University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

One of the most frequent inquirers after the Lormans,
and how they liked the west, was our early
acquaintance, Hearty Coil. Whenever Hearty saw
Mr. Solomon Beckford, he was sure to put question
upon question to him concerning the far way western
country; and he had been often heard to say,
after one of their talks, that if Mrs. Coil could be persuaded—now
Parlot's wife was dead, and the family
a kind of broke up—he would go there. To this the
old miser was disposed to persuade him, for he
thought, as Hearty would have to sell his little farm
to do so, he might get it very cheap, and in this way
remunerate himself for the carryall, which he had
been compelled to mend at his own expense.

Hearty, too, had done sundry jobs of pruning
trees, and doctoring horses for Mr. Murray, and
when he called for payment, he frequently saw Helen,
who never failed to amuse herself by a long chat
with him, in which the Lormans, and the west, and
what Hearty could do there, formed the principal
topics.

“Do you know, Hearty,” said Helen to him one
day, “that I think it likely I shall go west some of
these days, just to pay Ruth a visit.”

“And by the living jingoes, Miss Murray,” exclaimed

Hearty, “that's just what Hearty would like
to be a-doing himself. A sweet, neat lady is Miss
Ruth, and I'm told by all accounts, it's a sweet, neat
country, only the trees wants pruning; and I'll be
sworn, there's many of their horses would be the
better of skilful doctoring. Old Beckford, miser
though he is, and though he loves cents more than I
do dollars, is a good adviser, and he's a-thinking it's
about the best thing I could do—ha, ha, ha! I tucked
him in for that mourning suit after all. I got a week's
good wear out of it, and never paid him the first
cent.”

Flattered with the expectation of being a lady in
the land, and fond of novelty, and having caught the
spirit of emigration from the Lormans, and their
accounts of Perryville, Mrs. Coil was easily persuaded
by her husband to emigrate there; for the
“great west” is to many of the people of the eastern
and middle states, what the United States are to the
people of the “old country.” And it is nothing
marvellous to meet in a village, in the west, three or
four families from the same neighbourhood. It is
quite natural, that if one neighbour has emigrated
and done well, that those whom he has left, when
smitten with the love of change, perhaps, from the
accounts which the emigrant has himself given, in
seeking to better their condition, should locate where
he had bettered his; as well from the fact, that his
success seems to give them assurances of prosperity,
as in the hope, that in fixing their abiding place by

some one from “home,” it will make the location
wear a familiar face to them. Therefore, often in
our western cities, towns, villages, and even farming
settlements, the dramatis personæ of fact are grouped
together, as if placed there by the poetic arrangement
of fiction.

When Hearty made up his mind to emigrate to
Perryville, Mr. Solomon Beckford was much disappointed
in not becoming the purchaser of Hearty's
little farm at half price, with the cost for the repair
of the carryall deducted, for Helen Murray's father
purchased it, giving Hearty considerably more than
its full value for it.

“Friends and neighbours all,” said Hearty, as he
stood on the steps of a country grocery in his neighbourhood,
with a number of his acquaintances and
neighbours around him,—“the thing's settled—Mrs.
Coil give her consent long ago, and I've got every-thing
in readiness; we are off for the great big west,
now in a day or two. I will let you hear from me.
I will write to Moran the keeper of the grocery, and
he will give you the information. That is, I mean
to say, that I will get Miss Ruth to put it down, as I
am a kind of crampt about the fingers; though I
writ Parlot's wife's obituary notice, I mean, that first
one that the rascally printers destroyed, it was much
more amplified than this other. I'll get her to put it
down, but I will speak every word of it, and I'll tell
her exactly what to say. It's a great country, that
great big west. Jim Bunce is there, and he has a

distillery as big as the meeting house; think how the
fellow is up in the world. I know it will be for the
betterment of my family circle. I don't know what
I shall follow: you know I can turn my hand to any
thing—most any thing.”

“Hearty, you must let us know all about the
hunting thar,” said a great, big, lazy-looking fellow,
who stood in the group leaning on his rifle; “it's
monstrous thin, no hunting at all here; it's making
game to try to get game in these parts nowadays.”

“Yes, Snodgrass, you may depend on me; there's
plenty of game there, man; only think of the fish
there must be in their big rivers—and their woods,
they stretch as far as from here to where you can
think, and they are full of every-thing, from a deer
to a duck, and from a duck to nothing at all. You
shall hear from me all,” continued Hearty, theatrically
waving his hand.

