Charlemont; Or, The Pride of the Village Part 31

"This young man is not only a worthy young man, but he is one, naturally of very vigorous intellect. He is of earnest, impa.s.sioned temperament, full of enthusiasm and imagination; fitted for work--great work--public work--head work--the n.o.blest kind of work. He will be a great lawyer--perhaps a great statesman--if he addresses himself at once, manfully, to his tasks; but he will not address himself to these tasks while he pursues the rusting and mind-destroying life of a country village. Give him the object of his present desire and you deprive him of all motive for exertion. Give him the woman he seeks and you probably deprive him even of the degree of quiet which the country village affords. He would forfeit happiness without finding strength. Force him to the use of his tools and he builds himself fame and fortune."

Calvert was really not sorry that William Hinkley's treatment had been so harsh. He sympathized, it is true, in his sufferings, but he was not blind to their probable advantages; and he positively rejoiced in his rejection by Margaret Cooper.

It was some four or five days after the events with which our last chapter was closed, that the old man and his young friend were to be seen sitting together, under the shade of the venerable tree where we have met them before. They had conferred together seriously, and finally with agreeing minds, on the several topics which have been adverted to in the preceding paragraph. William Hinkley had become convinced that it was equally the policy of his mind and heart to leave Charlemont. He was not so well satisfied, however, as was the case with Mr. Calvert, that the loss of Margaret Cooper was his exceeding gain. When did young lover come to such a conclusion? Not, certainly, while he was young. But when was young lover wise? Though a discontent, William Hinkley was not, however, soured nor despairing from the denial of his hopes. He had resources of thought and spirit never tested before, of the possession of which he, himself, knew nothing. They were to be brought into use and made valuable only by these very denials; by the baffling of his hope; by the provocation of his strength.

His resolution grew rapidly in consequence of his disappointments.

He was now prepared to meet the wishes of his venerable and wise preceptor--to grapple stoutly with the masters of the law; and, keeping his heart in restraint, if not absolute abeyance, to do that justice to his head, which, according to the opinion of Mr. Calvert, it well-deserved if hitherto it had not demanded it. But to pursue his studies as well as his practice, he was to leave Charlemont. How was this to be done--where was he to go--by what means? A horse, saddle, and bridle--a few books and the ante-revolutionary pistols of his grandsire, which recent circ.u.mstances seemed to have endeared to him, were all his available property. His poverty was an estoppel, at the outset, to his own reflections; and thinking of this difficulty he turned with a blank visage to his friend.

The old man seemed to enter into and imagine his thoughts. He did not wait to be reminded, by the halting speech of the youth, of the one subject from which the latter shrunk to speak.

"The next thing, my son," said he, "is the necessary means. Happily, in the case of one so prudent and temperate as yourself, you will not need much. Food and clothing, and a small sum, annually, for contingencies, will be your chief expense; and this, I am fortunately able to provide.

I am not a rich man, my son; but economy and temperance, with industry, have given me enough, and to spare. It is long since I had resolved that all I have should be yours; and I had laid aside small sums from time to time, intending them for an occasion like the present, which I felt sure would at length arrive. I am rejoiced that my foresight should have begun in time, since it enables me to meet the necessity promptly, and to interpose myself at the moment when you most need counsel and a.s.sistance."

"Oh, my friend, my kind generous friend, how it shames me for my own father to hear you speak thus!"

The youth caught the hands of his benefactor, and the hot tears fell from his eyes upon them, while he fervently bent to kiss them.

"Your father is a good but rough man, William, who will come to his senses in good time. Men of his education--governed as he is by the mistake which so commonly confounds G.o.d with his self-const.i.tuted representative, religion with its professor--will err, and can not be reasoned out of their errors. It is the unceasing operation of time which can alone teach them a knowledge of the truth. You must not think too hardly of your father, who does not love you the less because he fancies you are his particular property, with whom he may do what he pleases. As for what I have done, and am disposed to do for you, let that not become burdensome to your grat.i.tude. In some respects you have been a son to me, and I send you from me with the same reluctance which a father would feel in the like circ.u.mstances. You have been my companion, you have helped to cheer my solitude; and I have learned to look on the progress of your mind with the interest of the philosopher who pursues a favorite experiment. In educating you, I have attempted an experiment which I should be sorry to see fail. I do not think now that it will fail. I think you will do yourself and me ample justice. If I have had my doubts, they were of your courage, not your talent. If you have a weakness, it is because of a deficiency of self-esteem--a tendency to self-disparagement. A little more actual struggle with the world, and an utter withdrawal from those helps and hands which in a youth's own home are very apt to be constantly employed to keep him from falling, and to save him from the consequences of his fall, and I do not despair of seeing you acquire that necessary moral hardihood which will enable you to think freely, and to make your mind give a fair utterance to the properties which are in it. When this is done, I have every hope of you. You will rise to eminence in your profession. I know, my son, that you will do me honor."

