 | CHAPTER IV. The King of the Hurons |  |
4. CHAPTER IV.
town of art and song;
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks
that round them throng.”
—Longfellow.
Jacobus Waldron was a Dutchman ingrain. He was born
somewhere near the centre of Holland proper, out of the range of
all foreign atmospheric influences, and of parents, whose lineage,
traceable for centuries, was of unadulterated Dutch. He spoke,
wrote, read, thought, and dreamed in Dutch, wore Dutch garments
with a Dutch air, and ate, and drank, and smoked, and slept after
the most approved fashion of his race. It had been with many
misgivings that he had migrated, when yet a young man, to New
York, which at that time was a colony of Holland, but which, by
some strange diplomatic process that he did not understand, was
soon afterwards passed over to the sovereignty of England. Like
some huge flapjack, tossed by the skilful housewife into the air, and
ever coming down in a reversed position, such, to Jacobus's seeming,
had been the political tumblings of the infant state, which had
already belonged twice to both Holland and England, had been
now taken on the sly and now by force, and had finally been transferred
with the dash of a pen to the last named government, in
company with some ignominious islands in the West Indies and the
South Seas. It was a galling reflection to Mynheer Waldron that
his native land had thus expatriated, as it were, thousands of her
loving sons, who had thought, even at this distance, to nestle safely
his worldly means, one half of which consisted of small yellow
bricks, with shingles, shutters, and weathercocks, which were destined
to grow into a house in the new world, and which had taken
a thousand fantastic shapes in his imagination, as he smoked, and
pondered, and dreamed through a three months' voyage from Amsterdam.
He had brought with him, too, a plump little wife and
a still plumper baby, crowing as yet, although of a sex which might
more appropriately have cackled. And thus it was that Jacobus
continued a denizen of New York, notwithstanding its excision from
Holland, the news of which cruel act reached him just as he had
completed his house, a building of many angles, which looked as
old on the day when it was finished as it did a century subsequent,
and on the very steep and smooth roof of which no bird, not remarkably
sure-footed, would have dared to alight. He shut himself up
for a while in his castle in great consternation, not knowing what
amount of personal calamity to apprehend; but finding himself
unmolested, he gradually took heart, and commenced timidly cultivating
his land, of which he had several acres; and, finally, growing
more and more daring, ventured to smoke his pipe on his front
stoop, in the face of the whole city. As time rolled by, Jacobus
was delighted to find that he remained undisturbed, and that his
little farm, stocked with some genuine Dutch cattle, and a few negro
slaves, who were then a cheap commodity in the province, afforded
him a very comfortable subsistence. If there was no lack, however
so neither was there any overplus; for his negroes, unfortunately,
were all provided with mouths, and even his children, as they came
successively to light, proved to be similarly equipped; so that, in
one way and another, his yearly products vanished as fast as they
came. He had many schemes for growing rich, none of which,
however, ever came to sufficient maturity in his mind to be acted
upon; but he kept hoping for better times, and fully believing that
something or other would turn up, by and by, greatly to his advantage.
which has been about to happen to thousands ever since, who have
lacked energy to overcome the natural vis inertiæ of both mind and
body, and who, practising neither self-denial nor industry, look confidently
for the rewards of both. Whatever it was, it did not come
to Jacobus. The course of nature was not subverted for his benefit.
He did not grow rich, though he grew fat; for as years increased
upon him, he worked less, and schemed more. Eighteen summers
rolled by, and he was startled, one fine afternoon, on rubbing the
smoke out of his eyes, and calling his little Hetty to his side, to
find that she had really grown to be a young woman, and not a
little handsome withal. It was strange that he had never noticed
this transformation before; for whatever his daughter might have
seemed to others, to him she had always been the same little toddler,
who used to dance among the cabbages at the age of three,
beguiling him by the hour from his little relished labor, and even
knocking down, at times, the underpinning of those airy structures
which he so much delighted to build. But now she herself became
the subject of a scheme, suddenly conceived, but long revolved, as
she stood at his side, the patient recipient of many puffs, not such
as beauty covets most. Jacobus gazed into her pretty face, and
smoothed her glossy hair, and eyed her neat round figure and her
dimpled little hand, and thought of the rich young Vanderknipper
in the neighborhood, who, everybody said, was in search of a wife.
