The Chainbearer: or, The Littlepage Manuscripts

"Never mind that, my dear; there only remain three more resolutions: let us hear them. Resolved, That we see an obvious connection between crowned heads, patents of nobility, canopied pews, personal distinctions, leasehold tenures, land-Lords, days' works, fat fowls, quarter-sales, three-lives leases, and Rent.

"Resolved, That we are of opinion that, when the owners of barns wish them destroyed, for any purpose whatever, there is a mode less alarming to a neighborhood than by setting them on fire, and thus giving rise to a thousand reports and accusations that are wanting in the great merit of truth.

"Resolved, That a fair draft be made of these resolutions, and a copy of them delivered to one Hugh Roger Littlepage, a citizen of Ravensnest, in the county of Washington; and that Peter Bunce, Esq., John Mowatt, Esq., and Hezekiah Trott, Esq., be a commitee to see that this act be performed.

"Whereupon the meeting adjourned, sine die. Onesiphoras Hayden, chairman; Pulaski Todd, secretary."

"Whe-e-e-w!" I whistled, "here's gunpowder enough for another Waterloo!"

"What means that last resolution, Mr. Littlepage?" asked Mary Warren, anxiously. "That about the barn."

"Sure enough; there is a latent meaning there which has its sting. Can the scoundrels intend to insinuate that I caused that barn to be set on fire!"

"If they should, it is scarcely more than they have attempted to do with every landlord they have endeavored to rob," said Patt, with spirit. "Calumny seems a natural weapon of those who get their power by appealing to numbers."

"That is natural enough, my dear sister; since prejudice and passion are quite as active agents as reasons and facts, in the common mind. But this is a slander that shall be looked to. If I find that these men really wish to circulate a report that I caused my own barn to be set on fire – pshaw! nonsense, after all; have we not Newcome, and that other rascal in confinement, at this moment, for attempting to set fire to my house?"

"Be not too confident, Mr. Littlepage," said Mary, with an anxiety so pointed that I could not but feel its flattery – "my dear father tells me he has lost most of his confidence in innocence, except as One above all weaknesses shall be the judge: this very story may be got up expressly to throw distrust on your accusations against the two incendiaries you have taken in the act. Remember how much of the facts will depend on your own testimony."

"I shall have you to sustain me, Miss Warren, and the juror is not living, who would hesitate to believe that to which you will testify. But here we are approaching the house; we will talk no more on the subject, lest it distress my grandmother."

We found all quiet at the Nest, no report of any sort having come from the red-men. Sunday was like any other day to them, with the exception that they so far deferred to our habits as to respect it, to a certain extent, while in our presence. Some writers have imagined that the aborigines of America are of the lost tribes of Israel; but it seems to me that such a people could never have existed apart, uninfluenced by foreign association, and preserved no tradition, no memorial of the Jewish Sabbath. Let this be as it may, John, who met us at the door, which we reached just after my uncle and grandmother, reported all quiet, so far as he knew anything of the state of the farm-buildings.

"They got enough last night, I'se thinking, Mr. Hugh, and has found out by this time, that it's better to light a fire in one of their own cook-stoves, than come to light it on the floor of a gentleman's kitchen. I never heard it said, sir, that the Hamericans was as much Hirish as they be Henglish, but to me they seems to grow every day more like the wild Hirishers, of whom we used to hear so much in Lun'un. Your honored father, sir, would never have believed that his own dwelling would be entered, at night, by men who are his very neighbors, and who act like burglariouses, as if they were so many Newgate birds – no. Why, Mr. Hugh, this 'Squire Newcome, as they call him, is an hattorney, and has often dined here at the Nest. I have 'anded him his soup, and fish, and wine, fifty times, just as if he was a gentleman, and to his sister, Miss Hopportunity, too; and they to come to set fire to the house, at midnight!"

"You do Miss Opportunity injustice, John; for she has not had the least connection with the matter."

"Well, sir, nobody knows anything nowaday – I declare, my eyes be getting weak, or there is the young lady, at this very instant!"

"Young lady! where? – you do not mean Opportunity Newcome, surely?"

"I does though, sir, and it's she, sure enough. If that isn't Miss Hopportunity, the prisoner that the savages has got up in the cellar of the old farm-house, isn't her brother."