"Ah, sir, I am afraid you overrate my abilities. I have no consciousness of any such resources as you suppose me to possess."

"It is here that your deficiency speaks out. Be bold, my son--be bold, bolder, boldest. I would not have you presumptuous, but there is a courage, short of presumption, which is only a just confidence in one's energies and moral determination. This you will soon form, if, looking around you and into the performances of others, you see how easy they are, and how far inferior they are to your own ideas of what excellence should be. Do not look into yourself for your standards. I have perhaps erred in making these too high. Look out from yourself--look into others--a.n.a.lyze the properties of others; and, in attempting, seek only to meet the exigencies of the occasion, without asking what a great mind might effect beyond it. Your heart will fail you always if your beau ideal is for ever present to your mind."

"I will try, sir. My tasks are before me, and I know it is full time that I should discard my boyhood. I will go to work with industry, and will endeavor not to disappoint your confidence; but I must confess, sir, I have very little in myself."

"If you will work seriously, William, my faith is in this very humility.

A man knowing his own weakness, and working to be strong, can not fail.

He must achieve something more than he strives for."

"You make me strong as I hear you, sir. But I have one request to make, sir. I have a favor to ask, sir, which will make me almost happy if you grant it--which will at least reconcile me to receive your favors, and to feel them less oppressively."

"What is that, William? You know, my son, there are few things which I could refuse you."

"It is that _I_ MAY BE YOUR SON; that I may call you father, and bear henceforward your name. If you adopt me, rear me, teach me, provide me with the means of education and life, and do for me what a father should have done, you are substantially more than my father to me. Let me bear, your name. I shall be proud of it, sir. I will not disgrace it--nay, more, it will strengthen me in my desire to do it and myself honor. When I hear it spoken, it will remind me of my equal obligations to you and to myself."

"But this, my son, is a wrong done to your own father."

"Alas! he will not feel it such."

The old man shook his head.

"You speak now with a feeling of anger, William. The treatment of your father rankles in your mind."

"No, sir, no! I freely forgive him. I have no reference to him in the prayer I make. My purpose is simply what I declare. Your name will remind me of your counsels, will increase my obligation to pursue them, will strengthen me in my determination, will be to me a fond monitor in your place. Oh, sir, do not deny me! You have shown me the affections of a father--let me, I entreat you, bear the name of your son!"

The youth flung his arms about the old man's neck, and wept with a gush of fondness which the venerable sire could not withstand. He was deeply touched: his lips quivered; his eyes thrilled and throbbed. In vain did he strive to resist the impulse. He gave him tear for tear.

"My son, you have unmanned me."

"Ah, my father, I can not regret, since, in doing so, I have strengthened my own manhood."

"If it have this effect, William, I shall not regret my own weakness.

There is a bird, you are aware, of which it is fabled that it nourishes its young by the blood of its own bosom, which it wounds for this purpose. Believe me, my dear boy, I am not unwilling to be this bird for your sake. If to feel for you as the fondest of fathers can give me the rights of one, then are you most certainly my son--my son!"

Long, and fond, and sweet, was their embrace. For a full hour, but few words, and those of a mournful tenderness, were exchanged between the parties. But the scene and the struggle were drawing nigh their close.

This was the day when they were to separate. It had been arranged that William Hinkley, or as he now calls himself, William Calvert, was to go into the world. The old man had recalled for his sake, many of the memories and a.s.sociations of his youth. He had revived that period--in his case one of equal bitterness and pleasure--when, a youth like him he was about to send forth, he had been the ardent student in a profession whose honors he had so sadly failed to reap. In this profession he was then fortunate in having many sterling friends. Some of these were still so. In withdrawing from society, he had not withdrawn from all commerce with a select and sacred few; and to the friendly counsel and protection of these he now deputed the paternal trusts which had been just so solemnly surrendered to himself. There were long and earnest appeals written to many n.o.ble a.s.sociates--men who had won great names by dint of honorable struggle in those fields into which the feebler temper of Mr.

