not too busy, Mrs. Hinkley, to oblige you in this or in any other
respect," replied the guest with suitable suavity of expression--"shall
I attend you down stairs."

"Oh! no! it won't need," said she. "I'll take a seat with you
awhile. We shall be less liable to interruption here."

Stevens scarcely repressed his smile, but the seniority of the old
lady made her proceedings very innocent, however much they might
have been adverse to the rules. He threw wide the door, and without
more hesitation she followed him at once into the chamber.

CHAPTER X.

THE MOTHER'S GRIEFS.

The business upon which Mrs. Hinkley sought the chamber of her
guest was a very simple one, and easily expressed. Not that she
expressed it in few words. That is scarcely possible at any time
with an ancient lady. But the long story which she told, when
compressed into intelligible form, related to her son William.
She had some maternal fears on his account. The lad was a decided
melancholic. His appetite was bad; his looks were thin and unhappy; he
lacked the usual spirit of youth; he lacked his own usual spirit.
What was the cause of the change which had come over him so suddenly,
she could not divine. Her anxiety was for the remedy. She had
consulted Brother Cross on the subject before he departed; but
that good man, after a brief examination of the patient, had freely
admitted his inability to say what was the matter with him, and what
was proper for his cure. To the object of this solicitude himself,
he had given much good counsel, concluding finally with a recommendation
to read devoutly certain chapters in Job and Isaiah. It appears
that William Hinkley submitted to all this scrutiny with exemplary
fortitude, but gave no satisfactory answers to any of the questions
asked him. He had no complaints, he denied any suffering; and
expressed himself annoyed at the inquisition into his thoughts
and feelings. This annoyance had been expressed, however, with the
subdued tones and language of one habitually gentle and modest.
Whenever he was approached on the subject, as the good old lady
assured her guest, he shook off his questioners with no little
haste, and took to the woods for the rest of the day. "That day,"
said she, "you needn't look for William Hinkley to his dinner."

Stevens had been struck with the deportment of this youth, which
had seemed to him haughty and repulsive; and, as he fancied,
characterized by some sentiment of hostility for himself. He was
surprised therefore to learn from the old lady that the lad was
remarkable for his gentleness.

"How long has he been in this way, Mrs. Hinkley?" he asked with
some curiosity.

"Well now, Brother Stevens, I can't tell you. It's been growing on
him for some time. I reckon it's a matter of more than four months
since I first seen it; but it's only been a few weeks that I have
spoken to him. Brother Cross spoke to him only Monday of last week.
My old man don't seem to see so much of it; but I know there's a
great change in him now from what there used to be. A mother's eye
sees a great way farther into the hearts of her children, Brother
Stevens, than any other persons; and I can see plainly that William
is no more the same boy--no! nor nothing like it--that he once was.
Why, once, he was all life, and good humor; could dance and sing
with the merriest among them; and was always so good and kind, and
loved to do whatever would please a body; and was always with somebody,
or other, making merry, and planning the prettiest sports. Now, he
don't sing, nor dance, nor play; when you see him, you 'most always
see him alone. He goes by himself into the woods, and he'll be
going over the hills all day, nobody with him, and never seeming
to care about his food, and what's more strange, never looking at
the books that he used to be so fond of."

"He has been fond of books, then--had he many?"

"Oh, yes, a whole drawer of them, and he used to get them besides
from the schoolmaster, Mr. Calvert, a very good man that lives
about half a mile from the village, and has a world of books. But
now he neither gets books from other people nor reads what he's
got. I'm dubious, Brother Stevens, that he's read too much for his
own good. Something's not right here, I'm a thinking."

The good old lady touched her head with her finger and in this
manner indicated her conjecture as to the seat of her son's disease.
Stevens answered her encouragingly.

"I scarcely think, Mrs. Hinkley, that it can be anything so bad.
The young man is at that age when a change naturally takes place
in the mind and habits. He wants to go into the world, I suspect.
He's probably tired of doing nothing. What is to be his business?
It's high time that such a youth should have made a choice."