True, he was a booby, and as surly as a mastiff, but he owned half
the street in which he resided, and many a fine block besides, his
father having recently abdicated in his favor, and gone to a world
where real estate is unknown. It was with much embarrassment
that Mynheer Waldron succeeded in broaching the delicate subject,
for the idea of matrimony, he doubted not, would overwhelm the
poor child with alarm. He proved to be somewhat abroad in his
calculations, as usual: matrimony, in the abstract, was not an object
of aversion to Hetty; but she would by no means consent to become
and, besides that, she had other views; not that she said to
her papa what she thus saucily thought, with the demurest and seemingly
most submissive of faces. Argument and reason were unavailing,
and Jacobus, pondering deeply, began to wonder whether the
weekly visits of a young English merchant, who brought over his
newspaper regularly for the father to read, while he chatted by the
hour with Hetty, had anything at all to do with the matter. It could
not be; for Mr. Huntington, although an enterprising, active young
man, was as poor as himself; and as neither party could make any
money by the operation, it did not seem at all probable that the
merchant should seek an alliance with his daughter. Once more,
Mynheer Waldron was in error; Huntington loved Hetty, and married
her, before the father well knew whether he had given his
consent or not; and Time, whom no events can retard, passed on
with all its myriad dramas, for another period of twenty years, at
which epoch his great kaleidoscope, being thoroughly shaken up,
presented objects in a very different aspect. Jacobus was still alive,
verging on eighty, as poor as ever, and still looking confidently for
some favorable change in his affairs. Huntington's business had
prospered famously for a while, for he was a dealer in furs, a magical
sort of trade, at which all parties were gainers, except the producers
of the raw material, who were cheated quite out of their skins. He
grew rich, indeed, till even the lout of a Vanderknipper took off his
hat to him; and then something jogged the rolling world, and a
heavy cargo of peltry, bound to China, sank, uninsured, in the
Pacific. Huntington took to his bed, and passed thence to the
churchyard; and Hetty pined but a year, before she slept at his
side, showing that life and wealth are only other names for bubbles
and shadows. But they had not lived in vain. A son, of manly
beauty, of graceful but athletic figure, of open and engaging countenance,
perpetuated his father's worth and his mother's gentleness
At the age of nineteen, he had been called home from a foreign
the coveted caresses of his remaining parent, and to follow her,
destitute, and an orphan, to the grave. Some hearts are schooled,
gradually, to grief, and grow familiar with its returning visage; but
Henrich's first draught of sorrow was from the lees. He mourned
as none but the ingenuous and noble-hearted can mourn; and when
to others' seeming least mindful of his bereavement, his whole heart
was often flooded with the gushing tenderness inspired by some
sudden recollection of his loss. Mementoes were all around him,
hourly touching some mystic thread of memory, and summoning,
from her haunted caverns, the apparitions of departed bliss. Ah!
little do they think, whose experience of adversity has been confined
to the common buffetings of fortune, of that greater calamity, which,
taking one treasure, leaves all others valueless! To lose a friend,
and feel that there can be no return, not even for one short hour,
through all the coming months, and seasons, and years of life, no
word, no glance, no token of forgiven wrong, of continued love, of
hoped re-union; to know this dreadful truth, to feel it pressing
heavily upon a heart yet unused to its vacancy, this is misery
indeed, and it was that of Henrich.
But Heaven has graciously implanted in the mind, as in the body,
those recuperative energies, which enable it to rise at length, buoyant,
from the severest lacerations. The young Huntington became
one of his grandfather's household, although, fortunately for both,
not without a remnant of means which saved him from dependence.
