University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.

What were my designs? The last words,—
the warning caution which Mowbray had suggested,
produced a closer degree of self-examination
than I had ever before undertaken I had

no designs. I was aware of none; but that it
was expected of me that I should entertain some,
naturally led me to them. Was I to be fettered
in this way all my life;—my youth lost;—my
better days and energies swallowed up in such a
miserable sphere of imbecility as that in which I
found myself—release from which seemed only obvious
on terms of still worse degradation? The
thought was inexpressibly humiliating. From
humiliation I got strength—I got resolve. My purpose
suddenly adopted, was to fly from my prison
—to devote all my energies, all my intellect, to this
one purpose. But art was necessary—cunning—I
was to foil the devil at his own game—with his
own weapons. To this resolve I rushed, ere I
reached the cottage of Bush Halsey. There, I
found my wife awaiting me. I threw off the air
of despondency which had possessed me. The
simple determination to be doing something had
its effect in relieving me from the mental prostration
under which I had suffered. I met Helen
with a degree of buoyancy which I had never
shewn before. My rude laughter, and violent
mirth, made her look at me with surprise, but it
was a surprise not unmixed with pleasure. She
congratulated me and herself upon the change,
and, in the belief that I was as happy as she wished
me, and quite content with herself—of which
my late sullenness had made her somewhat doubtful,—she
surrendered herself up to the feeling of
joy which, for the time, had neither doubt nor
qualification. In these feelings of satisfaction,
Bush Halsey shared. He had beheld my despondency
with dissatisfaction, and readily divined
the cause. But he could see no remedy. He
knew his brother—the tyrannical nature, by
which, himself governed, he governed all others;
and, believing that I had no escape from the
Swamp, he could only counsel me to the sort of
resignation by which he himself was reconciled
to it. But the change which my deportment had
undergone, if it deceived both himself and daughter,
did not long deceive the latter, or she began
to doubt the purity and propriety of its origin.
Women are close observers, and arrive, by the
keenest instincts, at the truth in all things which
much affect the objects whom they love. Whatever
might be the success of my practice upon
others, its tendency was more than doubtful to
her, and, after a few weeks, she was less satisfied
with my violent good spirits than she had been at
first. These alone, perhaps, would not have
disquieted her, but, by this time, I had become
rather a frequent associate with the outlaw parson.
The flexibility of this man was wonderful.
He had left me, on the day when I had heard his
narrative, looking more like a maniac than a man.
Never could I suppose that the same person
would ever smile again. The next day, he met
me with a bawdy jest. It was one of the
characteristics of his temperament to be easily
moved by the passing influence, whether grave
or gay—a sort of moral character to receive
its dark or bright aspects from the colors with
which he came in contact. I found him always
thus capricious;—at one moment gloomy,
even to ferocity, and sometimes touched with
a sort of religious fanaticism that would have
done honor to the ruggedest bare-bones of
the Long Parliament. The next day, he was
the courtier—all gravity and smiles, and as loose
in his morals as the most reckless cavalier of
the Court of Charles the Second—as courtly
as Waller, and as licentious as Rochester,—
as sentimental sometimes as the one, and again
as filthily witty as the other. He realized the
extremes of character more suddenly, in the same
person, and frequently on the same day, than any
other man I ever met. I confess that I was not
unfrequently pleased with his society—his wit—
his eloquence—his sentiment. He had all upon
occasion, and, had he been an adroit man, might,
I believe, have led me as he pleased. But he
was totally devoid of judgment. Had none of
that moral prudence which makes the great politician;
and, while he won at one moment, he too
frequently offended all my tastes, and disgusted
me at another. I sought him, however, and this
flattered him. I was rather superior as a companion
to those with whom he ordinarily associated,
and, in the better capacity which I brought
to appreciate his merits, he showed himself very
accessible on the score of mine. In the new
pleasure which I occasionally found in his society,
—in the excitement which it afforded and offered
me, and in the prosecution of the plan which I
had hit upon for extricating myself from the
meshes in which I was bound, I sought him frequently.
He was not the person to pry very
deeply into the sources of the pleasure which he
received, nor to analyse those motives in others,
the results of which afforded him the society
which he desired. He seemed to take for granted,
with that vanity which was a large feature
in his character, that I sought him because of his
intellect. I encouraged the idea, made frequent
appeals to his judgment, and, by getting him to
dilate upon various passages and portions of his
story, directed his thoughts upon himself rather
than to mine. In this way I brought not only
him, but others, to the conviction that I was fast
losing my superior moral, standard, and reconciling
myself to such as were paramount in the
Swamp. Bud Halsey looked on me with more
complacency, and not unfrequently contrived to
join the parson and myself in the long rambles
which we now so frequently took together. He
had occasionally a word for me of more particular
favor, and took care to confirm, by sentences
of mingled sneer and compliment, those improssions,
which, he fancied, had been conveyed by
my companion to my mind.

“You will be a man yet!” was his frequent

phrase, as he left us for his other objects. “Your
eyes are opening.”

