University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.

The summer had just set in, when the painter
returned to the Traveller's Rest, with the prospect,
so rapid was his convalescence, of being able to
leave the valley within the space of a fortnight.
But week came after week, June exchanged her
green cloak for the golden mantle of July, the
laurels bloomed on the hills, and the fire-flies
twinkled in the evening grass, and still he lingered
among the pleasant solitudes of Hawk-Hollow, as
if unable to tear himself away. This faintness of
purpose, for weekly, at least, he vowed he would
depart, he excused to himself, by pleading the
strong necessity he was under of delighting Captain
Loring's heart with a picture, which he could
not begin until his arm was released, not only
from the wooden bonds of splints, but from the
weakness resulting from the fracture. Until that
happy period arrived, he was a frequent and indeed
a welcome visiter at the mansion, his society
being not less agreeable to Catherine than it was
absolutely indispensable to her father. Young as
she was, and with a spirit so gay and frank, there
was much good sense in all Miss Loring's actions;
and this had been doubtless sharpened by the necessity,

imposed upon her so early, of playing the
matron in her father's household, and guarding
against the consequences of his many eccentricities.
It was this good sense which taught her the
propriety of getting rid of the stranger guest, as
soon as humanity would sanction his expulsion;
and this she had, in part, indirectly confessed to
the party herself, with her usual good-humoured
openness. This being accomplished, and Herman
now assuming his proper station at a distance, and
visiting the house as an avowed favourite of her
father, she felt herself delivered from restraint, and
received him without reserve. His manners and
conversation were at all times those of a gentleman;
and this is always enough, in America, to
entitle a stranger, of whom no evil is known or
suspected, to hospitality and respectful consideration,
especially at a distance from the larger cities.
That curiosity, which travellers have chosen to
saddle upon Americans as a national characteristic,
along with the two or three forms of speech
that have belonged to the mother-land since the
days of Chaucer, is in no country less really intrusive
than in America. If it be irksome, and, at
times, ludicrously impertinent, it is easily satisfied.
It springs, indeed, not from a suspicious, so much
as an inquisitive, disposition; and is the result of a
certain openness of character, such as arises under
every democratic government, and is well
known to have prevailed to an extraordinary extent
among the old Greek republics, notwithstanding
the proverbial craftiness of individual character.
With this curiosity is associated an equal
quantity of credulity; and Americans are very
content to receive the stranger, whose deportment
is at all prepossessing, entirely upon his own self-recommendations.
No jealousy accompanies an
introduction made only by accident; and the same
generous confidence is reposed in the new acquaintance,
which the bestower will expect, under
similar circumstances, to have lavished upon
himself.

It did not, therefore, enter into the thoughts of
Miss Loring to question Hunter's claims to such
friendly courtesies as were accorded to him; and
if any doubts of the propriety of continuing his
acquaintance had occurred, they must have been
dispelled by a remembrance of the circumstances
under which he was introduced. Her happy instrumentality
in rescuing him from a dreadful
peril, had given her a right to be interested in his
behalf; and the great pleasure the young man's
society afforded her father, was an additional
argument to banish reserve. The visits of Herman
were therefore received and encouraged; the
young lady's spirits, animated by such companionship,
became more elastic and joyous; and Captain
Loring rejoiced in the painter's acquaintance
as much on her account as his own. “Adzooks,
Kate,” he was used to exclaim, “the young dog
is as good company for you as cousin Harry,”—
so he often called Miss Falconer, as well as her
brother,—“and the lord knows how much better
for me! And then the picture, Kate, adzooks, is'n't
it a charmer! that is to say, it will be; but the
young dog won't show it to me.”

