The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

O >> Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) >> The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.


On this particular evening, he had a strange, unusual sense of some
impending peril. His recent interview with the Doctor, certain remarks
which had been dropped in his hearing, but above all an unaccountable
impression upon his spirits, all combined to fill his mind with a
foreboding conviction that he was very near some overshadowing danger.
It was as the chill of the ice-mountain toward which the ship is steering
under full sail. He felt a strong impulse to see Helen Darley and talk
with her. She was in the common parlor, and, fortunately, alone.

"Helen," he said,--for they were almost like brother and sister now,--"I
have been thinking what you would do, if I should have to leave the
school at short notice, or be taken away suddenly by any accident."

"Do?" she said, her cheek growing paler than its natural delicate
hue,--"why, I do not know how I could possibly consent to live here, if
you left us. Since you came, my life has been almost easy; before, it
was getting intolerable. You must not talk about going, my dear friend;
you have spoiled me for my place. Who is there here that I can have any
true society with, but you? You would not leave us for another school,
would you?"

"No, no, my dear Helen," Mr. Bernard said, "if it depends on myself, I
shall stay out my full time, and enjoy your company and friendship. But
everything is uncertain in this world. I have been thinking that I might
be wanted elsewhere, and called when I did not think of it;--it was a
fancy, perhaps,--but I can't keep it out of my mind this evening. If any
of my fancies should come true, Helen, there are two or three messages I
want to leave with you. I have marked a book or two with a cross in
pencil on the fly-leaf;--these are for you. There is a little hymn-book I
should like to have you give to Elsie from me;--it may be a kind of
comfort to the poor girl."

Helen's eyes glistened as she interrupted him,--

"What do you mean? You must not talk so, Mr. Langdon. Why, you never
looked better in your life. Tell me now, you are not in earnest, are
you, but only trying a little sentiment on me?"

Mr. Bernard smiled, but rather sadly.

"About half in earnest," he said. "I have had some fancies in my
head,--superstitions, I suppose,--at any rate, it does no harm to tell
you what I should like to have done, if anything should happen,--very
likely nothing ever will. Send the rest of the books home, if you
please, and write a letter to my mother. And, Helen, you will find one
small volume in my desk enveloped and directed, you will see to
whom;--give this with your own hands; it is a keepsake."

The tears gathered in her eyes; she could not speak at first. Presently,
"Why, Bernard, my dear friend, my brother, it cannot be that you are in
danger? Tell me what it is, and, if I can share it with you, or counsel
you in any way, it will only be paying back the great debt I owe you.
No, no,--it can't be true,--you are tired and worried, and your spirits
have got depressed. I know what that is;--I was sure, one winter, that
I should die before spring; but I lived to see the dandelions and
buttercups go to seed. Come, tell me it was nothing but your
imagination."

She felt a tear upon her cheek, but would not turn her face away from
him; it was the tear of a sister.

"I am really in earnest, Helen," he said. "I don't know that there is
the least reason in the world for these fancies. If they all go off and
nothing comes of them, you may laugh at me, if you like. But if there
should be any occasion, remember my requests. You don't believe in
presentiments, do you?"

"Oh, don't ask-me, I beg you," Helen answered. "I have had a good many
frights for every one real misfortune I have suffered. Sometimes I have
thought I was warned beforehand of coming trouble, just as many people
are of changes in the weather, by some unaccountable feeling,--but not
often, and I don't like to talk about such things. I wouldn't think
about these fancies of yours. I don't believe you have exercised
enough;--don't you think it's confinement in the school has made you
nervous?"

"Perhaps it has; but it happens that I have thought more of exercise
lately, and have taken regular evening walks, besides playing my old
gymnastic tricks every day."

They talked on many subjects, but through all he said Helen perceived a
pervading tone of sadness, and an expression as of a dreamy foreboding of
unknown evil. They parted at the usual hour, and went to their several
rooms. The sadness of Mr. Bernard had sunk into the heart of Helen, and
she mingled many tears with her prayers that evening, earnestly
entreating that he might be comforted in his days of trial and protected
in his hour of danger.

