University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.
SUSAN'S YOUNG MAN.

THERE seems no reasonable doubt that Myrtle Hazard
might have made a safe thing of it with Gifted Hopkins,
(if so inclined,) provided that she had only been secured
against interference. But the constant habit of reading
his verses to Susan Posey was not without its risk to
so excitable a nature as that of the young poet. Poets
were always capable of divided affections, and Cowley's
“Chronicle” is a confession that would fit the whole tribe
of them. It is true that Gifted had no right to regard
Susan's heart as open to the wiles of any new-comer. He
knew that she considered herself, and was considered by
another, as pledged and plighted. Yet she was such a
devoted listener, her sympathies were so easily roused, her
blue eyes glistened so tenderly at the least poetical hint,
such as “Never, O never,” “My aching heart,” “Go, let
me weep,” — any of those touching phrases out of the long
catalogue which readily suggests itself, — that her influence
was getting to be such that Myrtle (if really anxious to
secure him) might look upon it with apprehension, and the
owner of Susan's heart (if of a jealous disposition) might
have thought it worth while to make a visit to Oxbow Village
to see after his property.

It may seem not impossible that some friend had suggested
as much as this to the young lady's lover. The
caution would have been unnecessary, or at least premature.
Susan was loyal as ever to her absent friend.

Gifted Hopkins had never yet presumed upon the familiar
relations existing between them to attempt to shake her
allegiance. It is quite as likely, after all, that the young
gentleman about to make his appearance in Oxbow Village
visited the place of his own accord, without a hint from
anybody. But the fact concerns us more than the reason
of it, just now.

“Who do you think is coming, Mr. Gridley? Who do
you think is coming?” said Susan Posey, her face covered
with a carnation such as the first season may see in a city
belle, but not the second.

“Well, Susan Posey, I suppose I must guess, though I
am rather slow at that business. Perhaps the Governor.
No, I don't think it can be the Governor, for you would n't
look so happy if it was only his Excellency. It must be
the President, Susan Posey, — President James Buchanan.
Have n't I guessed right, now, tell me, my dear?”

“O Mr. Gridley, you are too bad, — what do I care for
governors and presidents? I know somebody that 's worth
fifty million thousand presidents, — and he 's coming, —
my Clement is coming,” said Susan, who had by this time
learned to consider the awful Byles Gridley as her next
friend and faithful counsellor.

Susan could not stay long in the house after she got her
note informing her that her friend was soon to be with her.
Everybody told everything to Olive Eveleth, and Susan
must run over to the Parsonage to tell her that there was
a young gentleman coming to Oxbow Village; upon which
Olive asked who it was, exactly as if she did not know;
whereupon Susan dropped her eyes and said, “Clement, —
I mean Mr. Lindsay.”

That was a fair piece of news now, and Olive had her

bonnet on five minutes after Susan was gone, and was on
her way to Bathsheba's, — it was too bad that the poor
girl who lived so out of the world should n't know anything
of what was going on in it. Bathsheba had been in all the
morning, and the Doctor had said she must take the air
every day; so Bathsheba had on her bonnet a little after
Olive had gone, and walked straight up to The Poplars to
tell Myrtle Hazard that a certain young gentleman, Clement
Lindsay, was coming to Oxbow Village.

It was perhaps fortunate that there was no special significance
to Myrtle in the name of Clement Lindsay.
Since the adventure which had brought these two young
persons together, and, after coming so near a disaster, had
ended in a mere humiliation and disappointment, and but
for Master Gridley's discreet kindness might have led to
foolish scandal, Myrtle had never referred to it in any way.
Nobody really knew what her plans had been except Olive
and Cyprian, who had observed a very kind silence about
the whole matter. The common version of the story was
harmless, and near enough to the truth, — down the river,
— boat upset, — pulled out, — taken care of by some women
in a house farther down, — sick, brain fever, — pretty
near it, anyhow, — old Dr. Hurlbut called in, — had her
hair cut, — hystericky, etc., etc.

