THE HAWK IN A NEW PART.
Humphreys was now in the last weeks of his singing-school. He had become
a devout Millerite, and was paying attentions to the not unwilling
Betsey Malcolm, though pretending at Anderson's to be absolutely
heart-broken at the conduct of Julia in jilting him after she had given
him every assurance of affection. And then to be jilted for a Dutchman,
you know! In this last regard his feeling was not all affectation. In
his soul, cupidity, vanity, and vindictiveness divided the narrow
territory between them. He inwardly swore that he'd get satisfaction
somehow. Debts which were due to his pride should be collected by
his revenge.
Did you ever reflect on the uselessness of a landscape when one has no
eyes to see it with, or, what is worse, no soul to look through one's
eyes? Humphreys was going down to the castle to call on the Philosopher,
and "Shady Hollow," as Andrew called it, had surely never been more
glorious than on the morning which he chose for his walk. The black-haw
bushes hung over the roadside, the maples lifted up their great
trunk-pillars toward the sky, and the grape-vines, some of them four
and even six inches in diameter, reached up to the high boughs, fifty or
a hundred feet, without touching the trunk. They had been carried up by
the growth of the tree, tree and vine having always lived in each
other's embrace. Out through the opening in the hollow, Humphreys saw
the green sea of six-feet-high Indian corn in the fertile bottoms, the
two rows of sycamores on the sandy edges of the river, and the hazy
hills on the Kentucky side. But not one touch of sentiment, not a
perception of beauty, entered the soul of the singing-master as he
daintily-chose his steps so as to avoid soiling his glossy boots, and as
he knocked the leaves off the low-hanging beech boughs with his delicate
cane. He had his purpose in visiting Andrew, and his mind was bent
on his game.
Charon, the guardian of the castle, bayed his great hoarse bark at the
Hawk, and with that keen insight into human nature for which dogs are so
remarkable, he absolutely forbade the dandy's entrance, until Andrew
appeared at the door and called the dog away.
"I am delighted at having the opportunity of meeting a great light in
literature like yourself, Mr. Anderson. Here you sit weaving, earning
your bread with a manly simplicity that is truly admirable. You are like
Cincinnatus at his plow. I also am a literary man."
He really was a college graduate, though doubtless he was as much of a
humbug in recitations and examinations as he had always been since.
Andrew's only reply to his assertion that he was a literary man was a
rather severe and prolonged scrutiny of his oily locks, his dainty
mustache, his breast-pin, his watch-seals, and finally his straps and
his boots. For Andrew firmly believed that neglected hair, Byron
collars, and unblackened boots were the first signs of literary taste.
"You think I dress too well," said Humphreys with his ghastly smirk.
"You think that I care too much for appearances. I do. It is a weakness
of mine which comes from a residence abroad."
These words touched the Philosopher a little. To have been abroad was
the next best thing to having been a foreigner _ab origine_. But still
he felt a little suspicious. He was superior to the popular prejudice
against the mustache, but he could not endure hair-oil. "Nature," he
maintained, "made the whole beard to be worn, and Nature provides an oil
for the hair. Let Nature have her way." He was suspicious of Humphreys,
not because he wore a mustache, but because he shaved the rest of his
face and greased his hair. He had, besides, a little intuitive
perception of the fact that a smile which breaks against the rock-bound
coast of cold cheek-bones and immovable eyes is a mask. And so he
determined to test the literary man. I have heard that Masonic lodges
have been deceived by impostors. I have never heard that a literary man
was made to believe in the genuineness of the attainments of a
charlatan.
And yet Humphreys held his own well. He could talk glibly and
superficially about books; he simulated considerable enthusiasm for the
books which Andrew admired. His mistake and his consequent overthrow
came, as always in such cases, from a desire to overdo. It was after
half an hour of talking without tripping that Andrew suddenly asked: "Do
you like the ever-to-be-admired Xenophanes?"
It certainly is no disgrace to any literary man not to know anything of
so remote a philosopher as Xenophanes. The first characteristic of a
genuine literary man is the frankness with which he confesses his
ignorance. But Humphreys did not really know but that Xenophanes was
part of the daily reading of a man of letters.
"Oh! yes," said he. "I have his works in turkey morocco."
"What do you think of his opinion that God is a sphere?" asked the
Philosopher, smiling.
"Oh! yes--ahem; let me see--which God is it that he speaks of, Jupiter
or--well, you know he was a Greek."
"But he only believed in one God," said Andrew sternly.
"Oh! ah! I forgot that he was a Christian."
So from blunder to blunder Andrew pushed him, Humphreys stumbling more
and more in his blind attempts to right himself, and leaving, at last,
with much internal confusion but with an unruffled smile. He dared not
broach his errand by asking the address of August. For Andrew did not
conceal his disgust, having resumed work at his loom, suffering the
bowing impostor to find his own way out without so much as a
courteous adieu.