The Doctor was roused from his revery by the clatter of approaching
hoofs. He looked forward and saw a young fellow galloping rapidly
towards him.
A common New-England rider with his toes turned out, his elbows jerking
and the daylight showing under him at every step, bestriding a cantering
beast of the plebeian breed, thick at every point where he should be
thin, and thin at every point where he should be thick, is not one of
those noble objects that bewitch the world. The best horsemen outside of
the cities are the unshod countryboys, who ride “bareback,” with only a
halter round the horse's neck, digging their brown heels into his ribs,
and slanting over backwards, but sticking on like leeches, and taking
the hardest trot as if they loved it.--This was a different sight
on which the Doctor was looking. The streaming mane and tail of the
unshorn, savage-looking, black horse, the dashing grace with which the
young fellow in the shadowy sombrero, and armed with the huge spurs,
sat in his high-peaked saddle, could belong only to the mustang of the
Pampas and his master. This bold rider was a young man whose sudden
apparition in the quiet inland town had reminded some of the good people
of a bright, curly-haired boy they had known some eight or ten years
before as little Dick Venner.
This boy had passed several of his early years at the Dudley mansion,
the playmate of Elsie, being her cousin, two or three years older than
herself, the son of Captain Richard Venner, a South American trader,
who, as he changed his residence often, was glad to leave the boy in his
brother's charge. The Captain's wife, this boy's mother, was a lady of
Buenos Ayres, of Spanish descent, and had died while the child was in
his cradle. These two motherless children were as strange a pair as one
roof could well cover. Both handsome, wild, impetuous, unmanageable,
they played and fought together like two young leopards, beautiful, but
dangerous, their lawless instincts showing through all their graceful
movements.
The boy was little else than a young Gaucho when he first came to
Rockland; for he had learned to ride almost as soon as to walk, and
could jump on his pony and trip up a runaway pig with the bolas or noose
him with his miniature lasso at an age when some city-children would
hardly be trusted out of sight of a nursery-maid. It makes men imperious
to sit a horse; no man governs his fellows so well as from this living
throne. And so, from Marcus Aurelius in Roman bronze, down to the “man
on horseback” in General Cushing's prophetic speech, the saddle has
always been the true seat of empire. The absolute tyranny of the human
will over a noble and powerful beast develops the instinct of personal
prevalence and dominion; so that horse-subduer and hero were almost
synonymous in simpler times, and are closely related still. An ancestry
of wild riders naturally enough bequeaths also those other tendencies
which we see in the Tartars, the Cossacks, and our own Indian Centaurs,
and as well, perhaps, in the old-fashioned fox-hunting squire as in
any of these. Sharp alternations of violent action and self-indulgent
repose; a hard run, and a long revel after it; this is what over-much
horse tends to animalize a man into. Such antecedents may have helped
to make little Dick Venner a self-willed, capricious boy, and a rough
playmate for Elsie.
Elsie was the wilder of the two. Old Sophy, who used to watch them
with those quick, animal-looking eyes of hers,--she was said to be
the granddaughter of a cannibal chief, and inherited the keen senses
belonging to all creatures which are hunted as game, Old Sophy, who
watched them in their play and their quarrels, always seemed to be more
afraid for the boy than the girl. “Masse Dick! Masse Dick! don' you be
too rough wi' dat gal! She scratch you las' week, 'n' some day she
bite you; 'n' if she bite you, Masse Dick!” Old Sophy nodded her head
ominously, as if she could say a great deal more; while, in grateful
acknowledgment of her caution, Master Dick put his two little fingers
in the angles of his mouth, and his forefingers on his lower eyelids,
drawing upon these features until his expression reminded her of
something she vaguely recollected in her infancy,--the face of
a favorite deity executed in wood by an African artist for her
grandfather, brought over by her mother, and burned when she became a
Christian.
These two wild children had much in common. They loved to ramble
together, to build huts, to climb trees for nests, to ride the colts,
to dance, to race, and to play at boys' rude games as if both were boys.