Myrtle was contented with this statement, and asked no
questions, and it was a perfectly understood thing that nobody
alluded to the subject in her presence. It followed
from all this that the name of Clement Lindsay had no
peculiar meaning for her. Nor was she like to recognize
him as the youth in whose company she had gone through
her mortal peril, for all her recollections were confused and
dreamlike from the moment when she awoke and found herself

in the foaming rapids just above the fall, until that
when her senses returned, and she saw Master Byles Gridley
standing over her with that look of tenderness in his
square features which had lingered in her recollection, and
made her feel towards him as if she were his daughter.

Now this had its advantage; for as Clement was Susan's
young man, and had been so for two or three years, it
would have been a great pity to have any such curious
relations established between him and Myrtle Hazard as a
consciousness on both sides of what had happened would
naturally suggest.

“Who is this Clement Lindsay, Bathsheba?” Myrtle
asked.

“Why, Myrtle, don't you remember about Susan Posey's
is-to-be, — the young man that has been — well, I don't
know, but I suppose engaged to her ever since they were
children almost?”

“Yes, yes, I remember now. O dear! I have forgotten
so many things, I should think I had been dead and was
coming back to life again. Do you know anything about
him, Bathsheba? Did n't somebody say he was very handsome?
I wonder if he is really in love with Susan Posey.
Such a simple thing! I want to see him. I have seen so
few young men.”

As Myrtle said these words, she lifted the sleeve a
little on her left arm, by a half-instinctive and half-voluntary
movement. The glimmering gold of Judith Pride's
bracelet flashed out the yellow gleam which has been the
reddening of so many hands and the blackening of so many
souls since that innocent sin-breeder was first picked up
in the land of Havilah. There came a sudden light into
her eye, such as Bathsheba had never seen there before.

It looked to her as if Myrtle were saying unconsciously
to herself that she had the power of beauty, and would
like to try its influence on the handsome young man whom
she was soon to meet, even at the risk of unseating poor
little Susan in his affections. This pained the gentle and
humble-minded girl, who, without having tasted the world's
pleasures, had meekly consecrated herself to the lowly
duties which lay nearest to her. For Bathsheba's phrasing
of life was in the monosyllables of a rigid faith. Her conceptions
of the human soul were all simplicity and purity,
but elementary. She could not conceive the vast license
the creative energy allows itself in mingling the instincts
which, after long conflict, may come into harmonious adjustment.
The flash which Myrtle's eye had caught from
the gleam of the golden bracelet filled Bathsheba with
a sudden fear that she was like to be led away by the
vanities of that world lying in wickedness of which the
minister's daughter had heard so much and seen so little.

Not that Bathsheba made any fine moral speeches to
herself. She only felt a slight shock, such as a word or
a look from one we love too often gives us, — such as a
child's trivial gesture or movement makes a parent feel, —
that impalpable something which in the slightest possible
inflection of a syllable or gradation of a tone will sometimes
leave a sting behind it, even in a trusting heart.
This was all. But it was true that what she saw meant a
great deal. It meant the dawning in Myrtle Hazard of
one of her as yet unlived secondary lives. Bathsheba's
virgin perceptions had caught a faint early ray of its glimmering
twilight.

She answered, after a very slight pause, which this
explanation has made seem so long, that she had never

seen the young gentleman, and that she did not know
about Susan's sentiments. Only, as they had kept so
long to each other, she supposed there must be love between
them.

Myrtle fell into a revery, with certain tableaux glowing
along its perspectives which poor little Susan Posey
would have shivered to look upon, if they could have been
transferred from the purple clouds of Myrtle's imagination
to the pale silvery mists of Susan's pretty fancies.
She sat in her day-dream long after Bathsheba had left
her, her eyes fixed, not on the faded portrait of her beatified
ancestress, but on that other canvas where the dead
Beauty seemed to live in all the splendors of her full-blown
womanhood.

