KITTY HOOD AND HER SCHOOL-HOUSE--DICK COMPTON GOING
SOLDIERING--A LOVERS' QUARREL, A BIT OF JEALOUSY, AND A
THREAT--HOW DICK COMPTON MET HIS SUPPOSED RIVAL--AN
ENCOUNTER, SUDDEN DEATH, AND KITTY HOOD'S TERRIBLE
DISCOVERY.
"I do not care, Dick Compton! You are a mean, good-for-nothing fellow, and
the sooner you go away and get killed, the better. I hope I may never set
eyes on you again, as long as I live."
A pleasant style of address, especially from a pretty woman; and yet one to
which a good many persons have submitted, first and last, from little
people whom they could physically have slain with a single stroke and
mentally discomfited with very little more trouble!
The time of this objurgation was the same morning on which the events took
place which have already been recorded as occurring at the residence of
Margaret Hayley, and at a very little earlier hour than that which
witnessed the departure of Carlton Brand from the place of his signal
discomfiture. The place was in front of a little country-school-house
standing half a mile from the Darby road, north-westward, and perhaps two
miles westward from the Hayleys. The interlocutors were Richard Compton
(already introduced as "Dick" by the flippant tongue of his companion), a
young and well-to-do farmer of the neighborhood, about a quarter of a
century old, perhaps some five feet nine in height, thickset,
strong-limbed, with a round, good-humored face guiltless of beard but
browned a good deal by exposure in the field, generally smiling and
content, but with a spice of the bull-dog in his nature which made him
sullen occasionally and led him always to be very fond of his own peculiar
way;--and Kitty Hood, teacher of the district school of that particular
section of the Keystone State, a short, round, rosy little lass, with merry
brown eyes that only occasionally had a sterner kind of mischief in them,
dark brown waved hair, and just the last general appearance in the world
that a phrenologist would have selected for the necessarily calm and
dignified life of an instructress of callow youth.
The old weather-beaten school-house, erected perhaps fifty years before but
not yet swept away in the prevailing rage for staring new white baby-houses
for the instruction of children in the country, stood at the base of a
slight wooded hill, facing southward; a fine old sycamore near the door
holding the whole house and all its contents in flecked light and shade; a
group of locusts not far away to the left showing a motley jumble of
benches beneath, that were evidently the favorite lounging-place of the
children during play-hours; and a little pond of a hundred or two feet in
diameter, with one edge half covered with the leaves of the intrusive
pond-lilies, and the other bordered by a juvenile wharf of stones, old
boards and bark, supplying the youngsters with a place in which to paddle,
sail boats and get very wet without any danger of being drowned, in summer,
and with a reliable though limited skating-ground in winter. Its
convenience for winter sports could only be imagined, at that season of the
year when the wild-roses were clambering up the dingy boards of the
inclosure, to the windows of the school-room; but its inevitable use as a
part of the great "highway of nations" was too plainly shown by a
circumstance which, alas!--at the same moment illustrated the vicissitudes
of commerce and the necessity for the existence of insurance companies. A
stately vessel of the mercantile guild, twelve inches in length but with
the dignity of three masts and each holding spitted on it as a sail nearly
an entire half-sheet of foolscap paper, had evidently left the little wharf
during the morning play-hour, freighted for the Spice Islands lying up
among the pond-lilies, but suffered the fate of many sea-going ships,
fallen under the power of foul winds or adverse currents, and stranded on
a reef of mud some paces from the shore, from which the ingenuity of her
factors had not yet been able to release her, and where she lay "keeled
over" in a manner equally contaminating to her white paper sails and
unpleasant to her possible passengers. No doubt anxious eyes were meanwhile
glancing out of the windows, between two leaves of the geography which
detailed the perils of navigation in the East Indian archipelago, to see
whether piratical canoes or pirogues did not put off to burn that noble
vessel and massacre her crew, before noon should give time for any further
efforts towards her release. Here the course of this narration painfully
but necessarily loses sight of the good three-master "Snorter, of
Philadelphia," as many another of the fairy barks launched by inexperienced
youth disappears from view and is known no more forever; but let us hope
that this particular venture was floated off at some early "spring tide" of
play-spell, and that she "came safely to her desired haven!"
