UNEXPECTED ISSUES.
William Hinkley ascended the narrow path leading to the hills with an
alacrity of heart which somewhat surprised himself. The apprehensions of
danger, if he felt any, were not of a kind to distress or annoy him, and
were more than balanced by the conviction that he had brought his enemy
within his level. That feeling of power is indeed a very consolatory
one. It satisfies the ambitious heart, though death preys upon his
household, one by one; though suffering fevers his sleep; though the
hopes of his affection wither; though the loves and ties of his youth
decay and vanish. It makes him careless of the sunshine, and heedless of
the storm. It deadens his ear to the song of birds, it blinds his eye to
the seduction of flowers. It makes him fly from friendship and rush on
hate. It compensates for all sorts of loneliness, and it produces them.
It is a princely despotism; which, while it robs its slave of freedom,
covers him with other gifts which he learns to value more; which,
binding him in fetters, makes him believe that they are sceptres and
symbols before which all things become what he desires them. His speech
is changed, his very nature perverted, but he acquires an “open sesame”
by their loss, and the loss seems to his imagination an exceeding gain.
We will not say that William Hinkley was altogether satisfied with HIS
bargain, but in the moment when he stood confronting his enemy on the
bald rock, with a deadly weapon in each hand--when he felt that he stood
foot to foot in equal conflict with his foe, one whom he had dragged
down from his pride of place, and had compelled to the fearful issue
which made his arrogance quail--in that moment, if he did not forget, he
did not so much feel, that he had lost family and friends, parents
and love; and if he felt, it was only to induce that keener feeling of
revenge in which even the affections are apt to be swallowed up.
Stevens looked in the eye of the young man and saw that he was
dangerous. He looked upon the ante-revolutionary pistols, and saw that
they were dangerous too, in a double sense.
“Here are pistols,” he said, “better suited to our purpose. You can
sound them and take your choice.”
“These,” said Hinkley, doggedly, “are as well suited as any. If you
will, you can take your choice of mine; but if you think yours superior,
use them. These are good enough for me.”
“But this is out of all usage,” said Stevens.
“What matters it, Mr. Stevens? If you are satisfied that yours are the
best, the advantage is with you. If you doubt that mine can kill, try
them. I have a faith in these pistols which will content me; but we will
take one of each, if that will please you better, and use which we think
proper.”
Stevens expressed himself better pleased to keep his own.
“Suit yourself as to distance,” said Hinkley, with all the coolness of
an unmixed salamander. His opponent stepped off ten paces with great
deliberation, and William Hinkley, moving toward a fragment of the rock
upon which he had placed his “revolutions” for the better inspection of
his opponent, possessed himself of the veterans and prepared to take the
station which had been assigned him.
“Who shall give the word?” demanded Stevens.
“You may!” was the cool rejoinder.
“If I do, I kill you,” said the other.
“I have no fear, Mr. Stevens,” answered William Hinkley with a degree of
phlegm which almost led Stevens to fancy he had to deal with a regular
Trojan--“I have no fear,” he continued, “and if you fancy you can
frighten me by this sort of bragging you have very much mistaken your
man. Shoot when you please, word or no word.”
William Hinkley stood with his back to the woods, his face toward the
lake which spread itself, smooth and calm at a little distance. He
did not perceive that his position was a disadvantageous one. The tree
behind, and that beside him, rendered his body a most conspicuous mark;
while his opponent, standing with his back to the uncovered rocks ranged
with no other objects of any prominence. Had he even been sufficiently
practised in the arts of the duello, he would most probably have been
utterly regardless of these things. They would not have influenced
his firmness in the slightest degree. His course was quite as much the
result of desperation as philosophy. He felt himself an outcast as
well from home as from love, and it mattered to him very little, in the
morbid excitement of his present mind, whether he fell by the hand
of his rival, or lived to pine out a wearisome existence, lonely and
uninspired, a gloomy exile in the bitter world. He waited, it may be
said, with some impatience for the fire of his antagonist. Once he saw
the pistol of Stevens uplifted. He had one in each hand. His own hung
beside him. He waited for the shot of the enemy as a signal when to lift
and use his own weapon. But instead of this he was surprised to see
him drop the muzzle of his weapon, and with some celerity and no small
degree of slight of hand, thrust the two pistols under his coat-skirts.