But wherever two natures have a great deal in common, the conditions of
a first-rate quarrel are furnished ready-made. Relations are very apt to
hate each other just because they are too much alike. It is so frightful
to be in an atmosphere of family idiosyncrasies; to see all the
hereditary uncomeliness or infirmity of body, all the defects of speech,
all the failings of temper, intensified by concentration, so that every
fault of our own finds itself multiplied by reflections, like our images
in a saloon lined with mirrors! Nature knows what she is about. The
centrifugal principle which grows out of the antipathy of like to like
is only the repetition in character of the arrangement we see expressed
materially in certain seed-capsules, which burst and throw the seed to
all points of the compass. A house is a large pod with a human germ
or two in each of its cells or chambers; it opens by dehiscence of the
front-door by and by, and projects one of its germs to Kansas, another
to San Francisco, another to Chicago, and so on; and this that Smith may
not be Smithed to death and Brown may not be Browned into a mad-house,
but mix in with the world again and struggle back to average humanity.
Elsie's father, whose fault was to indulge her in everything, found that
it would never do to let these children grow up together. They would
either love each other as they got older, and pair like wild creatures,
or take some fierce antipathy, which might end nobody could tell where.
It was not safe to try. The boy must be sent away. A sharper quarrel
than common decided this point. Master Dick forgot Old Sophy's caution,
and vexed the girl into a paroxysm of wrath, in which she sprang at him
and bit his arm. Perhaps they made too much of it; for they sent for the
old Doctor, who came at once when he heard what had happened. He had a
good deal to say about the danger there was from the teeth of animals
or human beings when enraged; and as he emphasized his remarks by the
application of a pencil of lunar caustic to each of the marks left by
the sharp white teeth, they were like to be remembered by at least one
of his hearers.
So Master Dick went off on his travels, which led him into strange
places and stranger company. Elsie was half pleased and half sorry to
have him go; the children had a kind of mingled liking and hate for each
other, just such as is very common among relations. Whether the girl had
most satisfaction in the plays they shared, or in teasing him, or taking
her small revenge upon him for teasing her, it would have been hard to
say. At any rate, she was lonely without him. She had more fondness for
the old black woman than anybody; but Sophy could not follow her far
beyond her own old rocking-chair. As for her father, she had made him
afraid of her, not for his sake, but for her own. Sometimes she would
seem to be fond of him, and the parent's heart would yearn within him as
she twined her supple arms about him; and then some look she gave him,
some half-articulated expression, would turn his cheek pale and almost
make him shiver, and he would say kindly, “Now go, Elsie, dear,” and
smile upon her as she went, and close and lock the door softly after
her. Then his forehead would knot and furrow itself, and the drops of
anguish stand thick upon it. He would go to the western window of
his study and look at the solitary mound with the marble slab for its
head-stone. After his grief had had its way, he would kneel down and
pray for his child as one who has no hope save in that special grace
which can bring the most rebellious spirit into sweet subjection. All
this might seem like weakness in a parent having the charge of one
sole daughter of his house and heart; but he had tried authority and
tenderness by turns so long without any good effect, that he had become
sore perplexed, and, surrounding her with cautious watchfulness as he
best might, left her in the main to her own guidance and the merciful
influences which Heaven might send down to direct her footsteps.
Meantime the boy grew up to youth and early manhood through a strange
succession of adventures. He had been at school at Buenos Ayres,--had
quarrelled with his mother's relatives,--had run off to the Pampas, and
lived with the Gauchos;--had made friends with the Indians, and ridden
with them, it was rumored, in some of their savage forays,--had
returned and made up his quarrel,--had got money by inheritance or
otherwise,--had troubled the peace of certain magistrates,--had found
it convenient to leave the City of Wholesome Breezes for a time, and
had galloped off on a fast horse of his, (so it was said,) with some
officers riding after him, who took good care (but this was only the
popular story) not to catch him. A few days after this he was taking
his ice on the Alameda of Mendoza, and a week or two later sailed from
Valparaiso for New York, carrying with him the horse with which he
had scampered over the Plains, a trunk or two with his newly purchased
outfit of, clothing and other conveniences, and a belt heavy with gold
and with a few Brazilian diamonds sewed in it, enough in value to serve
him for a long journey.