The picture,—` the grand picture of the Battle
of Brandywine, and Tom Loring dying,'—had
been at last begun, or rather a drawing in water
colours, meant to represent that double calamity;
and from the few samples of proficiency in his art
which Herman had already shown, the expectations
of the daughter were almost as agreeably
kindled as those of the parent. The painter had
presented Catherine with a few little sketches from
his port-folio,—landscapes, representing views of

Southern scenery, which to her appeared highly
spirited, while to the Captain they seemed sublime,
—only that he had a perverse facility at seeing
rocks and stumps of trees in groups of kine on the
meadows; and in distant flocks of sheep, nothing
better than so many rambling killdeers on the barren
upland. Notwithstanding these unlucky mistakes,
he conceived so high an opinion of the
artist's ability, that he strenuously urged him to
begin the Battle of Brandywine upon a scale of
magnitude commensurate with the grandeur of
the subject; `He would have it,' he said, `done
magnificently. He would go down to the village,
and buy Ephraim Gall, the tavern-keeper's, big
sign, that had the great Black Bear on it; or he
would have another made just like it; and, he had
no doubt, his young dog Haman,'—for the Captain
could never fall upon his protegé's true
name,—`would beat John Smith, the sign-painter,
hollow,'—a flight of panegyric that somewhat nettled
the artist, but vastly diverted Miss Loring.

But the greatest accession to his reputation was
obtained when Herman, as the only means of securing
a likeness of the Captain's deceased son,
prevailed upon Catherine to sit to him for hers,
and the radiant features beamed at last from the
ivory. The delight with which the Captain seized
upon this happy effort of art, was not merely boisterous;
it was obstreperous,—nay, uproarious; and
Catherine, laughing and weeping together, acknowledged
that, in thus enrapturing her father's heart,
the painter had made her his friend for ever.

“Now, Captain,” said Hunter, with a beaming
eye, “now, all I have to do, is to take that sketch
home”—

“Shan't let it go out of my hands!” cried Captain
Loring. “Why, it's my Kate herself! Give
up my heart's blood first.”

“You shall have it again, Captain; I promise
you that. It is only to copy it, you know—that
is, to paint the likeness of your son from it.”

“Shall do no such thing—must do another,”
cried Captain Loring; and it required all the arguments
of the painter, backed by those of Catherine,
to prevail upon the obstinate old man to surrender
the sketch, that it might be devoted to the purpose
for which it was executed.

Thus passed the time of the painter in an employment,
which, as much as his conversation,
recommended him to the friendship of two isolated
beings, simple-hearted, guileless, and unsuspicious
of any coming ill. Thus he passed his time, confiding
and confided in—the gayest, the merriest,
and perhaps the happiest visiter who had ever
been admitted to the privileges of Avondale; yet,
all the time, whether rambling with the frank maiden
in search of summer flowers to transfer to her
garden, whether listening to the gay music of her
conversation, or gazing, in the exercise of his art,
upon her beautiful features, drinking in a poison
which he felt and feared, yet without knowing the
deep hold it was taking upon his spirit, until the
sudden crash of coming events made him dreadfully
aware of its influence. He was neither too
young nor too short-sighted to be ignorant of the
impression made on his feelings by each daily interview
with a maiden so bewitching; no did he
attempt to repress the humiliating consciousness,
that, in thus giving his heart to the affianced bride
of another, he was preparing for himself a retribution
of pain and penitence, and perhaps of shame.
From the moment in which he discovered himself
treasuring away with such jealous care, the gift of
withering fern,—a bagatelle of compliment, which,
he well knew, was only given by Catherine to remove
a mortification she had inficted,—he saw

that he was sporting upon the brink of a precipice—
trifling upon some such slippery bridge as that of
fatal memory over the streamlet, from which his
folly might at any moment hurl him. With this
consciousness before him, he perceived the necessity
of flight, yet fled not, deeming that the power
of escape at the right moment could not be denied
him—of taking some antidote with the poison, but
took none, resolving it should be swallowed thereafter;
and, in fine, while still thinking that he resisted,
or was prepared to resist, when the peril
should become urgent, he gave himself up to the
intoxication of the new passion, and, in reality,
sought every means to augment it.
the flash of an insect, which one can admire, without
fearing its power to create a conflagration.
A vague impression that Catherine's want of affection
for the licensed lover would prevent the completion
of the marriage contract, gave a sort of
encouragement and hope to his selfishness, which
he interpreted into the more generous sympathy
of one who lamented her hard fate, and desired
only to shield and protect her. In this delusive
thought, in this romantic willingness to watch over
the safety of another, he lingered around the vortex
of fate, until the ripple became a current, and
the current an impetuous tide, from which there
was no escape, except by exerting his remaining
strength to the utmost. At the very period when
the exertion should have been made, he bore to his
solitary chamber the idol lately completed by his
own hands, and as he gazed upon it, felt that the
moment of salvation had passed by.

