University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.
CHALLENGE.

The whole scene passed in very few minutes. No time
was given for reflection, and each of the parties obeyed his
natural or habitual impulses. Old Hinkley, except when
at prayers, was a man of few words. He was much more
prompt at deeds than words — a proof of which has already
been shown; but the good mother was not so patient, and
made a freer use of the feminine weapon than we have been
willing to inflict upon our readers. Though she heartily
disapproved of her son's conduct toward Stevens, and regarded
it as one of the most unaccountable wonders, the
offender was still her son. She never once forgot, or could
forget, that. But the rage of the old man was unappeasable.
The indignity to his guest, and that guest of a calling
so sacred, was past all forgiveness, as it was past all his
powers of language fitly to describe. He swore to pursue
the offender with his wrath to the end of the world, to cut
him off equally from his fortune and forgiveness; and when
Brother Stevens, endeavoring to maintain the pacific and
forgiving character which his profession required, uttered
some commonplace pleading in the youth's behalf, he silenced
him by saying that, “were he on the bed of death,
and were the offender then to present himself, the last
prayer that he should make to Heaven would be for sufficient
strength to rise up and complete the punishment which
he had then begun.”

As for Stevens, though he professed a more charitable
spirit, his feelings were quite as hostile, and much more
deadly. He was not without that conventional courage
which makes one, in certain states of society, prompt
enough to place himself in the fields of the duello. To this
condition of preparedness it has hitherto been the training
of the West that every man, at all solicitous of public life,
must eventually come. As a student of divinity, it was not
a necessity with Alfred Stevens. Nay, it was essential to
the character which he professed that he should eschew
such a mode of arbitrament. But he reasoned on this subject,
as well with reference to past habits as to future responsibilities.
His present profession being simply a ruse
d'amour (and, as he already began to perceive, a harmless
one in the eyes of the beauty whom he sought, and whose
intense feelings and unregulated mind did not suffer her to
perceive the serious defects of a character which should attempt
so impious a fraud), he was beginning to be somewhat
indifferent to its preservation; and, with the decline
of his caution in this respect, arose the natural inquiry as
to what would be expected of him in his former relations
to society. Should it ever be known hereafter, at a time
when he stood before the people as a candidate for some
high political trust, that he had tamely submitted to the
infliction of a cowskin, the revelation would be fatal to all
his hopes of ambition, and conclusive against all his social
pretensions. In short, so far as society was concerned, it
would be his social death.

These considerations were felt in their fullest force. Indeed,
their force can not well be conceived by the citizen
of any community where the sense of individual responsibility
is less rigid and exacting. They naturally outweighed
all others in the mind of Alfred Stevens; and, though no
fire-eater, he not only resolved on fighting with Hinkley,
but, smarting under the strokes of the cowskin — heavily
laid on as they had been — his resolution was equally firm

that, in the conflict, they should not separate until blood
was drawn. Of course, there were some difficulties to be
overcome in bringing about the meeting, but, where the
parties are willing, most difficulties are surmounted with
tolerable ease. This being the case at present, it followed
that both minds were busy at the same moment in devising
the when, the how, and the where, of the encounter.

William Hinkley went from the house of his father to
that of his cousin; but the latter had not yet returned from
that ride which he had taken in order to discover the course
usually pursued by Stevens. Here he sat down to dinner,
but the sister of Ned Hinkley observed that he ate little,
and fancied he was sick. That he should come to dine
with his cousin was too frequent a matter to occasion question
or surprise. This lady was older than her brother
by some seven years. She was a widow, with an only child,
a girl. The child was a prattling, smiling, good-natured
thing, about seven years old, who was never so happy as
when on Cousin William's knee. Poor William, indeed,
was quite a favorite at every house in the village except
that of Margaret Cooper, and, as he sometimes used bitterly
to add, his own. On this occasion, however, the child
was rendered unhappy by the seeming indifference of Cousin
William. The heart of the young man was too full of grief,
and his mind of anxiety, to suffer him to bestow the usual
caresses upon her; and when, putting her down, he passed
into the chamber of Ned Hinkley, the little thing went
off to her mother, to complain of the neglect she had undergone.

“Cousin William don't love Susan any more, mamma,”
was the burden of her complaint.