Mr. Bernard stayed in his room a short time before setting out for his
evening walk. His eye fell upon the Bible his mother had given him when
he left home, and he opened it in the New Testament at a venture. It
happened that the first words he read were these,--"Lest, coming
suddenly, he find you sleeping." In the state of mind in which he was at
the moment, the text startled him. It was like a supernatural warning.
He was not going to expose himself to any particular danger this evening;
a walk in a quiet village was as free from risk as Helen Darley or his
own mother could ask; yet he had an unaccountable feeling of
apprehension, without any definite object. At this moment he remembered
the old Doctor's counsel, which he had sometimes neglected, and, blushing
at the feeling which led him to do it, he took the pistol his suspicious
old friend had forced upon him, which he had put away loaded, and,
thrusting it into his pocket, set out upon his walk.

The moon was shining at intervals, for the night was partially clouded.
There seemed to be nobody stirring, though his attention was unusually
awake, and he could hear the whirr of the bats overhead, and the
pulsating croak of the frogs in the distant pools and marshes. Presently
he detected the sound of hoofs at some distance, and, looking forward,
saw a horseman coming in his direction. The moon was under a cloud at
the moment, and he could only observe that the horse and his rider looked
like a single dark object, and that they were moving along at an easy
pace. Mr. Bernard was really ashamed of himself, when he found his hand
on the butt of his pistol. When the horseman was within a hundred and
fifty yards of him, the moon shone out suddenly and revealed each of them
to the other. The rider paused for a moment, as if carefully surveying
the pedestrian, then suddenly put his horse to the full gallop, and
dashed towards him, rising at the same instant in his stirrups and
swinging something round his head, what, Mr. Bernard could not make out.
It was a strange manoeuvre,--so strange and threatening in aspect that
the young man forgot his nervousness in an instant, cocked his pistol,
and waited to see what mischief all this meant. He did not wait long. As
the rider came rushing towards him, he made a rapid motion and something
leaped five-and-twenty feet through the air, in Mr. Bernard's direction.
In an instant he felt a ring, as of a rope or thong, settle upon his
shoulders. There was no time to think, he would be lost in another
second. He raised his pistol and fired,--not at the rider, but at the
horse. His aim was true; the mustang gave one bound and fell lifeless,
shot through the head. The lasso was fastened to his saddle, and his
last bound threw Mr. Bernard violently to the earth, where he lay
motionless, as if stunned.

In the mean time, Dick Venner, who had been dashed down with his horse,
was trying to extricate himself,--one of his legs being held fast under
the animal, the long spur on his boot having caught in the saddle-cloth.
He found, however, that he could do nothing with his right arm, his
shoulder having been in some way injured in his fall. But his Southern
blood was up, and, as he saw Mr. Bernard move as if he were coming to his
senses, he struggled violently to free himself.

"I 'll have the dog, yet," he said,--"only let me get at him with the
knife!"

He had just succeeded in extricating his imprisoned leg, and was ready to
spring to his feet, when he was caught firmly by the throat, and looking
up, saw a clumsy barbed weapon, commonly known as a hay fork, within an
inch of his breast.

"Hold on there! What 'n thunder 'r' y' abaout, y' darned Portagee?" said
a voice, with a decided nasal tone in it, but sharp and resolute.

Dick looked from the weapon to the person who held it, and saw a sturdy,
plain man standing over him, with his teeth clinched, and his aspect that
of one all ready for mischief.

"Lay still, naow!" said Abel Stebbins, the Doctor's man; "'f y' don't,
I'll stick ye, 'z sure 'z y' 'r' alive! I been arfter ye f'r a week, 'n'
I got y' naow! I knowed I'd ketch ye at some darned trick or 'nother
'fore I'd done 'ith ye!"

Dick lay perfectly still, feeling that he was crippled and helpless,
thinking all the time with the Yankee half of his mind what to do about
it. He saw Mr. Bernard lift his head and look around him. He would get
his senses again in a few minutes, very probably, and then he, Mr.
Richard Venner, would be done for.