Within the little one-story school-house, with its unpainted desks and
benches of pine, dark with age and scarred by notch and inscription from
the penknives of half a century of school-boys,--there was going on, at
that moment, precisely what may be seen in any school from Windsor to
Washoe, when the ruling power is temporarily absent. Wilkie painted not
only from life, but from the inevitable in life, when he drew the "Village
School in an Uproar;" for mobs have been put down by the military power and
even savage communities have been made quiet by the exercise of
powder-and-ball; but no force has yet been discovered that could check (and
who would wish it to be entirely checked, after all?) the riotous mischief
of the school-room when the terrible eye is removed! Five minutes before,
Mistress Hood in the chair of authority, fifty heads of all hues and all
textures had been more or less closely bent down over book and slate, and a
low monotonous hum, something like the sleepy drone from a score of
bee-hives, had been heard floating out on the summer air. Now, Mistress
Kitty Hood had been just two minutes absent from the school-room, and a
nice little Pandemonium was already established, that it would need some
birchings and many strong words to annihilate. Half a dozen of the big boys
had gathered into a knot, not far from the door, and were snickering aloud
and pointing knowingly towards the point of interest without, with running
comments on "Miss Hood's beau!" Three little girls, forgetting their sex,
were playing at leap-frog between and over two of the benches, to the
disarrangement of their short skirts and the eventual tumbling over of one
of the benches with a loud clatter. Two or three of the larger girls were
in close conversation, about what there is no means of knowing except that
one of them remarked that "it was real indecent and she meant to tell her
ma!" One boy, who was the possessor of a magnificently national
handkerchief, had stuck it on the end of the long ruler from the mistress'
desk, and was going through a dress parade of one, with a feeble whistle as
music. A young brute was taking the opportunity of pinching the ear of a
smaller boy, and making him whimper, as a punishment for some previous
alleged injury. Another had made a pair of spectacles out of blue paper,
and stuck them on the nose of a little girl on one of the near benches, who
blushed so rosily that her white dress, blue spectacles and red face quite
supplied the national colors. And still another, with cheeks marvellously
distended, was trying whether he could, in the short space of time during
which the mistress might be absent, manage to choke down three early
harvest-apples without dying by strangulation or requiring any assistance
from his companions.
Such were the surroundings of the country school-house, and such was the
aspect of Kitty Hood's little school-room during her temporary absence. And
now what was the necessity which had for the moment withdrawn her from her
charge, and what was the provocation under which the words were uttered,
given at the commencement of this chapter?
Perhaps the personal appearance of Dick Compton may go at least a little
distance towards the explanation. As he stood kicking his foot against the
lower step of the school-house door and listening to the words of petulance
which his mistress so plentifully bestowed upon him, it was to be seen that
while his coat was a sack of ordinary light summer-stuff, looking civil and
homelike enough, his pants and cap were both gray and military, according
to the pattern of the Reserves. Under his arm he held a bundle which might
very easily have contained the coat necessary to make the uniform complete;
and such was, indeed, the composition of the parcel. Dick Compton, never
before connected with any military organization, had the night before
determined to abandon home and the girl he loved, leave other hands to
gather in the fast ripening harvest, intrust his favorite pair of
farm-horses to the care of his younger brother and the hands on the farm,
and make at least a small part of the response to the urgent call of
Governor Curtin. He had been down to the rendezvous, to sign the roll of
membership in the Reserves, and to get his uniform, that morning. He was to
leave with the regiment for Harrisburgh, that evening, and it was on his
way home to the pleasant farm-house lying a couple of miles northward and
across the main road leading up from Market street, that he had called at
the school-house to make his adieux to Kitty Hood, which seemed to be so
ungraciously received.