“Yes, it is now too late,” he muttered, apostrophising
the miniature; “I have fooled myself a

second time into the whirlpool; and who, Catherine,
will play thy part with me again, and again
save me? It is too late; it is too late to retreat,
and now therefore I must go on—yet with what
hope go on? With none. She heeds me not, she
dreams not of my folly, she cares not. Friendship
is the grave of love; and in her friendship my
love is entombed, before it has breathed twice in
existence. I will speak to her, and be derided!—
I will confess myself, and be driven from her presence!
And this is honourable of me too! to take
advantage of her unsuspicious frankness, her
anxious desire to gratify her father, and steal a portrait
from her! I saw she doubted the propriety of
sitting; and yet I, by base dissimulation and affected
indifference, cajoled her to consent. Well, if I
can copy, I can destroy; and if this fool—this
slave—this Falconer wed her, why, then good-by
to the knavery and the folly together! I will tarry,
at least, until I see the privileged woer; and then,
if she like him not, if she recoil—nay, if she shed
but a tear of repugnance, may heaven forsake me
if I do not—Well, what? Kill him!—There
has been enough of that among us already.”

Thus murmuring to himself, and expressing invectives
against his folly, with the usual arguments
for continuing to indulge it, he sat down before a
table, and despite his convictions of the impropriety,
if not the meanness of the act, began to copy
the miniature. He laboured assiduously until he
had completed the outline, and then exclaimed,
with a species of reproachful triumph,

“Now, foolish father of the best and loveliest!
though you rob me of my labour, yet have I secured
its counterpart. Send me a thousand leagues
away, and within this dim outline shall my hand
reproduce the image of your sacrifice.—But here
come the fools again! Now for a smooth face, a

merry voice, and a frolic with my jolterhead admirers.”

The vow which the painter had made, when the
doctor and his two friends passed by the widow's
cottage, and smiled at his choice of lodgings, that
he would make them fonder of the Traveller's
Rest than their own village quarters, he had in
part fulfilled. Whatever was his secret and growing
care, it was yet confined to his own bosom;
and he was altogether of too joyous a temperament,
had he even desired to nourish his melancholy,
to bear a sad spirit in company. He was
one of those who suffer most, and suffer longest,
by grieving only at intervals, and enjoying themselves
heartily among friends. The idea of a continuous
grief, of any duration, at least, is preposterous.
The body can live upon the rack only a
few hours, or days; and the spirit's powers of endurance
are not much greater.

His gay and agreeable manners had strongly
recommended him to the trio; and the two lawyers,
having nothing better to do, were wont to
mount their horses, and accompany the doctor on
his professional visitations, which he continued for
some time after the patient had taken refuge within
the Traveller's Rest; and even after he insisted
upon being cured, they wasted their tediousness
upon him at least twice or thrice a week, in the
way of friendly calls; and he was wont to entertain
them as well as he could. Of the doctor he
had made a conquest by asking for his bill, and
paying it in good English guineas, a handful of
which coin gave doctor Merribody more sensible
delight than could the bushel of paper with which
he expected to fill his saddle-bags; the amount
charged against the unlucky amateur being some
few thousands of dollars,—Continental currency.