"That's true, Brother Stevens, but he's been the apple to our eyes,
and we haven't been willing that he should take up any business
that would--carry him away from us. He's done a little farming
about the country, but that took him away, and latterly he's kept
pretty much at home, going over his books and studying, now one
and now another, just as Mr. Calvert gave them to him."

"What studies did he pursue?"

"Well, I can't tell you. He was a good time at Latin, and then he
wants to be a lawyer;--"

"A lawyer!"

"Yes, he had a great notion to be a lawyer and was at his books
pretty hard for a good year, constant, day by day, until, as I
said before, about four months ago, when I saw that he was growing
thin, and that he had put down the books altogether, and had the
change come over him just as I told you. You see how thin he is
now. You'd scarce believe him to be the same person if you'd seen
him then. Why his cheeks were as full and as red as roses, and
his eye was always shining and laughing, and he had the liveliest
step, and between him and Ned Hinkley, his cousin, what with flute
and fiddle, they kept the house in a constant uproar, and we were
all so happy. Now, it isn't once a month that we hear the sound of
the fiddle in the house. He never sings, and he never dances, and
he never plays, and what little he lets us see of him, is always
so sad and so spiritless that I feel heartsick whenever I look
upon him. Oh! Brother Stevens, if you could only find out what's
the matter, and tell us what to do, it would be the most blessed
kindness, and I'd never forget it, or forget you, to my dying day."

"Whatever I can do, Mrs. Hinkley, shall surely be done. I will see
and speak with your son."

"Oh! do--that's a dear good sir. I'm sure if you only talk to him
and advise him it will do him good."

"Without being so sure, ma'am, I will certainly try to please
you. Though I think you see the matter with too serious eyes. Such
changes are natural enough to young people, and to old ones too.
But what may be your son's age."

"Nineteen last April."

"Quite a man for his years, Mrs. Hinkley."

"Isn't he?"

"He will do you credit yet."

"Ah! if I could believe so. But you'll speak to him, Brother Stevens?
You'll try and bring all to rights?"

"Rely upon me to do what I can;--to do my best."

"Well, that's as much as any man can do, and I'm sure I'll be so
happy--we shall all be so much indebted to you."

"Do not speak of it, my dear madam," said Stevens, bowing with
profound deference as the old lady took her departure. She went
off with light heart, having great faith in the powers of the holy
man, and an equal faith in his sincerity.

"What a bore!" he muttered as he closed the door behind her.
"This is one of the penalties, I suppose, which I must pay for my
privileges. I shall be called upon to reform the morals and manners,
and look into the petty cares of every chuckle-headed boor and
boor's brat for ten miles round. See why boys reject their mush,
and why the girls dislike to listen to the exhortations of a mamma,
who requires them to leave undone what she has done herself--and
with sufficient reason too, if her own experience be not wholly
profitless. Well, I must submit. There are advantages, however; I
shall have other pupils to tutor, and it shall go hard with me if
all the grapes prove sour where the vines are so various."

The student of divinity, after these conclusions, prepared to make
his toilet. Very few of these students, in their extreme solicitude for
the well being of the inner man, show themselves wholly regardless
of their externals. Even mourning, it appears, requires to be
disposed by a fashionable costumer. Though the garments to which
the necessities of travel limited Brother Stevens were not various,
they were yet select. The good young man had an affection for his
person, which was such certainly as to deserve his care. On this
occasion he was more than usually particular. He did not scruple
to discard the white cravat. For this he substituted a handkerchief
which had the prettiest sprig of lilac, on a ground of the most
delicato lemon color. He consulted complexions, and his mirror
determined him in favor of this pattern. Brother Stevens would not
have worn it had he been summoned, in his new vocation, to preach
or pray at the conventicle; nor would he have dreamed of anything
but a black stock had his business been to address the democracy
from the top of a cider-barrel. His habits, under such necessities,
would have been made to correspond with the principles (Qu?) which
such a situation more distinctly called for.