They were so indeed. Kitty, from the moment when Compton tapped at the door
and called her out amid the surprised glances and then the tittering of the
school-children--from the moment when she had observed his military cap and
pants--had understood the whole story and put herself not only on her
dignity but her unamiability. She had not smiled even once upon him, or
allowed him to take her hand, though he reached out for it; and though the
jolly round face of the school-mistress was not by any means the pattern of
countenance that could be made stupendously awful by the greatest amount
of effort, yet Kitty had done her best to be royal--not to say imperial. To
his explanations she had been worse than the traditional
"deaf"--insultingly interrupting; and to his asseverations that the country
needed the heart and the arm of every true man, she had answered with that
unromantic but unanswerable word: "fiddlestick!" She had tried wheedling,
coaxing, scolding, every thing but crying, in the effort to make him forego
his resolution and take off his name (supposing that he could do such a
thing) from the roll of the Reserves. She had no doubt, and expressed
herself to that effect, that if he went to Harrisburgh he would come back
in a coffin, all cut up into little bits by the savages, or not come back
at all and have his skull and bones used for a drinking cup and a few
necklaces by the women of Secessia, or come back in a condition worse than
either, with both legs cut off close up to the body, one arm gone and his
skull broken in, and a pretty thing for a respectable young woman to marry!
It was very well, for the sake of his adherence to his patriotic purpose,
that Dick Compton had in him that dash of bull-dog tenacity to which
allusion has before been made; for it is not every man to whom such words
of spiteful prophesy and determined discouragement, coming from the lips of
a pretty woman who made her own love the excuse for uttering them, would
have been without their effect. They might as well have been uttered to one
of the granite gods of old, as to Compton, so far as moving him to any
change of purpose was concerned; but his temper was by no means of as good
proof as his determination. In fact, Kitty Hood's spiteful expostulations
very soon made him ill-natured if not angry; and by the time the
culmination already recorded was reached, he was quite ready to say, in a
tone corresponding to her own:
"Well, I _will_ go, Kitty Hood, whether you like it or not. I was a fool
not to go away without walking a mile further to let you know any thing
about it."
"Nobody asked you!" was the petulant reply.
"Nobody _need_ to ask me, next time!" was the rejoinder. "I have a right to
be killed, if I please, and it is none of your business whether I am or
not. A pretty world it would be, with half of it made up of women too weak
and too cowardly to fight a cat, and the other half of men tied fast of
their apron strings, so that they had to ask every time they wanted to go
away, just as one of your little whelps of school-boys whines: 'Please to
let me go out!'"
Kitty Hood was finding a tongue quite as sharp as her own, by this time,
and the effect was very much what is often seen in corresponding cases.
Finding her lover growing as angry as herself, and a little more violent,
the young school-mistress concluded that it was time to assume a less
decided demeanor, so that if they must part they might do so without an
absolute quarrel.
"Well, Dick," she said, after a moment of pause, "there is no use of your
being angry about it!" Just as if she had not been showing ill-temper from
the beginning--the minx! "Of course I cannot hold you, and do not wish to
do so, if you prefer dressing yourself up in that ridiculous manner and
standing up to be shot at, to remaining here with _me_."
"I don't _prefer_ it, you know I don't, Kitty!" said Dick, aware that his
flank of conversation had once more been turned and himself placed in a
false position.
But here came an interruption. A young gentleman of seven made his
appearance in the door of the school-room, his hands blacker than the
proverbial ace-of-spades, his nether raiments spotted, and his face drawn
into a most comical whimper, while his words came out between a sob and a
hiccough:
"Please, Miss Hood, won't you come in to Jem Stephenson? He has gone and
upsot the inkstand all over my hands and spoilt my new trowsers!"
"Go in and keep your seat, you young villain, or I shall flog you and Jem
Stephenson both!" was the consoling assurance with which the "young
villain" departed; while the hum from the school-room was evidently
increasing, and the young school-mistress felt that she must indeed soon
resume the reins of government if she was not to be permanently left
without a realm worth ruling. But she took time to rejoin to Compton's last
assertion.
"I don't know any thing of the kind. I say that if you thought half as much
of me as you did of public opinion and making a show of your fine new
clothes, you would not stir one step."
"Now, Kitty, do be reasonable--" again began Compton.
"Look at other people--don't _they_ respect the wishes of those they expect
to marry?" the young lady went on, not heeding his last attempt.
"See--there is Carlton Brand--who does not know that he has remained at
home ever since the war broke out, though he could have been a Colonel and
perhaps even a General--just because he was really in love with Margaret
Hayley, and she did not wish him to leave her?"
