University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

The painter, still keeping his eyes upon the pair,
pondered over that propensity of our nature, which
urges even the coldest and demurest of mortals
into acts of extravagance, when removed a moment
from artificial restraints. The whole system
of social federation is a state of enthrallment and
captivity, although undoubtedly a wholesome one;
and he who publicly rejects its fetters, though he
may personally enjoy his independence, violates
that compact which separates the refined from
the primitive and uncivilized states of existence,
and encourages others to rush back upon the savage
freedom of the latter. The preservation of a
certain share of dignity is incumbent upon men,
not merely as a means of holding caste, but of preventing
a downslide in manners and mind. The
hero may properly play at bo-peep with his children,
though not at the head of his army; and, by
the same rule, a fair lady may shoot and drive,
play the fiddle, and race horses, to her heart's content,
so long as the amusement is confined to the
proper circle. For our own part, we think there
is no more delightful spectacle in the world than

is afforded by a troop of grown-up hoydens, released
from the heavy trammels of etiquette, and
yielding, in all the confidence of privacy, to the
wild extravagancies of freedom; though a public
display of the kind would, undoubtedly, be any
thing but agreeable. Such were the sentiments of
the painter; and however much the young ladies
may have been mortified at an introduction made
in a way so boisterous and masculine, it is questionable
whether any other could have caused
them to produce a stronger, or even more favourable,
impression on his imagination. Being of a
joyous temperament himself, he rejoiced at the
manifestation of similar spirit in others; and only
regretted that the parentage of the most admired
(for his prejudice against the name of Falconer
had been strongly avowed,) should have so
soon driven away the visions of amusement and
delight, that, at the glance of her brilliant eyes,
came rushing through his brain.

He had scarce lost sight of them in the park,
before the road again echoed with the sound of
hoofs; and looking round, he beheld three young
men, very genteely dressed, ride by, and make
their way to the park gate. As they passed the
cottage, they turned their faces towards it, saluting
the widow by name, and acknowledging the
presence of the stranger by courteous nods. He
perceived, however, that they were somewhat surprised,
and not a little diverted, by his appearance
at such a place; for they exchanged smiles, and
by and by, when they had got a little beyond the
brook, they were heard laughing together.

“Well done, ye vagabonds,” muttered the good-humoured
youth to himself: “never trust me, if I
do not make you more in love with my lodgings
than your own empty skulls, before we are many

days older. There is some life in Hawk-Hollow,
after all.”

He had just succeeded in recalling his attention
to his unfinished sketch, when it was distracted for
the third time by the sudden appearance of a carriage,
somewhat old-fashioned and grim, that rolled
up to the inn at an unusual speed, and was in
the act of passing it, when an old gentleman, whose
head was thrust from the window, caught sight of
Herman, and immediately diverted it from its
course, by roaring out to the coachman, a venerable
negro,—

“Holla, you Dick! right about wheel,—turn,—
halt!” and the coach, guided with ready skill,
stopped at the porch-step, almost before the last
word had been pronounced.

Open flew the door, for it was evident the old
gentleman was too impatient to await the tardy
assistance of his servant, and out flew the steps,
unfolding at a kick of his foot, which immediately
followed them. As he thrust himself thus hurriedly
from the vehicle, Herman observed, that besides
his aged appearance, he had another claim to such
duties as a young man could render, in a second
foot, which, instead of displaying any of the
strength and agility of the former, was battered
out of shape by some ancient injury, and was pendent
to a leg unquestionably infirm and halt. Seeing
this, the young painter instantly stepped forward,
and assisted him to descend; a courtesy
that was acknowledged by a hearty gripe of the
hand, and the exclamation,

“Surrender, you dog, or I'll blow your brains
out!”—And to complete the astonishment of the
young man, he perceived, at the same moment, a
great horse-pistol, which the old gentleman had
whipped out of the vehicle, presented within three
inches of his ear.

Astounded at such an unexpected mode of salutation,
the painter could do little more than express
his alarm and confusion, by echoing the word,
“Surrender?” when Elsie interfered in his behalf,
crying out, “For Heaven's sake, Captain Loring!
what are you doing? Do the young gentleman
no harm!”

