One Of Them

“Don’t be on the look-out, sir, for Eu-ropean graces,” he would say, “in this country, for the men that have most of ‘em ain’t our best people; and don’t mistake the eagerness with which everybody will press you to admire America for any slight towards the old country. We all like her, sir; and we’d like her better if she wasn’t so fond of saying she’s ashamed of us.”

These were the sort of warnings and counsels he would drop as he guided Layton about through the city, pointing out whatever he deemed most worthy of curiosity, or whatever he conceived might illustrate the national character. It was chiefly on the wealth of the people, their untiring industry, and the energy with which they applied themselves to money-getting, that he laid stress; and he did this with a degree of insistence that betrayed an uneasy consciousness of how little sympathy such traits meet with from the passing traveller.

“Mayhap, sir, you ‘d rather see ‘em loafing?” said he one day in a moment of impatience, as Layton half confessed that he ‘d like to meet some of the men of leisure. “Well, you ‘ll have to look ‘em up elsewhere, I expect. I ‘ll have to take you a run down South for that sort of cattle, – and that’s what I mean to do. Before you go before our people, sir, as a lecturer, you ‘ll have to study ‘em a little, that’s a fact! When you come to know ‘em, you ‘ll see that it’s a folk won’t be put off with chaff when they want buckwheat; and that’s jest what your Eu-ropeans think to do. I will take a trip to the Falls first; I ‘d like to show you that water-power. We start away on Monday next.”

Layton was not sorry to leave New York. The sight of that ever busy multitude, that buzzing hive of restless bees, was only addling to one who never regarded wealth save as a stage to something farther off. He was well aware how rash it would be to pronounce upon a people from the mere accidents of chance intercourse, and he longed to see what might give him some real insight into the character of the nation. Besides this, he felt, with all the poignant susceptibility of his nature, that he was not himself the man to win success amongst them. There was a bold rough energy, a daring go-ahead spirit, that overbore him wherever he went. They who had not travelled spoke more confidently of foreign lands than he who had seen them. Of the very subjects he had made his own by study, he heard men speak with a confidence he would not have dared to assume; and lastly, the reserve which serves as a sanctuary to the bashful man was invaded without scruple by any one who pleased it.

If each day’s experience confirmed him in the impression that he was not one to gain their suffrages, he was especially careful to conceal this discouraging conviction from Quackinboss, leaving to time, that great physician, to provide for the future. Nor was the Colonel himself, be it owned, without his own misgivings. He saw, to his amazement, that the qualities which he had so much admired in Layton won no approval from his countrymen; the gifts, which by reading and reflection he had cultivated, seemed not to be marketable commodities; there were no buyers, – none wanted them. Now Quackinboss began to think seriously over their project, deeply pained as he remembered that it was by his own enthusiastic description of his countrymen the plan had first met acceptance. Whether it was that the American mind had undergone some great change since he had known it, or that foreign travel had exaggerated, in his estimation, the memory of many things he had left behind him; but so it was, the Colonel was amazed to discover that with all the traits of sharp intelligence and activity he recognized in his countrymen, there were yet some features in the society of the old continent that he regretted and yearned after. Again and again did he refer to Italy and their life there; even the things he had so often condemned now came up, softened by time and distance, as pleasant memories of an era passed in great enjoyment If any passing trait in the scenery recalled the classic land, he never failed to remark it, and, once launched upon the theme, he would talk away for hours of the olive-woods, the trellised vines, the cottages half hid amidst the orange-groves, showing how insensibly the luxurious indolence he had imbibed lingered like a sort of poison in his blood.

“Yes, sir,” said he, one day, as with an amount of irritation he acknowledged the fatal fascination of that land of dreamy inactivity, “it’s my notion that Italy is a pasture where no beast ought to be turned out that’s ever to do any work again. It ain’t merely that one does nothing when he ‘s there, but he ain’t fit for anything when he leaves it. I know what I ‘d have thought of any man that would have said to me, ‘Shaver Quackinboss, you ‘ll come out of them diggin’s lazy and indolent. You ‘ll think more of your ease than you ought, and you ‘ll be more grateful for being jest left alone to follow your own fancies than for the best notion of speculation that ever was hit upon.’ And that’s exactly what I ‘ve come to! I don’t want a fellow to tell me where I can make thirty or forty thousand dollars; I ‘ve lost all that spring in me that used to make me rise early and toil late. What I call happiness now is to sit and smoke with one of your sort of an afternoon, and listen to stories of chaps that lived long ago, and worked their way on in a world a precious sight harder to bully than our own. Well now, sir, I say, that ain’t right, and it ain’t nat’ral, and, what’s more, I ain’t a-goin’ to bear it. I mean to be stirrin’ and active again, and you ‘ll see it.”