A buz reached his ears a moment after--the hum of voices--some rustling
in the bushes, which signified confusion in the approach of strangers.
He did not wish to look round as he preferred keeping his eye on his
antagonist.
“Shoot!” he exclaimed--“quickly, before we are interrupted.”
Before he could receive any answer there was a rush behind him--he heard
his father's voice, sudden, and in a high degree of fury, mingled with
that of his mother and Mr. Calvert, as if in expostulation. From the
latter the words distinctly reached his ears, warning him to beware.
Such, also, was the purport of his mother's cry. Before he could turn
and guard against the unseen danger, he received a blow upon his head,
the only thing of which he was conscious for some time. He staggered and
fell forward. He felt himself stunned, fancied he was shot, and sunk to
the ground in an utter state of insensibility.
The blow came from his father's crab-stick. It was so utterly unexpected
by the parties who had attended old Hinkley to the place of meeting,
that no efforts were made to prevent it. But the mother of the victim
rushed in in time to defeat the second blow, which the father prepared
to inflict, in the moment when his son was falling from the effects of
the first. Grasping the coat skirts of her spouse, she pulled him back
with no scrupulous hand, and effectually baffled his designs by bringing
him down, though in an opposite direction, to the same level with the
youth. Old Hinkley did not bite the dust, but the latter part of his
skull most effectually butted it; and had not his head been quite as
tough as his crab-stick, the hurt might have been quite as severe as
that which the latter had inflicted on the son.
The latter lay as perfectly quiet as if all had been over with him. So
much so, that the impression became very general that such was the
case. Under this impression the heart of the mother spoke out in mingled
screams of lamentation and reproach. She threw herself down by the side
of the youth and vainly attempted to stop the blood which was streaming
from a deep gash on his skull. While engaged in this work, her apron and
handkerchief being both employed for this purpose, she poured forth a
torrent of wrath and denunciation against her spouse. She now forgot all
the offences of the boy, and even Alfred Stevens came in for his share
of the anger with which she visited the offence and the offender.
“Shame! shame! you bloody-minded man,” she cried, “to slaughter your own
son--your only son--to come behind him and knock him down with a club as
if he had been an inhuman ox! You are no husband of mine. He sha'n't own
you for a father. If I had the pick, I'd choose a thousand fathers for
him, from here to Massassippi, sooner than you. He's only too good and
too handsome to be son of yours. And for what should you strike him? For
a stranger--a man we never saw before. Shame on you! You are a brute, a
monster, William Hinkley, and I'm done with you for ever.
“My poor, poor boy! Look up, my son. Look up, William. Open your eyes.
It's your own dear mother that speaks to you. O my God! you've killed
him--he will not open his eyes. He's dead, he's dead, he's dead!”
And truly it seemed so, for the youth gave no sign of consciousness. She
threw herself in a screaming agony upon his body, and gave herself up to
the unmeasured despair, which, if a weakness, is at least a sacred
one in the case of a mother mourning her only son. Old Hinkley was not
without his alarms--nay, not altogether without his compunctions. But
he was one of that round head genus whose self-esteem is too much at all
times for fear, or shame, or sensibility. Without seeking to assist
the lad, and ascertain what was his real condition, he sought only to
justify himself for what he had done by repeating the real and supposed
offences of the youth. He addressed himself in this labor chiefly to Mr.
Calvert, who, with quite as much suffering as any of the rest, had more
consideration, and was now busied in the endeavor to stanch the blood
and cleanse the wound of the victim.
“He's only got what he deserved,” exclaimed the sullen, stubborn father.
