 | V.
HECTOR. Neighbor Jackwood |  |
5. V.
HECTOR.
The evening was soft and warm. The sky spread calm and
starry above the sultry city. The houses were thrown open to
catch the breath of a light south wind that blew gently up the
bay. Many of the inhabitants were in the streets, sitting before
their doors, or strolling up and down; while upon the river the
negro bargemen sang their wild and plaintive melodies, in the
moonlight that shone over the water.
At ten o'clock, two young men landed from a pleasure-boat,
and walked arm-in-arm into the town.
“Here we are again,” said one, pointing with his cane. “It is
on this corner we met. Well, we have had a pleasant sail, and I
have you to thank for it.”
“I stifle,” returned the other, “in these close streets. When I
look up at the stars, I would fly! How cool, how far-off, how
pure, they are!”
“You are homesick, Hector.”
“No, Joseph, — but a little heart-sick! Life seems so rotten
here, my hands feel slimy with it, and I reach up instinctively,
as if to wash them in the light of the stars. What is the great
end of existence, Joseph?”
“Upon my word,” cried Joseph, “I don't know!”
“You have lived too long in this contagious atmosphere of
vice!” rejoined Hector. “There is danger here of forgetting
what the word existence means. Do you not often start, and cry
out, `Is this humanity? am I a part of it? who are we? what
are we? why do we exist?'”
“When I dwell upon such things,” answered Joseph, “I have
the blue devils horridly!”
“The thought haunts me continually. It tyrannizes over me
like conscience. Night and day, wherever I go, whatever I
see or do, the inexorable voice whispers, `To what end is it
all?'”
“Will you tell me what you live for?”
“I live for LOVE!” exclaimed Hector.
“You!” laughed his companion. “Do you know that, with
all the ladies of my acquaintance, you have the reputation of
being the coldest and most indifferent mortal in the world?”
“With the ladies of your acquaintance!” repeated the other,
significantly. “I like the compliment! But, let me tell you,
there is an ocean of love palpitating and throbbing in that heart
they find so cold. It waits for a possessor.”
“Which you will never find!”
“In truth, I do not expect it. I take leave of southern society
in a few days; I go home to my native Vermont, to spend a solitary
summer among the mountains. There is nothing for me there
but thought and study. And as for Mobile, I have had strange
experiences here; I have learned something of woman's heart, in
spite of my coldness; but it is all in the past, thank heaven! and
nothing will ever allure me here again.”
“You are right!” said Joseph, thoughtfully. “I wish I was
going with you. Rob Greenwich is up that way somewhere, is
he not?”
“Where Rob Greenwich is, it 's not easy to say. He goes
where passion leads him, — not like you and me, dear Joseph!”
said Hector, ironically. “But, if you ask where his home is, I
can tell you. It 's in the village of Huntersford, about a mile
and a half from my father's house. I will show it you when you
come to visit me this summer.”
“I? — That 's out of the question, unless I marry a rich wife,
and go north for a wedding tour.”
“Well, do that, and you shall have a double welcome.”
“If I had your opportunities,” said Joseph, “perhaps I might.
My friendship will never forgive you for not marrying Helen.
She is rich, beautiful, and charming; more than all, she loves
you —”
“A woman,” cried Hector, “who holds human property; who
must have her slaves to wait upon her; who would not give them
up even for me! Judge how well she loves me! But we will
not discuss that question. Take her, if you can get her, black
servants and all. And now good-night. You have an engagement,
and are anxious to get rid of me.”
“True,” said Joseph, “I have a call to make; but —”
“No compliments. We part here. Joseph, be worthy of the
name!”
Leaving his friend to proceed alone, Hector turned a corner,
and walked, with folded arms, along a street brilliant with lighted
saloons. The doors of these places were thrown open, pouring
floods of yellow light upon the street, and exposing all the allurements
of dissipation within, from the well-furnished bar to the gay
and voluptuous pictures that adorned the walls.
Into one of these, led by the same habit of observing human
nature which had prompted his visit to the south, Hector Dunbury
strolled abstractedly. It was a celebrated saloon, called the
“Revolver,” either in honor of the weapon so named, or in consequence
of a certain rotary motion with which the brains of its
patrons were apt to become familiar. The sign above the door
favored both these ideas, — showing on one side the device of a
huge six-shooting pistol, and on the other that of a jolly gentleman
reeling under the weight of one glass of liquor in his hand,
and several more in his head.
Within, conversation, music, and dancing, together with the fine
arts, or rather the coarse arts, added their charms to the attraction
of the bar. The music was by an itinerant performer, who
exercised a feeble violin, with an accompaniment of bells which
he jingled with one foot, a triangle which he sounded from time
to time with the other, and a pair of cymbals played between his
knees. The dancing was by two artists, a male and a female.