John was quite right; there was Opportunity standing in the very path, and at the very spot where I had last seen her disappear from my sight, the past night. That spot was just where the path plunged into the wooded ravine, and so far was her person concealed by the descent, that we could only perceive the head, and the upper part of the body. The girl had shown herself just that much, in order to attract my attention, in which she had no sooner succeeded, than, by moving downward a few paces, she was entirely hid from sight. Cautioning John to say nothing of what had passed, I sprang down the steps, and walked in the direction of the ravine, perfectly satisfied I was expected, and far from certain that this visit did not portend further evil.

The distance was so short that I was soon at the verge of the ravine, but when I reached it Opportunity had disappeared. Owing to the thicket, her concealment was easily obtained, while she might be within a few yards from me, and I plunged downward, bent only on ascertaining her object. One gleam of distrust shot across my mind, I will own, as I strided down the declivity; but it was soon lost in the expectation and curiosity that were awakened by the appearance of the girl.

I believe it has already been explained, that in this part of the lawn a deep, narrow ravine had been left in wood, and that the bridle-path that leads to the hamlet had been carried directly through it, for effect. This patch of wood may be three or four acres in extent, following the course of the ravine until it reaches the meadows, and it contains three or four rustic seats, intended to be used in the warmer months. As Opportunity was accustomed to all the windings and turnings of the place, she had posted herself near one of these seats, which stood in a dense thicket, but so near the main path as to enable her to let me know where she was to be found, by a low utterance of my name, as my tread announced my approach. Springing up the by-path, I was at her side in an instant. I do believe that, now she had so far succeeded, the girl sunk upon the seat from inability to stand.

"Oh! Mr. Hugh!" she exclaimed, looking at me with a degree of nature and concern in her countenance that it was not usual to see there – "Sen – my poor brother Sen – what have I done? – what have I done?"

"Will you answer me one or two questions, Miss Opportunity, with frankness, under the pledge that the replies never shall be used to injure you or yours? This is a very serious affair, and should be treated with perfect frankness."

"I will answer anything to you– any question you can put me, though I might blush to do so – but," laying her hand familiarly, not to say tenderly, on my arm – "why should we be Mr. Hugh and Miss Opportunity to each other, when we were so long Hugh and Op? Call me Op again, and I shall feel that the credit of my family and the happiness of my poor Sen are, after all, in the keeping of a true friend."

"No one can be more willing to do this than myself, my dear Op, and I am willing to be Hugh again. But, you know all that has passed."

"I do – yes, the dreadful news has reached us, and mother wouldn't leave me a moment's peace till I stole out again to see you."

"Again? Was your mother, then, acquainted with the visit of last night?"

"Yes, yes – she knew it all, and advised it all."

"Your mother is a most thoughtful and prudent parent," I answered, biting my lip, "and I shall know hereafter how much I am indebted to her. To you, Opportunity, I owe the preservation of my house, and possibly the lives of all who are most dear to me."

"Well, that's something, any how. There's no grief that hasn't its relief. But, you must know, Hugh, that I never could or did suppose that Sen himself would be so weak as to come in his own person on such an errand! I didn't want telling to understand that, in anti-rent times, fire and sword are the law – but, take him in general, Sen is altogether prudent and cautious. I'd a bit my tongue off before I'd got my own brother into so cruel a scrape. No, no – don't think so ill of me as to suppose I came to tell of Sen."

"It is enough for me that I know how much trouble you took to warn me of danger. It is unnecessary for me to think of you in any other light than that of a friend."

"Ah, Hugh! how happy and merry we all of us used to be a few years since! That was before your Miss Coldbrookes, and Miss Marstons, and Mary Warrens ever saw the country. Then we did enjoy ourselves, and I hope such times will return. If Miss Martha would only stick to old friends, instead of running after new ones, Ravensnest would be Ravensnest again."

"You are not to censure my sister for loving her own closest associates best. She is several years our junior, you will remember, and was scarcely of an age to be our companion six years ago."

Opportunity had the grace to color a little, for she had only used Patt as a cloak to make her assaults on me, and she knew as well as I did that my sister was good seven years younger than herself. This feeling, however, was but momentary, and she next turned to the real object of this visit.

"What am I to tell mother, Hugh? You will let Sen off, I know?"

I reflected, for the first time, on the hardships of the case; but felt a strong reluctance to allow incendiaries to escape.

"The facts must be known, soon, all over the town," I remarked.

"No fear of that; they are pretty much known already. News does fly fast at Ravensnest, all must admit."

"Ay, if it would only fly true. But your brother can hardly remain here, after such an occurrence."

