University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

Leaving Bess Matthews, as we have seen, under
the influence of a fierce and feverish spirit, Hugh Grayson,
as if seeking to escape the presence of a pursuing
and painful thought, plunged deep and deeper into the
forest, out of the pathway, though still in the direction
of his own home. His mind was now a complete
chaos, in which vexation and disappointment, not to
speak of self-reproach, were active principles of misrule.
He felt deeply the shame following upon the act
of espionage of which he had been guilty, and though
conscious that it was the consequence of a momentary
paroxysm that might well offer excuse, he was nevertheless
too highly gifted with sensibility not to reject
those suggestions of his mind which at moments sought
to extenuate it. Perhaps, too, his feeling of abasement
was not a little exaggerated by the stern and
mortifying rebuke which had fallen from the lips of that
being whose good opinion had been all the world to
him. With these feelings at work, his mood was in
no sort enviable; and when at nightfall he reached the
dwelling of his mother, it was in a condition of mind
which drove him, a reckless savage, into a corner of the
apartment opposite that in which sat the old dame
croning over the pages of the sacred volume. She
looked up at intervals and cursorily surveyed, in brief
glances, the features of her son, whose active mind
and feverish ambition, warring as they ever did against
that condition of life imposed upon him by the necessities
of his birth and habitation, had ever been an
object of great solicitude to his surviving parent. He

had been her pet in his childhood--her pride as he
grew older, and began to exhibit the energies and
graces of a strongly-marked and highly original, though
unschooled intellect. Not without ambition and an
appreciation of public honours, the old woman could
not but regard her son as promising to give elevation
to the name of his then unknown family; a hope not
entirely extravagant in a part of the world in which the
necessities of life were such as to compel a sense of
equality in all; and, indeed, if making an inequality
anywhere, making it in favour rather of the bold and
vigorous plebeian, than of the delicately-nurtured and
usually unenterprising scion of aristocracy. Closing
the book at length, the old lady turned to her son, and
without remarking upon the peculiar unseemliness, not
to say wildness, of his appearance, she thus addressed
him:—

“Where hast thou been, Hughey, boy, since noon?
Thy brother and thyself both from home—I have felt
lonesome, and really began to look for the Indians that
the young captain warned us of.”

“Still the captain--nothing but the captain. Go
where I may, he is in my sight, and his name within
my ears. I am for ever haunted by his presence.
His shadow is on the wall, and before me, whichever
way I turn.”

“And does it offend thee, Hughey, and wherefore?
He is a goodly gentleman, and a gracious, and is so
considerate. He smoothed my cushion when he saw
it awry, and so well, I had thought him accustomed to
it all his life. I see no harm in him.”

“I doubt not, mother. He certainly knows well
how to cheat old folks not less than young ones into
confidence. That smoothing of thy cushion makes
him in thy eyes for ever.”

“And so it should, my son, for it shows consideration.
What could he hope to get from an old woman
like me, and wherefore should he think to find means
to pleasure me, but that he is well-bred, and a gentleman?”

“Ay, that is the word, mother--he is a gentleman--
who knows, a lord in disguise--and is therefore
superior to the poor peasant who is forced to dig his
roots for life in the unproductive sands. Wherefore
should his hands be unblistered, and mine a sore?
Wherefore should he come, and with a smile and silly
speech win his way into people's hearts, when I, with
a toiling affection of years, and a love that almost
grows into a worship of its object, may not gather a
single regard from any? Has nature given me life for
this? Have I had a thought given me, bidding me
ascend the eminence and look down upon the multitude,
only for denial and torture? Wherefore is this cruelty,
this injustice? Can you answer, mother—does the
Bible tell you any thing on this subject?”

“Be not irreverent, my son, but take the sacred
volume more frequently into your own hands if you
desire an answer to your question. Why, Hughey, are
you so perverse? making yourself and all unhappy
about you, and still fevering with every thing you see.”

“That is the question, mother, that I asked you
but now. Why is it? Why am I not like my brother,
who looks upon this Harrison as if he were a god,
and will do his bidding, and fetch and carry for him
like a spaniel? I am not so--yet thou hast taught us
both--we have known no other teaching. Why does
he love the laughter of the crowd, content to send up
like sounds with the many, when I prefer the solitude,
or if I go forth with the rest, go forth only to dissent
and to deny, and to tutor my voice into a sound that
shall be unlike any of theirs? Why is all this?”

“Nay, I know not, yet so it is, Hughey. Thou wert
of this nature from thy cradle, and wouldst reject the
toy which looked like that of thy brother, and quarrel
with the sport which he had chosen.”

“Yet thou wouldst have me like him—but I would
rather perish with my own thoughts in the gloomiest
dens of the forest, where the sun comes not; and
better, far better that it were so—far better,” he exclaimed,
moodily.

“What say'st thou, Hughey—why this new sort of
language? what has troubled thee?” inquired the old
woman, affectionately.

“Mother, I am a slave—a dog—an accursed thing,
and in the worst of bondage—I am nothing.”