The young man whose name had set her thoughts roving
was handsome, as the glance at him already given
might have foreshadowed. But his features had a graver
impress than his age seemed to account for, and the sober
tone of his letter to Susan implied that something had
given him a maturity beyond his years. The story was
not an uncommon one. At sixteen he had dreamed — and
told his dream. At eighteen he had awoke, and found,
as he believed, that a young heart had grown to his so
that its life was dependent on his own. Whether it would
have perished if its filaments had been gently disentangled
from the object to which they had attached themselves,
experienced judges of such matters may perhaps question.
To justify Clement in his estimate of the danger of such
an experiment, we must remember that to young people
in their teens a first passion is a portentous and unprecedented
phenomenon. The young man may have been

mistaken in thinking that Susan would die if he left her,
and may have done more than his duty in sacrificing himself;
but if so, it was the mistake of a generous youth,
who estimated the depth of another's feelings by his own.
He measured the depth of his own rather by what he felt
they might be, than by that of any abysses they had yet
sounded.

Clement was called a “genius” by those who knew him,
and was consequently in danger of being spoiled early.
The risk is great enough anywhere, but greatest in a new
country, where there is an almost universal want of fixed
standards of excellence.

He was by nature an artist; a shaper with the pencil
or the chisel, a planner, a contriver capable of turning his
hand to almost any work of eye and hand. It would not
have been strange if he thought he could do everything,
having gifts which were capable of various application, —
and being an American citizen. But though he was a
good draughtsman, and had made some reliefs and modelled
some figures, he called himself only an architect.
He had given himself up to his art, not merely from a love
of it and talent for it, but with a kind of heroic devotion,
because he thought his country wanted a race of builders
to clothe the new forms of religious, social, and national
life afresh from the forest, the quarry, and the mine.
Some thought he would succeed, others that he would be
a brilliant failure.

“Grand notions, — grand notions,” the master with whom
he studied said. “Large ground plan of life, — splendid
elevation. A little wild in some of his fancies, perhaps,
but he 's only a boy, and he 's the kind of boy that sometimes
grows to be a pretty big man. Wait and see, —

wait and see. He works days, and we can let him dream
nights. There 's a good deal of him, anyhow.” His fellow-students
were puzzled. Those who thought of their calling
as a trade, and looked forward to the time when they
should be embodying the ideals of municipal authorities
in brick and stone, or making contracts with wealthy
citizens, doubted whether Clement would have a sharp
eye enough for business. “Too many whims, you know.
All sorts of queer ideas in his head, — as if a boy like him
was going to make things all over again!”

No doubt there was something of youthful extravagance
in his plans and expectations. But it was the untamed
enthusiasm which is the source of all great thoughts and
deeds, — a beautiful delirium which age commonly tames
down, and for which the cold shower-bath the world furnishes
gratis proves a pretty certain cure.

Creation is always preceded by chaos. The youthful
architect's mind was confused by the multitude of suggestions
which were crowding in upon it, and which he had
not yet had time or developed mature strength sufficient to
reduce to order. The young American of any freshness
of intellect is stimulated to dangerous excess by the conditions
of life into which he is born. There is a double
proportion of oxygen in the New-World air. The chemists
have not found it out yet, but human brains and breathing-organs
have long since made the discovery.

Clement knew that his hasty entanglement had limited
his possibilities of happiness in one direction, and he felt
that there was a certain grandeur in the recompense of
working out his defeated instincts through the ambitious
medium of his noble art. Had not Pharaohs chosen it
to proclaim their longings for immortality, Cæsars their

passion for pomp and luxury, and priests to symbolize
their conceptions of the heavenly mansions? His dreams
were on a grand scale; such, after all, are the best
possessions of youth. Had he but been free, or mated
with a nature akin to his own, he would have felt himself
as truly the heir of creation as any young man that
lived. But his lot was cast, and his youth had all the
serious aspect to himself of thoughtful manhood. In the
region of his art alone he hoped always to find freedom and
a companionship which his home life could never give him.

Clement meant to have visited his beloved before he left
Alderbank, but was called unexpectedly back to the city.
Happily Susan was not exacting; she looked up to him
with too great a feeling of distance between them to dare
to question his actions. Perhaps she found a partial consolation
in the company of Mr. Gifted Hopkins, who tried
his new poems on her, which was the next best thing to
addressing them to her. “Would that you were with us
at this delightful season,” she wrote in the autumn; “but no,
your Susan must not repine. Yet, in the beautiful words of
our native poet,

The poet referred to, it need hardly be said, was our
young and promising friend G. H., as he sometimes modestly
signed himself. The letter, it is unnecessary to state,
was voluminous, — for a woman can tell her love, or other
matter of interest, over and over again in as many forms
as another poet, not G. H., found for his grief in ringing
the musical changes of “In Memoriam.”