It is scarcely necessary to say, at this stage of the narration, that Miss
Kitty Hood was "begging the question." She had never heard one word to
indicate why Carlton Brand had not accepted his opportunities, and she
merely mentioned the two as people of prominence in the section,
acquaintances, and the first pair of lovers of whom she happened to think.
But she had made a terrible blunder, as many of us do at the very moment
when we seem to be performing the very keenest of operations. Carlton
Brand--one of the finest-looking men to be found within a radius of an
hundred miles, a member of one of the liberal professions, and known to be
wealthy enough to afford indulgence in any line of life which he might
happen to fancy--was naturally an object of envy if not of suspicion to
hundreds of other young men who did not feel that they possessed quite the
same advantages. Young farmers, who chanced to catch him saying a polite
word to their sisters, looked at him through eyes not too confiding, in
spite of the fact that not even rumor had pointed out a single instance in
which he had indulged in a dishonorable amour; and those who detected him
in glances of kindness (perhaps of admiration) towards demoiselles whom
they had marked out as their own destined marital property, had a bad habit
of even looking out of the corners of their eyes and scowling a little, at
such manifestations. Carlton Brand, in all this, was only paying a very
slight penalty for his triple advantage of wealth, position and good looks,
while many others pay the same unpleasant toll to society for the
possession of even one (and sometimes none) of the three favors of fortune.
The farm-house of the Comptons and the residence of the Brands (as will be
hereafter made apparent) lay but a very short distance apart; and the
little house (perhaps it might with more propriety have been called a
cottage) in which Kitty Hood had seen the light, and where she lived with
her quiet widowed mother, was still nearer to the abode of the young
lawyer. Though the Hoods were much more humbly circumstanced than their
neighbors, intercourse between the two families had always been frequent,
with a very pleasant friendship between Elsie and Kitty, and more visits of
the young girl at the residence of the Brands, and of Carlton, accompanying
his sister, to that of the Hoods, than at all pleased the lover and
expectant husband of Kitty. Then the latter had a head a little giddy and a
tongue more than a little imprudent; and she had shown the bad taste, many
times since their tacit engagement, to draw comparisons, in the presence of
her lover, to his disadvantage, and in favor of a man who had much better
opportunities than the farmer for keeping his clothes unimpeachable, his
hands unsoiled, and his cheek unbrowned. Only very imprudent people, and
perhaps very unfeeling ones, use such words; but they are used much too
often, ignoring the pure gold that may lie within a rough nugget, and
preferring the mere tinsel leaf on a bit of handsome carving. Kitty Hood
was one of the thoughtless, and she was likely, some day, to pay the
penalty in a manner she little anticipated.
Within the few weeks previous, without Kitty being at all aware of the
fact, Mr. Dick Compton had allowed himself to ruminate more than was
healthy upon the glances he had chanced to see interchanged between Kitty
and her "stuck-up lawyer friend," as he chose to designate him, and upon
the continual commendations which she chose to bestow on the latter--until
rooted personal dislike and something very near to positive jealousy, had
been the result. Walking over towards the rendezvous that morning, if one
shadow of hesitation on the subject of going to Harrisburgh had passed
through the mind of the young farmer, it was caused by his dislike of
leaving Kitty out of view, with Carlton Brand in the same near
neighborhood. All that difficulty had been removed by the understanding
that the lawyer was to leave at the same time and on the same service with
himself; but when Kitty at once revived the obnoxious name with a new
phrase of commendation, and signified that the section was not to be
relieved of the lawyer's presence during his own absence, it is not very
strange that the unreasonable demons of jealousy began tugging again at his
heart-strings, and that he felt like performing some severe operation upon
the Mordecai who sat in his gate, if he could only catch him!
"So you have got to quoting Carlton Brand again, have you!" he responded to
Miss Kitty's citation. "I thought I had told before that I had heard nearly
enough of that proud puppy!"
"'Puppy' indeed!" and Miss Kitty fired in an instant. "He's nothing of the
kind, but a man and a gentleman, and you know it, Dick Compton!"