Dick Venner had seen life enough to wear out the earlier sensibilities
of adolescence. He was tired of worshipping or tyrannizing over the
bistred or umbered beauties of mingled blood among whom he had been
living. Even that piquant exhibition which the Rio de Mendoza presents
to the amateur of breathing sculpture failed to interest him. He was
thinking of a far-off village on the other side of the equator, and of
the wild girl with whom he used to play and quarrel, a creature of a
different race from these degenerate mongrels.
“A game little devil she was, sure enough!”--And as Dick spoke, he bared
his wrist to look for the marks she had left on it: two small white
scars, where the two small sharp upper teeth had struck when she flashed
at him with her eyes sparkling as bright as those glittering stones
sewed up in the belt he wore. “That's a filly worth noosing!” said Dick
to himself, as he looked in admiration at the sign of her spirit and
passion. “I wonder if she will bite at eighteen as she did at eight! She
shall have a chance to try, at any rate!”
Such was the self-sacrificing disposition with which Richard Venner,
Esq., a passenger by the Condor from Valparaiso, set foot upon his
native shore, and turned his face in the direction of Rockland, The
Mountain, and the mansion-house. He had heard something, from time
to time, of his New-England relatives, and knew that they were living
together as he left them. And so he heralded himself to “My dear Uncle”
by a letter signed “Your loving nephew, Richard Venner,” in which letter
he told a very frank story of travel and mercantile adventure, expressed
much gratitude for the excellent counsel and example which had helped to
form his character and preserve him in the midst of temptation, inquired
affectionately after his uncle's health, was much interested to know
whether his lively cousin who used to be his playmate had grown up as
handsome as she promised to be, and announced his intention of paying
his respects to them both at Rockland. Not long after this came the
trunks marked R. V. which he had sent before him, forerunners of his
advent: he was not going to wait for a reply or an invitation.
What a sound that is,--the banging down of the preliminary trunk,
without its claimant to give it the life which is borrowed by all
personal appendages, so long as the owner's hand or eye is on them! If
it announce the coming of one loved and longed for, how we delight to
look at it, to sit down on it, to caress it in our fancies, as a lone
exile walking out on a windy pier yearns towards the merchantman lying
alongside, with the colors of his own native land at her peak, and the
name of the port he sailed from long ago upon her stern! But if it tell
the near approach of the undesired, inevitable guest, what sound short
of the muffled noises made by the undertakers as they turn the corners
in the dim-lighted house, with low shuffle of feet and whispered
cautions, carries such a sense of knocking-kneed collapse with it as the
thumping down in the front entry of the heavy portmanteau, rammed with
the changes of uncounted coming weeks?
Whether the R. V. portmanteaus brought one or the other of these
emotions to the tenants of the Dudley mansion, it might not be easy
to settle. Elsie professed to be pleased with the thought of having an
adventurous young stranger, with stories to tell, an inmate of their
quiet, not to say dull, family. Under almost any other circumstances,
her father would have been unwilling to take a young fellow of whom he
knew so little under his roof; but this was his nephew, and anything
that seemed like to amuse or please Elsie was agreeable to him. He had
grown almost desperate, and felt as if any change in the current of her
life and feelings might save her from some strange paroxysm of dangerous
mental exaltation or sullen perversion of disposition, from which some
fearful calamity might come to herself or others.
Dick had been several weeks at the Dudley mansion. A few days before, he
had made a sudden dash for the nearest large city,--and when the Doctor
met him, he was just returning from his visit.
It had been a curious meeting between the two young persons, who had
parted so young and after such strange relations with each other. When
Dick first presented himself at the mansion, not one in the house would
have known him for the boy who had left them all so suddenly years ago.