“Do not speak so, Mr. Hinkley,” replied Calvert, with a sternness which
was unusual with him; “your son may have got his death.”
“And he deserves it!” responded the other doggedly.
“And if he has,” continued Calvert, “you are a murderer--a cold-blooded
murderer--and as such will merit and will meet the halter.”
The face of the old man grew livid--his lips whitened with rage; and he
approached Calvert, his whole frame quivering with fury, and, shaking
his hand threateningly, exclaimed:--
“Do you dare to speak to me in this manner, you miserable, white-headed
pedagogue--do you dare?”
“Dare!” retorted Calvert, rising to his feet with a look of majesty
which, in an instant, awed the insolence of the offender. Never had he
been faced by such defiance, so fearlessly and nobly expressed.
“Dare!--Look on me, and ask yourself whether I dare or not. Approach me
but a step nigher, and even my love for your unfortunate and much-abused
but well-minded son will not protect you. I would chastise you, with all
my years upon me, in spite of my white head. Yours, if this boy should
die, will never become white, or will become so suddenly, as your
soul will wither, with its own self-torture, within you. Begone!--keep
back--do not approach me, and, above all, do not approach me with
uplifted hand, or, by Heaven, I will fell you to the earth as surely
as you felled this boy! You have roused a feeling within me, William
Hinkley, which has slept for years. Do not provoke it too far. Beware in
season. You have acted the brute and the coward to your son--you could
do so with impunity to him--to me you can not.”
There was something in this speech, from one whom old Hinkley was
accustomed to look upon as a dreaming bookworm, which goaded the
tyrannical father into irrepressible fury; and, grinding his teeth,
without a moment's hesitation he advanced, and was actually about to lay
the crab-stick over the shoulders of the speaker: but the latter was as
prompt as he was fearless. Before Hinkley could conceive his intention,
he had leaped over the still unconscious person of William, and,
flinging the old man round with a sudden jerk, had grasped and wrested
the stick from his hands with a degree of activity and strength which
confounded all the bystanders, and the subject of his sudden exercise of
manhood no less than the rest.
“Were you treated justly,” said Calvert, regarding him with a look of
the loftiest indignation, “you should yourself receive a taste of the
cudgel you are so free to use on others. Let your feebleness, old man,
be a warning to your arrogance.”
With these words, he flung the crab-stick into the lake, old Hinkley
regarding him with looks in which it was difficult to say whether
mortification or fury had preponderance.
“Go,” he continued--“your son lives; but it is God's mercy, and none of
yours, which has spared his life. You will live, I hope, to repent
of your cruelty and injustice to him; to repent of having shown a
preference to a stranger, so blind as that which has moved you to
attempt the life of one of the most gentle lads in the whole country.”
“And did he not come here to murder the stranger? did we not find him
even now with pistol ready to murder Brother Stevens? See the pistols
now in his hands--my father's pistols. We came not a minute too soon.
But for my blow, he had been a murderer.”
Such was the justification which old Hinkley now offered for what he had
done.
“I am no advocate for duelling,” said Calvert, “but I believe that your
son came with the stranger for this purpose, and not to murder him.”
“No, no! do you not see that Brother Stevens has no pistols? Did we not
see him trying to escape--walking off--walking almost over the rocks to
get out of the way?”
Calvert comprehended the matter much more clearly.
“Speak, sir!” he said to Stevens, “did you not come prepared to defend
yourself?”
“You see me as I am,” said Stevens, showing his empty hands.
Calvert looked at him with searching eye.
“I understand you, sir,” he said, with an expression not to be mistaken;
“I understand you now. THIS LAD I KNOW. HE COULD NOT BE A MURDERER. HE
COULD NOT TAKE ANY MAN AT ADVANTAGE. If you do not know the fact, Mr.
Stevens, I can assure you that your life was perfectly secure from his
weapon, so long as his remained equally unendangered. The sight of that
lake, from which he rescued you but a few days ago, should sufficiently
have persuaded you of this.”
