University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
A COLLISION.

IF this were a History of Metropolisville—but it
isn't, and that is enough. You do not want to
hear, and I do not want to tell you, how Dave
Sawney, like another Samson, overthrew the Philistines;
how he sauntered into the room where all the
county officers did business together, he and his associates, at
noon, when most of the officers were gone to dinner; how he
seized the records—there were not many at that early day—
loaded them into his wagon, and made off. You don't want
to hear all that. If you do, call on Dave himself. He has told
it over and over to everybody who would listen, from that
time to this, and he would cheerfully get out of bed at three
in the morning to tell it again, with the utmost circumstantiality,
and with such little accretions of fictitious ornament as
always gather about a story often and fondly told. Neither do
you, gentle reader, who read for your own amusement, care to
be informed of all the schemes devised by Plausaby for removing
the county officers to their offices, nor of the town lots and
other perquisites which accrued to said officers. It is sufficient
for the purposes of this story that the county-seat was carted
off to Metropolisville, and abode there in basswood tabernacles

for a while, and that it proved a great advertisement to the
town; money was more freely invested in Metropolisville, an
“Academy” was actually staked out, and the town grew rapidly.
Not alone on account of its temporary political importance did
it advance, for about this time Plausaby got himself elected a
director of the St. Paul and Big Gun River Valley Land Grant
Railroad, and the speculators, who scent a railroad station at
once, began to buy lots—on long time, to be sure, and yet to
buy them. So much did the fortunes of Plausaby, Esq., prosper
that he began to invest also—on time and at high rates of interest—in
a variety of speculations. It was the fashion of '56
to invest everything you had in first payments, and then to sell
out at an advance before the second became due.

But it is not about Plausaby or Metropolisville that I meant
to tell you in this chapter. Nor yet about the wooing of Charlton.
For in his case, true love ran smoothly. Too smoothly
for the interest of this history. If Miss Minorkey had repelled
his suit, if she had steadfastly remained cold, disdainful, exacting,
it would have been better, maybe, for me who have to tell
the story, and for you who have to read it. But disdainful she
never was, and she did not remain cold. The enthusiasm of her
lover was contagious, and she came to write and talk to him
with much earnestness. Next to her own comfort and peace of
mind and her own culture, she prized her lover. He was original,
piquant, and talented. She was proud of him, and loved
him with all her heart. Not as a more earnest person might
have loved, but as heartily as she could. And she came to take
on the color of her lover's habits of thought and feeling; she
expressed herself even more warmly than she felt, so that Albert
was happy, and this story was doomed to suffer because of his

happiness. I might give zest to this dull love-affair by telling
you that Mr. Minorkey opposed the match. Next to a disdainful
lady-love, the best thing for a writer and a reader is a furious
father. But I must be truthful at all hazards, and I am
obliged to say that while Mr. Minorkey would have been
delighted to have had for son-in-law some man whose investments
might have multiplied Helen's inheritance, he was yet so
completely under the influence of his admired daughter that
he gave a consent, tacitly at least, to anything she chose to do.
So that Helen became recognized presently as the prospective
Mrs. Charlton. Mrs. Plausaby liked her because she wore nice
dresses, and Katy loved her because she loved Brother Albert.
For that matter, Katy did not need any reason for loving anybody.
Even Isa stifled a feeling she was unable to understand,
and declared that Miss Minorkey was smart, and just
suited to Albert; and she supposed that Albert, with all his
crotchets and theories, might make a person like Miss Minorkey
happy. It wasn't every woman that could put up with
them, you know.

But it was not about the prosperous but uninteresting courtship
of two people with “idees” that I set out to tell in this
chapter. If Charlton got on smoothly with Helen Minorkey,
and if he had no more serious and one-sided outbreaks with
his step-father, he did not get on with his sister's lover.

Westcott had been drinking all of one night with some
old cronies of the Elysian Club, and his merry time of the
night was subsiding into a quarrelsome time in the morning.
He was able, when he was sober, to smother his resentment
towards Albert, for there is no better ambush than an entirely
idiotic giggle. But drink had destroyed his prudence. And

[ILLUSTRATION]

ONE SAVAGE BLOW FULL IN THE FACE.

[Description: 557EAF. Illustration page. Page 156. Engraving of one man punching another, who staggers backward, his hat flying off his head. Two other men look on.]

so when Albert stepped on the piazza of the hotel where
Westcott stood rattling his pocketful of silver change and his
keys for the amusement of the bystanders, as was his wont,
the latter put himself in Charlton's way, and said, in a dreary,
half-drunk style:

“Mornin', Mr. Hedgehog! By George! he! he! he! How's
the purty little girl? My little girl. Don't you wish she wasn't?
Hard feller, I am. Any gal's a fool to marry me, I s'pose.
Katy's a fool. That's just what I want, by George! he! he!
I want a purty fool. And she's purty, and she's—the other
thing. What you goin' to do about it? He! he! he!”

“I'm going to knock you down,” said Albert, “if you say
another word about her.”

“A'n't she mine? You can't help it, either. He! he! The
purty little goose loves Smith Westcott like lots of other purty
little —”

Before he could finish the sentence Charlton had struck him
one savage blow full in the face, and sent him staggering back
against the side of the house, but he saved himself from falling
by seizing the window-frame, and immediately drew his
Deringer. Charlton, who was not very strong, but who had a
quick, lightning-like activity, knocked him down, seized his
pistol, and threw it into the street. This time Charlton fell on
him in a thoroughly murderous mood, and would perhaps have
beaten and choked him to death in the frenzy of his long
pent-up passion, for notwithstanding Westcott's struggles Albert
had the advantage. He was sober, active, and angry enough
to be ruthless. Westcott's friends interfered, but that lively
gentleman's eyes and nose were sadly disfigured by the pummeling
he had received, and Charlton was badly scratched and bruised.