It was a few days after he had made this resolve that he said to Layton, —

“Only think who I saw at the bar this morning. That fellow we came over with in the passage out; he was a-liquoring down there and treating all the company. He comes up to me, straight on end, and says, —

“‘Well, old ‘oss, and how do you get on?’

“‘Bobbish-like,’ says I, for I was minded to be good-humored with him, and see what I could get out of him about hisself.

“‘Where’s the young ‘un I saw with you aboard?’ says he.

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘he ain’t very far off, when he’s wanted.’

“‘That’s what he ain’t,’ said he; ‘he ain’t wanted nowhere.’ When he said this I saw he was very ‘tight,’ as we call it, – far gone in liquor, I mean.

“‘Have you found out that same water-power you were arter?’ said he.

“‘No,’ said I. ‘It’s down West a man must go who has n’t a bag full of dollars. Everything up hereabouts is bought up at ten times its worth.’

“‘Well, look sharp after the young ‘un,’ said he, laughing; ‘that’s my advice to you. Though you’re Yankee, he ‘ll be too much for you in the end.’ He said this, drinking away all the time, and getting thicker in his speech at every word.

“‘I ain’t a man to neglect a warnin’,’ says I, in a sort of whisper, ‘and if you mean friendly by me, speak out.’

“‘And ain’t that speaking out,’ says he, boldly, ‘when I say to a fellow I scarcely know by sight, “Mind your eye; look out for squalls!” I wonder what more he wants? Does he expect me to lend him money?’ said he, with an insolent laugh.

“‘No,’ said I, in the same easy way, ‘by no manner o’ means; and if it’s myself you allude to, I ain’t in the vocative case, sir. I ‘ve got in that old leather pocket-book quite enough for present use.’

“‘Watch it well, then; put it under your head o’ nights, that’s all,’ said he, hiccuping; ‘and if you wake up some morning without it, don’t say the fault was Oliver Trover’s.’ This was a-tellin’ me his name, which I remembered the moment I heard it.

“‘You ‘ll take a brandy-smash or a glass of bitters with me now, sir?’ said I, hopin’ to get something more out of him; but he wouldn’t have it. He said, with a half-cunning leer, ‘No more liquor, no more liquor, and no more secrets! If you was to treat me to all in the bar, you ‘d get nothing more out of Noll Trover.’”

“But what does the fellow mean by his insinuations about me?” said Layton, angrily. “I never knew him, never met him, never so much as heard of him!”

“What does that signify if he has heard of you, and suspects you to know something about him? He ain’t all right, that’s clear enough; but our country is so full of fellows like that, it ain’t easy work tracking ‘em.”

Layton shrugged his shoulders with an indifference, as though to say the matter did not interest him; but Quackinboss rejoined quickly, “I ‘ve a notion that it concerns us, sir. I heerd his inquiry about all the lines down South, and asking if any one knew a certain Harvey Winthrop, down at Norfolk.”

“Winthrop – Winthrop? Where have I heard that name?”

“In that book of your father’s, – don’t you remember it? It was he was mentioned as the guardian of that young girl, the daughter of him as was pisoned at Jersey.”

“And is this man Trover in search of Winthrop?” asked Layton, eagerly.

“Well, he’s a-lookin’ arter him, somehow, that’s certain; for when somebody said, ‘Oh, Harvey Winthrop ain’t at Norfolk now,’ he looked quite put out and amazed, and muttered something about having made all his journey for nothing.”

“It is strange, indeed, that we should have the same destination, and stranger still would it be if we should be both on the same errand.”

“Well,” said Quackin boss, after a long pause, “I’ve been a-rolling the log over and over, to see which way to cut it, and at last, I believe, I ‘ve found the right side o’ it. You and I must quarrel.”

“What do you mean?” asked Layton, in astonishment.

“I mean jest this. I must take up the suspicion that he has about you, and separate from you. It may be to join him. He’s one of your Old-World sort, that’s always so proud to be reckoned ‘cute and smart, that you ‘ve only to praise his legs to get his leggin’s. We’ll be as thick as thieves arter a week’s travelling, and I ‘ll find out all that he’s about. Trust Old Shaver, sir, to get to windward of small craft like that!”

“I own to you frankly,” said Layton, “that I don’t fancy using a rogue’s weapons even against a rogue.”