A few days after this conversation, Hearty, with
four good horses hitched to a substantial wagon,
and with Mrs. Coil, and his little family circle well
packed up in it, departed for the west, intending to
journey in this way to Wheeling, and then to dispose
of the wagon and horses there, and descend the
river.

We will not trace the journey of Hearty Coil, but
precede him to Perryville, to notice the arrival of
Henry Beckford there. The Lormans were surprised
at seeing him. Mr. Lorman was delighted, for
Ruth had never told him—not wishing to give him

unnecessary pain—of what she held the reason of
her stepmother's taking the laudanum which caused
her death. Her father, therefore, was still under the
impression which his wife had been careful to plant
in his mind, that Henry was pleased with Ruth.
Amidst his tribulations and trials at his wife's death,
the question had more than once entered his mind,
why Henry did not make known his intentions plainly;
but then he reflected, that though he might be attached
to Ruth, yet there were degrees in attachment,
and Henry's might not have arrived at the
point of confession. Latterly, after the death of his
wife, when Henry discontinued his visits, Mr. Lorman,
when amid the press of his many cares, he
thought on the subject, received the impression, that
perhaps he had been mistaken—or that perhaps Henry
had been taught to believe, in some way or other,
that Ruth preferred Ralph to himself, and had therefore
made a silent withdrawal, or waited other opportunities
of wooing her. To this latter conclusion, his
mind speedily came, on the arrival of Henry at Perryville,
for Mr. Lorman could not perceive what
earthly motive had brought him there, but attachment
to Ruth. Ruth, on the contrary, felt a foreboding
of ill, while she wondered that Helen Murray,
from whom she had not received a letter for some
time, had not written to her, and said something of
Henry. The news of Henry's adventures at the
theatre had not yet reached Perryville. Helen Murray
had written to Ruth but once after the arrival
of Mr. Davidson, in her city, and then she wrote at
length, and spoke in raptures of Mr. Davidson. Helen
had sat down since several times, to write Ruth
concerning Henry's adventures, but she was taken
off by some one calling; and as Hearty Coil had,
when she last saw him, informed her he would positively
start for Perryville the ensuing week; she concluded
to wait, and write by him, as it was her intention
to make him the bearer of several valuable
presents to Ruth.

“And so, Mr. Beckford, you have brought me no
letter from Helen?” exclaimed Ruth, in a tone of deep
disappointment.

“Ay, I did not mention that I had not seen her for
some time before I left. The truth is, that an unfortunate
creature in the theatre, who was insane from
intoxication, alas! a woman, too, gave me, as I stood
in the crowd, amidst many others, so severe a wound
from a pistol, that I have been dangerously ill. Did
not Miss Murray mention it in any of her letters to
you, Miss Ruth?”

“No, she did not, sir,” replied Ruth, much surprised.

“Well, I had supposed that ere this, you had received
awful accounts of my mishaps, construed into
misdeeds. The wildest and most exaggerated stories
were flying over town concerning it. And, as Miss
Murray, you know, is given to a little severity, I supposed,
long before this, she had cooked up for your
edification, no very flattering account to myself, of

my adventures. I lay very long ill, and when I recovered,
not wishing the poor wretch to be sent to
the penitentiary on my account, I absented myself
to prevent appearing, which I must have done, had
I remained, and in that event, she would have inevitably
been convicted. Having resolved on absence,
I knew no place where I could be relieved of its tedium,
better than this place now.”

A smile broke over Mr. Lorman's countenance,
and after musing a moment, he apologized to Henry
on the score of business, and left the room. Henry
having heard from Helen of the relation existing between
Ralph and Ruth, was extremely desirous to
discover if it was a fact, but he knew not well how
to introduce the subject, as he also had been made
aware, from the same source, that Ruth attributed
the suicidal death of her stepmother, to his conduct.
He hoped Ruth would mention his cousin, and give
him an opportunity of “pumping” her, but he could
not but perceive that she evidently avoided naming
Ralph, and that her conduct towards himself, was
constrained and embarrassed. He saw plainly a
sense of politeness, and not of pleasure, led her to
make an effort to entertain him, and after the most
disagreeable tête-à-tête he had ever held, with the
exception of some lately with Helen; he arose and
left, with more bitter feelings, if possible, against
Ruth and his cousin, than he had ever yet entertained.