Charlemont; Or, The Pride of the Village Part 28

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 gla.s.sy 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 b.u.t.t. The huge mouth seems to dilate as you look upon it. You already begin to fancy you behold the leaden ma.s.s--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 un.o.bservant 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 a.s.sumes the party addressed to be already in possession of the princ.i.p.al 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. G.o.d 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 a.s.sault 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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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 G.o.d--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 extinguis.h.i.+ng 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.

Meanwhile, the combatants had met. William Hinkley, having ascended the tallest perch among the hills, beheld his enemy approaching at a natural pace and at a short distance. He descended rapidly to meet him and the parties joined at the foot of the woodland path leading down to the lake, where, but a few days before, we beheld Stevens and Margaret Cooper. Stevens was somewhat surprised to note the singular and imposing change which a day, almost an hour, had wrought in the looks and bearing of the young rustic. His good, and rather elevated command of language, had struck him previously as very remarkable, but this had been explained by his introduction to Mr. Calvert, who, as his teacher, he soon found was very well able to make him what he was. It was the high bearing, the courteous defiance, the superior consciousness of strength and character, which now spoke in the tone and manner of the youth. A choice military school, for years, could scarcely have brought about a more decided expression of that subdued heroism, which makes mere manliness a matter of chivalry, and dignifies brute anger and blind hostility into something like a sentiment. Under the prompting of a good head, a generous temper, and the goodness of a highly-roused, but legitimate state of feeling, William Hinkley wore the very appearance of that n.o.bleness, pride, ease, firmness, and courtesy, which, in the conventional world, it is so difficult, yet held to be so important, to impress upon the champion when ready for the field. A genuine son of thunder would have rejoiced in his deportment, and though a sneering, jealous and disparaging temper, Alfred Stevens could not conceal from himself the conviction that there was stuff in the young man which it needed nothing but trial and rough attrition to bring out.

William Hinkley bowed at his approach, and pointed to a close footpath leading to the rocks on the opposite sh.o.r.e.

"There, sir, we shall be more secret. There is a narrow grove above, just suited to our purpose. Will it please you to proceed thither?"

"As YOU please, Mr. Hinkley," was the reply; "I have no disposition to balk your particular desires. But the sight of this lake reminds me that I owe you my life?"

"I had thought, sir, that the indignity which I put upon you, would cancel all such memories," was the stern reply.

The cheek of Stevens became crimson--his eye flashed--he felt the sarcasm--but something was due to his position, and he was cool enough to make a concession to circ.u.mstances. He answered with tolerable calmness, though not without considerable effort.

"It has cancelled the OBLIGATION, sir, if not the memory! I certainly can owe you nothing for a life which you have attempted to disgrace--"

"Which I have disgraced!" said the other, interrupting him.

"You are right, sir. How far, however, you have shown your manhood in putting an indignity upon one whose profession implies peace, and denounces war, you are as well prepared to answer as myself."

"The cloth seems to be of precious thickness!" was the answer of Hinkley, with a smile of bitter and scornful sarcasm.

"If you mean to convoy the idea that I do not feel the shame of the blow, and am not determined on avenging it, young man, you are in error.

You will find that I am not less determined because I am most cool. I have come out deliberately for the purpose of meeting you. My purpose in reminding you of my profession was simply to undeceive you. It appears to me not impossible that the knowledge of it has made you somewhat bolder than you otherwise might have been."

"What mean you?" was the stern demand of Hinkley, uttered in very startling accents.

"To tell you that I have not always been a non-combatant, that I am scarcely one now, and that, in the other schools, in which I have been taught, the use of the pistol was an early lesson. You have probably fancied that such was not the case, and that my profession--"

"Come, sir--will you follow this path?" said Hinkley, interrupting him impatiently.

"All in good time, sir, when you have heard me out," was the cool reply.

"Now, sir," he continued, "were you to have known that it would be no hard task for me to mark any b.u.t.ton on your vest, at any distance--that I have often notched a smaller mark, and that I am prepared to do so again, it might be that your prudence would have tempered your courage--"

"I regret for your sake," said Hinkley, again interrupting him with a sarcasm, "that I have not brought with me the weapon with which MY marks are made. You seem to have forgotten that I too have some skill in my poor way. One would think, sir, that the memory would not fail of retaining what I suspect will be impressed upon the skin for some time longer."

"You are evidently bent on fighting, Mr. Hinkley, and I must gratify you!"

"If you please, sir."

"But, before doing so, I should like to know in what way I have provoked such a feeling of hostility in your mind? I have not sought to do so.