The one, a cotton-dealer, of “respectable” standing in southern
society, carried away by the enthusiasm of over-strong potations,
had volunteered a double pigeon-wing, in a style that would have
somewhat astonished his mercantile connections in New York and
Boston. The female was no other than a learned duck, had in
her to a noble emulation of the cotton-dealer's extraordinary
performance.
At the bar, Hector called for a glass of lemonade.
“No fire in it for me!” he exclaimed, as the bar-tender was
about to dash some brandy into the tumbler.
“Lemonade?” echoed a dark, bearded individual, on his
left, inclining over the bar. “The same for me — with a
good deal of the extra. In short, make it a punch. And you,
Dickson?”
“Yes, doctor, if you please,” said a third customer, thickly.
“If I please?” cried the doctor. “What 's the matter?”
“Nothing,” replied Dickson, “only I 'm conside'bly 'fected by
the music.”
“Do ye call that music?” cried his companion. “I 'll make
better with a saw-file and a pair of tongs!”
“Recollect,” said the bar-tender, “that, six weeks ago, that man
had never seen a fiddle.”
“He plays well, for six weeks!” observed Dickson, with drunken
gravity.
“You swallow such a story as that in your liquor!” retorted
the doctor. “I 'm ashamed of you!”
And he playfully thrust his friend's hat over his features, like
an extinguisher.
“I said,” gasped Dickson, struggling out of his hat, and
looking up with a ludicrous expression of bewilderment, “I
said — where is what I said? I dropped it as a candid remark,”
— and he looked about him as if expecting to find it
on the counter, or on the floor. “Who knocked my hat over
my eyes?”
“'T was the lemonade gentleman, I reckon,” replied the doctor.
“He appears anxious to apologize. As for your marvellous fiddler,”
— and he turned his back, while Dickson staggered fiercely
upon Hector.
“O, as for him,” said the bar-tender, “I can prove that he had
never seen a fiddle six weeks ago. Perhaps you 'd like to take
a bet.”
“Well, I reckon!” cried the doctor. “I 'll go the drinks for
the company.”
“All right!” returned the other. “The man is blind!”
“Sold, by Jove!” shouted the doctor, flinging his hat across
the room.
At that moment a thickly-articulated cry for help was heard;
the doctor recognized his own name, and the voice of a friend. It
was Dickson, whose drunken attack upon Hector had proved something
of a failure, and who now, in consequence, lay in a disagreeable
heap under the table, where he was trying to open the wall,
mistaking it for the door.
Meanwhile, Hector had taken his seat in the corner, with his
lemonade before him. Declining the doctor's invitation to the
bar, he sat looking on, with a listless expression, while the rest
of the company celebrated the bet. The blind man was led up
by the ragged urchin, who grinned over his gin-and-sugar with
the men at the bar, and smacked his lips afterwards, as if he
loved it.
The company then, becoming hilarious, formed a ring to observe
the duck dance. Among other amusing feats the wonderful biped
performed, was that of recognizing the medical faculty, and saluting
them in the crowd. Her sagacity in that respect was fairly
tested, the betting doctor being the subject. Stopping before
him, in her waddling rounds, she uttered the characteristic
cry, —
“Quack! quack!”
A shout of exultation from the spectators. The doctor, excited,
offered to wager that the experiment would not succeed a second
time. The bet taken, he changed his position; and once more
the duck, waddling about the floor to the blind fiddler's music,
stopped suddenly, and, bobbing her head up and down, politely
saluted the doctor.
“Quack! quack! quack!”
The applause was tremendous. Some drunken fellows fell
down upon the floor, and rolled and roared. The doctor's eyes
flashed.
“Who says that 's true?”
Dickson, who had by this time crept from under the table, muttering
revenge, indicated Hector with his tipsy fist. The doctor
marched up to the young man, in a blustering way, and demanded
an apology.
Hector sipped his lemonade coolly, but made no reply.
“Do you know who I am?” hissed the doctor.
“No,” replied Hector, “unless I am to take the duck's word.”
“You are a liar!” articulated the doctor, with choking
passion.
The next instant, the contents of Hector's glass were streaming
from his brows, and eyes, and beard; and Hector stood upon his
feet, pale, but firm, grasping the empty tumbler in his hand.
As the doctor staggered back from the shock, his hand instinctively
found its way to his bosom, where it came in contact with
the handle of a pistol. He drew it, and levelled it at Hector.
But quick as thought it flew to the ceiling, struck up by a swift
blow from his adversary's hand.
At this juncture, the courageous Dickson made a sally in favor
of his ally, with a chair upon his head. Hector leaped aside, and
the blow intended for him fell upon the crown of the dancing
cotton-dealer. At the same time, the doctor rushed forward with
a brandished knife.
