University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.
FOOT TO FOOT.

William Hinkley was all impatience until his little
messenger returned, which she did with a speed which
might deserve commendation in the case of our professional
Mercuries — stage - drivers and mail contractors, hight!
He did not withhold it from the little maid, but taking
her in his arms, and kissing her fondly, he despatched her
to her mother, while he wrapped up his pistols and concealing
them in the folds of his coat, hurried from the house
with the anxious haste of one who is going to seek his
prey. He felt somewhat like that broad-winged eagle
which broods on the projecting pinnacle of yonder rocky
peak in waiting for the sea-hawk who is stooping far below
him, watching when the sun's rays shall glisten from the
uprising fins of his favorite fish. But it was not a selfish
desire to secure the prey which the terror of the other
might cause him to drop. It was simply to punish the
prowler. Poor William could not exactly tell indeed why
he wished to shoot Alfred Stevens; but his cause of hostility
was not less cogent because it had no name. The
thousand little details which induce our prejudices in regard
to persons, are, singly, worth no one's thought, and would
possibly provoke the contempt of all; but like the myriad
threads which secured the huge frame of Gulliver in his
descent upon Lilliput, they are, when united, able to bind
the biggest giant of us all.

The prejudices of William Hinkley, though very natural

in such a case as his, seemed to him very much like instincts.
It seemed to him, if he once reasoned on the matter,
that, as he had good cause to hate the intruder, so
there must be justification for shooting him. Were this not
so, the policy of hating would be very questionable, and
surely very unprofitable. It would be a great waste of a
very laudable quantity of feeling — something like omitting
one's bullet in discharging one's piece — a profligacy only
justifiable in a feu de joie after victory, where the bullets
have already done all necessary mischief, and will warrant
a small subsequent waste of the more harmless material.

Without designing any such child's play, our rustic hero,
properly equipped with his antique pistols, well charged,
close rammed, three-ounce bullets, or nearabouts, in each,
stood, breathing fire but without cooling, on the edge of the
lake, perched on an eminence and looking out for the coming
enemy. He was playing an unwonted character, but he
felt as if it were quite familiar to him. He had none of
that nice feeling which, without impugning courage, is natural
enough to inexperience in such cases. The muzzles of
the pistols did not appear to him particularly large. He
never once thought of his own ribs being traversed by his
three-ounce messengers. He had no misgivings on the subject
of his future digestion. He only thought of that blow
from his father's hand — that keen shaft from the lips
of Margaret Cooper — that desolation which had fallen
upon his soul from the scorn of both; and the vengeance
which it was in his power to inflict upon the fortunate interloper
to whose arts he ascribed all his misfortunes! and
with these thoughts his fury and impatience increased, and
he ascended the highest hill to look out for his foe; descended,
in the next moment, to the edge of the lake, the
better to prepare for the meeting.

In this state of excitement the meekness had departed
from his countenance; an entire change of expression had
taken place: he stood up, erect, bold, eagle-eyed, with the

look of one newly made a man by the form of indomitable
will, and feeling, for the first time, man's terrible commission
to destroy. In a moment, with the acquisition of new
moods, he had acquired a new aspect. Hitherto, he had
been tame, seemingly devoid of spirit — you have not forgotten
the reproaches of his cousin, which actually conveyed
an imputation against his manliness? — shrinking, with a
feeling of shyness akin to mauvaise honte, and almost submitting
to injustice, to avoid the charge of ill-nature. The
change that we have described in his soul; had made itself
singularly apparent in his looks. They were full of a grim
determination. Had he gazed upon his features, in the
glassy surface of the lake beside him, he had probably recoiled
from their expression.

We have seen Mrs. Hinkley sending Stevens forth for
the purpose of recalling her son to his senses, receiving his
repentance, and bringing him once more home into the
bosom of his flock. We have not forgotten the brace of
arguments with which he provided himself in order to bring
about this charitable determination. Stevens was a shot.
He could snuff his candle at ten paces, sever his bamboo,
divide the fingers of the hand with separate bullets without
grazing the skin — nay, more, as was said in the euphuistic
phraseology of his admirers, send his ball between soul and
body without impairing the integrity of either.