"Oh, yes, a _gentleman_, and that suits you to a turn, Kitty Hood!" was the
sneering reply. "When your _gentlemen_ are in the way, you think that an
honest hard-working man is nobody."
If ever a man spoke an unjust word to a woman (and it is to be feared that
a great many have been uttered since the unfortunate gift of speech was
conferred upon the race), Dick Compton was stupidly unjust at that moment.
For the very quarrel (it was but little else, from first to last) in which
they were engaged, had originated in the young girl's evident anxiety for
his safety and pleading that he would not go away and leave her, even for a
short period! Kitty Hood felt the injustice, if he did not, and all the old
rage came back again, in a varied form, but hotter than ever. Her eyes
flashed, she choked for a moment, and then, before Dick Compton could be at
all aware what was about to happen, the school-mistress drew her little
white hand back and brought him a ringing box on the ear and cheek, that
the latter would not be very likely to forget for a fortnight,--while she
flashed out:
"Dick Compton, just take that for a fool! You are not worth any honest
woman's loving, with your mean jealousy. You can go where you please, and I
will never speak to you again until you learn better manners than to talk
to _me_ in that manner!"
Before the jealous lover had half recovered from the blow she stepped away
from him and put her foot on the sill of the door, to re-enter. Compton,
spite of the tingle in his cheek, did not quite believe in the propriety of
parting in that manner, when he was just going to the war; and he made a
step towards her.
"Kitty!--oh, now, Kitty--"
"Keep off, Dick Compton! Good-day and good-bye, and nobody cares where you
go or how long you stay!" was the forbidding rejoinder, as the
school-mistress swung herself round the jamb of the door and half
disappeared. Her blood was at fever heat: that of her lover was likely to
be at the same pitch in a moment.
"You won't come back, then?"
"No, I won't!"
"Then I will tell you something, Kitty Hood!" and the young man was very
angry and very earnest when he made the threat. "If I can catch Carlton
Brand before I go away to-night, I will just flog him till he is the
nearest to a dead man _you_ ever saw,--and see how you both like it!"
Without another word the young farmer turned and strode round the corner of
the school-house with his bundle and his indignation, making hasty strides
up the hill and towards the woods that lay in the direction of his home.
Kitty Hood saw thus much, and realized that very probably she was looking
at him for the last time. Then she realized, too, what she had scarcely
felt before--that she had been terribly to blame in the quarrel--that she
might have been wrecking the happiness of a life by her ill-temper--and
that it would never do to let poor Dick go away to the war, so angry at her
that if killed his last thought would be upon every one else rather than
her, and that if he returned he would never come near her again--never!
Then poor Kitty dropped her head upon her desk, heedless of the only
partially-hushed Pandemonium around her and the necessity of settling with
Master Jem Stephenson, spiller of ink and others,--dropped her head upon
her desk and sobbed loudly enough for some of the children to be quite
aware of the fact, so that one of the little boys hazarded the remark,
_sotto voce_: "Wonder what is the matter with her!" and a bigger one
enlightened his ignorance with: "Why, didn't you see? Her beau has got on
sojer clothes and is going away--stupid!"
Only a minute or two, and then Kitty Hood could endure the struggle no
longer. She was very unhappy and not a little penitent. She _could_ not
remain any longer in the midst of those noisy children: she _must_ go home
(or elsewhere) and see what facilities fate might yet throw in her way for
seeing and speaking once more to her angry lover before his departure.
Perhaps she could even find some means, still, for inducing him to remain,
and then----. And at that thought the school-mistress raised her head,
informed her school that she had a bad headache and must go home to bed,
and dismissed them for a half-holiday.
Whereupon one of the larger girls, who had seen the lover go away, without
hearing any of the parting words, and who thought that she understood all
about the affair, remarked to one of her companions that: "That was real
nice, and she thought all the better of Miss Hood for it!" while one of the
larger boys, unawake as yet to any of the softer feelings, bawled out to
his mates that: "Miss Hood was going to see her old beau off--ki-yah!" It
is painful to be obliged to say, justifying previously-expressed
apprehension, that even the stranded vessel was forgotten in the haste with
which the school separated, and that all the imaginary pirates of the
Society, the Friendly and various other islands that maintained every thing
else rather than friendly society for sailors, had at least one day more of
chance at her with their canoes and pirogues.