“Them’s not the sentiments of the men that made laws, sir,” said Quackinboss. “Laws is jest rogues’ weapons against rogues. You want to do something you have n’t no right to, and straight away you discover that some fellow was so wide awake once that he made a statute against it, ay, and so cleverly too, that he first imagined every different way you could turn your dodge, and provided for each in turn.”

Layton shook his head in dissent, but could not repress a faint smile.

“Ain’t it roguery to snare partridges and to catch fish, for the matter o’ that?” said he, with increased warmth. “Wherever a fellow shows hisself more ‘cute than his neighbors, there’s sure to be an outcry ‘What a rogue he is!’”

“Your theory would be an indictment against all mankind,” said Layton.

“No, sir, for I only call him a rogue that turns his sharpness to bad and selfish ends. Now, that’s not the case with him as hunts down varmint: he’s a-doin’ a good work, and all the better that he may get scratched for his pains.”

“Well, what is your plan?” said Layton, rather fearful of the length into which his friend’s speculations occasionally betrayed him.

“Here it is, sir,” said the Colonel. “I’ll come down upon that crittur at Detroit, where I hear he’s a-goin’, and flatter him by saying that he was all right about you.”

“Indeed!” said Layton, laughing.

“Yes, sir,” said the other, gravely. “I’ll say to him, ‘Stranger, you are a wide-awake ‘un, that’s a fact.’ He’ll rise to that, like a ground-shark to a leg of pork, – see if he don’t, – and he ‘ll go on to ask about you; that will give me the opportunity to give a sketch of myself, and a more simple, guileless sort of bein’ you ‘ve not often heerd of than I ‘ll turn out to be. Yes, sir, I ‘m one as suspects no ill of anybody, jest out of the pureness of my own heart. When we get on to a little more intimacy, I mean to show him twenty thousand dollars I ‘ve got by me, and ask his advice about investin’ ‘em. I guess pretty nigh what he’ll say: ‘Give ‘em over to me.’ Well, I ‘ll take a bit of time to consider about that. There will be, in consequence, more intimacy and more friendship atween us: but arter he’s seen the money, he ‘ll not leave me; human natur’ could n’t do that!”

“Shall I tell you fairly,” said Layton, “that I not only don’t like your scheme, but that I think it will not repay you?”

“Well, sir,” said Quackinboss, drawing himself up, “whenever you see me baitin’ a rat-trap, I don’t expect you ‘ll say, ‘Colonel, ain’t that mean? Ain’t you ashamed of yourself to entice that poor varmint there to his ruin? Why don’t you explain to him that if he wants that morsel of fried bacon, it will cost him pretty dear?’”

“You forget that you’re begging the question. You’re assuming, all this time, that this man is a rogue and a cheat.”

“I am, sir,” said he, firmly, “for it’s not at this time o’ day Shaver Quackinboss has to learn life. All the pepperin’ and lemon-squeezin’ in the world won’t make a toad taste like a terrapin: that crittur’s gold chains don’t impose upon me! You remember that he was n’t aboard four-and-twenty hours when I said, ‘That sheep’s mangy.’”

“Perhaps I like your plan the less because it separates us,” said Layton, who now perceived that the Colonel seemed to smart under anything that reflected on his acuteness.

“That’s jest what galls me too,” said he, frankly. “It’s been all sunshine in my life, since we ‘ve been together. All the book-learnin’ you ‘ve got has stolen into your nature so gradually as to make part of yourself, but what you tell me comes like soft rain over a dry prairie, and changing the parched soil into something that seems to say, ‘I ‘m not so barren, after all, if I only got my turn from fortune.’ You ‘ve shown me one thing, that I often had a glimmerin’ of, but never saw clearly till you pointed it out, that the wisest men that ever lived felt more distrust of themselves than of their fellows. But we only part for a while, Layton. In less than a month we ‘ll meet again, and I hope to have good news for you by that time.”

“Where are we to rendezvous, then?” asked Layton, for he saw how fruitless would be the attempt at further opposition.

“I’ll have the map out this evening, and we ‘ll fix it,” said the Colonel. “And now leave me to smoke, and think over what’s afore us. There’s great thoughts in that bit of twisted ‘bacco there, if I only have the wit to trace ‘em. Every man that has had to use his head in life finds out by the time he’s forty what helps him to his best notions. Bonaparte used to get into a bath to think, Arkwright went to bed, and my father, Methuselah Grip Quackinboss, said he never was so bright as standing up to his neck in the mill-race, with the light spray of the wheel comin’ in showers over him. ‘I feel,’ says he, ‘as if I was one-half Lord Bacon and the other John C. Colhoun.’ Now my brain-polisher is a long Cuban, a shady tree, and a look-out seaward, – all the better if the only sails in sight be far away.”