But men may do much shooting at candle or bamboo, who
would do precious little while another is about to shoot at
them. There is a world of difference between looking in a
bull's-eye, and looking in the eye of man. A pistol, too,
looks far less innocent, regarded through the medium of a
yawning muzzle, than the rounded and neatly-polished butt.
The huge mouth seems to dilate as you look upon it. You
already begin to fancy you behold the leaden mass — the
three-ounce bullet — issuing from its stronghold, like a relentless
baron of the middle ages, going forth under his
grim archway, seeking only whom he may devour. The

sight is apt to diminish the influence of skill. Nerves are
necessary to such sportsmen, and nerves become singularly
untrue when frowned upon through such a medium.

Under this view of the case, we are not so sure that the
excellence of aim for which Alfred Stevens has been so
much lauded, will make the difference very material between
the parties; and now that he is fairly roused, there
is a look of the human devil about William Hinkley, that
makes him promise to be dangerous. Nay, the very pistols
that he wields, those clumsy, rusty, big-mouthed ante-revolutionary
machines, which his stout grandsire carried at
Camden and Eutaw, have a look of service about them —
a grim, veteran-like aspect, that makes them quite as perilous
to face as to handle. If they burst they will blow on
all sides. There will be fragments enough for friend and
foe; and even though Stevens may not apprehend so much
from the aim of his antagonist, something of deference is
due to the possibility of such a concussion, as will make up
all his deficiencies of skill.

But they have not yet met, though Stevens, with praiseworthy
Christianity, is on his way to keep his engagements,
as well to mother as to son. He has his own pistols — not
made for this purpose — but a substantial pair of traveller's
babes — big of mouth, long of throat, thick of jaw, keen
of sight, quick of speech, strong of wind, and weighty of
argument. They are rifled bores also, and, in the hands
of the owner, have done clever things at bottle and sapling.
Stevens would prefer to have the legitimate things, but
these babes are trustworthy; and he has no reason to suppose
that the young rustic whom he goes to meet can produce
anything more efficient. He had no idea of those
ancient bull-pups, those solemn ante-revolutionary barkers,
which our grandsire used upon harder heads than his, at
Camden and the Eutaws. He is scarcely so confident in
his own weapons when his eye rests on the rusty tools of
his enemy.

But it was not destined that this fight should take place
without witnesses. In spite of all the precautions of the
parties, and they were honest in taking them, our little
village had its inklings of what was going on. There were
certain signs of commotion and explosion which made
themselves understood. Our little maid, Susan Hinkley,
was the first, very innocently, to furnish a clue to the
mystery. She had complained to her mother that Cousin
William had not shot the little guns for her according to
his promise.

“But, perhaps, he didn't want to shoot them, Susan.”

“Yes, mamma, he put them in his pockets. He's carried
them to shoot; and he promised to shoot them for me as
soon as I carried the note.”

“And to whom did you carry the note, Susan?” asked
the mother.

“To the young parson, at Uncle William's.”

The mother had not been unobservant of the degree of
hostility which her brother, as well as cousin, entertained
for Stevens. They had both very freely expressed their
dislike in her presence. Some of their conferences had
been overheard and were now recalled, in which this expression
of dislike had taken the form of threats, vague
and purposeless, seemingly, at the time; but which now,
taken in connection with what she gathered from the lips
of the child, seemed of portentous interest. Then, when
she understood that Stevens had sent a note in reply — and
that both notes were sealed, the quick, feminine mind instantly
jumped to the right conclusion.

“They are surely going to fight. Get my bonnet, Susan,
I must run to Uncle William's, and tell him while there's
time. Which way did Cousin William go?”

The child could tell her nothing but that he had taken to
the hills.

