Part 29 (1/2)
I have on the contrary, striven to show you my friends.h.i.+p, 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.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
UNEXPECTED ISSUES.
William Hinkley ascended the narrow path leading to the hills with an alacrity of heart which somewhat surprised himself. The apprehensions of danger, if he felt any, were not of a kind to distress or annoy him, and were more than balanced by the conviction that he had brought his enemy within his level. That feeling of power is indeed a very consolatory one. It satisfies the ambitious heart, though death preys upon his household, one by one; though suffering fevers his sleep; though the hopes of his affection wither; though the loves and ties of his youth decay and vanish. It makes him careless of the suns.h.i.+ne, and heedless of the storm. It deadens his ear to the song of birds, it blinds his eye to the seduction of flowers. It makes him fly from friends.h.i.+p and rush on hate. It compensates for all sorts of loneliness, and it produces them.
It is a princely despotism; which, while it robs its slave of freedom, covers him with other gifts which he learns to value more; which, binding him in fetters, makes him believe that they are sceptres and symbols before which all things become what he desires them. His speech is changed, his very nature perverted, but he acquires an ”open sesame”
by their loss, and the loss seems to his imagination an exceeding gain.
We will not say that William Hinkley was altogether satisfied with HIS bargain, but in the moment when he stood confronting his enemy on the bald rock, with a deadly weapon in each hand--when he felt that he stood foot to foot in equal conflict with his foe, one whom he had dragged down from his pride of place, and had compelled to the fearful issue which made his arrogance quail--in that moment, if he did not forget, he did not so much feel, that he had lost family and friends, parents and love; and if he felt, it was only to induce that keener feeling of revenge in which even the affections are apt to be swallowed up.
Stevens looked in the eye of the young man and saw that he was dangerous. He looked upon the ante-revolutionary pistols, and saw that they were dangerous too, in a double sense.
”Here are pistols,” he said, ”better suited to our purpose. You can sound them and take your choice.”
”These,” said Hinkley, doggedly, ”are as well suited as any. If you will, you can take your choice of mine; but if you think yours superior, use them. These are good enough for me.”
”But this is out of all usage,” said Stevens.
”What matters it, Mr. Stevens? If you are satisfied that yours are the best, the advantage is with you. If you doubt that mine can kill, try them. I have a faith in these pistols which will content me; but we will take one of each, if that will please you better, and use which we think proper.”
Stevens expressed himself better pleased to keep his own.
”Suit yourself as to distance,” said Hinkley, with all the coolness of an unmixed salamander. His opponent stepped off ten paces with great deliberation, and William Hinkley, moving toward a fragment of the rock upon which he had placed his ”revolutions” for the better inspection of his opponent, possessed himself of the veterans and prepared to take the station which had been a.s.signed him.
”Who shall give the word?” demanded Stevens.