The answers to Susan's letters were kind, but not very
long. They convinced her that it was a simple impossibility
that Clement could come to Oxbow Village, on
account of the great pressure of the work he had to keep
him in the city, and the plans he must finish at any rate.
But at last the work was partially got rid of, and Clement
was coming; yes, it was so nice, and, O dear! should n't
she be real happy to see him?

To Susan he appeared as a kind of divinity, — almost
too grand for human nature's daily food. Yet, if the simple-hearted
girl could have told herself the whole truth in
plain words, she would have confessed to certain doubts
which from time to time, and oftener of late, cast a shadow
on her seemingly bright future. With all the pleasure that
the thought of meeting Clement gave her, she felt a little
tremor, a certain degree of awe, in contemplating his visit.
If she could have clothed her self-humiliation in the gold
and purple of the “Portuguese Sonnets,” it would have
been another matter; but the trouble with the most common
sources of disquiet is that they have no wardrobe of
flaming phraseology to air themselves in; the inward
burning goes on without the relief and gratifying display
of the crater.

“A friend of mine is coming to the village,” she said to
Mr. Gifted Hopkins. “I want you to see him. He is a
genius, — as some other young men are.” (This was obviously
personal, and the youthful poet blushed with ingenuous
delight.) “I have known him for ever so many years.
He and I are very good friends.” The poet knew that
this meant an exclusive relation between them; and though
the fact was no surprise to him, his countenance fell a
little. The truth was, that his admiration was divided

between Myrtle, who seemed to him divine and adorable,
but distant, and Susan, who listened to his frequent poems,
whom he was in the habit of seeing in artless domestic
costumes, and whose attractions had been gaining upon
him of late in the enforced absence of his divinity.

He retired pensive from this interview, and, flinging
himself at his desk, attempted wreaking his thoughts upon
expression, to borrow the language of one of his brother
bards, in a passionate lyric which he began thus:—

“judge — judge, — no, not judge. Budge, drudge, fudge —
What a disgusting language English is! Nothing fit to
couple with such a word as grudge! And the gush of
an impassioned moment arrested in full flow, stopped short,
corked up, for want of a paltry rhyme! Judge, — budge,
— drudge, — nudge, — oh! — smudge, — misery! — fudge.
In vain, — futile, — no use, — all up for to-night!”

While the poet, headed off in this way by the poverty
of his native tongue, sought inspiration by retiring into the
world of dreams, — went to bed, in short, — his more
fortunate rival was just entering the village, where he was
to make his brief residence at the house of Deacon Rumrill,
who, having been a loser by the devouring element, was
glad to receive a stray boarder when any such were looking
about for quarters.

For some reason or other he was restless that evening,
and took out a volume he had brought with him to beguile
the earlier hours of the night. It was too late when he

arrived to disturb the quiet of Mrs. Hopkins's household;
and whatever may have been Clement's impatience, he
held it in check, and sat tranquilly until midnight over the
pages of the book with which he had prudently provided
himself.

“Hope you slept well last night,” said the old Deacon,
when Mr. Clement came down to breakfast the next morning.

“Very well, thank you, — that is, after I got to bed.
But I sat up pretty late reading my favorite Scott. I am
apt to forget how the hours pass when I have one of his
books in my hand.”

The worthy Deacon looked at Mr. Clement with a
sudden accession of interest.

“You could n't find better reading, young man. Scott
is my favorite author. A great man. I have got his likeness
in a gilt frame hanging up in the other room. I have
read him all through three times.”

The young man's countenance brightened. He had not
expected to find so much taste for elegant literature in an
old village deacon.

“What are your favorites among his writings, Deacon?
I suppose you have your particular likings, as the rest of us
have.”

The Deacon was flattered by the question. “Well,” he
answered, “I can hardly tell you. I like pretty much
everything Scott ever wrote. Sometimes I think it is one
thing, and sometimes another. Great on Paul's Epistles,
— don't you think so?”