He was so dark, partly from his descent, partly from long habits of
exposure, that Elsie looked almost fair beside him. He had something of
the family beauty which belonged to his cousin, but his eye had a fierce
passion in it, very unlike the cold glitter of Elsie's. Like many people
of strong and imperious temper, he was soft-voiced and very gentle in
his address, when he had no special reason for being otherwise. He soon
found reasons enough to be as amiable as he could force himself to be
with his uncle and his cousin. Elsie was to his fancy. She had a strange
attraction for him, quite unlike anything he had ever known in other
women. There was something, too, in early associations: when those who
parted as children meet as man and woman, there is always a renewal
of that early experience which followed the taste of the forbidden
fruit,--a natural blush of consciousness, not without its charm.
Nothing could be more becoming than the behavior of “Richard Venner,
Esquire, the guest of Dudley Venner, Esquire, at his noble mansion,” as
he was announced in the Court column of the “Rockland Weekly Universe.”
He was pleased to find himself treated with kindness and attention as a
relative. He made himself very agreeable by abundant details concerning
the religious, political, social, commercial, and educational progress
of the South American cities and states. He was himself much interested
in everything that was going on about the Dudley mansion, walked all
over it, noticed its valuable wood-lots with special approbation, was
delighted with the grand old house and its furniture, and would not be
easy until he had seen all the family silver and heard its history. In
return, he had much to tell of his father, now dead,--the only one of
the Venners, beside themselves, in whose fate his uncle was interested.
With Elsie, he was subdued and almost tender in his manner; with the few
visitors whom they saw, shy and silent,--perhaps a little watchful, if
any young man happened to be among them.
Young fellows placed on their good behavior are apt to get restless and
nervous, all ready to fly off into some mischief or other. Dick Venner
had his half-tamed horse with him to work off his suppressed life with.
When the savage passion of his young blood came over him, he would fetch
out the mustang, screaming and kicking as these amiable beasts are wont
to do, strap the Spanish saddle tight to his back, vault into it, and,
after getting away from the village, strike the long spurs into his
sides and whirl away in a wild gallop, until the black horse was flecked
with white foam, and the cruel steel points were red with his blood.
When horse and rider were alike fired, he would fling the bridle on his
neck and saunter homeward, always contriving to get to the stable in a
quiet way, and coming into the house as calm as a bishop after a sober
trot on his steady-going cob.
After a few weeks of this kind of life, he began to want some more
fierce excitement. He had tried making downright love to Elsie, with no
great success as yet, in his own opinion. The girl was capricious in her
treatment of him, sometimes scowling and repellent, sometimes familiar,
very often, as she used to be of old, teasing and malicious. All this,
perhaps, made her more interesting to a young man who was tired of easy
conquests. There was a strange fascination in her eyes, too, which at
times was quite irresistible, so that he would feel himself drawn to
her by a power which seemed to take away his will for the moment. It may
have been nothing but the common charm of bright eyes; but he had never
before experienced the same kind of attraction.
Perhaps she was not so very different from what she had been as a child,
after all. At any rate, so it seemed to Dick Venner, who, as was said
before, had tried making love to her. They were sitting alone in the
study one day; Elsie had round her neck that somewhat peculiar ornament,
the golden torque, which she had worn to the great party. Youth is
adventurous and very curious about necklaces, brooches, chains, and
other such adornments, so long as they are worn by young persons of
the female sex. Dick was seized with a great passion for examining this
curious chain, and, after some preliminary questions, was rash enough
to lean towards her and put out his hand toward the neck that lay in the
golden coil.
She threw her head back, her eyes narrowing and her forehead drawing
down so that Dick thought her head actually flattened itself. He started
involuntarily; for she looked so like the little girl who had struck him
with those sharp flashing teeth, that the whole scene came back, and he
felt the stroke again as if it had just been given, and the two white
scars began to sting as they did after the old Doctor had burned them
with that stick of gray caustic, which looked so like a slate pencil,
and felt so much like the end of a red-hot poker.
It took something more than a gallop to set him right after this. The
next day he mentioned having received a letter from a mercantile agent
with whom he had dealings. What his business was is, perhaps, none of
our business. At any rate, it required him to go at once to the city
where his correspondent resided.