“That brother Ned shouldn't be here now! Though I
don't see the good of his being here. He'd only make

matters worse. Run, Susan — run over to Gran'pa Calvert,
and tell him to come and stop them from fighting, while I
hurry to Uncle William's. Lord save us! — and let me get
there in time.”

The widow had a great deal more to say, but this was
quite enough to bewilder the little girl. Nevertheless, she
set forth to convey the mysterious message to Grand'pa
Calvert, though the good mother never once reflected that
this message was of the sort which assumes the party addressed
to be already in possession of the principal facts.
While she took one route the mother pursued another, and
the two arrived at their respective places at about the same
time. Stevens had already left old Hinkley's when the
widow got there, and the consternation of Mrs. Hinkley
was complete. The old man was sent for to the fields, and
came in only to declare that some such persuasion had filled
his own mind when first the billet of his son had been received.
But the suspicion of the father was of a much
harsher sort than that of the widow Hinkley. In her sight
it was a duel only — bad enough as a duel — but still only
a duel, where the parties incurring equal risks, had equal
rights. But the conception of the affair, as it occurred to
old Hinkley, was very different.

“Base serpent!” he exclaimed — “he has sent for the
good young man only to murder him. He implores him to
come to him, in an artful writing, pretending to be sorely
sorrowful and full of repentance; and he prepares the
weapon of murder to slay him when he comes. Was there
ever creature so base! — but I will hunt him out. God give
me strength, and grant that I may find him in season.”

Thus saying, the old man seized his crab-stick, a knotty
club, that had been seasoned in a thousand smokes, and
toughened by the use of twenty years. His wife caught
up her bonnet and hurried with the widow Hinkley in his
train. Meanwhile, by cross-examining the child, Mr. Calvert
had formed some plausible conjectures of what was on

foot, and by the time that the formidable procession had
reached his neighborhood he was prepared to join it.
Events thickened with the increasing numbers. New facts
came in to the aid of old ones partially understood. The
widow Thackeray, looking from her widow, as young and
handsome widows are very much in the habit of doing, had
seen William Hinkley going by toward the hill, with a very
rapid stride and a countenance very much agitated; and an
hour afterward she had seen Brother Stevens following on
the same route — good young man! — with the most heavenly
and benignant smile upon his countenance — the very
personification of the cherub and the seraph, commissioned
to subdue the fiend.

“Here is some of your treachery, Mr. Calvert. You
have spoiled this boy of mine; turning his head with law
studies; and making him disobedient — giving him counsel
and encouragement against his father — and filling his mind
with evil things. It is all your doing, and your books.
And now he's turned out a bloody murderer, a papist murderer,
with your Roman catholic doctrines.”

“I am no Roman catholic, Mr. Hinkley,” was the mild
reply — “and as for William becoming a murderer, I think
that improbable. I have a better opinion of your son than
you have.”

“He's an ungrateful cub — a varmint of the wilderness —
to strike the good young man in my own presence — to
strike him with a cowskin — what do you think of that, sir?
answer me that, if you please.”

“Did William Hinkley do this?” demanded the old
teacher earnestly.

“Ay, that he did, did he!”

“I can hardly understand it. There must have been
some grievous provocation?”

“Yes; it was a grievous provocation, indeed, to have to
wait for grace before meat.”

“Was that all? can it be possible!”

The mother of the offender supplied the hiatus in the
story — and Calvert was somewhat relieved. Though he
did not pretend to justify the assault of the youth, he
readily saw how he had been maddened by the treatment
of his father. He saw that the latter was in a high pitch
of religious fury — his prodigious self-esteem taking part
with it, naturally enough, against a son, who, until this
instance, had never risen in defiance against either. Expostulation
and argument were equally vain with him; and
ceasing the attempt at persuasion, Calvert hurried on with
the rest, being equally anxious to arrest the meditated violence,
whether that contemplated the murderous assassination
which the father declared, or the less heinous proceeding
of the duel which he suspected.

