University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

“She is gone, Randolph! and without my seeing
her, or receiving an explanation from any source
whatever. I did not expect one from them at this
time, but there are others of my acquaintances
who have no excuse whatever for the manner in
which they treat me. The moment I approach
any of them where she is the subject of discourse,
the conversation is hushed, as if they were talking
of an idiot who suddenly makes his appearance.
I will not bear it, by heavens! I will be off without
so much as giving Lamar notice, and seek an
explanation where I have now a right to seek it,
namely, at Oakland. My brain is on fire. My
passion, if it can be dignified with no higher name,
becomes the more maddening with every new
obstacle that is thrown in its way. But my object
in taking up the pen was not to dwell upon the
unutterable things which I have suffered in the last
few days, but to relate to you another unfortunate

turn, which things relating to our northern expedition
have taken.

“Lamar and Arthur have become bitter enemies,
and Arthur has actually challenged Lamar to meet
him in deadly combat the day after to-morrow.
What is to be done? My own head is confused,
my heart sad, and my anticipations gloomy. I
have reasoned and raged with both, and have left
them much more disposed to fight with me than
to adjust their own quarrel. This enmity had its
ostensible origin, like most others of its kind, in a
mere trifle. Lamar and Arthur met at the Hazlehurst's,
when the former began to entertain the fair
Isabel with some of the oddities of Damon, repeating
his speeches and imitating his gestures. Arthur
construed this into an intentional affront, purposely
introduced in his presence for effect, and immediately
left the room. Lamar had not long returned
to the hotel before Arthur entered in a towering
passion, and demanded to know what he meant by
exhibiting his damned Kentuckian, just at that time
and place, and in his presence, and by heavens,
glancing at me all the while, said he. You know
how this was likely to end. Lamar is not the man
to be either softened or bullied into measures by
such a speech. Coolly talking through his teeth,
in his peculiarly provoking style, he told Arthur
that all discussion was at an end, and that he was
willing and ready to hear any communication from
him with which he might choose to honour him.
To make the matter more difficult to adjust, young

Hazlehurst became the bearer of a challenge from
Arthur, which Lamar referred to me of course. I
say it made the matter worse, because, in the first
place, he is the brother of the lady, and in the
second, he and I are open and undisguised rivals,
so that we might get up a double affair with very
little trouble; but against this, I took especial care
to guard at the onset.

“I waited upon Arthur in person, contrary to
all rules in such cases; he insisted upon sending
for Hazlehurst. I locked the door and put the key
in my pocket, and then undertook to argue the case
with him; I represented to him that we were three
strangers here, almost in a foreign country, and
that it would have no good appearance to slay one
of the three for a trifle. He was silent. I begged
him to relate all the circumstances; he referred
me to Hazlehurst, so that I was compelled to turn
my attention next to Lamar. I found him in his
room, writing. He laid down his pen, and looked
up in a very unpromising manner; he was as perverse
and coolly obstinate as his antagonist, and
wound up the discussion by handing me the key
to his pistol case, and requesting me to look to their
condition.

“Now you have a glance at the whole business.
What could I do but arrange weapons, distance,
place, et cetera, with Hazlehurst? And thus the
matter rests until day after to-morrow; when I
will make one more effort to reconcile these maddened
young men and old school fellows.

“Now for my own affairs again. You no doubt
recollect, Randolph, those days of incipient bachelorism,
as you and Lamar considered them, when
I was living secluded from female society; I was
not then an unobservant spectator, as you supposed;
I studied the female character much and deeply;
it is true, that I had given myself up to a future
life of single blessedness; not from selfishness, or
suspicion, or parsimony, or fear, but from a supposed
knowledge of my own individuality, I never
expected to find a lady endowed with all the rich
and varied characteristics which my imagination
had taught me to look for, at the same time that
she should possess youth, beauty, and accomplishments.
I thought such a one as I might worship,
could only be formed by the two (almost) impossibilities
of youth and experience.

“Such a one I have found, Randolph; one
whose whole life in detail could furnish me with
subjects for pleasing study and admiration; one
whose interest would never flag; whose mind is
constantly increasing in its rich and simple stores;
whose deep knowledge of the world has neither
tinctured her with incurable melancholy, cynicism,
nor pride; who is as simple and unaffected as a
child of nature, whose beauty is of such vision-like
influence, that you breathe in an exhilarating atmosphere
as long as you are within its spell. Her
presence illumines a room, not for me only—every
one smiles when she smiles, and listens when she
speaks. She carries with her an indescribable

charm; the young and the old alike seek her
society. To the old and the sanctimonious she is
agreeable without the affectation of piety or prudery;
to the young she is charming without wit,
gayety, or vanity. It is not sympathy alone, for
we can deeply sympathize with those that suffer,
without receiving as much as we give, and without
in any measure enjoying their society.