But the circumstances which gave him satisfaction
now, afforded none to his brother, Bush
Halsey, or my wife. Their attachment to me,
as I have intimated rather than said, arose in
part from the tenacious firmness with which I
had held to my virtues. I have endeavored to
show that Bush Halsey was the victim of his own
imbecility, as well as of circumstances. A good
man, meaning well, and with an excellent mind,
he was yet controlled entirely by the superior
will of his brother—a man of inferior intellect—
of bad habits and character—but of indomitable
energies, and unrelaxing determination. It was
his own misery that, unwilling to face bankruptcy
and its consequences, in the civilized community
in which he had lived like a nobleman, he was
yet compelled to rear up his only child—a girl
—in contact with the wretched profligates
among whom I found him. But, once a slave,
such a man always remains a slave. From the
moment that he yielded to the suggestions of
his brother, and fled from his creditors to the
wilderness, from that moment, he yielded himself
up to a bondage, from which he did not now hope
to set himself free. But that his child should
grow up in such a situation, with no escape from
such a life, was to him a source of perpetual suffering.
Elegant himself in his tastes, he had tutored
hers, with a degree of watchfulness and skill

which can better be conjectured than detailed,
and it was with a feeling of exultation therefore,
that he hailed the circumstances, already narrated,
by which I had become her husband. Still,
I do not mean to say that he counselled, encouraged,
or in any wise contributed to those arrangements
of his brother, by which that event was
precipitated. Let me do him the justice to say,
that I verily believe the event, as it did happen,
was distasteful to him. His simple wish, as he
frankly avowed to me afterwards, was that we
should grow together, by the natural tendencies
of a sympathetic passion, and he did not believe
that his brother would seriously oppose my departure
from their retreat, when my connection
with Helen should become indissoluble. He did
not know the despotical nature of that man. He
did not conceive it possible that such a connection,
as that which Bud Halsey acknowledged
with the outlaws, could so completely subdue
and set at nought, the natural ties of kindred flesh
and blood. He was yet to learn, how terribly
and entirely this was to be done hereafter.

It will be easy to understand how, even to
him, not less than my wife, the idea that I was
about to be beguiled from my virtue, by the
subtleties of Mowbray, was of intolerable annoyance.
He had indulged himself in the hope, that
I was to restore his daughter to society. For
himself he had no serious cares on this subject.
He, too, would like to return to society. He

lived among the outlaws in a sort of Coventry,
distrusting them, and half distrusted by them;—
but he was no longer so youthful as to feel deeply
the privation, except on account of one, whose
happiness was truly so much dearer than his own.
He did not doubt that the time would come, when
I should be suffered to go free, and he shrunk
with horror from the thought that, meanwhile, I
should be guilty of any course of conduct, which
should lessen my desire to return, or affect my
peace of mind and security when I did so. The
changes in my deportment surprised him, and,
as in the case of his daughter, at the first blush,
gave him pleasure. They had both been disposed
to ascribe my previous gloom to a lessening
of my regard for the latter—to the staling
of a boyish passion in possession of its object; and
a change in this respect, in my conduct, was too
grateful at first sight, to render them at all desirous
of seeking farther into its causes. But when
my intimacy with Mowbray was remarked—
when, too, it was seen that I betrayed more curiosity—more
sympathy—with the proceedings
of the outlaws,—and when Bud Halsey began to
regard me with favor,—every apprehension of
poor Helen was aroused. The favor of her
uncle, seemed to her, one of the most doubtful
and dangerous of signs. The danger seemed
conclusive, when, one morning, Bud Halsey sent
me my horse. The brave animal had been taken
from me, at my first coming—I had not been permitted
to see him since, and when, with a sentiment
of pride and pleasure which I could not conceal,
I went forth, laid my hand upon his neck,
and heard him whinny his recognition as he
heard my voice,—then all her suspicions seemed
confirmed. I was about to leap upon him, with
all that gush of unmeasured exultation, which
youth feels, confident of strength, buoyant with
prospects of assured success, and in the possession
of one of those agents of power and speed,
in the employment of which the impetuous nature
feels all that enthusiasm and delight which grows
out of the intimate union and joint action of blood
and brain;—my hand was on his neck, my foot in
the stirrup—when Helen called me to her side.

“Go not yet, dear Henry—come with me first
—but a moment. I would speak with you.”

I confess to a little reluctance at quitting the
animal, even at the solicitation of one so dear.
But I followed her. There was nobody besides
in the cottage. Her father had gone out on a
ramble. When I joined her in the chamber to
which she had returned, she at once, and passionately,
putting her hand upon my arm, thus addressed
me:—

“Oh, Henry, forgive me, but I fear you, I suspect
you!”

“Suspect me?—of what, dear Helen?”

“This horse, this new favor of my uncle, your
intimacy with that Mr. Mowbray, all make me
tremble lest they seduce you to their evil prac

tices—lest you should be tempted,—lest you
should fall! Oh, Henry, be not tempted, be firm,
go not with them to do evil. Go not,—for my
sake, Henry, for your own sake;—go not, go
not!”

I kissed her, oh! how fondly—pressed her to
my bosom—and while the tears gathered in her
eyes,—while she clung to me with continued
pleading,—I begged her to be quiet—to believe
me still. It was necessary, however, that I should
maintain appearances, and, breaking from her, I
hurried to horse, and proceeded to join Mowbray
in a canter which he proposed. How I felt myself,
once more on horseback! What a feeling
of pride it inspires, mounted on a noble steed
who knows his own strength, and rejoices in the
free play of his majestic limbs. My horse knew
his rider, and I him, and as I rode forth to meet
Mowbray, I found myself calculating the chances
of a long chase, through swamp and through
briar, against any, the best mettled, in the camp
of the outlaws.