But the thoughts of our worthy brother ran upon other objects. He
was thinking of Margaret Cooper. He was about to pay that damsel
a visit. His progress, we may suppose, had not been inconsiderable
when we are told that his present visit was one of previous
arrangement. They were about to go forth on a ramble together--the
woods were so wild and lovely--the rocks surrounding Charlemont
were so very picturesque;--there was the quietest tarn, a sort of
basin in the bosom of the hills at a little distance, which she was
to show him; and there was the sweetest stream in the world, that
meandered in the neighborhood; and Brother Stevens so loved the
picturesque--lakes embosomed in hills, and streams stealing through
unbroken forests, and all so much the more devotedly, when he had
such a companion as Margaret Cooper.

And Margaret Cooper!--she the wild, the impassioned. A dreamer--a
muse--filled with ambitious thoughts--proud, vain, aspiring
after the vague, the unfathomable! What was her joy, now that she
could speak her whole soul, with all its passionate fullness, to
understanding ears! Stevens and herself had already spoken together.
Her books had been his books. The glowing passages which she loved
to repeat, were also the favorite passages in his memory. Over the
burning and thrilling strains of Byron, the tender and spiritual
of Shelley, the graceful and soft of Campbell, she loved to linger.
They filled her thoughts. They made her thoughts. She felt that
her true utterance lay in their language; and this language, until
now, had fallen dead and without fruit upon the dull ears of her
companions in Charlemont. What was their fiddling and festivity to
her! What their tedious recreations by hillside or stream, when she
had to depress her speech to the base levels of their unimaginative
souls! The loveliness of nature itself, unrepresented by the glowing
hues of poetry, grew tame, if not offensive; and when challenged
to its contemplation by those to whom the muse was nothing, the
fancy of the true observer grew chilled and heavy, and the scenes
of beauty seemed prostituted in their glance.

We have all felt this. Nothing can more annoy the soul of taste or
sensibility than to behold its favorite scene and subject fail in
awakening others to that emotion which it has inspired in ourselves.
We turn away in haste, lest the object of our worship should become
degraded by a longer survey. Enthusiasm recoils at a denial of
sympathy; and all the worth of our companion, in a thousand other
respects, fails to reconcile us to his coldness and indifference.

That Alfred Stevens had taste and talent--that he was well read
in the volumes which had been her favorite study, Margaret Cooper
needed no long time to discover. She soon ascribed to him qualities
and tastes which were beyond his nature. Deceived by his tact, she
believed in his enthusiasm. He soon discovered HER tastes; and she
found equally soon that HIS were like her own. After this discovery,
she gave him credit for other and more important possessions; and
little dreamed that, while he responded to her glowing sentiments
with others equally glowing--avowed the same love for the same
authors, and concurred with her in the preference of the same
passages--his feelings were as little susceptible of sympathy with
hers as would have been those of the cold demon Mephistopheles!
While her eye was flashing, her cheek flushed, her breast heaving
with the burning thoughts and strains of the master to whom her
beautiful lips were giving utterance, he was simply sensible to HER
beauty--to its strange, wild charms--and meditating thoughts from
which the soul of true poetry recoils with the last feelings of
aversion. Even the passion which he felt while he surveyed her,
foreign as it was to those legitimate emotions which her ambition
and her genius would equally have tended to inspire in any
justly-minded nature, might well be considered frigid--regarded as
the result of deliberate artifice--the true offspring of an habitual
and base indulgence.

