Yet, they had once been friends.
Before Wilmer Drayton and Oliver Hampden were old enough to understand
that by all the laws of heredity and custom they should be enemies, they
had learned to like each other. When they were only a few years old, the
little creek winding between the two plantations afforded in its strip
of meadow a delightful neutral territory where the two boys could enjoy
themselves together, safe from the interference of their grave seniors;
wading, sailing mimic fleets upon its uncertain currents, fishing
together, or bathing in the deepest pools it offered in its winding
course.
It looked, indeed, for a time as if in the fellowship of these two lads
the long-standing feud of the Hampdens and Draytons might be ended,
at last. They went to school together at the academy, where their only
contests were a generous rivalry. At college they were known as Damon
and Pythias, and though a natural rivalry, which might in any event
have existed between them, developed over the highest prize of the
institution--the debater's medal--the generosity of youth saved them. It
was even said that young Drayton, who for some time had apparently been
certain of winning, had generously retired in order to defeat a third
candidate and throw the prize to Oliver Hampden.
They came home and both went to the Bar, but with different results.
Young Drayton was learned and unpractical. Oliver Hampden was clever,
able, and successful, and soon had a thriving practice; while his
neighbor's learning was hardly known outside the circle of the Bar.
Disappointed in his ambition, Drayton shortly retired from the Bar and
lived the life of a country gentleman, while his former friend rapidly
rose to be the head of the Bar.
The old friendship might have disappeared in any event, but a new cause
arose which was certain to end it.
Lucy Fielding was, perhaps, the prettiest girl in all that region.
Oliver Hampden had always been in love with her. However, Fortune, ever
capricious, favored Wilmer Drayton, who entered the lists when it looked
as if Miss Lucy were almost certain to marry her old lover. It appeared
that Mr. Drayton's indifference had counted for more than the other's
devotion. He carried off the prize with a dash.
If Oliver Hampden, however, was severely stricken by his disappointment,
he masked it well; for he married not long afterward, and though some
said it was from pique, there was no more happily married pair in all
the county.
A year later a new Oliver came to keep up the name and tenets of the
Hampdens. Oliver Hampden, now the head of the Bar, would not have envied
any man on earth had not his wife died a few years later and left him
alone with his boy in his big house.
Lucy Drayton was born two years after young Oliver Hampden.
The mammies of the two children, as the mammies of their parents had
done before them, used to talk them over on the edge of the shaded
meadow which divided the places, and thus young Oliver Hampden, a lusty
boy of five, came to know little Lucy Drayton fully three years before
his father ever laid eyes on her.
Mr. Hampden was riding around his fences one summer afternoon, and was
making his way along the double division line with a cloud on his brow
as the double rows recalled the wide breach with his neighbor and former
friend, and many memories came trooping at the recollection. Passing
through a small grove which had been allowed to grow up to shut off a
part of his view of the Drayton place, as he came out into the meadow
his eye fell on a scene which made him forget the present with all its
wrongs. On the green turf before him where butter-cups speckled the
ground with golden blossoms, was a little group of four persons busily
engaged and wholly oblivious of the differences which divided the
masters of the two estates. The two mammies were seated side by side on
a bank, sewing and talking busily--their large aprons and caps making a
splotch of white against the green willows beyond--and in front of them
at a little distance a brown-haired boy of five and a yellow-ringleted
girl of three were at play on the turf, rolling over and over, shouting
and laughing in their glee.
As the father rested his eyes on the group, the frown which had for a
second lowered on his brow passed away and he pulled in his horse so as
not to disturb them. He was about to turn back and leave them in their
happiness when his black-eyed boy caught sight of him and ran toward
him, shouting for a ride and calling over his shoulder for “Luthy” to
“come on too.” As there was no escape, Mr. Hampden went forward and,
ignoring the confusion of the mammies at being caught together, took
the boy up before him and gave him a ride up and down the meadow. Then
nothing else would do for Master Oliver but he “must take Luthy up,
too.”
“Perhaps 'Luthy' may be afraid of the horse!” suggested Mr. Hampden with
a smile.
But far from it. Led by the little boy who had run to fetch her, she
came to Mr. Hampden as readily as his own son had done, and, though she
gave him one of those quick searching glances with which childhood reads
character, having made sure that he was friendly, she was no more afraid
of his horse than the boy was.
Oliver tried to lift her, and as he tugged at her, the father sat and
watched with a smile, then leant down and picked her up while the two
mammies gasped with mingled astonishment and fear.
“I tell you, she's pretty heavy,” said the little boy.
“Indeed, she is,” said the father, gaily.
Mr. Hampden would have taken his son home with him, but the latter
declined the invitation. He wished to “stay with Luthy.” So, Mr.
Hampden, having first set the nurses' minds at ease by complimenting the
little girl in warm terms to her mammy, rode home alone with his face
set in deep reflection.
The breach between the Hampdens and the Draytons was nearer being
closed that evening than it had been in three generations, for as Oliver
Hampden rode up the bridle path across his fields, he heard behind him
the merry laughter of the two children in the quiet meadow below, and
old memories of his childhood and college life softened his heart. He
forgot the double-line fences and determined to go on the morrow to
Drayton Hall and make up the quarrel. He would offer the first overture
and a full declaration of regret, and this, he was quite sure, would
make it up. Once he actually turned his horse around to go straight
across the fields as he used to do in his boyhood, but there below him
were the double-line fences stretching brown and clear. No horse could
get over them, and around the road it was a good five miles, so he
turned back again and rode home and the chance was lost.
On his arrival he found a summons in a suit which had been instituted
that day by Wilmer Drayton for damages to his land by reason of his
turning the water of the creek upon him.
Mr. Hampden did not forbid old Lydia to take his boy down there again,
but he went to the meadow no more himself, and when he and Wilmer
Drayton met next, which was not for some time, they barely spoke.