“How!—”

“I would be, and I am not. They keep me down—
they refuse to hear—they do not heed me, and with a
thought of command and a will of power in me, they yet
pass me by, and I must give way to a bright wand and a
gilded chain. Even here in these woods, with a poor
neighbourhood, and surrounded by those who are unhonoured
and unknown in society, they—the slaves
that they are!—they seek for artificial forms, and
bind themselves with constraints that can only have a
sanction in the degradation of the many. They yield
up the noble and true attributes of a generous nature,
and make themselves subservient to a name and a
mark—thus it is that fathers enslave their children;
and but for this, our lords proprietors, whom God in
his mercy take to himself, have dared to say, even in
this wild land not yet their own, to the people who
have battled its dangers—ye shall worship after our
fashion, or your voices are unheard. Who is the
tyrant in this?—not the ruler—not the ruler—but those
base spirits who let him rule,—those weak and unworthy,
who, taking care to show their weaknesses, have
invited the oppression which otherwise could have no
head. I would my thoughts were theirs—or, and perhaps
it were better—I would their thoughts were
mine.”

“God's will be done, my son—but I would thou
hadst this content of disposition—without which there
is no happiness.”

“Content, mother—how idle is that thought. Life
itself is discontent—hope, which is one of our chief
sources of enjoyment, is discontent, since it seeks that
which it has not. Content is a sluggard, and should be
a slave—a thing to eat and sleep, and perhaps to dream
of eating and sleeping, but not a thing to live. Discontent

is the life of enterprise, of achievement, of
glory—ay, even of affection. I know the preachers
say not this, and the cant of the books tells a different
story; but I have thought of it, mother, and I know!
Without discontent—a serious and unsleeping discontent—life
would be a stagnant stream as untroubled as
the back water of the swamps of Edistoh, and as full
of the vilest reptiles.”

“Thou art for ever thinking strange things, Hugh,
and different from all other people, and somehow I can
never sleep after I have been talking with thee.”

“Because I have thought for myself, mother—in the
woods, by the waters—and have not had my mind
compressed into the old time-mould with which the
pedant shapes the sculls of the imitative apes that
courtesy considers human. My own mind is my
teacher, and perhaps my tyrant. It is some satisfaction
that I have no other. It is some satisfaction that
I may still refuse to look out for idols such as Walter
loves to seek and worship--demeaning a name and
family which he thus can never honour.”

“What reproach is this, Hughey? Wherefore art
thou thus often speaking unkindly of thy brother?
Thou dost wrong him.”

“He wrongs me, mother, and the name of my father,
when he thus for ever cringes to this captain of yours--
this Harrison—whose name and image mingle in with
his every thought, and whom he thrusts into my senses
at every word which he utters.”

“Let not thy dislike to Harrison make thee distrustful
of thy brother. Beware, Hughey--beware, my son,
thou dost not teach thyself to hate where nature would
have thee love!”

“Would I could--how much more happiness were
mine! Could I hate where now I love—could I exchange
affections, devotion, a passionate worship, for
scorn, for hate, for indifference,--any thing so it be
change!” and the youth groaned at the conclusion of
the sentence, while he thrust his face buried in his
hands against the wall.

“Thou prayest for a bad spirit, Hugh; and a temper
of sin—hear now, what the good book says, just where
I have been reading;” and she was about to read, but
he hurriedly approached and interrupted her--

“Does it say why I should have senses, feelings,
faculties of mind, moral, person, to be denied their
aim, their exercise, their utterance? Does it say why
I should live, for persecution, for shame, for shackles?
If it explain not this, mother,—read not—I will not
hear—look! I shut my ears—I will not hear even thy
voice—I am deaf, and would have thee dumb!”

“Hugh,” responded the old woman, solemnly—
“have I loved thee or not?”

“Wherefore the question, mother?” he returned,
with a sudden change from passionate and tumultuous
emotion, to a more gentle and humble expression.

“I would know from thy own lips, that thou thinkest
me worthy only of thy unkind speech, and look,
and gesture. If I have not loved thee well, and as my
son, thy sharp words are good, and I deserve them;
and I shall bear them without reproach or reply.”

“Madness, mother, dear mother—hold me a madman,
but not forgetful of thy love—thy too much love
for one so undeserving. It is thy indulgence that
makes me thus presuming. Hadst thou been less kind,
I feel that I should have been less daring.”

“Ah! Hugh, thou art wrestling with evil, and thou
lovest too much its embrace—but stay,—thou art not
going forth again to-night?”—she asked, seeing him
about to leave the apartment.

“Yes, yes—I must, I must go.”

“Where, I pray—”

“To the woods—to the woods. I must walk—out
of sight—in the air—I must have fresh air, for I choke
strangely.”

“Sick, Hughey,—my boy—stay, and let me get thee
some medicine.”

“No, no,—not sick, dear mother; keep me not back
—fear not for me—I was never better—never better.”
And he supported her, with an effort at moderation,

back to her chair. She was forced to be satisfied with
the assurance, which, however, could not quiet.

“Thou wilt come back soon, Hughey, for I am all
alone, and Walter is with the captain.”

“The captain!—ay, ay, soon enough, soon enough,”
and as he spoke he was about to pass from the door of
the apartment, when the ill-suppressed sigh which she
uttered as she contemplated in him the workings of a
passion too strong for her present power to suppress,
arrested his steps. He turned quickly, looked back
for an instant, then rushed towards her, and kneeling
down by her side, pressed her hand to his lips, while
he exclaimed--

“Bless me, mother--bless your son—pray for him,
too--pray that he may not madden with the wild
thoughts and wilder hopes that keep him watchful and
sometimes make him wayward.”

“I do, Hughey—I do, my son. May God in his
mercy bless thee, as I do now!”

He pressed her hand once more to his lips and
passed from the apartment.