“Why do you say so, Susan?”

“He don't kiss me, mamma; he don't keep me in his lap.
He don't say good things to me, and call me his little sweetheart.
I'm afraid Cousin William's got some other sweetheart.
He don't love Susan.”

It was while the little prattler was pouring forth her
infantile sorrows in her mother's ear, that the voice of
William Hinkley was heard, calling her name from the
chamber.

“There, he's calling you now, Susan. Run to him and
kiss him, and see what he wants. I'm sure he loves you
just as much as ever. He's got no other sweetheart.”

“I'll run, mamma — that I will. I'm so glad! I hope he
loves me!” and the little innocent scampered away to the
chamber. Her artless tongue, as she approached, enabled
him to perceive what had been her grievances.

“Do you call me to love me, and to kiss me, Cousin
William, and to make me your sweetheart again?”

“Yes, Susan, you shall be my only sweetheart. I will
kiss nobody but you.”

“You'll forget — you will — you'll put me out of your
lap, and go away shaking your head, and looking so! —”
and here the observant little creature attempted a childish
imitation of the sad action and the strange, moody gestures
with which he had put her down when he was retiring from
the room — gestures and looks which the less quick eyes of
her mother had failed utterly to perceive.

“No, no!” said he, with a sad smile; “no, Susan. I'll
keep you in my lap for an hour whenever I come, and you
shall be my sweetheart always.”

“Your little sweetheart, your little Susan, Cousin William.”

“Yes, my dear little Susan, my dearest little sweetheart
Susan.”

And he kissed the child fondly while he spoke, and patted
her rosy cheeks with a degree of tenderness which his
sad and wandering thoughts did not materially diminish.

“But now, Susan,” said he, “if I am to be your sweetheart,
and to love you always, you must do all that I bid
you. You must go where I send you.”

“Don't I, Cousin William? When you send me to
Gran'pa Calvert, don't I go and bring you books, and didn't

I always run, and come back soon, and never play by the
way?”

“You're a dear Susan,” said he; “and I want you to
carry a paper for me now. Do you see this little paper?
What is it?”

“A note — don't I know?”

“Well, you must carry this note for me to uncle's, but
you mustn't give it to uncle, nor to aunty, nor to anybody
but the young man that lives there — young Mr. Stevens.”

“Parson Stevens,” said the little thing, correcting him.

“Ay, ay, Parson Stevens, if you please. You must give
it to him, and him only; and he will give you a paper to
bring back to me. Will you go now, Susan?”

“Yes, I'll go: but, Cousin William, are you going to
shoot the little guns? Don't shoot them till I come back,
will you?”

The child pointed to a pair of pistols which lay upon the
table where William Hinkley had penned the billet. A
flush of consciousness passed over the young man's cheek.
It seemed to him as if the little innocent's inquiry had
taken the aspect of an accusation. He promised and dismissed
her, and, when she had disappeared, proceeded to
put the pistols in some condition for use. In that time and
region, duels were not often fought with those costly and
powerful weapons, the pistols of rifle bore and sight. The
rifle, or the ordinary horseman's pistol, answered the purposes
of hate. The former instrument, in the hands of the
Kentuckian, was a deadly weapon always; and, in the
grasp of a firm hand, and under the direction of a practised
eye, the latter, at ten paces, was scarcely less so. This
being the case, but few refinements were necessary to bring
about the most fatal issues of enmity; and the instruments
which William Hinkley was preparing for the field were
such as would produce a smile on the lips of more civilized
combatants. They were of the coarsest kind of holster-pistols,
and had probably seen service in the Revolution.

The stocks were rickety, the barrels thin, the bore almost
large enough for grape, and really such as would receive
and disgorge a three-ounce bullet with little straining or
reluctance. They had been the property of his own grandfather,
and their value for use was perhaps rather heightened
than diminished by the degree of veneration which, in
the family, was attached to their history.