"Lord! How you talk! If the law will only let him alone, who'd trouble him for this? You haven't been home long enough to learn that folks don't think half as much of setting fire to a house, in anti-rent times, as they'd think of a trespass under the old-fashioned law. Anti-rent alters the whole spirit."

How true was this! And we have lads among us, who have passed from their tenth to their eighteenth and twentieth years, in a condition of society that is almost hopelessly abandoned to the most corrupting influence of all the temptations that beset human beings. It is not surprising that men begin to regard arson as a venial offence, when the moral feeling of the community is thus unhinged, and boys are suffered to grow into manhood in the midst of notions so fatal to everything that is just and safe.

"But the law itself will not be quite as complaisant as the 'folks.' It will scarcely allow incendiaries to escape; and your brother would be compelled to flee the land."

"What of that? How many go off, and stay off for a time; and that's better than going up north to work at the new prison. I'm not a bit afraid of Sen's being hanged, for these an't hanging times, in this country; but it is some disgrace to a family to have a member in the State's prison. As for any punishment that is lasting, you can see how it is, as well as I. There've been men murdered about anti-rentism, but, Lord! the Senators and Assemblymen will raise such a rumpus, if you go to punish them, that it won't be long, if things go on as they have, before it will be thought more honorable to be put in jail for shooting a peace-officer, than to stay out of it for not having done it. Talk's all; and if folks have a mind to make anything honorable, they've only to say so often enough to make it out."

Such were the notions of Miss Opportunity Newcome, on the subject of modern morals, and how far was she from the truth? I could not but smile at the manner in which she treated things, though there was a homely and practical common sense in her way of thinking that was probably of more efficiency than would have been the case with a more refined and nicer code. She looked at things as they are, and that is always something toward success.

As for myself, I was well enough disposed to consider Opportunity, in this unfortunate affair of the fire, for it Would have been a cruel thing to suffer the girl to imagine she had been an instrument in destroying her brother. It is true, there is no great danger of a rogue's being hanged, nowadays, and Seneca was not sufficiently a gentleman, though very tenacious of the title, to endanger his neck. Had he been a landlord, and caught lighting a fire on the kitchen-floor of one of the tenants, the State would not grow hemp enough for his execution; but it was a very different thing to catch a tenant at that work. I could not but ask myself, how many of the "honorable gentlemen" at Albany would interfere in my behalf, had matters been reversed? for this is the true mode of arriving at the "spirit of the institutions;" or, rather, I have just as good a right to affirm such is their "spirit," as any one has to assert that the leasehold tenure is opposed to them; the laws and institutions themselves being equally antagonist to both.

The results of the interview I had with Opportunity were: firstly, I kept my heart just where it was at its commencement, though I am not certain that it was in my own custody; secondly, the young lady left me much encouraged on the subject of the credit of the Newcomes, though I took very good care not to put myself in her power by promising to compromise felony; thirdly, I invited the sister to come openly to the Nest, that evening, as one of the means to be employed in attaining her ends – as respects Seneca, be it remembered, not as respects me; and lastly, we parted just as good friends as we ever had been, and entertaining exactly the same views as regards each other. What those views were it may not be modest in me to record.

CHAPTER XXVI

"If men desire the rights of property, they must take their consequences; distinction in social classes. Without the rights of property civilization can hardly exist, while the highest class of improvements is probably the result of the very social distinctions that so many decry. The great political problem to be solved is to ascertain if the social distinctions that are inseparable from civilization can really exist with perfect equality in political rights. We are of opinion they can; and as much condemn him who vainly contends for a visionary and impracticable social equality, as we do him who would deny to men equal opportunities for advancement." —Political Essay.

My interview with Opportunity Newcome remained a secret between those who first knew of it. The evening service in St. Andrew's was attended only by the usual congregation, all the curiosity of the multitude seeming to have been allayed by the visit in the morning. The remainder of the day passed as usual, and after enjoying a pleasant eventide, and the earlier hours of the night in the company of the girls, I retired early to bed, and slept profoundly until morning. My Uncle Ro partook of my own philosophical temper, and we encouraged each other in it by a short conversation that occurred in his room before we respectively retired to rest.

"I agree with you, Hugh," said my uncle, in reply to a remark of my own; "there is little use in making ourselves unhappy about evils that we cannot help. If we are to be burnt up and stripped of our property, we shall be burnt up and stripped of our property. I have a competency secured in Europe, and we can all live on that, with economy, should the worst come to the worst."

"It is a strange thing to hear an American talk of seeking a refuge of any sort in the Old World!"