Calvert did not permit him to penetrate. Some of these letters bore for their superscriptions such names as the Clays, the Crittendens, and the Metcalfs--the strong men, not merely of Kentucky, but of the Union.

The good old man sighed as he read them over, separately, to his young companion.

"Once I stood with them, and like them--not the meanest among them--nay, beloved by them as an a.s.sociate, and recognised as a compet.i.tor. But they are here--strong, high, glorious, in the eye of the nation--and I am nothing--a poor white-headed pedagogue in the obscurest regions of Kentucky. Oh, my son, remember this, and be strong! Beware of that weakness, the offspring of a miserable vanity, which, claiming too much for itself, can bestow nothing upon others. Strive only to meet the exigency, and you will do more--you will pa.s.s beyond it. Ask not what your fame requires--the poor fame of a solitary man struggling like an atom in the bosom of the great struggling world--ask only what is due to the task which you have a.s.sumed, and labor to do that. This is the simple, small secret, but be sure it is the one which is of more importance than all beside."

The departure of William Hinkley from his native village was kept a profound secret from all persons except his adopted father and his bosom friend and cousin, Fisherman Ned. We have lost sight of this young man for several pages, and, in justice equally to the reader and himself, it is necessary that we should hurriedly retrace our progress, at least so far as concerns his. We left him, if we remember, having driven Alfred Stevens from his purpose, riding on alone, really with no other aim than to give circulation to his limbs and fancies. His ride, if we are to believe his random but significant words, and his very knowing looks, was not without its results. He had certainly made some discoveries--at least he thought and said so; but, in truth, we believe these amounted to nothing more than some plausible conjectures as to the route which Alfred Stevens was in the habit of pursuing, on those excursions, in which the neighbors were disposed to think that there was something very mysterious. He certainly had jumped to the conclusion that, on such occasions, the journey of Stevens was prolonged to Ellisland; and, as such a ride was too long for one of mere pleasure and exercise, the next conclusion was, that such a journey had always some business in it.

Now, a business that calls for so much secrecy, in a young student of theology, was certainly one that could have very little relation to the church. So far as Ned Hinkley knew anything of the Decalogue it could not well relate to that. There was nothing in St. Paul that required him to travel post to Ellisland; though a voyage to Tarsus might be justified by the authority of that apostle; and the whole proceeding, therefore, appeared to be a mystery in which gospelling had very little to do. Very naturally, having arrived at this conclusion, Ned Hinkley jumped to another. If the saints have nothing to do with this journey of Alfred Stevens, the sinners must have. It meant mischief--it was a device of Satan; and the matter seemed so clearly made out to his own mind, that he returned home with the further conviction, which was equally natural and far more easily arrived at, that he was now bound by religion, as he had previously been impelled by instinct, to give Stevens "a regular licking the very first chance that offered." Still, though determined on this measure, he was not unmindful of the necessity of making other discoveries; and he returned to Charlemont with a countenance big with importance and almost black with mystery.

But the events which had taken place in his absence, and which we have already related, almost put his own peculiar purposes out of his mind.

That William Hinkley should have cowskinned Stevens would have been much more gratifying to him could he have been present; and he was almost disposed to join with the rest in their outcry against this sacrilegious proceeding, for the simple reason, that it somewhat antic.i.p.ated his own rigorous intentions to the same effect. He was not less dissatisfied with the next attempt for two reasons.

"You might have known, Bill, that a parson won't fight with pistols. You might have persuaded him to fist or cudgel, to a fair up and down, hand over, fight! That's not so criminal, they think. I heard once of Brother John Cross, himself trying a cudgel bout with another parson down in Mississippi, because he took the same text out of his mouth, and preached it over the very same day, with contrary reason. Everybody said that John Cross served him right, and n.o.body blamed either. But they would have done so if pistols had been used. You can't expect parsons or students of religion to fight with firearms. Swords, now, they think justifiable, for St. Peter used them; but we read nowhere in Old or New Testament of their using guns, pistols, or rifles."