He possessed a taste for study and added largely, in private, to
that broad superstructure of learning which had been already founded
in his mind; and when a few summers had passed away, there
were but slight traces of his affliction discernible in his deportment.
He had become happy and hopeful; his laughter was again heard
by welcoming ears; his step was light and agile; and his whole
frame animated with the returning elasticity of youth. Still determining
and still hesitating to enter in some way upon the active
indecision that he resolved should soon terminate. He would
attempt something; he would not be an idler in the busy world
around him; disconnected with its sympathies and hopeless of its
rewards. Yet his were not the common illusions of youth, presenting
the personal aggrandizement resulting from wealth or fame as
the ultimate end of life. Taught in the school of affliction, he felt
that there was something nobler and less selfish in existence than
this; and that the glorious universe, of which he was a conscious
part, was something more than a theatre for mere personal display,
however brilliant might be the ephemeral gifts of man. The silent
exemplars of ancient virtue, visible in colossal though indistinct proportions
upon the classic page, and the more direct teachings of that
high and holy philosophy, before which the light of mere human
learning “pales its ineffectual ray,” had given to his character that
moral prominence which alone truly exalts humanity; and which,
when wedded to intellect, becomes, like the blended light and heat
of day, both brilliant and benign.
It was at this period of his life that an event occurred, which,
though singular in itself, deserves chronicling, only by reason of its
sequences, at an after day. Fond of hardy sports, and skilful as a
marksman, the forests were his frequent resort when oppressed with
the weariness of study; and on a fine June afternoon, he had sauntered,
gun in hand, to the woods, uncompanioned save by the bright
memories and brighter hopes that spring spontaneous in the breast
of youth. There was a point, a little north of the wall, where a high
sandy embankment overlooked the city, the confluent rivers, the bay
and its islands, and the opposing shores, which stretched away in the
distance, and converged in a hazy line around the shining waters, till
but a narrow vista hinted of the unrevealed beauties beyond. It
was a spectacle of rare beauty, and Henrich lingered long to gaze
upon it, and to watch the shifting shadows that played upon the
bay and beach, as the gauzy clouds sailed lazily across the bright
hum to his ear. The shouts of children in the streets, driving the
bounding ball, or watching the diving kite; the sound of the woodman's
axe and its quick echo; the rattling of an occasional wagon;
the laughter of trafficking men; the song of the light-hearted negro;
—these were the city's blended voices. The gleam of the sentinel's
bayonet came from the distant fort as he paced his idle round; the
unlifted flag was seen drooping from its staff; and, frowning from
their embrasures, the threatening cannon looked out towards the
sea.
Beyond this hill, over which the “ploughshare of ruin” has long
since been driven, was a thicket or dense portion of the forest,
remarkable for its profuse foliage and the unrelieved depth of its
shade. It was of considerable extent, and included a ravine, at the
bottom of which a sullen streamlet proved an attraction to the game,
and consequently to the sportsman also. He had not proceeded far
in this direction, when he perceived signs of what seemed at first
a mortal contest between two athletic men; but a nearer advance
and a closer scrutiny showed him that one only of the combatants
was a human being, who was wrestling at vastly unequal odds with
a huge gaunt wolf. Unusual as was this circumstance, it being well
known that these animals seldom singly attack a man, unless
impelled by the fiercest goadings of famine, the combat was of the
most violent kind, and gave promise of a speedy termination.
