21. CHAPTER XXI.
THE HAWK IN A NEW PART.
HUMPHREYS was now in the last weeks of his
singing-school. He had become a devout Millerite,
and was paying attentions to the not unwilling
Betsey Malcolm, though pretending at Anderson's
to be absolutely heart-broken at the conduct of
Julia in jilting him after she had given him every assurance of
affection. And then to be jilted for a Dutchman, you know!
In this last regard his feeling was not all affectation. In his
soul, cupidity, vanity, and vindictiveness divided the narrow
territory between them. He inwardly swore that he'd get satisfaction
somehow. Debts which were due to his pride should
be collected by his revenge.
Did you ever reflect on the uselessness of a landscape when
one has no eyes to see it with, or, what is worse, no soul to look
through one's eyes? Humphreys was going down to the castle
to call on the Philosopher, and “Shady Hollow,” as Andrew
called it, had surely never been more glorious than on the morning
which he chose for his walk. The black-haw bushes hung
over the roadside, the maples lifted up their great trunk-pillars
toward the sky, and the grape-vines, some of them four and even
six inches in diameter, reached up to the high boughs, fifty or a
hundred feet, without touching the trunk. They had been carried
up by the growth of the tree, tree and vine having always
lived in each other's embrace. Out through the opening in the
hollow, Humphreys saw the green sea of six-feet-high Indian
corn in the fertile bottoms, the two rows of sycamores on the
sandy edges of the river, and the hazy hills on the Kentucky side.
But not one touch of sentiment, not a perception of beauty, entered
the soul of the singing-master as he daintily chose his steps so as
to avoid soiling his glossy boots, and as he knocked the leaves off
the low-hanging beech boughs with his delicate cane. He had
his purpose in visiting Andrew, and his mind was bent on
his game.
Charon, the guardian of the castle, bayed his great hoarse
bark at the Hawk, and with that keen insight into human nature
for which dogs are so remarkable, he absolutely forbade the
dandy's entrance, until Andrew appeared at the door and called
the dog away.
“I am delighted at having the opportunity of meeting a great
light in literature like yourself, Mr. Anderson. Here you sit
weaving, earning your bread with a manly simplicity that is
truly admirable. You are like Cincinnatus at his plow. I also
am a literary man.”
He really was a college graduate, though doubtless he was as
much of a humbug in recitations and examinations as he had
always been since. Andrew's only reply to his assertion that
he was a literary man was a rather severe and prolonged scrutiny
of his oily locks, his dainty mustache, his breast-pin, his watch-seals,
and finally his straps and his boots. For Andrew firmly
believed that neglected hair, Byron collars, and unblackened
boots were the first signs of literary taste.
“You think I dress too well,” said Humphreys with his
ghastly smirk. “You think that I care too much for appearances.
I do. It is a weakness of mine which comes from a
residence abroad.”
These words touched the Philosopher a little. To have been
abroad was the next best thing to having been a foreigner ab
origine. But still he felt a little suspicious. He was superior
to the popular prejudice against the mustache, but he could not
endure hair-oil. “Nature,” he maintained, “made the whole
beard to be worn, and Nature provides an oil for the hair. Let
Nature have her way.” He was suspicious of Humphreys, not
because he wore a mustache, but because he shaved the rest of
his face and greased his hair. He had, besides, a little intuitive
perception of the fact that a smile which breaks against the
rock-bound coast of cold cheek-bones and immovable eyes is a
mask. And so he determined to test the literary man. I have
heard that Masonic lodges have been deceived by impostors. I
have never heard that a literary man was made to believe in
the genuineness of the attainments of a charlatan.
And yet Humphreys held his own well. He could talk glibly
and superficially about books; he simulated considerable enthusiasm
for the books which Andrew admired. His mistake and
his consequent overthrow came, as always in such cases, from
a desire to overdo. It was after half an hour of talking without
tripping that Andrew suddenly asked: “Do you like the ever-to-be-admired
Xenophanes?”
It certainly is no disgrace to any literary man not to know
anything of so remote a philosopher as Xenophanes. The first
characteristic of a genuine literary man is the frankness with
which he confesses his ignorance. But Humphreys did not really
know but that Xenophanes was part of the daily reading of a
man of letters.
“Oh! yes,” said he. “I have his works in turkey morocco.”
“What do you think of his opinion that God is a sphere?”
asked the Philosopher, smiling.
“Oh! yes—ahem; let me see—which God is it that he speaks
of, Jupiter or—well, you know he was a Greek.”
“But he only believed in one God,” said Andrew sternly.
“Oh! ah! I forgot that he was a Christian.”
So from blunder to blunder Andrew pushed him, Humphreys
stumbling more and more in his blind attempts to right himself,
and leaving, at last, with much internal confusion but with an unruffled
smile. He dared not broach his errand by asking the
address of August. For Andrew did not conceal his disgust,
having resumed work at his loom, suffering the bowing impostor
to find his own way out without so much as a courteous adieu.
