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 | CHAPTER II. Western clearings |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
Ragion? tu m'odii; ecco il mio sol misfatto.
Alfieri.
Old Brand's hatred of the Indians had not always expended
itself in words. When war in its worst shape ravaged the frontiers,
there were, besides those regularly commissioned and paid
to destroy, many who took the opportunity of wreaking personal
wrongs, or gratifying that insane hatred of the very name of Indian,
which appears to have instigated a portion of the original
settlers. These were a sort of land privateers;—the more merciless
and inhuman that their deeds were perpetrated from the
worst and most selfish impulses, and without even a pretence of
the sanction of law. We may look in vain among the horrors of
savage warfare for any act more atrocious, than some of those
by which the white man has shown his red brother how the
Christian can hate.
The achievement of which the old trapper boasted loudest was
the burning of an Indian wigwam. He would recount, with circumstantial
minuteness, every item of his preparation for the
murderous deed; the stratagem by which he approached the
place unobserved: and the pleasure that he felt when he saw the
flames curling round the dry bark roof on four sides at once. He
laughed when he told how the father of the family burst through
the pile of burning brush which barricaded the only door, and
how he was shot down before he had time to recognise his cruel
enemy. Then the agonized shrieks of the women and children;
their fleeing half naked and half roasted into the forest; and the
mother and babe found dead in the path the next day,—these
were never-failing topics; and, strange to say, old Brand, though
not born a fiend, could exult in the recollection of such exaggerated
wickedness. War, the concentrated essence of cruelty and
injustice, gave the opportunity, and some wrong, real or pretended,
only remembered as one of the incidental horrors of a border
contest.
As Richard Brand became more infirm, his garrulity seemed
rather to increase, and his grand-daughter, who was his constant
attendant, used to sit for hours drinking in his wild stories, and
imbibing unconsciously, something of the daring and reckless
spirit of the reciter. She grew up to be a tall, majestic-looking
girl, with the eye of Sappho herself; proud and high-spirited,
impatient of control, and peculiarly jealous of any assumption of
superiority in others; yet capable of attachment of the most ardent
and generous kind to those from whom she experienced kindness
and consideration. With these qualities she became an object
of a good deal of interest in the neighbourhood, and none the
less that her grandfather was known to have saved property enough
to be accounted rich where all are nearly alike poor.
Julia Brand had just completed her fourteenth year when her
aged relative failed suddenly; as people who have led rough
lives are apt to do; and his mind and body became so much enfeebled
that it was thought advisable to remove him to the vicinity
of more competent aid in case of illness, as well as to more
comfortable shelter than the old shingled hive could now afford.
More than one offer was made by the neighbours, and the old
man, though seeming at first scarcely to understand or accede to
the plan, yet showed a gleam of his former acuteness by making
choice voluntarily of Allen Coddington's house as his future home.
This Coddington was a man whose early advantages had been
such as to place him far above the ordinary class of settlers in
point of intelligence and ability. He was an industrious and
thriving farmer, whose education, begun at one of the best New
England academies, had been furthered by a good deal of solid
reading, and made effective by a habit of observation without
which reading can be of but little practical utility. He stood
decidedly in the first rank among the citizens of his town and
county. He was among the earlier adventurers in that region,
and, having had the wisdom or the forethought, during the time
of extravagant prices, when producers were few and consumers
many, to bestow his whole attention on raising food for the gold-hunters,
had turned the speculating mania to good account, and become
comparatively wealthy. His house was ample in size, and well
provided with ordinary accommodations, and his farm presented
the somewhat rare spectacle (in new country experience,) of a
complete supply of every thing requisite for carrying on business
to the best advantage.
Whether Allen Coddington was naturally of a self-satisfied and
exclusive temper, or whether he had become somewhat overbearing
through success and prosperity, or whether his good fortune,
and that alone, had had the effect of rendering him an object
of jealousy and ill-will,—he was certainly no favourite in his neighbourhood.
He had a certain influence, but it was that which
arises from a sense of power, and not from a feeling of confidence
and attachment. People found his advice valuable, but they
complained that his manner was cold and unsympathizing; and
they remembered the offence long after the benefit was forgotten.
Mr. Coddington's family were still less liked than himself, in consequence
of their retired habits, which were supposed to argue a
desire to keep themselves aloof from the society about them.
To one man in particular the whole house of Coddington was
an object of the bitterest hatred and envy. This man was their
nearest neighbour; a person of violent passions, and an ambitious
and designing mind, capable of almost any extreme of malignity,
when his pride was hurt, or his favourite objects thwarted. Blanchard
was not habitually an ill-tempered man. He had often
proved himself capable of great kindness towards those whom he
liked; but he belonged to a class emphatically termed good haters—a
dreadful anomaly in this erring world, where every man
stands so much in need of the forbearance and kindness of his
fellow man. Whoever had the misfortune to excite his vindictive
feelings was sure of a life-long and uncompromising enmity; and
though prudence might restrain him from overt acts, yet he was
not above many mean arts and secret efforts to lower those
against whom he had conceived any dislike.