It was to meet this unsophisticated, impassioned, and confiding
girl, that Alfred Stevens bestowed such particular pains on his
costume. He felt its deficiencies, and, accordingly, the necessity
of making the most of it; for, though he perfectly well knew that
such a woman as Margaret Cooper would have been the very last to
regard the mere garment in which a congenial nature is arrayed,
yet he also well knew that the costume is not less indicative of
the tastes than the wealth of the wearer. You will see thousands
of persons, men and women, richly dressed, and but one will be WELL
dressed: that one, most generally, will be the individual who is
perhaps of all others possessed of the least resources for dress,
other than those which dwell in the well-arranged mind, the
well-disposing taste, and the happy, crowning fancy.

His tasks of the toilet were at length ended, and he was preparing
to go forth. He was about to leave the chamber, had already placed
his hand upon the latch of the door, when he heard the voice of his
hostess, on the stairway, in seeming expostulation with her son.
He was about to forbear his purpose of departure as the parties had
retired, when, remembering the solicitude of the lady, and thinking
it would show that zest in her service which he really could not
entertain, he determined at once to to join the young man, and
begin with him that certain degree of intimacy without which it
could scarcely be supposed that he could broach the subject of his
personal affairs. He felt somewhat the awkwardness of this assumed
duty, but then he recollected his vocation; he knew the paramount
influence of the clergy upon all classes of persons in the West,
and, with the conscious superiority derived from greater years
and better education, he felt himself fortified in undertaking the
paternal office which the fond, foolish mother had confided to his
hands. Accordingly, descending the stairs briskly, he joined the
two at the entrance of the dwelling. The son was already on the
outside; the mother stood in the doorway: and, as Stevens appeared
and drew nigh, William Hinkley bowed, and turned away as if to
withdraw.

"If you have no objections, Mr. Hinkley," said Stevens, "I will
join you. You seem to be about to go my way."

The young man paused with an air of reluctance, muttered something
which was not altogether intelligible, but which Stevens construed
into assent, and the two set forth together--the good old matron
giving a glance of gratitude to the benevolent young student which
her son did not fail to note, while, at the same time, a sentence
which evidently conveyed some motherly rebuke, was addressed to
his already-irritated ears.

CHAPTER XI.

WRESTLING.

Alfred Stevens, as he walked behind his young companion, observed
him with a more deliberate survey than he had yet taken. Hitherto,
the young man had challenged but little of his scrutiny. He had
simply noted him for a tall youth, yet in the green, who appeared
of a sulky, retiring nature, and whose looks had seemed to him
on one or more occasions to manifest something like distaste for
himself. The complacency of Stevens, however, was too well grounded
to be much disturbed by such an exhibition. Perhaps, indeed, he
would have derived a malicious sort of satisfaction in making a
presumptuous lad feel his inferiority. He had just that smallness
of spirit which would find its triumph in the success of such a
performance.

He now observed that the youth was well formed, tall, not ungraceful--with
features of singular intelligence, though subdued to the verge of
sadness. His face was pale and thin, his eyes were a little sunken,
and his air, expression, and general outside, denoted a youth of
keen sensibilities, who had suffered some disappointment.

In making this examination, Alfred Stevens was not awakened to
any generous purposes. He designed, in reality, nothing more than
to acquit himself of the duty he had undertaken with the smallest
possible exertion. His own mind was one of that mediocre character
which the heart never informs. His scrutiny, therefore, though it
enabled him to perceive that the young man had qualities of worth,
was not such as to prompt any real curiosity to examine further.
A really superior mind would have been moved to look into these
resources; and, without other motive than that of bringing a young,
laboring, and ardent soul out of the meshes of a new and bewildering
thought or situation, would have addressed himself to the task with
that degree of solicitous earnestness which disarms prejudice and
invites and wins confidence. But, with his first impression, that
the whole business was a "bore," our benevolent young teacher
determined on getting through with it with the least possible effort.
He saw that the youth carried a book under his arm, the externals
of which, so uniform and discouraging as they appear in every legal
library, could not well be questioned as belonging to some such
venerable receptacle of barbarous phrase and rigid authority. The
circumstance afforded him an occasion to begin a conversation,
the opening of which, with all his coolness, was a subject of some
awkwardness.