“Gentleman!” cried the Captain, somewhat
staggered himself. “Adzooks! do you say so?—
a gentleman? What! and no cut-throat Gilbert,
hah? By the lord, I thought I had him! Why,
you vagabond young fellow, give an account of
yourself.—Who are you? what are you? and how
did you come here? You are a gentleman, hah?
and you have not killed Colonel Falconer, hah?
and you profess yourself to be an honest man, hah!
Why, what will the world come to!”

As he spoke, in these abrupt and startling
phrases, Herman had leisure, notwithstanding his
surprise, to observe that he was a comely, eccentric-looking
old man, with a bottle-shaped nose,
gray eyes, and huge beetle-brows, his whole countenance
puckered into wrinkles, that seemed to
begin at the tip of his nose, or on his upper lip, as
a common centre, and radiate thence to all parts
of his visage, though they appeared in the greatest
luxuriance on the chin and forehead. His hair was
clubbed, queued, and powdered; and, although he
was evidently battered by time and hard service,
and limped withal very uncouthly on his wounded
leg, a three-cornered hat, and a half-and-half old
military dress, gave him a somewhat heroic appearance.
His coat was blue, his breeches buff;
and he had a boot on one leg, and a shoe on the
other,—or,—to speak more strictly, on the foot
thereof, that being incapable of the more manly
decoration. But at the present moment, it was
scarce possible to obtain a just idea of his appearance

or character, had Herman been cool enough
for the attempt. The violence of his attack upon
one in the act of rendering him a humane courtesy,
indicated that he was somewhat beside himself;
and it was equally plain, from the medley of expressions
on his visage, agitated at once by suspicion,
anxiety, indignation, fury, triumph, and
doubt, that he was in a condition to be replied to
rather with softness than anger. In truth, there
was something so ridiculous in his appearance, as
well as in the circumstance of his own unexpected
arrest, that Herman was no sooner relieved of the
fear of death, by the dropping of the pistol, which
the gallant soldier removed at the remonstrance
of Elsie, than he burst into a laugh, and would
have indulged it freely, had not the Captain cut
him short by exclaiming,

“Hark ye, ye grinning cub! is it a thing to
laugh at, when a man's murdered, and you arrested
on suspicion?”

“Murdered, Captain!” cried the widow, whom
some of his previous ejaculations seemed to have
turned into stone:—“Murdered, Captain, did you
say?” she exclaimed, seizing the soldier by the
arm, and wholly disregarding the presence of the
painter,—“Richard Falconer murdered at last?
and by a Gilbert, when all that bore the name are
in the grave? Impossible!”

“Murdered, I tell you, and given over by the
doctors,” roared the Captain, “and by one of the
cursed Hawk-Hollow Gilberts, if there's any believing
words out of his own mouth: I have it by
express. And hark ye, you old beldam, if you
have given shelter to the villain, never trust me if
I don't burn you at a stake. Adzooks! was there
ever such a thing dreamed of?—Hark ye, sir, I
arrest you on suspicion.”

“What, sir! on suspicion of murder!” cried

Hunter, who had by this time recovered his gravity,
and now spoke with as much dignity as boldness:
“If you have any authority to apprehend me, I
am your prisoner, and will accompany you to the
nearest magistrate.—This is the most extraordinary
circumstance in the world; and let me tell
you, sir,”—but he was interrupted by the widow;
who, still grasping the Captain's arm, although he
strove to cast her off, exclaimed,

“Do no rash folly with the young man. Look
at him—does he look like a Gilbert? You are mad
to think it, Captain Loring!”

Then, as if satisfied that such argument was
sufficient to acquit her lodger of all suspicion, she
again renewed her questions; and Herman, giving
ear to the Captain, gathered from his broken and
impetuous expressions, that assassination had been
committed, or rather attempted, (for it did not
appear that the victim was dead,) upon the body
of Colonel Falconer, who had been so lately the
subject of his thoughts and conversation,—that the
outrage had been perpetrated at, or near, the metropolis
of the State,—that suspicion had fallen
upon a man long esteemed defunct,—and that Captain
Loring, in the fervour of his indignation and
zeal to bring the assassin to justice, being never
very notorious for the wisdom of his actions, had
resolved to seize upon all suspicious persons,—
that is to say, all strangers,—he might light on,
without much question of his right to do so, until
he had caught the true offender, who, he doubted
not, being a refugee and a Gilbert, would be found
lurking about the Hawk's Hollow. It seemed, that
the suddenness of the intelligence had overpowered
the veteran's brain, and left him as incapable
of distinguishing the appearances of innocence
from those of guilt, as of understanding the illegal
character of his proceedings; yet, being a man of

impulses, excitable both in head and heart, his suspicions
were as easily diverted as inflamed; and,
accordingly, after having come within an ace of
shooting a pistol through the painter's head, his
next act was to seize upon him in the most affectionate
manner in the world, crying out by way of
apology,