To such a man as Blanchard the peaceful and softening counsels
of an amiable and judicious wife would have been invaluable.
Many a ruthless and violent character is kept within
being exerted in a manner unperceived by all but the person most
interested; perhaps unacknowledged even by him. Blessed, indeed,
are such peace-makers, and all who belong to them! But
Mrs. Blanchard was a spirit of another tone. Wholly uneducated,
both in mind and heart; tormented with a vague and vulgar
ambition to be first, without reference to means or ends; and especially
jealous of the pretence to superior delicacy and refinement,
which she conceived to be implied in the quiet and secluded
habits of Mrs. Coddington and her children—this woman's soul
was consumed with bitterness; and her ingenuity was constantly
exercised to discover some means of pulling down what she called
the pride of her neighbours;—a term with which we sometimes
deceive ourselves, when in fact we mean only their superiority.
As was the accusation of witchcraft in olden times—a charge
on which neither evidence, judge nor jury, was necessary to condemn
the unfortunate suspected,—so with us of the West is the
suspicion of pride—an undefined and undefinable crime, described
alike by no two accusers, yet held unpardonable by all.
Once establish the impression that a man is guilty of this high
offence against society, and you have succeeded in ruining his
reputation as a good neighbour. Nobody will ask you for proof;
accusation is proof. This is one of the cases where one has no
right to be suspected. The cry of “Mad dog!” is not more
surely destructive.
This powerful engine was put in operation by the Blanchard
family, into every member of which the parental hatred of the
Coddingtons had been instilled. They made incessant complaints
of the indignities which they suffered from the pride of people
whose true offence consisted in letting them alone, until the whole
neighbourhood had learned from them to look upon the Coddingtons
as covert enemies.
When Richard Brand made choice of the great house as an
asylum for himself and Julia, he unconsciously gave yet another
tinge of bitterness to the hatred of the Blanchards. They had
been among the most urgent of the inviters, and they felt the
preference given to their detested neighbour as a new insult to
their own pretensions. We have said that old Brand had shown
to which he was removed was one of extreme regularity,
industry and order; the Blanchards were known to be
careless, wild, passionate, and rather thriftless people; whose business
was done by violent efforts at intervals, instead of habitual
application and method. Their children were ill-governed, and
their eldest son bore a character which was by no means to be
coveted, although he maintained an exterior of decency, and
even affected with some success the manners of a squire of
dames.
Martha Coddington was a sweet, gentle girl; lovely in appearance
and manners, and in all respects a most desirable companion
for Julia, whose education had not been such as was calculated
to endow her with all the feminine graces, although she was
far from being deficient in the stronger and more active qualities
which are no less valuable if something less attractive. Martha
was in very feeble health, and confined almost entirely to sedentary
occupations; and she had thus enjoyed opportunities for
mental cultivation which would scarcely have fallen to her rustic
lot if she had been blest with full health and strength. It was
partly with a view to constant companionship for this beloved
daughter, that Mr. Coddington had been induced to offer a home
to Richard Brand. The old man himself was becoming almost
a nonentity, and Julia had that indescribable something about her
which attracts the attention and awakens interest without our
being able to define satisfactorily the source of the fascination.
Her manners were singularly simple, child-like and trustful:
while her eye had a power and her step a firmness which betokened
her ability to judge for herself, and to read the thoughts
of others. She was as yet almost totally undeveloped; but it
was impossible not to perceive at a glance that there was abundance
of material, either for good or evil, as after circumstances
might sway the balance of her destiny.
Once established in Mr. Coddington's family, Julia enjoyed all
the privileges of a daughter of the house, and shared with Martha,
and one or two younger children, the occasional instruction
of the parents. Her quickness of apprehension was remarkable;
and the activity of her habits and the cheerfulness of her temper
departments of householdry which would have fallen to Martha's
share if she had been stout like the rest. So that the arrangement
was one of mutual advantage, and the evening of Richard
Brand's life bid fair to be as calm as its morning had been boisterous.
The Blanchards made many attempts at something like intimacy
with Julia, but these were quietly discouraged by her protectors,
probably from a sincere belief that such association would
be unprofitable for her. They were at this time not at all aware
of the deep enmity of the Blanchards, although they had not been
blind to various indications of ill will. So, in silence and secrecy
grew this baleful hatred! as the deadly nightshade becomes
more intensely poisonous when sheltered from the sun-light and
the breeze. Imagination is the most potent auxiliary of the passions.
Nothing so effectually moderates personal dislike as personal
intercourse. Any circumstance which had thrown these
neighbouring families into contact, in such a way as to bring into
action the good qualities of either, would have done away with
much of their mutual aversion. What a world of misery would
thus have been spared to both!
| CHAPTER II. Western clearings | |