Charlemont; Or, The Pride of the Village Part 26

The old man did not once raise his eyes until the prayer was over. He would not have done so had the house been on fire. But at the close, he looked up at his son with a brow of thunder. The cloud was of serious and very unusual blackness. He had for some time been dissatisfied with his son. He had seen that the youth entertained some aversion for his guest. Besides, he had learned from his worthy consort, that, in an endeavor of Brother Stevens to bestow good counsel upon the youth, he had been repulsed with as little respect as ceremony. There was one thing that the stern old man had not seen, and could not see; and that was the altered appearance of the lad. As he knew of no reason why he should be unhappy, so he failed to perceive in his appearance any of the signs of unhappiness. He saw nothing but the violation of his laws, and that sort of self-esteem which produces fanaticism, is always the most rigid in the enforcement of its own ordinances. Already he regarded the youth as in a state of rebellion and for such an offence his feeling was very much that of the ancient puritan. No one more insists upon duty, than he who has attained authority by flinging off the fetters of obedience. Your toughest sinner usually makes the sourest saint.

"And is this the way, William Hinkley, that you show respect to G.o.d? Do you despise the blessing which Brother Stevens asks upon the food which sustains us?"

"I presume, sir, that G.o.d has already blessed all the food which he bestows upon man. I do not think that any prayer of Brother Stevens can render it more blessed."

"Ha! you do not, do you? Please to rise from this table."

"Nay, sir--" began Stevens.

"Rise, sir," continued the old man, laying down knife and fork, and confronting the offender with that dogged look of determination which in a coa.r.s.e nature is the sure sign of moral inflexibility.

"Forgive him, sir, this time," said Stevens; "I entreat you to forgive him. The young man knows not what he does."

"I will make him know," continued the other.

"Plead not for me, sir," said William Hinkley, glaring upon Stevens with something of that expression which in western parlance is called wolfish, "I scorn and spurn your interference."

"William, William, my dear son, do not speak so--do not make your father angry."

"Will you leave the table, sir, or not?" demanded the father, his words being spoken very slowly, through his teeth, and with the effort of one who seeks to conceal the growing agitation. The eyes of the mother fell upon the youth full of tears and entreaty. His fine countenance betrayed the conflicting emotions of his soul. There was grief, and anger, despair and defiance; the consciousness of being wrong, and the more painful consciousness of suffering wrong. He half started from his chair, again resumed it, and gazing upon Stevens with the hate and agony which he felt, seemed to be entirely forgetful of the words and presence of the father. The old man deliberately rose from the table and left the room. The mother now started up in an agony of fear.

"Run, my son--leave the room before your father comes back. Speak to him, Brother Stevens, and tell him of the danger."

"Do not call upon him, mother, if you would not have me defy you also.

If YOUR words will not avail with me, be sure that his can not."

"What mean you, my son? You surely have no cause to be angry with Brother Stevens."

"No cause! no cause!--but it matters not! BROTHER Stevens knows that I have cause. He has heard my defiance--he knows my scorn and hate, and he shall feel them!"

"William, my son, how--"

The steps of the father, approaching through the pa.s.sageway, diverted her mind to a new terror. She knew the vindictive and harsh nature of the old man; and apprehensions for her son superseded the feeling of anger which his language had provoked.

"Oh, my son, be submissive, or fly. Jump out of the window, and leave Brother Stevens and me to pacify him. We will do all we can."

The unlucky allusion to Brother Stevens only increased the young man's obstinacy.

"I ask you not, mother. I wish you to do nothing, and to say nothing.

Here I will remain. I will not fly. It will be for my father and mother to say whether they will expel their only son from their home, to make room for a stranger."

"It shall not be said that I have been the cause of this," said Stevens, rising with dignity from his chair; "I will leave your house, Mrs.

Hinkley, only regretting that I should be the innocent cause of any misunderstanding or discontent among its members. I know not exactly what can be the meaning of your son's conduct. I have never offended him; but, as my presence does offend him, I will withdraw myself--"

"You shall not!" exclaimed old Hinkley, who re-entered the room at this moment, and had heard the last words of the speaker. "You shall not leave the house. Had I fifty sons, and they were all to behave in the manner of this viper, they should all leave it before you should stir from the threshold."

The old man brought with him a cowskin; and the maternal apprehensions of his wife, who knew his severe and determined disposition, were now awakened to such a degree as to overcome the feeling of deference, if not fear, with which the authority of her liege lord had always inspired her.

"Mr. Hinkley, you won't strike William with that whip--you must not--you shall not!" and, speaking thus, she started up and threw herself in the old man's way. He put her aside with no measured movement of his arm, and approached the side of the table where the young man sat.

"Run, William, run, if you love me!" cried the terrified mother.

"I will not run!" was the answer of the youth, who rose from his seat, however, at the same moment and confronted his father.

"Do not strike me, father! I warn you--do not strike me. I may be wrong, but I have suffered wrong. I did not mean, and do not mean, to offend you. Let that content you, but do not strike me."

The answer was a blow. The whip descended once, and but once, upon the shoulders of the young man. His whole frame was in a convulsion.