“Take care!” cried Hector, stepping back.
There was something in his tone and look which betokened a
roused and dangerous spirit. The doctor might have been warned;
but his passion blinded him, and, with an oath, showing his firmset,
glittering teeth, under his curled moustache, he aimed a blow
at the young man's breast. On the instant, the empty glass,
which was Hector's only weapon, was shivered in the face of his
antagonist; who, stunned and gashed, dropped upon one knee,
letting fall his weapon, and supporting himself with his hand upon
the floor.
Hector was unhurt; and, the moment he saw his adversary
down, he sprang to raise him up, and helped him to a chair.
“Dickson!” cried out the doctor, in accents of pain and rage,
endeavoring to wipe the blood from his eyes; “by —! Dickson!”
A violent tumult had arisen in the saloon. Dickson was in the
midst of it, and unable to render his friend any assistance.
“O, — furies!” articulated the doctor. “Lives shall pay
for this!”
“We will talk of that,” said Hector. “But first let me look
to your wound. I sought no quarrel; but it is my way to defend
myself.”
The doctor was not dangerously hurt. His brow was cut, and
the blinding blood that streamed down into his eyes rendered him
incapable of offering any opposition. Hector removed the fragments
of glass from the wound, and tied his own handkerchief
about it, to staunch the blood.
By this time, the police having been alarmed, five or six drunken
officials, with badges upon their hats and bricks in them, reeled
into the saloon, swaggering and swearing.
The ragged urchin, the duck, and the blind fiddler, were the
first offenders seized. This was natural, they being not only
quite innocent, but incapable of resistance. The police next laid
hands upon the cotton-dealer, who, discomfited, sat in Turkish
fashion upon his supple legs, in a corner, looking hazily about
him, as if vainly endeavoring to comprehend what was going on.
After him, the pugnacious Dickson, laid away once more under
his favorite table, and fighting heavily with his enemies, disguised
as table-legs, was dragged out by the heels, and placed
under arrest.
The police, however, took good care to avoid meddling with
such persons as swore terribly and flourished weapons. With
them discretion was not only the better part of valor, but the
whole of justice. Hector, therefore, who exercised neither pistols
nor profanity, bid fair to become the next victim. He stood,
with calm dignity, confronting the officers, when a demonstration
on the part of the doctor caused a diversion in another
direction.
The latter had been some moments on his feet, looking about
him savagely from beneath his bandaged brows, for his bowie-knife,
which Hector had kicked under the chair; and, now perceiving
it, he clutched it fiercely, and rushed upon his late antagonist.
already raised to smite him, when a policeman, seizing the opportunity,
stepped behind the assailant, and felled him to the floor.
Hector was untouched; and while the officers rushed upon the
doctor to secure his weapons and bind his hands, the young man,
taking quite an unceremonious leave of the company, walked
quietly and quickly out at the door.
“O, corruption! O, death!” he exclaimed, in accents of
loathing, as he fled from the spot. He shook the dust from his
feet; and, perceiving a fountain running in the street, stooped
instinctively to wash his hands. When he would have wiped
them, he remembered that he had bound his handkerchief upon
his adversary's head.
“It is well!” said he. “I have left my garment with
them!”
The tumult in the saloon partially subsiding, the bar-tender
managed, by shouting, to make himself heard. The officers
showed a liberal disposition to listen to the man, whose liquor
they drank much oftener than they paid for it; and on his representations,
the cotton-dealer — a valuable customer — was set
at liberty before he had become fully conscious of his arrest.
Dickson and the other prisoners were released at the same
time; excepting the doctor alone, reserved as a sacrifice to
public justice.
“Do what ye please with me,” muttered the latter, as one of
the officers put on his hat for him over his bandaged brows.
“I 've only one suggestion to make. Le 's liquor!”
The police sympathizing with this generous sentiment, their
feelings were so much softened, that they at once proceeded to
undo his hands, to afford him the gratification of paying for the
treat out of his own pocket. This done, he swallowed a potent
comforter for his griefs, in the form of a glass of fiery spirits,
and set out to accompany an officer to the watch-house.
Stopping occasionally to refresh themselves by the way, always
at the doctor's expense, officer and prisoner alike forgot their
relative positions and their original destination. The doctor
of his guide, that the latter not only promised to assist
him in ascertaining Hector's name and address, but, arrived at
a street-corner, he restored his weapons, and shook hands with
him, swearing an eternal friendship, and bidding him an affecting
good-night.
Then, while the faithful guardian of the town moved off unsteadily,
bent on still further exploits in behalf of the public peace, the
doctor, examining his pistol and muttering by the way, sought
the calm precincts of domestic peace, where his affectionate wife
awaited his return.
| V.
HECTOR. Neighbor Jackwood | |