The honest fact was, that Clement remembered very
little about “Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk,” — a book of
Sir Walter's less famous than many of his others; but he

signified his polite assent to the Deacon's statement, rather
wondering at his choice of a favorite, and smiling at his
queer way of talking about the Letters as Epistles.

“I am afraid Scott is not so much read now-a-days as
he once was, and as he ought to be,” said Mr. Clement.
“Such character, such nature and so much grace —”

“That 's it, — that 's it, young man,” the Deacon broke
in, — “Natur' and Grace, — Natur' and Grace. Nobody
ever knew better what those two words meant than Scott
did, and I 'm very glad to see you 've chosen such good
wholesome reading. You can't set up too late, young man,
to read Scott. If I had twenty children, they should all
begin reading Scott as soon as they were old enough to
spell `sin,' — and that 's the first word my little ones
learned, next to `pa' and `ma.' Nothing like beginning
the lessons of life in good season.”

“What a grim old satirist!” Clement said to himself.
“I wonder if the old man reads other novelists. — Do tell
me, Deacon, if you have read Thackeray's last story?”

“Thackery's story? Published by the American Tract
Society?”

“Not exactly,” Clement answered, smiling, and quite
delighted to find such an unexpected vein of grave pleasantry
about the demure-looking church-dignitary; for the
Deacon asked his question without moving a muscle, and
took no cognizance whatever of the young man's tone and
smile. First-class humorists are, as is well known, remarkable
for the immovable solemnity of their features. Clement
promised himself not a little amusement from the
curiously sedate drollery of the venerable Deacon, who, it
was plain from his conversation, had cultivated a literary
taste which would make him a more agreeable companion

than the common ecclesiastics of his grade in country villages.

After breakfast, Mr. Clement walked forth in the direction
of Mrs. Hopkins's house, thinking as he went of the
pleasant surprise his visit would bring to his longing and
doubtless pensive Susan; for though she knew he was
coming, she did not know that he was at that moment in
Oxbow Village.

As he drew near the house, the first thing he saw was
Susan Posey, almost running against her just as he turned
a corner. She looked wonderfully lively and rosy, for the
weather was getting keen and the frosts had begun to bite.
A young gentleman was walking at her side, and reading
to her from a paper he held in his hand. Both looked
deeply interested, — so much so that Clement felt half
ashamed of himself for intruding upon them so abruptly.

But lovers are lovers, and Clement could not help joining
them. The first thing, of course, was the utterance
of two simultaneous exclamations, “Why, Clement!”
“Why, Susan!” What might have come next in the programme,
but for the presence of a third party, is matter
of conjecture; but what did come next was a mighty awkward
look on the part of Susan Posey, and the following
short speech: —

“Mr. Lindsay, let me introduce Mr. Hopkins, my friend,
the poet I 've written to you about. He was just reading
two of his poems to me. Some other time, Gifted — Mr.
Hopkins.”

“O no, Mr. Hopkins, — pray go on,” said Clement.
“I 'm very fond of poetry.”

The poet did not require much urging, and began at
once reciting over again the stanzas which were afterwards

so much admired in the “Banner and Oracle,” — the first
verse being, as the readers of that paper will remember,
—
Clement, who must have been in an agony of impatience
to be alone with his beloved, commanded his feelings admirably.
He signified his approbation of the poem by
saying that the lines were smooth and the rhymes absolutely
without blemish. The stanzas reminded him forcibly
of one of the greatest poets of the century.

Gifted flushed hot with pleasure. He had tasted the
blood of his own rhymes; and when a poet gets as far as
that, it is like wringing the bag of exhilarating gas from
the lips of a fellow sucking at it, to drag his piece away
from him.

“Perhaps you will like these lines still better,” he said;
“the style is more modern: —

And so on, through a series of stanzas like these, with the
pulp of two rhymes between the upper and lower crust of
two others.

Clement was cornered. It was necessary to say something
for the poet's sake, — perhaps for Susan's; for she
was in a certain sense responsible for the poems of a youth
of genius, of whom she had spoken so often and so enthusiastically.

“Very good, Mr. Hopkins, and a form of verse little
used, I should think, until of late years. You modelled
this piece on the style of a famous living English poet, did
you not?”