Her scholars dismissed, Kitty Hood took time to wash and cool her eyes and
to smooth her hair, for a moment, at the little wash-closet in one corner
of the school-room--then flung on her light bonnet and gauzy mantle and
took her way, walking somewhat rapidly in spite of the heat of the coming
noon, along the path that led around the base of the hill north-westward
towards the residence of Carlton and Elsie Brand.
Mr. Richard Compton had meanwhile been walking yet more rapidly, with his
bundle under his arm, up the path leading over the hill, almost due north,
and through the belt of woods discernible from the school-house. Whether
the increasing heat of the day added to the heat of his temper is
uncertain; but certain it is that he did not at all cool down under it. He
had the excuse of being the party _last_ ill-used, if not indeed the party
_first_ so treated. He loved Kitty Hood beyond all reason, and he was of
course the person most likely to grow angry at her and jealous of her,
beyond all endurance. He felt that he could not worse punish her, or better
satisfy himself, than by carrying out his threat and soundly flogging
Carlton Brand if he should once catch him under proper circumstances; he
had no doubt whatever of his ability to flog him or "any other man," when
he once set about the task; and while surmounting the hill, and even after
plunging into the cool, thick, leafy woods, full of the twitter of birds
and the fragrance of June blossoms, which should have had the power to
soften passion in the breast of any man who held a true sympathy with
Nature, his mental fists were clenched and his teeth set in a manner most
threatening for any opposing force with which he might happen to be brought
into contact.
That "opposing force" was much nearer than the young man at the moment
imagined. He was just emerging by the path to the main road which he was to
cross, half a mile before reaching his own farm, when he saw a horseman
riding rapidly up from the eastward. Intersecting the path just where it
joined the road, was a blind road leading through the woods across toward
the Darby, and closed at the entrance by a swinging gate. There was a low
panel near it, and the young farmer leaped it in preference to unfastening
the clumsy latch--finding himself, when beyond the fence, in the presence
of Carlton Brand, who had just reined in his horse at the gate. Whatever
there may have been in the face of the horseman at that moment, within a
few minutes after his leaving the presence of Margaret Hayley and his
sister, the eyes of Dick Compton were not sufficiently keen to recognize
it. He only saw the handsome, proud-looking young lawyer, and his old
antipathy rose, with the remembrance of the threat he had just used,
accompanying it. Carlton Brand saw nothing more in the face of the young
farmer than he had been accustomed to see, and accosted him as he might
have done any other acquaintance, under the same circumstances, with a
request for a slight service.
"Ah, Compton, is that you?--just be kind enough to throw open that gate for
me, will you?"
"No--I'll not do any thing of the kind. If you want the gate open, just
get off and open it yourself!" was the surly reply, very much to the
astonishment of the lawyer. His face paled a little, then flushed, and he
hesitated for an instant before he asked:
"What do you mean, Richard Compton, by answering me in that manner?"
"What I say!" answered Compton, quite as insolently as before. "You are a
puppy, Carlton Brand, and I have half a mind to take you off that horse and
flog you soundly, instead of opening a gate for you."
"The d----l you have!" was the very natural reply. "Well, Dick Compton, I
do not know what it is all about, but you are behaving very much like a
ruffian, to a man who has never done any thing worse to you than to treat
you like a gentleman."
"You lie, Carlton Brand, and you know it!" was the response.
"I lie, do I?" and the speaker shifted a little uneasily in his saddle,
though he made no apparent movement to alight.
"Yes, you lie!" said Compton, his voice thick and hoarse with agitation and
anger. "And if you will get off that horse I will teach you a lesson about
meddling with other people's property, that you will remember for a
twelvemonth."
If Carlton Brand's face expressed intense surprise, it was certainly
nothing more than he felt; for what the "meddling with other people's
property" could mean, except that he might unwittingly have run across some
interest of Compton's in the pursuit of his profession, he had no more idea
than he could have had of the number of trees in the adjoining wood or the
depth of soil on which his horse was standing. Yet he threw his leg at once
over the saddle, at the last salutation, sprang to the ground, flung his
bridle over one of the posts near the gate, and said:
"Now then!"