Stevens muttered something, the purport of which was, that “he did not
believe the young man intended to murder him.”
“Did he not send you a challenge?”
“No!” said old Hinkley; “he sent him a begging note, promising atonement
and repentance.”
“Will you let me see that note?” said Calvert, addressing Stevens.
“I have it not--I destroyed it,” said Stevens with some haste. Calvert
said no more, but he looked plainly enough his suspicions. He now gave
his attention to William Hinkley, whose mother, while this scene was
in progress, had been occupied, as Calvert had begun, in stanching the
blood, and trimming with her scissors, which were fortunately at her
girdle, the hair from the wound. The son, meanwhile, had wakened to
consciousness. He had been stunned but not severely injured by the blow,
and, with the promptitude of a border-dame, Mrs. Hinkley, hurrying to
a pine-tree, had gathered enough of its resin, which, spread upon a
fragment of her cotton apron, and applied to the hurt, proved a very
fair substitute for adhesive plaster. The youth rose to his feet, still
retaining the pistols in his grasp. His looks were heavy from the stupor
which still continued, but kindled into instant intelligence when he
caught sight of Stevens and his father.
“Go home, sir!” said the latter, waving his hand in the prescribed
direction.
“Never!” was the reply of the young man, firmly expressed; “never, sir,
if I never have a home!”
“You shall always have a home, William, while I have one,” said Mr.
Calvert.
“What! you encourage my son in rebellion? you teach him to fly in the
face of his father?” shouted the old man.
“No, sir; I only offer him a shelter from tyranny, a place of refuge
from persecution. When you learn the duties and the feelings of a
father, it will be time enough to assert the rights of one. I do not
think him safe in your house against your vindictiveness and brutality.
He is, however, of full age, and can determine for himself.”
“He is not of age, and will not be till July.”
“It matters not. He is more near the years of discretion than his
father; and, judging him to be in some danger in your house, as a man
and as a magistrate I offer him the protection of mine. Come home with
me, William.”
“Let him go, if he pleases--go to the d--l! He who honors not
his father, says the Scriptures--what says the passage, Brother
Stevens--does it not say that he who honors not his father is in danger
of hell-fire?”
“Not exactly, I believe,” said the other.
“Matters not, matters not!--the meaning is very much the same.”
“Oh, my son,” said the mother, clinging to his neck, “will you, indeed,
desert me? can you leave me in my old age? I have none, none but you!
You know how I have loved--you know I will always love you.”
“And I love you, mother--and love him too, though he treats me as an
outcast--I will always love you, but I will never more enter my father's
dwelling. He has degraded me with his whip--he has attempted my life
with his bludgeon. I forgive him, but will never expose myself again
to his cruelties or indignities. You will always find me a son, and a
dutiful one, in all other respects.”
He turned away with Mr. Calvert, and slowly proceeded down the pathway
by which he had approached the eminence. He gave Stevens a significant
look as he passed him, and lifted one of the pistols which he still
carried in his hands, in a manner to make evident his meaning. The other
smiled and turned off with the group, who proceeded by the route along
the hills, but the last words of the mother, subdued by sobs, still came
to the ears of the youth:--
“Oh, my son, come home! come home!”
“No! no! I have no home--no home, mother!” muttered the young man, as
if he thought the half-stifled response could reach the ears of the
complaining woman.
“No home! no hope!” he continued--“I am desolate.”
“Not so, my son. God is our home; God is our companion; our strength,
our preserver! Living and loving, manfully striving and working out our
toils for deliverance, we are neither homeless, nor hopeless; neither
strengthless, nor fatherless; wanting neither in substance nor
companion. This is a sharp lesson, perhaps, but a necessary one. It will
give you that courage, of the great value of which I spoke to you but a
few days ago. Come with me to my home; it shall be yours until you can
find a better.”
“I thank you--oh! how much I thank you. It may be all as you pay, but I
feel very, very miserable.”