Appalled at the imminent peril which threatened a fellow-being,
Henrich hastened to the spot, and for some time strove in vain to
make himself a party to the conflict. So closely was the man locked
in the fearful embrace of the beast, and so rapid were their gyrations,
that any attempt to dispatch the latter with his weapon, might
have proved equally fatal to the other. For a few seconds he
darted around the parties, from side to side, seeking vainly for a
safe opportunity to discharge his rifle with effect; and then, impelled
by the increasing peril of the stranger, he threw his gun on the
flashing eyes of the wolf, his ensanguined jaws and teeth, as he
turned snarlingly for a moment towards the new comer, were not
calculated to inspire courage in his breast; but determined not to
abandon a fellow mortal in such extremity, Henrich grasped the
infuriated beast by the neck, and throwing himself heavily upon him
succeeded in disengaging him from the wounded man. The latter,
staggering backwards for a moment, rallied, and raising a club was
about to renew the war, when the animal, alarmed at the reinforcement
of his foe, commenced a growling retreat. It proved, however,
a less masterly and less successful performance than some feats of
this class which are on record; for Huntington, coolly recovering his
weapon, called upon the rescued man to stand aside, who was still
menacingly brandishing his club, and making a feint of pursuit. A
quick aim and a detonation that was mingled with a short, fierce
yell of the wolf, as he rolled on the ground, ended the affair; and
for the first time Henrich had an opportunity to gratify his curiosity
by looking at his companion. He was a rough, sun-burnt man of
about forty years, clad in a sailor's dress, and with a countenance
which must have been singularly forbidding in any aspect, but which
at the present moment was almost flendish in its expression. Seamed
with scratches, stained with blood, lighted with eyes that still flashed
rage, his face scarcely needed the coarse, disordered hair, and matted
moustache which environed it, to seem altogether diabolical; and
when Henrich, suppressing his emotions of horror, sympathizingly
inquired the extent of his injuries, the harsh, grating reply of the
other was in singular unison with his looks.
“The foul fiend seize him!” he said, glancing at the insensate
carcase; “I was asleep upon the ground, or he never would have
dared to attack me; and as for you, young man, I suppose you
think you have saved my life!”
Henrich smiled, and was about to reply, when the other continued:
“But in that you are quite mistaken; if you had let us alone, I
should have done well enough; I don't need help against one
wolf, and not much against a whole pack; however, you meant well
enough, Henrich Huntington, and for such a milk-soppish looking fellow,
did well enough, too; only, next time, I'll thank you not to
interfere—that's all!” and so saying, the man picked up his crushed
cap, shook the dust from it, and thrusting it on his head, marched
off without further comment.
The young man gazed after him with an air of utter surprise, nor
did he withdraw his eyes until the other had entirely disappeared in
the depths of the forest. Then smiling, as he proceeded to reload
his gun, he said:
“I killed the wrong wolf that time, certainly, and should have
received more thanks if I had helped the other side. Who can the
savage be? and how does he know my name?”
Thus soliloquizing, Henrich, after loading and priming his piece,
proceeded to examine the body of the slain animal, which was of a
size and species unusual in that region, and one from a personal
encounter with which the bravest might well have shrunk. His
bold attack, however, was very remarkable, and rendered probable
the truth of the stranger's assertion, that it had been made while he
was asleep, and, doubtless, in the opinion of his assailant, already
defunet.
The young man, after examining the body a few minutes, was
about to turn away, when he heard a light bounding step breaking
through the underbrush, and a young Indian hunter stood at his
side. Uttering a quick guttural sound, that would hardly have been
recognised as a laugh, excepting by one familiar with Indian modes
of expression, the savage looked deferentially at Huntington, and
then pointing at the game, said:
“Old long-ears; me shoot him twice last year; no use—see!”
and turning the carcase over, he pointed out two scars upon the
animal's chest, which were evidently the traces of severe wounds.
and taking his knife from his belt, moved it dexterously for a few
moments about the shoulder of the beast, and produced a leaden
bullet, which he held up exultingly to Henrich.
“Mine!” he said; “my wolf! What does my brother say?”
“Say?” replied Henrich; “why, I say that you have proved title
very clearly; and if you want the head—there it is; help yourself,
Winny! The bounty will find you in powder for a month.”
Nodding good-naturedly to the young man, the Indian quickly
severed the head, and seizing it by the ears, started on a run
towards the city, to claim the small bounty which was then paid for
slaughtering beasts of prey. Henrich, meanwhile, abandoning his
proposed sport, returned slowly homeward, musing upon the singular
events of the day.
| CHAPTER IV. The King of the Hurons | |