CHAPTER XLII. A NEW LOCATION

After a great deal of discussion it was agreed between Layton and the Colonel that they should meet that day month at St. Louis. Layton was to employ the interval in seeing as much as he could of the country and the people, and preparing himself to appear before them at the first favorable opportunity. Indeed, though he did not confess it, he yielded to the separation the more willingly, because it offered him the occasion of putting into execution a plan he for some time had been ruminating over. In some measure from a natural diffidence, and in a great degree from a morbid dread of disappointing the high expectations Quackinboss had formed of the success he was to obtain, Layton had long felt that the presence of his friend would be almost certain to insure his failure. He could neither venture to essay the same flights before him, nor could he, if need were, support any coldness or disinclination of his audience were Quackinboss there to witness it. In fact, he wanted to disassociate his friend from any pain failure should occasion, and bear all alone the sorrows of defeat.

Besides this, he felt that, however personally painful the ordeal, he was bound to face it. He had accepted Quackinboss’s assistance under the distinct pledge that he was to try this career. In its success was he to find the means of repaying his friend; and so confidently had the Colonel always talked of that success, it would seem mere wilfulness not to attempt it.

There is not, perhaps, a more painful position in life than to be obliged to essay a career to which all one’s thoughts and instincts are opposed; to do something against which self-respect revolts, and yet meet no sympathy from others, – to be conscious that any backwardness will be construed into self-indulgence, and disinclination be set down as indolence. Now this was Alfred Layton’s case. He must either risk a signal failure, or consent to be thought of as one who would rather be a burden to his friends than make an honorable effort for his own support. He was already heavily in the Colonel’s debt; the thought of this weighed upon him almost insupportably. It never quitted him for an instant; and, worse than all, it obtruded through every effort he made to acquit himself of the obligation; and only they who have experienced it can know what pain brain labor becomes when it is followed amidst the cares and anxieties of precarious existence; when the student tries in vain to concentrate thoughts that will stray away to the miserable exigencies of his lot, or struggle hopelessly to forget himself and his condition in the interest of bygone events or unreal incidents. Let none begrudge him the few flitting moments of triumph he may win, for he has earned them by many a long hour of hardship!

The sense of his utter loneliness, often depressing and dispiriting, was now a sort of comfort to him. Looking to nothing but defeat, he was glad that there was none to share in his sorrows. Of all the world, he thought poor Clara alone would pity him. Her lot was like his own, – the same friendlessness, the self-same difficulty. Why should he not have her sympathy? She would give it freely and with her whole heart. It was but to tell her, “I am far away and unhappy. I chafe under dependence, and I know not how to assert my freedom. I would do something, and yet I know not what it is to be. I distrust myself, and yet there are times when I feel that one spoken word would give such courage to my heart that I could go on and hope.” Could she speak that word to him? was his ever present thought. He resolved to try, and accordingly wrote her a long, long letter. Full of the selfishness of one who loved, he told her the whole story of his journey, and the plan that led to it. “I have patience enough for slow toil,” said he, “but I do not seek for the success it brings. I wanted the quick prosperity that one great effort might secure, and time afterwards to enjoy the humble fortune thus acquired. With merely enough for life, Clara, I meant to ask you to share it. Who are as friendlessly alone as we are? Who are so bereft of what is called home? Say, have you a heart to give me, – when I can claim it, – and will you give it? I am low and wretched because I feel unloved. Tell me this is not so, and in the goal before me hope and energy will come back to me.” Broken and scarce coherent at times, his letter revealed one who loved her ardently, and who wanted but her pledge to feel himself happy. He pressed eagerly to know of her own life, – what it was, and whether she was contented. Had she learned anything of the mystery that surrounded her family, or could she give him the slightest clew by which he could aid her in the search? He entreated of her to write to him, even though her letter should not be the confirmation of all he wished and prayed for.

The very fact of his having written this to Clara seemed to rally his spirits. It was at least a pledge to his own heart. He had placed a goal before him, and a hope.

“I am glad to see you look cheerier,” said Quackinboss, as they sat talking over their plans. “The hardest load a man ever carried is a heavy heart, and it’s as true as my name’s Shaver, that one gets into the habit of repinin’ and seein’ all things black jest as one falls into any other evil habit. Old Grip Quackinboss said, one day, to Mr. Jefferson, ‘Yes, sir,’ says he, ‘always hearty, sir, – always cheery. There ‘s an old lady as sweeps the crossin’ in our street, and I give her a quarter-dollar to fret for me, for it’s a thing I’ve sworn never to do for myself.’”