His eyes dilated with the anguish of his soul; his features worked spasmodically. There was a moment's hesitation. The arm that smote him was again uplifted--the cruel and degrading instrument of punishment a second time about to descend; when, with the strength of youth, and the determination of manhood, the son grasped the arm of the father, and without any more than the degree of violence necessary to effect his object, he tore the weapon from the uplifted hand.

"I can not strike YOU.'" he exclaimed, addressing the old man. "That blow has lost you your son--for ever! The shame and the dishonor shall rest on other shoulders. They are better deserved here, and here I place them!"

With these words, he smote Stevens over the shoulders, once, twice, thrice, before the latter could close with him, or the father interfere to arrest the attempt. Stevens sprang upon him, but the more athletic countryman flung him off, and still maintained his weapon. The father added his efforts to those of Stevens; but he shook himself free from both, and, by this time, the mother had contrived to place herself between the parties. William Hinkley then flung the whip from the window, and moved toward the door. In pa.s.sing Stevens, he muttered a few words:--

"If there is any skin beneath the cloak of the parson, I trust I have reached it."

"Enough!" said the other, in the same low tone. "You shall have your wish."

The youth looked back once, with tearful eyes, upon his mother; and making no other answer but a glance more full of sorrow than anger to the furious flood of denunciation which the old man continued to pour forth, he proceeded slowly from the apartment and the dwelling.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHALLENGE.

The whole scene pa.s.sed in very few minutes. No time was given for reflection, and each of the parties obeyed his natural or habitual impulses. Old Hinkley, except when at prayers, was a man of few words.

He was much more prompt at deeds than words--a proof of which has already been shown; but the good mother was not so patient, and made a freer use of the feminine weapon than we have been willing to inflict upon our readers. Though she heartily disapproved of her son's conduct toward Stevens, and regarded it as one of the most unaccountable wonders, the offender was still her son. She never once forgot, or could forget, that. But the rage of the old man was unappeasable. The indignity to his guest, and that guest of a calling so sacred, was past all forgiveness, as it was past all his powers of language fitly to describe. He swore to pursue the offender with his wrath to the end of the world, to cut him off equally from his fortune and forgiveness; and when Brother Stevens, endeavoring to maintain the pacific and forgiving character which his profession required, uttered some commonplace pleading in the youth's behalf, he silenced him by saying that, "were he on the bed of death, and were the offender then to present himself, the last prayer that he should make to Heaven would be for sufficient strength to rise up and complete the punishment which he had then begun."

As for Stevens, though he professed a more charitable spirit, his feelings were quite as hostile, and much more deadly. He was not without that conventional courage which makes one, in certain states of society, prompt enough to place himself in the fields of the duello. To this condition of preparedness it has. .h.i.therto been the training of the West that every man, at all solicitous of public life, must eventually come.

As a student of divinity, it was not a necessity with Alfred Stevens.

Nay, it was essential to the character which he professed that he should eschew such a mode of arbitrament. But he reasoned on this subject, as well with reference to past habits as to future responsibilities. His present profession being simply a ruse d'amour (and, as he already began to perceive, a harmless one in the eyes of the beauty whom he sought, and whose intense feelings and unregulated mind did not suffer her to perceive the serious defects of a character which should attempt so impious a fraud), he was beginning to be somewhat indifferent to its preservation; and, with the decline of his caution in this respect, arose the natural inquiry as to what would be expected of him in his former relations to society. Should it ever be known hereafter, at a time when he stood before the people as a candidate for some high political trust, that he had tamely submitted to the infliction of a cowskin, the revelation would be fatal to all his hopes of ambition, and conclusive against all his social pretensions. In short, so far as society was concerned, it would be his social death.

These considerations were felt in their fullest force. Indeed, their force can not well be conceived by the citizen of any community where the sense of individual responsibility is less rigid and exacting. They naturally outweighed all others in the mind of Alfred Stevens; and, though no fire-eater, he not only resolved on fighting with Hinkley, but, smarting under the strokes of the cowskin--heavily laid on as they had been--his resolution was equally firm that, in the conflict, they should not separate until blood was drawn. Of course, there were some difficulties to be overcome in bringing about the meeting, but, where the parties are willing, most difficulties are surmounted with tolerable ease. This being the case at present, it followed that both minds were busy at the same moment in devising the when, the how, and the where, of the encounter.

William Hinkley went from the house of his father to that of his cousin; but the latter had not yet returned from that ride which he had taken in order to discover the course usually pursued by Stevens. Here he sat down to dinner, but the sister of Ned Hinkley observed that he ate little, and fancied he was sick. That he should come to dine with his cousin was too frequent a matter to occasion question or surprise. This lady was older than her brother by some seven years. She was a widow, with an only child, a girl. The child was a prattling, smiling, good-natured thing, about seven years old, who was never so happy as when on Cousin William's knee. Poor William, indeed, was quite a favorite at every house in the village except that of Margaret Cooper, and, as he sometimes used bitterly to add, his own. On this occasion, however, the child was rendered unhappy by the seeming indifference of Cousin William. The heart of the young man was too full of grief, and his mind of anxiety, to suffer him to bestow the usual caresses upon her; and when, putting her down, he pa.s.sed into the chamber of Ned Hinkley, the little thing went off to her mother, to complain of the neglect she had undergone.

"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."