Charlemont; Or, The Pride of the Village Part 23

The study of the young is always a study of the past with the old. They seem, in such a contemplation, to live over the records of memory. They feel as one just returning from a long and weary journey, who encounters another, freshly starting to traverse the same weary but inviting track.

Something in the character of William Hinkley, which seemed to resemble his own, made this feeling yet more active in the mind of Mr. Calvert; and his earnest desire was to help the youth forward on the path which, he soon perceived, it was destined that the other should finally take.

He was not satisfied with the indecision of character which the youth displayed. But how could he blame it harshly? It was in this very respect that his own character had failed, and though he felt that all his counsels were to be addressed to this point, yet he knew not where; or in what manner, to begin. The volume of Blackstone which the youth carried suggested to him a course, however. He bade the young man bring out a chair, and taking the book in his hand, he proceeded to examine him upon parts of the volume which he professed to have been reading.

This examination, as it had the effect of compelling the mind of the student to contract itself to a single subject of thought, necessarily had the further effect of clearing it somewhat from the chaos of clouds which had been brooding over it, obscuring the light, and defeating the warmth of the intellectual sun behind them; and if the examination proved the youth to have been very little of a student, or one who had been reading with a vacant mind, it also proved that the original powers of his intellect were vigorous and various--that he had an a.n.a.lytical capacity of considerable compa.s.s; was bold in opinion, ingenious in solution, and with a tendency to metaphysical speculation, which, modified by the active wants and duties of a large city-practice, would have made him a subtle lawyer, and a very logical debater. But the blush kept heightening on the youth's cheeks as the examination proceeded. He had answered, but he felt all the while how much his answer had sprung from his own conjectures and how little from his authorities. The examination convinced him that the book had been so much waste-paper under his thumb. When it was ended the old man closed the volume, laid it on the sward beside him, and looked, with a mingled expression of interest and commiseration, on his face. William Hinkley noted this expression, and spoke, with a degree of mortification in look and accent, which he did not attempt to hide:--

"I am afraid, sir, you will make nothing of me. I can make nothing of myself. I am almost inclined to give up in despair. I will be nothing--I can be nothing. I feared as much from the beginning, sir. You only waste your time on me."

"You speak too fast, William--you let your blood mingle too much with your thoughts. Let me ask you one question. How long will you be content to live as you do now--seeking nothing--performing nothing--being nothing?"

The youth was silent.

"I, you see, am nothing," continued the old man--"nay, do not interrupt me. You will tell me, as you have already told me, that I am much, and have done much, here in Charlemont. But, for all that I am, and have done here, I need not have gone beyond my accidence. My time has been wasted; my labors, considered as means to ends, were unnecessary; I have toiled without the expected profits of toil; I have drawn water in a sieve. It is not pleasant for me to recall these things, much less to speak of them; but it is for your good that I told you my story. You have, as I had, certain defects of character--not the same exactly, but of the same family complexion. To be something, you must be resolved.

You must devote yourself, heart and mind, with all your soul and with all your strength, to the business you have undertaken. Shut your windows against the suns.h.i.+ne, your ears to the song of birds, your heart against the fascinations of beauty; and if you never think of the last until you are thirty, you will be then a better judge of beauty, a truer lover, a better husband, a more certain candidate for happiness. Let me a.s.sure you that, of the hundred men that take wives before they are thirty, there is scarcely one who, in his secret soul, does not repent it--scarcely one who does not look back with yearning to the days when he was free."

There was a pause. The young man became very much agitated. He rose from his chair, walked apart for a few moments, and then, returning, resumed his seat by the old man.

"I believe you are right, sir--nay, I know you are; but I can not be at once--I can not promise--to be all that you wish. If Margaret Cooper would consent, I would marry her to-morrow."

The old man shook his head, but remained silent. The young one proceeded:--

"One thing I will say, however: I will take to my studies after this week, whatever befalls, with the hearty resolution which you recommend.

I will try to shut out the suns.h.i.+ne and the song. I will endeavor to devote soul and strength, and heart and mind, to the task before me. I KNOW that I can master these studies--I think I can"--he continued, more modestly, modifying the positive a.s.sertion--"and I know that it is equally my interest and duty to do so. I thank you sir, very much for what you have told me. Believe me, it has not fallen upon heedless or disrespectful ears."

The old man pressed his hand.

"I know THAT, my son, and I rejoice to think that, having given me these a.s.surances, 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 came 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 wors.h.i.+pped 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."