In an instant and without another word, Dick Compton, who had dropped his
bundle as the other dismounted, sprang at him, fury in his face and the
clench of determined hostility in every nerve. Probably no battle on earth
was ever fought so singularly--the one combatant without the least cause
for his rage, and the other not even acquainted with the accusation made
against him. They seemed not badly matched, in physical force, though any
connoisseur of the exclusively muscular would have considered Compton
likely to be by far the most enduring. He was fifteen or twenty pounds the
heavier, and fully trained by field labor; Brand two or three inches the
taller, athletic, and a little the longer armed.
Half a dozen blows were rapidly exchanged, before either succeeded in
breaking the guard of the other. Then Compton managed to reach the lawyer's
cheek, with a blow of some violence that probably stung within quite as
much as it did without. At all events it brought a new color to his face,
and from that instant he was cool no longer. He struck out more rapidly and
angrily, and Compton followed his motion. In less than a minute half a
dozen blows had reached the faces and bodies of each, and there was a
probability that, whatever the event of the fight, both would be injured as
well as disfigured. Suddenly, the instant after, as Compton aimed a
well-directed blow at the throat of his antagonist, that he believed would
entirely settle the affair, something happened, upon which he had not
calculated. Whether his blow was entirely fended he did not know; but what
he did know, so far as he knew any thing, was that Carlton Brand's right
fist, dashed out with a force little less formidable than the kick of an
iron-shod horse, struck him on the left of the nose and the cheek
adjoining, sending a perfect gore of blood spouting over face and clothing,
and throwing him reeling backward, stunned and half senseless, to the
earth,--the fight over, so far as he was to bear any part in it.
There was only a little sensation left in poor Compton at that juncture,
but that little cried out against being beaten down in such a manner by a
man whom he had before considered his inferior in muscular power, and whom
he had set out to flog. The bull-dog within him wished to rise and make
another effort, but for a moment his eyes _would not_ open and his head
would not clear sufficiently for him to make any effort at regaining his
lost perpendicular. When he thought he heard a groan and a loud "thud" on
the ground, and he did manage to struggle to a sitting position, the sight
that met his eyes was nearly sufficient to drive him back into his partial
insensibility, amazement and horror being about equally compounded in the
spectacle. Carlton Brand lay at length on the ground, his face set in a
frightful spasm, a thin white froth issuing from the set lips, the eyes
closed, and not even a quiver of motion in the limbs. Dick Compton sprang
up, then, with a supernatural energy born of absolute fright, and bent over
his prostrate antagonist. To all appearance he was dead!--dead as if he had
been lying there for the last century! The frightened farmer put his hand
to his temples, his pulses and his heart, and found no motion whatever.
Then the dreadful fear took possession of him that his own last blow, which
he remembered aiming at the throat of the other, might have taken effect
there at the same moment when he was himself struck and prostrated--that
some vital part of the throat might have been touched and death instantly
ensued!
To say that Dick Compton was frightened and even horrified at this
unexpected issue of the pugilistic combat which he had forced, is indeed to
put the case very mildly. He was literally paralyzed, for the moment, with
consternation. What was his fate?--to be a homicide! And--good God!--here
another thought took possession of him. He had left Kitty Hood at the
school-house, only a little while before, himself angry and in a dangerous
mood, and with his last words threatening personal violence against Carlton
Brand! If he should be dead--and there seemed to be no hope to the
contrary--what words of his could ever persuade the school-mistress that he
had not entertained enough of jealousy and anger against the lawyer to
desire his death?--and how far would not Kitty's evidence go in proving
before a criminal court that he was an intentional murderer?
Such reflections are not pleasant, to say the least! A very few of them go
a great way in a man's life. Those who have been placed, even for one
moment, in the belief that they have suddenly become homicides, need not be
told how far beyond all other horrors is the feeling: those who have missed
the sensation, may thank God with all reverence for having spared them one
of the untold agonies which belong only to the damned!