“There are a few of these rare and gifted individuals
scattered over the world, like brilliant stars
in a dark night; but they are often overclouded
with storms and vicissitudes. I do not assert that
these are actually necessary to their full development;
but certain I am that they are a constant
attendant upon their sometimes brilliant career.
The captivating charm in these persons is not
eccentricity, either real or affected; nor in displays
of learning or superior wisdom; nor in wit and
novelty; nor in beauty and genius. It seems to
me to consist in bland, ingenuous benevolence, intuitive
perception of propriety, and the engaging
sadness of deep and painful experience, untinctured
with the evils which a knowledge of human depravity
too often engenders. I know that every
ardent lover imagines his mistress to be just such a
character; but before I would class them as such,
the impression must be universal; there must be
no room for argument; these good qualities must
charm all hearts into acquiescence—not reason
them into conviction, or dazzle them into the acknowledgment
by brilliant sallies of genius. Such

a gentle and admirable being, I say, I had found:
nay, more, I had worshipped, in the permitted human
worship of the heart. But now, Randolph, I
am neither contented nor happy. I have a longing
and eager desire to hear what this experience
has been that has developed those very qualities
which I most admire. It would be strange and
anomalous, would it not, if I were to quarrel with
the means by which this great good, in my eyes,
has been brought about? But so it is; we often
are willing to pluck the delicious fruit, and quarrel
with the thorns upon which it grew. This is quite
natural. All men love to pluck the roses without
the thorns; to gather up the good things of this life
without the accompanying and antithetical evils in
which they are uniformly found imbedded. The
soul of man seems to have been constructed for
another sphere of existence. It seems to scorn the
schooling of contrasts by which all things are
effected here; and not to desire the knowledge of
good and evil in the only way in which nature has
made that knowledge admissible. We would reap
the knowledge, it is true; but we would reject the
pains and experience of which it is born.

“I am just now in that predicament. I desire
to possess a peerless and princely jewel; yet I
dread to dive down into those regions in which
only it is to be found; but I have embarked upon
the current, and I must now sink or swim.

“But apart from personal considerations, is it
man's singular destiny, that all sensations should

be born of contrasts? That all pleasures should
be born of pains, and that our ideas should be but
the combined representatives of these? It is a
curious matter of study, to ascertain of how much
pain our pleasures are composed, and how essential
are the former to the very existence of the
latter. These rich capacities produced by the
various combinations of contrasts, are peculiar to
the human animal, so far as I have observed; and
may account in some measure for the fact, that
man is capable of suffering more exquisite and a
longer duration of pain, than any of his fellow
animals. How much of this acute sensibility is
owing to the combination of the soul with our organizations,
is another curious subject of study,
which I merely hint at for your especial benefit;
investigate these subjects, Randoph, and enlighten
the world upon them.

“You see I begin with love and murder and end
with metaphysics, but you must not quarrel with
the desultory manner in which I write, if you wish
really to follow the current of our thoughts and
feelings, for is it not a fact that men, at our age at
least, think and act in this desultory train? Take
one of your conversations with a friend, for instance,
and think over the course which it pursued,
and you will be surprised at the first glance to
perceive how little connexion there is apparently
between the subjects of it; yet if you have been
the leader in that conversation, take a second view

and see the little secret vein or connexion in your
own mind; you will find the most opposite subjects
connected together, by a chain which you will
seldom find on paper, either in fact or described.
How many ludicrous ideas will sometimes force
themselves upon us on the most solemn occasions!
How natural it is to see an urchin labouring to
suppress a laugh at a funeral or at church! And
how often have you yourself been just ready to
burst into merriment in the middle of the most
pathetic scenes of tragic representation, not owing
to the defects of the actor, but to that secret current
of the thoughts over which one has no control.
I recollect once going to hear a funeral sermon,
deeply impressed with the solemnity of the occasion,
and of course profoundly engaged in the subject
of the eloquent speaker: but all at once, like
a flash of electricity, the idea rushed through my
mind, of Samson racing down three hundred
foxes. I thought of the dead, and his virtues; of
our loss, the sad occasion for which we had assembled;
but all would not do; I could see Samson
running after Reynard too distinctly; so that I
was forced to feign sudden illness, and leave the
church for fear of disgracing myself. Now there
was no impious feeling in all this. I had never
in my life thought of that subject before; I surmised
some figurative meaning in the text, but the
ludicrous was too palpable for me.

“These secret currents of the thoughts are inexplicable,

at least at our time of day; perhaps age
and long drilling may put the other powers more
completely under the command of the will; until
then you must allow me to write as I think.