“Harkee, younker,—adzooks, no ill blood betwixt
us? When my blood's up, I'm an old fool,
d'ye see. Didn't mean to insult you; and as for
shooting, that's neither here nor there. But when
we're after a deserter, spy, refugee, murderer, or
such dogs, why quick's the word, and `Fall in,
friend,' the order of the day. Must catch the villain,
and take account of all skulking fellows without
the counter-sign. Here's bloody murder in the
wind. The old woman says you are a gentleman:
so, gentleman, as you were! Adzooks, you look
no more like a Gilbert than a mud-terrapin; but
all honest men answer to their names—what's
yours?”

“Hunter,—Herman Hunter,” replied the young
man; “and, if need be, I can easily convince you
that I am no object of suspicion.”

“Don't doubt it; you've an excellent phys'nomy,
—very much like my poor son Tom's,” cried the
soldier, now as much struck with the open and
agreeable countenance of the stranger, as he had
been before blinded by his own impetuosity. “I
like you! You're a soldier, hah? Where do you
come from?”

“From South Carolina,” said Hunter, exchanging
the serious mood in which he first submitted
to examination, for one more characteristic of his
humorous temper. He began to understand and
even relish the oddities of the inquisitor; and as
the Captain's questions were now put in a tone
indicative of good will and admiration, and it was

evident his turbulent feelings were giving way
rapidly before others of a new character, he seemed
disposed not only to endure but to encourage
the ordeal.

“From South Carolina?” cried the Captain.
“Too many tories there by half! But then you
have some men there; yes, sir, some men, whom
I call men! Sumpter, sir, and Marion, sir,—why
I call such fellows men, sir! I like this swamp-fighting,
too; I was brought up to it,—took my
first lesson among red Delawares, and ended with
Mingoes and Shawnees. A good tussle at Eutaw,
too, sir, it was, by the lord!” exclaimed Captain
Loring, warming into such a blaze of military
ardour at the recollection, that he quite forgot the
object of his delay, and the assassination of his
kinsman into the bargain;—“a good tussle, (without
saying any thing of my friend Morgan's rub-a-dub-dub
at the Cowpens,)—a good tussle! And
such glorious weather, too, when a man could
fight and keep cool! Now I remember, that, at
the fatal field of Braddock, ninth July, '55, it was
the hottest work, what with the weather, what
with the savages, what with the stupid cockney
red-coats, that man ever saw,—an oven above,
and a furnace all round; it was all blood and
sweat, sir!—the wounded were boiled in their
own gore. It was a day, sir, to make a man a
man, sir,—it taught me to smell gun-powder! It
was there, sir, I first looked in the face of George
Washington,—a poor colonial buck-skin colonel
then, but now, adzooks, the greatest man the world
ever saw! Harkee, sir, have you served? have you
smelt powder? have you heard a trumpet? have
you ever fought a battle?”

“Certainly, sir,” replied the young man, with
humour; “I have inflicted bloody-noses, and received
them. I was quite a Hector at school;

and, so long as you stop short of killing, I am a
Hector yet. But I never could find any appetite
in me for bullets and broad-swords; and as for a
bayonet, I think it the most inhuman weapon in
the world. Noble Captain, I am a non-combatant,
a man of peace.”

“Hah!” cried the Captain, indignantly; “and
how comes that? An able-bodied man, with your
bleeding country calling on you, and no fight in
you? Sir, let me tell you, sir, such a pair of legs
should have been devoted to the service of your
country, sir! Look you, sir, my son Tom Loring
was only eighteen years old, when he fought his
battle on the Brandywine; and a whole year before,
he was ripe for a rub, as he often told me.
How comes it, sir, you have grown out of your
teens, and never faced an enemy? Zounds, sir, I
was beginning to have a good opinion of you!”