"You seem a student like myself, Mr. Hinkley, and, if I mistake not
from the appearance of your book, you are taking up the profession
which I am about to lay down."

"This is a law-book, sir," said Hinkley, in accents which were
rather meek than cold; "it is Blackstone."

"Ah! I thought as much. Have you been long a student?"

"I may scarcely consider myself one yet. I have read, sir, rather
than studied."

"A good distinction, not often made. But, do you incline to law
seriously?"

"Yes, sir--I know no occupation to which I so much incline."

"The law is a very arduous profession. It requires a rare union of
industry, talent, and knowledge of mankind to be a good lawyer."

"I should think so, sir."

"Few succeed where thousands fail. Young men are very apt to mistake
inclination for ability; and to be a poor lawyer--"

"Is to be worse than poor--is to be despicable!" replied Hinkley
with a half-sfnile, as he interrupted a speech which might have
been construed into a very contemptuous commentary on his own
pretensions. It would seem that the young man had so understood
it. He continued thus:--

"It may be so with me, sir. It is not improbable that I deceive
myself, and confound inclination with ability."

"Oh, pardon me, my dear young friend," said Stevens patronizingly;
"but I do not say so. I utter a mere generality. Of course, I can
know nothing on the subject of your abilities. I should be glad
to know. I should like to converse with you. But the law is very
arduous, very exacting. It requires a good mind, and it requires
the whole of it. There is no such thing as being a good lawyer
from merely reading law. You can't bolt it as we do food in this
country. We must chew upon it. It must be well digested. You seem
to have the right notion on this subject. I should judge so from two
things: the distinction which you made between the reader and the
student; and the fact that your appearance is that of the student. I
am afraid, my young friend, that you overwork yourself. You look
thin, and pale, and unhappy. You should be careful that your passion
for study is not indulged in at the peril of your health."

The frame of the young man seemed to be suddenly agitated. His face
was flushed, and a keen, quick, flash of anger seemed to lighten
in his eyes as he looked up to the paternal counsellor and replied:--

"I thank you, sir, for your interest, but it is premature. I am
not conscious that my health suffers from this or any other cause."

"Nay, my young friend, do not deceive yourself. You perhaps underrate
your own industry. It is very difficult matter to decide how much
we can do and how much we ought to do, in the way of study. No mere
thinking can determine this matter for us. It can only be decided
by being able to see what others do and can endure. In a little
country village like this, one can not easily determine; and the
difficulty may be increased somewhat by one's own conviction, of
the immense deal that one has to learn. If you were to spend a year
in some tolerably large community. Perhaps you meditate some such
plan?".

"I do not, sir," was the cold reply.

"Indeed; and have you no desire that way?"

"None!"

"Very strange! at your time of life the natural desire is to go
into the great world. Even the student fancies he can learn better
there than he can anywhere else--and so he can."

"Indeed, sir: if I may be so bold to ask, why, with this opinion,
have you left the great city to bury yourself in a miserable village
like Charlemont?"

The question was so quickly put, and with so much apparent keenness,
that Stevens found the tables suddenly reversed. But he was in
nowise discomposed. He answered promptly.

"You forget," he said, "that I was speaking of very young men, of
an ambitious temper, who were seeking to become lawyers. The student
of divinity may very well be supposed to be one who would withdraw
himself from the scene of ambition, strifes, vanities, and tumultuous
passions."

"You speak, sir, as if there were a material difference in our
years?" said Hinkley inquiringly.

"Perhaps it is less than in our experience, my young friend," was
the answer of the other, betraying that quiet sense of superiority
which would have been felt more gallingly by Hinkley had he been
of a less modest nature. Still, it had the effect of arousing some
of the animal in his blood, and he responded in a sentence which was
not entirely without its sneer, though it probably passed without
penetrating such a buff of self-esteem as guarded the sensibilities
of our adventurer.

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