Whatever hesitancy had kept Albert from talking to Katy
about Smith Westcott was all gone now, and he went home
to denounce him bitterly. One may be sure that the muddled
remarks of Mr. Westcott about Katy—of which even
he had grace to be a little ashamed when he was sober—were
not softened in the repetition which Albert gave them at home.
Even Mrs. Plausaby forgot her attire long enough to express
her indignation, and as for Miss Marlay, she combined with
Albert in a bayonet-charge on poor Katy.

Plausaby had always made it a rule not to fight a current.
Wait till the tide turns, he used to say, and row with the stream
when it flows your way. So now he, too, denounced Westcott,
and Katy was fairly borne off her feet for a while by the influences
about her. In truth, Katy was not without her own private
and personal indignation against Westcott. Not because he
had spoken of her as a fool. That hurt her feelings, but did
not anger her much. She was not in the habit of getting angry
on her own account. But when she saw three frightful scratches
and a black bruise on the face of Brother Albert, she could not
help thinking that Smith had acted badly. And then to draw
a pistol, too! To threaten to kill her own dear, dear brother!
She couldn't ever forgive him, she said. If she had seen the
much more serious damage which poor, dear, dear Smith had
suffered at the tender hands of her dear, dear brother, I doubt
not she would have had an equally strong indignation against
Albert.

For Westcott's face was in mourning, and the Privileged
Infant had lost his cheerfulness. He did not giggle for ten
days. He did not swear “by George” once. He did not he!
he! The joyful keys and the cheerful ten-cent coins lay in his

pocket with no loving hand to rattle them. He did not indulge
in double-shuffles. He sang no high-toned negro-minstrel songs.
He smoked steadily and solemnly, and he drank steadily and
solemnly. His two clerks were made to tremble. They forgot
Smith's bruised nose and swollen eye in fearing his awful
temper. All the swearing he wanted to do and dared not do at
Albert, he did at his inoffensive subordinates.

Smith Westcott had the dumps. No sentimental heart-break
over Katy, though he did miss her company sadly in a town
where there were no amusements, not even a concert-saloon in
which a refined young man could pass an evening. If he had
been in New York now, he wouldn't have minded it. But in
a place like Metropolisville, a stupid little frontier village of pious
and New Englandish tendencies—in such a place, as Smith
pathetically explained to a friend, one can't get along without a
sweetheart, you know.

A few days after Albert's row with Westcott he met George
Gray, the Hoosier Poet, who had haunted Metropolisville, off
and on, ever since he had first seen the “angel.”

He looked more wild and savage than usual.

“Hello! my friend,” said Charlton heartily. “I'm glad to
see you. What's the matter?”

“Well, Mister Charlton, I'm playin' the gardeen angel.”

“Guardian angel! How's that?”

“I'm a sorter gardeen of your sister. Do you see that air
pistol? Hey? Jist as sure as shootin,' I'll kill that Wes'cott
ef he tries to marry that angel. I don't want to marry her.
I aint fit, mister, that's a fack. Ef I was, I'd put in fer her.
But I aint. And ef she marries a gentleman, I haint got not a
bit of right to object. But looky hyer! Devils haint got no

right to angels. Ef I kin finish up a devil jest about the time
he gits his claws onto a angel and let the angel go free, why,
I say it's wuth the doin'. Hey?”

Charlton, I am ashamed to say, did not at first think the
death of Smith Westcott by violence a very great crime or calamity,
if it served to save Katy. However, as he walked and
talked with Gray, the thought of murder made him shudder, and
he made an earnest effort to persuade the Inhabitant to give up
his criminal thoughts. But it is the misfortune of people like
George Gray that the romance in their composition will get into
their lives. They have not mental discipline enough to make
the distinction between the world of sentiment and the world
of action, in which inflexible conditious modify the purpose.

“Ef I hev to hang fer it I'll hang, but I'm goin' to be her
gardeen angel.”

“I didn't know that guardian angels carried pistols,” said
Albert, trying to laugh the half-crazed fellow out of a conceit
from which he could not drive him by argument.

“Looky hyer, Mr. Charlton,” said Gray, coloring, “I thought
you was a gentleman, and wouldn' stoop to make no sech a remark.
Ef you're goin' to talk that-a-way, you and me don't
travel no furder on the same trail. The road forks right here,
mister.”

“Oh! I hope not, my dear friend. I didn't mean any offense.
Give me your hand, and God bless you for your noble
heart.”

Gray was touched as easily one way as the other, and he took
Charlton's hand with emotion, at the same time drawing his
sleeve across his eyes and saying, “God bless you, Mr. Charlton.
You can depend on me. I'm the gardeen, and I don't keer two

cents fer life. It's a shadder, and a mush-room, as I writ some
varses about it wonst. Let me say 'em over:

Charlton, full of ambition, having not yet tasted the bitterness
of disappointment, clinging to life as to all, was fairly
puzzled to understand the morbid sadness of the Poet's spirit.
“I'm sorry you feel that way, Gray,” he said. “But at any rate
promise me you won't do anything desperate without talking
to me.”

“I'll do that air, Mr. Charlton,” and the two shook hands again.