“Well,” said Layton, gayly, “you ‘ll see I ‘ve turned over a new leaf; and whatever other thoughts you shall find in me, causeless depression shall not be of the number.”

“All right, sir; that’s my own platform. Now here’s your instructions, for I ‘m a-goin’. I start at seven-forty, by the cars for Buffalo. That spot down there is our meetin’-place, – St. Louis. It looks mighty insignificant on the map, there; but you ‘ll see it’s a thrivin’ location, and plenty of business in it. You ‘ll take your own time about being there, only be sure to arrive by this day month; and if I be the man I think myself, I ‘ll have news to tell you when you come. This crittur, Trover, knows all about that widow Morris, and the girl, too, – that Clara, – you was so fond of. If I have to tie him up to a tree, sir, I ‘ll have it out of him! There ‘s five hundred dollars in that bag. You ‘ll not need all of it, belike, if you keep clear of ‘Poker’ and Bully-brag; and I advise you to, sir, – I do,” said he, gravely. “It takes a man to know life, to guess some of the sharp ‘uns in our river steamers. There’s no other dangers to warn you of here, sir. Don’t be riled about trifles, and you ‘ll find yourself very soon at home with us.”

These were his last words of counsel as he shook Layton’s hand at parting. It was with a sad sense of loneliness Layton sat by his window after Quackinboss had gone. For many a month back he had had no other friend or companion: ever present to counsel, console, or direct him, the honest Yankee was still more ready with his purse than his precepts. Often as they had differed in their opinions, not a hasty word or disparaging sentiment had ever disturbed their intercourse; and even the Colonel’s most susceptible spot – that which touched upon national characteristics – never was even casually wounded in the converse. In fact, each had learned to see with how very little forbearance in matters of no moment, and with how slight an exercise of deference for differences of object and situation, English and American could live together like brothers.

There was but one thought which embittered the relations between them, in Layton’s estimation. It was the sense of that dependence which destroyed equality. He was satisfied to be deeply the debtor of his friend, but he could not struggle between what he felt to be a fitting gratitude, and that resolute determination to assert what he believed to be true at any cost. He suspected, too, – and the suspicion was a very painful one, – that the Colonel deemed him indolent and self-indulgent. The continued reluctance he had evinced to adventure on the scheme for which they came so far, favored this impression.

As day after day he travelled along, one thought alone occupied him. At each place he stopped came the questions, Will this suit? Is this the spot I am in search of? It was strange to mark by what slight and casual events his mind was influenced. The slightest accident that ruffled him as he arrived, an insignificant inconvenience, a passing word, the look of the place, the people, the very aspect of the weather, were each enough to assure him he had not yet discovered what he sought after. It was towards the close of his fifth day’s ramble that he reached the small town of Bunkumville. It was a newly settled place, and, like all such, not over-remarkable for comfort or convenience. The spot had been originally laid out as the centre of certain lines of railroad, and intended to have been a place of consequence; but the engineers who had planned it had somehow incurred disgrace, the project was abandoned, and instead of a commercial town, rich, populous, and flourishing, it now presented the aspect of a spot hastily deserted, and left to linger out an existence of decline and neglect. There were marks enough to denote the grand projects which were once entertained for the place, – great areas measured off for squares, spacious streets staked off; here and there massive “blocks” of building; three or four hotels on a scale of vast proportion, and an assembly-room worthy of a second-rate city. With all this, the population was poor-looking and careworn. No stir of trade or business to be met with. A stray bullock-car stole drearily along through the deep-rutted streets, or a traveller significantly armed with rifle and revolver rode by on his own raw-boned horse; but of the sights and sounds of town life and habits there were none. Of the hotels, two were closed; the third was partially occupied as a barrack, by a party of cavalry despatched to repress some Indian outrages on the frontier. Even the soldiers had contracted some of the wild, out-of-the-world look of the place, and wore their belts over buckskin jackets, that smacked more of the prairie than the parade. The public conveyance which brought Layton to the spot only stopped long enough to bait the horses and refresh the travellers; and it was to the no small surprise of the driver that he saw the “Britisher” ask for his portmanteau, with the intention of halting there. “Well, you ain’t a-goin’ to injure your constitution with gayety and late hours, stranger,” said he, as he saw him descend; “that’s a fact.”