“There is no accounting for it, Captain, except”—

“Hark ye, Mr. What-d'ye-call-it,” said the soldier,
the good feelings with which he was beginning
to regard the youth, giving place at once to
contempt and indignation, “there is every thing in
having the right sort of blood for these things, and
you have no blood at all. I despise you, sir, and,
adzooks, I believe you are some suspicious person
after all, and very contemptible, for all of your red
jacket.—Holloa, Dick, there! help me into the
carriage.”

And thus venting his disgust, and preparing to
put the seal to his displeasure by instant departure,
the young man was on the point of losing a friend
so suddenly won, when, fortunately for him, the
Captain's eye fell upon the little table with the
drawing materials, which he had not before observed,
and walking up to it, he began, without a
moment's hesitation, to examine the unfinished

sketch. The effect was instantaneous; the spectacle
of his own dwelling, transferred, with not a
little skill, to paper, though only in light lead
marks, and so accurately that he instantly detected
(as appeared to him wonderful enough) the
windows of his own sleeping apartment, threw
him into such transports, that he seemed on the
point of dancing for joy, as he would perhaps
have done, had it not been for the infirmity of his
extremity.

“Lord bless us!” said he, “here's the Folly! the
identical old Folly, with the grape-vine, the stables,
the negro-houses, the locust grove, the three
tulip-trees, the pot in the chimney, and the old
martin-house on a pole! And here's my two negroes,
Dick and Sam, at the gate, driving the cows
out of the park”—

“No, Captain,” said Herman, with a painter's
dignity; “those are the two young ladies; and I
flatter myself, when I have done a little more to
them”—

“My girls?” cried the Captain, in a rapture;
“why, so they are! And you did this? and you're
a painter, hah?”

“A sort of one, as you see, Captain,” replied
the youth, with an air.

“A painter!” cried the Captain, grasping his
hand, with delight. “Can you paint a soldier,
hah?”

“Ay,” replied the youth, “if he'll hold still long
enough.”

“And cannon, and horses, and smoke, and trees,
and a dreadful splutter of blood and dead men,
hah? Then, by the lord, you shall paint me the
Fatal Field of Braddock, with the red-coats and
the continentals, the savages and the Frenchmen,
—and Braddock, lugged off on men's shoulders,—
and George Washington rallying the colony-boys

for another charge on the red-skins! What a
picture that will make!—I'll tell you what, Mr.
Harkem What-d'-ye-call-it, you shall come to my
house, drink and be merry, and then you shall
paint me that picture. You shall paint me the battle
of Brandywine, too, with my poor Tom Loring
bleeding to death, like a hero, as he was: and hark
ye, you may bring me in, too, holding him on my
knee,—for I did it,—and telling him to die like a
man,—for an old fool, as I was, to think he could
die like any thing else! And stick in my girl, too,
if you can, weeping and wringing her hands, when
I carried Tom Loring home that day. And remember
the bugles and trumpets, blasting up for the
charge of cavalry; you should have heard them
sweeping by, just as Tom was dying.—It was the
finest sound in nature!” continued the Captain,
vehemently, and as he spoke, dashing a tear from
his eye; “the finest music ever heard; as Tom
acknowledged himself: `Father!' said he, as he
bled in my arms, `it is not hard to die to such
music, for I hear our own trumpets among the
others!' And so died Tom Loring; he went to
heaven amid thunder and trumpets; and if I had
seven sons more, I should wish nothing better for
them, than that they might go to heaven the same
way,—I would, by the lord! For why? there's no
way that's better!”

There was something in this eccentric burst of
ardour, which, however ludicrous it seemed, touched
some of the finer feelings of the painter, and
checked the laugh which he could scarce repress,
when the Captain began his energetic instructions.
Not being disposed to accept a commission so
capriciously proffered, or to undertake a composition,
in which, it was evident, if he hoped to please
his employer, he must mingle together as many
different scenes and actions as would furnish subjects

for a whole gallery, and desiring to temper
his refusal to the peculiarities of his patron, he
was puzzling himself in what way to express it,
when his good-fortune sent him aid in the person
of another stranger, who, as the capricious stars
would have it, designed, like himself, to make trial
of the accommodations of the Traveller's Rest.