William Hinkley soon put them in the most efficient order.
He was not a practised hand, but an American forester
is a good shot almost by instinct; he naturally cleaves
to a gun, and without instruction learns its use. William,
however, did not think much of what he could hit, at what
distance, and under what circumstances. Nothing, perhaps,
could better show the confidence in himself and weapon
than the inattention which the native-born woodman usually
exhibits to these points. Let his weapon be such as he can
rely upon, and his cause of quarrel such as can justify his
anger, and the rest seems easy, and gives him little annoyance.
This was now the case with our rustic. He never,
for a moment, thought of practising. He had shot repeatedly,
and knew what he could do. His simple object was
to bring his enemy to the field, and to meet him there. Accordingly,
when he had loaded both pistols, which he did
with equal care, and with a liberal allowance of lead and
powder, he carefully put them away without offering to test
his own skill or their capacities. On this subject, his indifference
would have appeared, to a regular duellist, the
very extreme of obtuseness.

His little courier conveyed his billet to Stevens in due
season. As she had been instructed, she gave it into the
hands of Stevens only; but, when she delivered it, old
Hinkley was present, and she named the person by whom
it was sent.

“My son! what does he say?” demanded the old man,
half-suspecting the purport of the billet.

“Ah!” exclaimed Stevens, with the readiness of a practised

actor, “there is some hope, I am glad to tell you, Mr.
Hinkley, of his coming to his senses. He declares his wish
to atone, and invites me to see him. I have no doubt that
he wishes me to mediate for him.”

“I will never forgive him while I have breath!” cried
the old man, leaving the room. “Tell him that!”

“Wait a moment, my pretty one,” said Stevens, as he
was about retiring to his chamber, “till I can write an answer.”

The billet of Hinkley he again read. We may do so
likewise. It was to the following effect:—

“Short and sharp!” exclaimed Stevens as he read the
billet. “`Who would have thought that the young man
had so much blood in him!' Well, we will not balk your
desire, Master Hinkley. We will meet you, in verity,
though it may compel me to throw up my present hand and
call for other cards. N'importe: there is no other course.”

While soliloquizing, he penned his answer, which was
brief and to the purpose: —

“There, my little damsel,” said he, re-entering the
dining-room, and putting the sealed paper into the hands of

the child, “carry that to Mr. Hinkley, and tell him I will
come and speak with him as he begs me. But the note will
tell him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So—”

Mrs. Hinkley entered the room at this moment. Her
husband had apprized her of the communication which her
son had made, and the disposition to atonement and repentance
which he had expressed. She was anxious to confirm
this good disposition, to have her son brought back within
the fold, restored to her own affections and the favor of his
father. The latter, it is true, had signified his determined
hostility, even while conveying his intelligence; but the
mother was sanguine — when was a mother otherwise? —
that all things would come right which related to her only
child. She now came to implore the efforts of Stevens; to
entreat, that, like a good Christian, he would not suffer the
shocking stripes which her son, in his madness, had inflicted
upon him to outweigh his charity, to get the better of his
blessed principles, and make him war upon the atoning
spirit which had so lately, and so suddenly wakened up in
the bosom of the unruly boy. She did not endeavor to
qualify the offence of which her son had been guilty. She
was far from underrating the indignity to which Stevens
had been subjected; but the offender was her son — her
only son — in spite of all his faults, follies, and imperfections,
the apple of her eye — the only being for whom she
cared to live!

Ah! the love of a mother! — what a holy thing! sadly
wanting in judgment — frequently misleading, perverting,
nay, dooming the object which it loves; but, nevertheless,
most pure; least selfish; truest; most devoted!

And the tears gushed from the old woman's eyes as she
caught the hand of Stevens in her own, and kissed it —
kissed his hand — could William Hinkley have seen that,
how it would have rankled, how he would have writhed!

She kissed the hands of that wily hypocrite, bedewing them
with her tears, as if he were some benign and blessing
saint; and not because he had shown any merits or practised
any virtues, but simply because of certain professions
which he had made, and in which she had perfect faith because
of the professions, and not because of any previous
knowledge which she had of the professor. Truly, it behooves
a rogue monstrous much to know what garment it is
best to wear; the question is equally important to rogue
and dandy.

Stevens made a thousand assurances in the most Christian
spirit — we can not say that he gave her tear for tear
— promised to do his best to bring back the prodigal son
to her embrace, and the better to effect this object, put his
pistols under his belt! Within the hour he was on his way
to the place of meeting.