Independently of this “business” which called him, there may have been
other motives, such as have been hinted at. People who have been living
for a long time in dreary country-places, without any emotion beyond
such as are occasioned by a trivial pleasure or annoyance, often get
crazy at last for a vital paroxysm of some kind or other. In this state
they rush to the great cities for a plunge into their turbid life-baths,
with a frantic thirst for every exciting pleasure, which makes them
the willing and easy victims of all those who sell the Devil's wares on
commission. The less intelligent and instructed class of unfortunates,
who venture with their ignorance and their instincts into what is
sometimes called the “life” of great cities, are put through a rapid
course of instruction which entitles them very commonly to a diploma
from the police court. But they only illustrate the working of the same
tendency in mankind at large which has been occasionally noticed in the
sons of ministers and other eminently worthy people, by many ascribed
to that intense congenital hatred for goodness which distinguishes human
nature from that of the brute, but perhaps as readily accounted for by
considering it as the yawning and stretching of a young soul cramped too
long in one moral posture.
Richard Veneer was a young man of remarkable experience for his years.
He ran less risk, therefore, in exposing himself to the temptations and
dangers of a great city than many older men, who, seeking the livelier
scenes of excitement to be found in large towns as a relaxation after
the monotonous routine of family life, are too often taken advantage of
and made the victims of their sentiments or their generous confidence
in their fellow-creatures. Such was not his destiny. There was something
about him which looked as if he would not take bullying kindly. He had
also the advantage of being acquainted with most of those ingenious
devices by which the proverbial inconstancy of fortune is steadied to
something more nearly approaching fixed laws, and the dangerous risks
which have so often led young men to ruin and suicide are practically
reduced to somewhat less than nothing. So that Mr. Richard Veneer worked
off his nervous energies without any troublesome adventure, and
was ready to return to Rockland in less than a week, without having
lightened the money-belt he wore round his body, or tarnished the long
glittering knife he carried in his boot.
Dick had sent his trunk to the nearest town through which the railroad
leading to the city passed. He rode off on his black horse and left him
at the place where he took the cars. On arriving at the city station, he
took a coach and drove to one of the great hotels. Thither drove also
a sagacious-looking, middle-aged man, who entered his name as “W.
Thompson” in the book at the office immediately after that of “R.
Venner.” Mr. “Thompson” kept a carelessly observant eye upon Mr. Venner
during his stay at the hotel, and followed him to the cars when he left,
looking over his shoulder when he bought his ticket at the station, and
seeing him fairly off without obtruding himself in any offensive way
upon his attention. Mr. Thompson, known in other quarters as Detective
Policeman Terry, got very little by his trouble. Richard Venner did
not turn out to be the wife-poisoner, the defaulting cashier, the
river-pirate, or the great counterfeiter. He paid his hotel-bill as a
gentleman should always do, if he has the money and can spare it. The
detective had probably overrated his own sagacity when he ventured
to suspect Mr. Venner. He reported to his chief that there was a
knowing-looking fellow he had been round after, but he rather guessed he
was nothing more than “one o' them Southern sportsmen.”
The poor fellows at the stable where Dick had left his horse had had
trouble enough with him. One of the ostlers was limping about with a
lame leg, and another had lost a mouthful of his coat, which came very
near carrying a piece of his shoulder with it. When Mr. Venner came back
for his beast, he was as wild as if he had just been lassoed, screaming,
kicking, rolling over to get rid of his saddle, and when his rider was
at last mounted, jumping about in a way to dislodge any common horseman.
To all this Dick replied by sticking his long spurs deeper and deeper
into his flanks, until the creature found he was mastered, and dashed
off as if all the thistles of the Pampas were pricking him.
“One more gallop, Juan?” This was in the last mile of the road before he
came to the town which brought him in sight of the mansion-house. It was
in this last gallop that the fiery mustang and his rider flashed by the
old Doctor. Cassia pointed her sharp ears and shied to let them pass.
The Doctor turned and looked through the little round glass in the back
of his sulky.
“Dick Turpin, there, will find more than his match!” said the Doctor.