One of the doctor's friends, whom he usually

addressed by the familiar title of Jingleum, but
whose real name was Jackson, or Johnson, or
some such unhappy dissyllable, was the poet of the
village, and a bard of renown for at least ten miles
round. Him the painter won by praising his verses,
and what was still more captivating, by singing
them, and what was yet more enslaving, by requesting
permission to cull all the stanzas of a
cantabile nature from the long blue-covered log-books,
in which Mr. Jingleum had carefully recorded
his labours. Seeing what a congenial soul
he had found in the painter, Jingleum freely supplied
his wants, and wrote divers madrigals at his
suggestion, with which Herman charmed the ears
of Miss Loring. The poet soon became his intense
admirer and perpetual visiter; they grew fast
friends, and soon came to regard each other, the
one as the divinest poet, the other as the most
finished singer, under the moon. It would have
been an interesting sight, could one have invaded
the sanctity of the painter's apartment, on such
occasions, to see them together, industriously fixing
a tune to each affecting ditty,—a labour that
was sometimes none of the lightest; and sometimes,
when the genius of the bard, as it often did,
chose to disdain the base bonds of metre and
rhythm, and none of the thousand melodies in
their service could be forced or wheedled into
nuptials with his independent verse, they were fain
to betake themselves to their own resources, and
finish the business with such a quodlibet as they
could manufacture between them. It was a divine
enjoyment to the poet, when they had at last succeeded
with any refractory song, to hear his lines
breathed out from the mellow lips of his friend;
for then his poetry seemed as celestial as his pleasure.
His bliss, however, was not complete, until
he lighted by accident, one day, in the village, upon
a battered guitar,—an instrument of such venerable
antiquity, that there was not a soul therein who
was able to pronounce for what unheard-of purpose
such an extraordinary engine had been framed,
until Herman Hunter, swearing it could discourse
most eloquent music, and was not a banjo, managed,
by dint of much exertion, to fit it up with
fiddle-strings and the savings of some demolished
harpsichord, and set its dumb tongues twangling:
it was not until he heard his rhymes trolled forth
to the clatter of this romantic instrument, that the
joy of the poet mounted to the heaven of ecstasy.
He would sit distilling with delight, while the lips
of his friend warbled over the seraphic lines, and
while his fingers hopped over the amaranthine
strings; and then, sometimes, with a sudden feeling
of inspiration, he would snatch the lyre, as he
poetically called it, into his own hands, doubtless
expecting an overflow of ineffable harmony from
the mere fulness of his spirit, until warned by the
dreadful dissonance of his touches, and the remonstrances
of his admirer, he found, however extraordinary
it seemed, that the drum and the jewsharp
were the only instruments the playing of which
came by nature.

This peculiar friendship betwixt the bard and
the singer it is perhaps necessary here to mention,
in order that it should be understood to whom
should be given the credit of those canzonets sung
by the painter, which seem to have any peculiar reference
to his own condition. He did not carry his
affection so far as to bestow any of his private confidence
on the bard; nor did the latter ever suspect
that any call, however urgent, for a ballad especially
sad and amatory, was to be understood as
indicating a passion deeper than that of the mere
songster. There was little suspiciousness in the
poet's frame, and no scandal-mongers in the neighbourhood.

It was indeed the golden age of that
part of the world; although the country was somewhat
overflowed with paper-money.

It was one result of this generous spirit, doubtless,
that caused the story of the resuscitation of a
Hawk of Hawk-Hollow to be so soon forgotten.
The account of the outrage upon Colonel Falconer,
as having been perpetrated by Oran Gilbert,
did indeed at first create a considerable sensation;
and many excitable individuals, hearing of the
chase after the fugitive Nehemiah, mounted their
horses, and resumed the trail, the next day, with
the resolution of sifting the mystery to the bottom.
But the trail ended where Lieutenant Brooks had
left it; the raw-boned white horse had passed
through divers hands, and was, in course of time,
supposed to have been recovered by the rightful
owner; but the rider had vanished as if swallowed
up by the earth, or melted into the air, and was
never more heard of. The story died away, or
was remembered only as a jest, which finally expired
in the vapour of its own silliness. The reasonable
men laughed at their late fears, and forgot
them.

About the present time, however, there arose a
rumour, no one knew how or why, which created
a new sensation among the credulous and foreboding.
It was whispered that a band of tories was
secretly forming among the hills; but where, or
for what purpose, no one pretended to say. It was
a vague and mysterious apprehension, that spread
from person to person, by virtue, perhaps, of its
enigmatic character; for no inquiry could detect
a better reason for its prevalence. As it carried
its contagion further and further, men began again
to talk of the Hawks of Hawk-Hollow; the refugees,
in imagination, rose again from their tombs,
and the scalp-hunter stole anew through the forests.

The rumour had reached the Traveller's
Rest; but it made little impression on the spirit of
the painter.

He laid aside his drawing in haste, so soon as
he heard that clatter of hoofs in the oaken yard,
which, he thought, betokened the coming of his
friends; and having secured it beyond the reach
of any prying eye, he descended to meet them.