There was one thing which made him tremble for his own
confidence in William Hinkley's propriety of course. It
was the difficulty which he had with the rest, in believing
that the young student of divinity would fight a duel. This
doubt, he felt, must be that of his pupil also: whether the
latter had any reason to suppose that Stevens would depart
from the principles of his profession, and waive the securities
which it afforded, he had of course, no means for conjecturing;
but his confidence in William induced him to
believe that some such impression upon his mind had led
him to the measure of sending a challenge, which, otherwise,
addressed to a theologian, would have been a shameless
mockery.

There was a long running fire, by way of conversation
and commentary, which was of course maintained by these
toiling pedestrians, cheering the way as they went; but
though it made old Hinkley peccant and wrathy, and exercised
the vernacular of the rest to very liberal extent, we
do not care to distress the reader with it. It may have
been very fine or not. It is enough to say that the general
tenor of opinion run heavily against our unhappy rustic, and
in favor of the good young man, Stevens. Mrs. Thackeray,

the widow, to whom Stevens had paid two visits or more
since he had been in the village, and who had her own reasons
for doubting that Margaret Cooper had really obtained
any advantages in the general struggle to find favor in the
sight of this handsome man of God — was loud in her eulogy
upon the latter, and equally unsparing in her denunciations
of the village lad who meditated so foul a crime as the extinguishing
so blessed a light. Her denunciations at length
aroused all the mother in Mrs. Hinkley's breast, and the
two dames had it, hot and heavy, until, as the parties approached
the lake, old Hinkley, with a manner all his own,
enjoined the most profound silence, and hushed, without
settling the dispute.

Meanwhile, the combatants had met. William Hinkley,
having ascended the tallest perch among the hills, beheld
his enemy approaching at a natural pace and at a short distance.
He descended rapidly to meet him and the parties
joined at the foot of the woodland path leading down to
the lake, where, but a few days before, we beheld Stevens
and Margaret Cooper. Stevens was somewhat surprised to
note the singular and imposing change which a day, almost
an hour, had wrought in the looks and bearing of the young
rustic. His good, and rather elevated command of language,
had struck him previously as very remarkable, but
this had been explained by his introduction to Mr. Calvert,
who, as his teacher, he soon found was very well able to
make him what he was. It was the high bearing, the
courteous defiance, the superior consciousness of strength
and character, which now spoke in the tone and manner of
the youth. A choice military school, for years, could
scarcely have brought about a more decided expression of
that subdued heroism, which makes mere manliness a matter
of chivalry, and dignifies brute anger and blind hostility
into something like a sentiment. Under the prompting of
a good head, a generous temper, and the goodness of a
highly-roused, but legitimate state of feeling, William Hinkley

wore the very appearance of that nobleness, pride, ease,
firmness, and courtesy, which, in the conventional world, it
is so difficult, yet held to be so important, to impress upon
the champion when ready for the field. A genuine son of
thunder would have rejoiced in his deportment, and though
a sneering, jealous and disparaging temper, Alfred Stevens
could not conceal from himself the conviction that there
was stuff in the young man which it needed nothing but
trial and rough attrition to bring out.

William Hinkley bowed at his approach, and pointed to
a close footpath leading to the rocks on the opposite shore.

“There, sir, we shall be more secret. There is a narrow
grove above, just suited to our purpose. Will it please you
to proceed thither?”

“As you please, Mr. Hinkley,” was the reply; “I have
no disposition to balk your particular desires. But the
sight of this lake reminds me that I owe you my life?”

“I had thought, sir, that the indignity which I put upon
you, would cancel all such memories,” was the stern reply.

The cheek of Stevens became crimson — his eye flashed
— he felt the sarcasm — but something was due to his position,
and he was cool enough to make a concession to circumstances.
He answered with tolerable calmness, though
not without considerable effort.

“It has cancelled the obligation, sir, if not the memory!
I certainly can owe you nothing for a life which you have
attempted to disgrace—”

“Which I have disgraced!” said the other, interrupting
him.

“You are right, sir. How far, however, you have shown
your manhood in putting an indignity upon one whose profession
implies peace, and denounces war, you are as well
prepared to answer as myself.”