“Indeed I did not, Mr. Lindsay, — I never imitate.
Originality is, if I may be allowed to say so much for myself,
my peculiar forte. Why, the critics allow as much as
that. See here, Mr. Lindsay.”

Mr. Gifted Hopkins pulled out his pocket-book, and,
taking therefrom a cutting from a newspaper, — which
dropped helplessly open of itself, as if tired of the process,
being very tender in the joints or creases, by reason of
having been often folded and unfolded, — read aloud as
follows:—

Clement was apparently silenced by this, and the poet
a little elated with a sense of triumph. Susan could not
help sharing his feeling of satisfaction, and without meaning
it in the least, nay, without knowing it, for she was as
simple and pure as new milk, edged a little bit — the
merest infinitesimal atom — nearer to Gifted Hopkins, who
was on one side of her, while Clement walked on the other.
Women love the conquering party, — it is the way of their
sex. And poets, as we have seen, are wellnigh irresistible
when they exert their dangerous power of fascination upon
the female heart. But Clement was above jealousy;
and, if he perceived anything of this movement, took no
notice of it.

He saw a good deal of his pretty Susan that day. She
was tender in her expressions and manners as usual, but
there was a little something in her looks and language

from time to time that Clement did not know exactly what
to make of. She colored once or twice when the young
poet's name was mentioned. She was not so full of her
little plans for the future as she had sometimes been,
“everything was so uncertain,” she said. Clement asked
himself whether she felt quite as sure that her attachment
would last as she once did. But there were no reproaches,
not even any explanations, which are about as bad between
lovers. There was nothing but an undefined feeling on
his side that she did not cling quite so closely to him, perhaps,
as he had once thought, and that, if he had happened
to have been drowned that day when he went down
with the beautiful young woman, it was just conceivable
that Susan, who would have cried dreadfully, no doubt,
would in time have listened to consolation from some other
young man, — possibly from the young poet whose verses
he had been admiring. Easy-crying widows take new
husbands soonest; there is nothing like wet weather for
transplanting, as Master Gridley used to say. Susan had
a fluent natural gift for tears, as Clement well knew, after
the exercise of which she used to brighten up like the rose
which had been washed, just washed in a shower, mentioned
by Cowper.

As for the poet, he learned more of his own sentiments
during this visit of Clement's than he had ever before
known. He wandered about with a dreadfully disconsolate
look upon his countenance. He showed a falling-off in
his appetite at tea-time, which surprised and disturbed his
mother, for she had filled the house with fragrant suggestions
of good things coming, in honor of Mr. Lindsay,
who was to be her guest at tea. And chiefly the genteel
form of doughnut called in the native dialect cymbal (Qu.

Symbol? B. G.) which graced the board with its plastic
forms, suggestive of the most pleasing objects, — the spiral
ringlets pendent from the brow of beauty, — the magic
cirelet, which is the pledge of plighted affection, — the
indissoluble knot, which typifies the union of hearts, which
organs were also largely represented; this exceptional
delicacy would at any other time have claimed his special
notice. But his mother remarked that he paid little attention
to these, and his, “No, I thank you,” when it came to
the preserved “damsels,” as some call them, carried a
pang with it to the maternal bosom. The most touching
evidence of his unhappiness — whether intentional or the
result of accident was not evident — was a broken heart,
which he left upon his plate, the meaning of which was as
plain as anything in the language of flowers. His thoughts
were gloomy during that day, running a good deal on the
more picturesque and impressive methods of bidding a
voluntary farewell to a world which had allured him with
visions of beauty only to snatch them from his impassioned
gaze. His mother saw something of this, and got from
him a few disjointed words, which led her to lock up the
clothes-line and hide her late husband's razors, — an affectionate,
yet perhaps unnecessary precaution, for self-elimination
contemplated from this point of view by those who
have the natural outlet of verse to relieve them is rarely
followed by a casualty. It may rather be considered
as implying a more than average chance for longevity; as
those who meditate an imposing finish naturally save themselves
for it, and are therefore careful of their health until
the time comes, and this is apt to be indefinitely postponed
so long as there is a poem to write or a proof to be corrected.