"But he consented to fight, and brought his own pistols, Ned?"

"Why, then, didn't you fight? That's the next thing I blame you for--that, when you were both ready, and had the puppies in your hands, you should have stood looking at each other without taking a crack. By jingo, had there been fifty fathers and mothers in the bush, I'd have had a crack at him. No, I blame you, William--I can't help it. You didn't do right. Oh! if you had only waited for me, and let me have fixed it, how finely we would have managed. What then, if your father had burst in, it was only s.h.i.+fting the barkers from your hands to mine.

I'd have banged at him, though John Cross himself, and all his flock, stood by and kneed it to prevent me. They might have prayed to all eternity without stopping me, I tell you."

William Hinkley muttered something about the more impressive sort of procedure which his father had resorted to, and a little soreness about the parietal bones just at that moment giving a quick impatient air to his manner, had the effect of putting an end to all further discussion of this topic. Fisherman Ned concluded with a brief a.s.surance, meant as consolation, that, when he took up the cudgels, his cousin need make himself perfectly easy with the conviction that he would balance both accounts very effectually. He had previously exhorted William to renew the attempt, though with different weapons, to bring his enemy into the field; but against this attempt Mr. Calvert had already impressively enjoined him; exacting from him a promise that he would not seek Stevens, and would simply abide any call for satisfaction which the latter might make. The worthy old man was well a.s.sured that in Stevens's situation there was very little likelihood of a summons to the field from him.

Still, William Hinkley did not deem it becoming in him to leave the ground for several days, even after his preparations for departure were complete. He loitered in the neighborhood, showed himself frequently to his enemy, and, on some of these occasions, was subjected to the mortification of beholding the latter on his way to the house of Margaret Cooper, with whom, a few moments after, he might be seen in lonely rambles by the lake-side and in the wood. William had conquered his hopes from this quarter, but he vainly endeavored to suppress his pangs.

At length the morning came for his departure. He had seen his mother for the last time the night before. They had met at the house of the widow Hinkley, between which and that of Calvert, his time had been chiefly spent, since the day of his affair with Stevens. His determination to depart was carefully concealed from his mother. He dreaded to hear her entreaties, and he doubted his own strength to endure them. His deportment, however, was sufficiently fond and tender, full of pain and pa.s.sion, to have convinced her, had she been at all suspicious of the truth, of the design he meditated. But, as it was, it simply satisfied her affections; and the fond "good night" with which he addressed her ears at parting, was followed by a gush of tears which shocked the more st.u.r.dy courage of his cousin, and aroused the suspicions of the widow.

"William Hinkley," she said after the mother had gone home--"you must be thinking to leave Charlemont. I'm sure of it--I know it."

"If you do, say nothing, dear cousin; it will do no good--it can not prevent me now, and will only make our parting more painful."

"Oh, don't fear me," said the widow--"I shan't speak of it, till it's known to everybody, for I think you right to go and do just as Gran'pa Calvert tells you; but you needn't have made it such a secret with me.

I've always been too much of your friend to say a word."

"Alas!" said the youth mournfully, "until lately, dear cousin, I fancied that I had no friends--do not blame me, therefore, if I still sometimes act as if I had none."

"You have many friends, William, already--I'm sure you will find many more wherever you go; abler friends if not fonder ones, than you leave behind you."

The youth threw his arms round the widow's neck and kissed her tenderly.

Her words sounded in his ears like some melodious prophecy.

"Say no more, cousin," he exclaimed with sudden enthusiasm; "I am so well pleased to believe what you promise me of the future, that I am willing to believe all. G.o.d bless you. I will never forget you."

The parting with Calvert was more touching in reality, but with fewer of the external signs of feeling. A few words, a single embrace and squeeze of the hand, and they separated; the old man hiding himself and his feelings in the dimness of his secluded abode, while his adopted son, with whom Ned Hinkley rode a brief distance on his way, struck spurs into his steed, as if to lose, in the rapid motion of the animal, the slow, sad feelings which were pressing heavily upon his heart. He had left Charlemont for ever. He had left it under circ.u.mstances of doubt, and despondency--stung by injustice, and baffled in the first ardent hopes of his youthful mind. "The world was all before him, where to choose." Let us not doubt that the benignant Providence is still his guide.