“The cloth seems to be of precious thickness!” was the
answer of Hinkley, with a smile of bitter and scornful
sarcasm.

“If you mean to convey the idea that I do not feel the
shame of the blow, and am not determined on avenging it,
young man, you are in error. You will find that I am not
less determined because I am most cool. I have come out
deliberately for the purpose of meeting you. My purpose
in reminding you of my profession was simply to undeceive
you. It appears to me not impossible that the knowledge
of it has made you somewhat bolder than you otherwise
might have been.”

“What mean you?” was the stern demand of Hinkley,
uttered in very startling accents.

“To tell you that I have not always been a non-combatant,
that I am scarcely one now, and that, in the other
schools, in which I have been taught, the use of the pistol
was an carly lesson. You have probably fancied that such
was not the case, and that my profession—”

“Come, sir — will you follow this path?” said Hinkley,
interrupting him impatiently.

“All in good time, sir, when you have heard me out,”
was the cool reply. “Now, sir,” he continued, “were you
to have known that it would be no hard task for me to mark
any button on your vest, at any distance — that I have often
notched a smaller mark, and that I am prepared to do so
again, it might be that your prudence would have tempered
your courage—”

“I regret for your sake,” said Hinkley, again interrupting
him with a sarcasm, “that I have not brought with me
the weapon with which my marks are made. You seem to
have forgotten that I too have some skill in my poor way.
One would think, sir, that the memory would not fail of
retaining what I suspect will be impressed upon the skin for
some time longer.”

“You are evidently bent on fighting, Mr. Hinkley, and I
must gratify you!”

“If you please, sir.”

“But, before doing so, I should like to know in what

way I have provoked such a feeling of hostility in your
mind? I have not sought to do so. I have on the contrary,
striven to show you my friendship, in part requital of the
kindness shown me by your parents.”

“Do not speak of them, if you please.”

“Ay, but I must. It was at the instance of your worthy
mother that I sought you and strove to confer with you on
the cause of your evident unhappiness.”

“You were the cause.”

“I?”

“Yes — you! Did I not tell you then that I hated you;
and did you not accept my defiance?”

“Yes; but when you saved my life! —”

“It was to spurn you — to put stripes upon you. I tell
you, Alfred Stevens, I loathe you with the loathing one
feels for a reptile, whose cunning is as detestable as his
sting is deadly. I loathe you from instinct. I felt this dislike
and distrust for you from the first moment that I saw
you. I know not how, or why, or in what manner, you are
a villain, but I feel you to be one! I am convinced of it
as thoroughly as if I knew it. You have wormed yourself
into the bosom of my family. You have expelled me from
the affections of my parents; and not content with this, you
have stolen to the heart of the woman to whom my life was
devoted, to have me driven thence also. Can I do less
than hate you? Can I desire less than your destruction?
Say, having heard so much, whether you will make it necessary
that I should again lay my whip over your shoulders.”

The face of Stevens became livid as he listened to this
fierce and bitter speech. His eye watched that of the
speaker with the glare of the tiger, as if noteful only of the
moment when to spring. His frame trembled. His lip
quivered with the struggling rage. All his feeling of self-superiority
vanished when he listened to language of so unequivocal
a character — language which so truly denounced,

without defining, his villany. He felt, that if the instinct
of the other was indeed so keen and quick, then was the
combat necessary, and the death of the rustic essential,
perhaps, to his own safety. William Hinkley met his glance
with a like fire. There was no shrinking of his heart or
muscles. Nay, unlike his enemy, he felt a strange thrill
of pleasure in his veins as he saw the effect which his
language had produced on the other.

“Lead the way!” said Stevens; “the sooner you are
satisfied the better.”

“You are very courteous, and I thank you,” replied
Hinkley, with a subdued but sarcastic smile, “you will
pardon me for the seeming slight, in taking precedence of
one so superior; but the case requires it. You will please
to follow. I will show you my back no longer than it seems
necessary.”

“Lead on, sir — lead on.”