FOOT TO FOOT.
William Hinkley was all impatience until, his little messenger returned,
which she did with a speed which might deserve commendation in the
case of our professional Mercuries--stage-drivers and mail contractors,
hight! He did not withhold it from the little maid, but taking her in
his arms, and kissing her fondly, he despatched her to her mother, while
he wrapped up his pistols and concealing them in the folds of his coat,
hurried from the house with the anxious haste of one who is going to
seek his prey. He felt somewhat like that broad-winged eagle which
broods on the projecting pinnacle of yonder rocky peak in waiting for
the sea-hawk who is stooping far below him, watching when the sun's rays
shall glisten from the uprising fins of his favorite fish. But it was
not a selfish desire to secure the prey which the terror of the other
might cause him to drop. It was simply to punish the prowler. Poor
William could not exactly tell indeed why he wished to shoot Alfred
Stevens; but his cause of hostility was not less cogent because it had
no name. The thousand little details which induce our prejudices in
regard to persons, are, singly, worth no one's thought, and would
possibly provoke the contempt of all; but like the myriad threads which
secured the huge frame of Gulliver in his descent upon Lilliput, they
are, when united, able to bind the biggest giant of us all.
The prejudices of William Hinkley, though very natural in such a case
as his, seemed to him very much like instincts. It seemed to him, if
he once reasoned on the matter, that, as he had good cause to hate the
intruder, so there must be justification for shooting him. Were this
not so, the policy of hating would be very questionable, and surely very
unprofitable. It would be a great waste of a very laudable quantity
of feeling--something like omitting one's bullet in discharging one's
piece--a profligacy only justifiable in a feu de joie after victory,
where the bullets have already done all necessary mischief, and will
warrant a small subsequent waste of the more harmless material.
Without designing any such child's play, our rustic hero, properly
equipped with his antique pistols, well charged, close rammed,
three-ounce bullets, or nearabouts, in each, stood, breathing fire but
without cooling, on the edge of the lake, perched on an eminence and
looking out for the coming enemy. He was playing an unwonted character,
but he felt as if it were quite familiar to him. He had none of that
nice feeling which, without impugning courage, is natural enough to
inexperience in such cases. The muzzles of the pistols did not appear
to him particularly large. He never once thought of his own ribs being
traversed by his three-ounce messengers. He had no misgivings on the
subject of his future digestion. He only thought of that blow from his
father's hand--that keen shaft from the lips of Margaret Cooper--that
desolation which had fallen upon his soul from the scorn of both; and
the vengeance which it was in his power to inflict upon the fortunate
interloper to whose arts he ascribed all his misfortunes! and with these
thoughts his fury and impatience increased, and he ascended the highest
hill to look out for his foe; descended, in the next moment, to the edge
of the lake, the better to prepare for the meeting.
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 glassy 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 butt. The huge
mouth seems to dilate as you look upon it. You already begin to fancy
you behold the leaden mass--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 unobservant 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 assumes the party
addressed to be already in possession of the principal 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. God 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 bloody 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 assault
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 assassination 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
God--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 extinguishing 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 nobleness, 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 shore.
“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 circumstances. 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 button 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.
I have on the contrary, striven to show you my friendship, in part
requital of the kindness shown me by your parents.”
“Do not speak of them, if you please.”
“Ay, but I must. It was at the instance of your worthy mother that I
sought you and strove to confer with you on, the cause of your evident
unhappiness.”
“You were the cause.”
“I?”
“Yes--you! Did I not tell you then that I hated you; and did you not
accept my defiance?”
“Yes; but when you saved my life!--”
“It was to spurn you--to put stripes upon you. I tell you, Alfred
Stevens, I loathe you with the loathing one feels for a reptile, whose
cunning is as detestable as his sting is deadly. I loathe you from
instinct. I felt this dislike and distrust for you from the first moment
that I saw you. I know not how, or why, or in what manner, you are a
villain, but I feel you to be one! I am convinced of it as thoroughly as
if I knew it. You have wormed yourself into the bosom of my family. You
have expelled me from the affections of my parents; and not content
with this, you have stolen to the heart of the woman to whom my life was
devoted, to have me driven thence also. Can I do less than hate you? Can
I desire less than your destruction? Say, having heard so much, whether
you will make it necessary that I should again lay my whip over your
shoulders.”
The face of Stevens became livid as he listened to this fierce and
bitter speech. His eye watched that of the speaker with the glare of
the tiger, as if noteful only of the moment when to spring. His frame
trembled. His lip quivered with the struggling rage. All his feeling of
self-superiority vanished when he listened to language of so unequivocal
a character--language which so truly denounced, without defining, his
villany. He felt, that if the instinct of the other was indeed so keen
and quick, then was the combat necessary, and the death of the rustic
essential, perhaps, to his own safety. William Hinkley met his glance
with a like fire. There was no shrinking of his heart or muscles. Nay,
unlike his enemy, he felt a strange thrill of pleasure in his veins as
he saw the effect which his language had produced on the other.
“Lead the way!” said Stevens; “the sooner you are satisfied the better.”
“You are very courteous, and I thank you,” replied Hinkley, with a
subdued but sarcastic smile, “you will pardon me for the seeming slight,
in taking precedence of one so superior; but the case requires it. You
will please to follow. I will show you my back no longer than it seems
necessary.”
“Lead on, sir--lead on.”