Dick Compton was not one of the most delicate of men, either in action or
perception, but he was a good fellow in the main, with quite enough of
intuition to foresee the worst perils of a situation, and with quite enough
of presence of mind to act quickly in a desperate emergency. There was yet
no breath or motion in the prostrate man: he would die very soon if not
already dead: something might yet be done for him: but that something, if
done at all, must be done at once. Besides, if death should prove to be
real, he would himself be a little better circumstanced if found trying to
preserve the life of his antagonist, than if discovered to have let him die
without effort. A mile to the westward, and at the side of the very road at
the edge of which he was standing, was the residence of one of the two
doctors of the immediate section, and medical assistance might be procured,
with the aid of the fallen man's horse, in a brief period.
With this thought in mind, and in far less time after the occurrence of the
catastrophe than it has needed to put it upon record, Dick Compton had
unfastened the horse of Carlton Brand from the post, swung himself into the
saddle, and was galloping away westward, a little doubtful in mind whether
he was indeed going after a doctor or looking for a convenient gallows and
a hangman,--and wishing, from the bottom of his soul, that he had never
entertained quite so good an opinion of his personal prowess as that which
had led him into such a terrible position. Once, as he galloped on, he
caught sight of his new military trowsers, and found himself thinking
whether, when they hung soldiers, they allowed them to retain their uniform
or subjected them to the degrading alternative of the prison gray! And that
is all, of the very peculiar reflections of Mr. Dick Compton as he sped
away after the doctor, that needs to be put upon record.
Kitty Hood, meanwhile, leaving the school-house perhaps ten minutes after
her lover, had sped along the path at the base of the woods, intent on
going over to the residence of the Brands and seeking advice, if not
assistance, from Elsie, in her dilemma. She had quite overcome her anger,
now, and taken into her young heart a full supply of that which very often
follows the former--anxiety; and her feet moved as glibly, in the better
cause of reconciliation, as her tongue had done not long before in a very
unreasonable lovers' quarrel.
The path she was pursuing would have led her out to the main road, which
she must cross to reach the Brands', some half a mile further west than the
point at which the gate gave access to the blind road through the wood. But
there was a little spot of marshy ground before reaching the road; she
remembered that her shoes were thin and that wet feet were disagreeable
even in June, and as a consequence she struck into a cross path which
intersected the blind road and would bring her out at the gate. As a
secondary consequence, she followed that road and came out a minute after
at the gate, to open it without observing what lay beyond, and to start
back with a scream of affright as she saw the body of Carlton Brand lying
on the green sward without, his face still set in that terrible contortion,
and the rigidity of death alike in limb and feature.
The young girl had seen but little of death, and not yet learned to regard
it rather as a deliverance than otherwise; and in any shape it frightened
her. How natural, then, that she should regard it with peculiar horror when
she came upon it alone, by a wood-side, and in the person of an
acquaintance equally admired and respected! But what must have been her
feelings when, the moment after, and before she had commanded herself
sufficiently to do more than utter that single scream of terror, she saw a
bundle lying near the apparently dead man, saw blood staining one of his
hands and the grass beside him, and recognized the bundle as the same she
had seen, not half an hour before, under the arm of Richard Compton!
If that unfortunate young man, on discovering the supposed extent of his
mishap, had remembered the threat against the lawyer made but a little
while before to Kitty, how did that threat spring into her mind on seeing
the blood and recognizing the bundle! Murder, beyond a doubt, and Dick
Compton the murderer! The two had met, accidentally, had quarrelled, had
clenched, and in that clench her lover had forgotten all except his
jealousy and fear of the lawyer, and had killed him outright! Oh, here was
trouble, indeed, to which that of a few moments previous had been but the
merest shadow! Dick would be arrested, tried, imprisoned, perhaps hung; and
_she_ would be obliged to give the fatal evidence that must seal his doom!
Terrible indeed--most terrible!--the thought culminating in such mental
suffering that the poor girl scarcely knew whether she was treading upon
earth or air, as she took one more look upon the motionless form, the
blood, and the accusing bundle that lay beside--then turned her back with a
shudder upon all, crossed the road and hastened over the fields beyond, by
a bye-path that would lead her to the home of the murdered man--her errand
now, and her reason for haste, how different from what it had been when
walking towards, the same destination but a few moments before!