"Let me up! let me up!" he cried, in a low, hurried voice,--"I 'll give
you a hundred dollars in gold to let me go. The man a'n't hurt,--don't
you see him stirring? He'll come to himself in two minutes. Let me up!
I'll give you a hundred and fifty dollars in gold, now, here on the
spot,--and the watch out of my pocket; take it yourself, with your own
hands!"

"I'll see y' darned fust! Ketch me lett'n' go!" was Abel's emphatic
answer. "Yeou lay still, 'n' wait t'll that man comes tew."

He kept the hay-fork ready for action at the slightest sign of
resistance.

Mr. Bernard, in the mean time, had been getting, first his senses, and
then some few of his scattered wits, a little together.

"What is it?"--he said. "Who'shurt? What's happened?"

"Come along here 'z quick 'z y' ken," Abel answered, "'n' haalp me fix
this fellah. Y' been hurt, y'rself, 'n' the' 's murder come pooty nigh
happenin'."

Mr. Bernard heard the answer, but presently stared about and asked again,
"Who's hurt? What's happened?"

"Y' 'r' hurt, y'rself, I tell ye," said Abel; "'n' the' 's been a murder,
pooty nigh."

Mr. Bernard felt something about his neck, and, putting his hands up,
found the loop of the lasso, which he loosened, but did not think to slip
over his head, in the confusion of his perceptions and thoughts. It was a
wonder that it had not choked him, but he had fallen forward so as to
slacken it.

By this time he was getting some notion of what he was about, and
presently began looking round for his pistol, which had fallen. He found
it lying near him, cocked it mechanically, and walked, somewhat
unsteadily, towards the two men, who were keeping their position as still
as if they were performing in a tableau.

"Quick, naow!" said Abel, who had heard the click of cocking the pistol,
and saw that he held it in his hand, as he came towards him. "Gi' me that
pistil, and yeou fetch that 'ere rope layin' there. I 'll have this here
fella,h fixed 'n less 'n two minutes."

Mr. Bernard did as Abel said,--stupidly and mechanically, for he was but
half right as yet. Abel pointed the pistol at Dick's head.

"Naow hold up y'r hands, yeou fellah," he said, "'n' keep 'em up, while
this man puts the rope mound y'r wrists."

Dick felt himself helpless, and, rather than have his disabled arm
roughly dealt with, held up his hands. Mr. Bernard did as Abel said; he
was in a purely passive state, and obeyed orders like a child. Abel then
secured the rope in a most thorough and satisfactory complication of
twists and knots.

"Naow get up, will ye?" he said; and the unfortunate Dick rose to his
feet.

"Who's hurt? What's happened?" asked poor Mr. Bernard again, his memory
having been completely jarred out of him for the time.

"Come, look here naow, yeou, don' Stan' askin' questions over 'n'
over;--'t beats all! ha'n't I tol' y' a dozen times?"

As Abel spoke, he turned and looked at Mr. Bernard.

"Hullo! What 'n thunder's that 'ere raoun' y'r neck? Ketched ye 'ith a
slippernoose, hey? Wal, if that a'n't the craowner! Hol' on a minute,
Cap'n, 'n' I'll show ye what that 'ere halter's good for."

Abel slipped the noose over Mr. Bernard's head, and put it round the neck
of the miserable Dick Veneer, who made no sign of resistance,--whether
on account of the pain he was in, or from mere helplessness, or because
he was waiting for some unguarded moment to escape,--since resistance
seemed of no use.

"I 'm go'n' to kerry y' home," said Abel; "'T' th' ol Doctor, he's got a
gre't cur'osity t' see ye. Jes' step along naow,--off that way, will
ye?--'n' I Ill hol' on t' th' bridle, f' fear y' sh'd run away."

He took hold of the leather thong, but found that it was fastened at the
other end to the saddle. This was too much for Abel.

"Wal, naow, yeou be a pooty chap to hev raound! A fellah's neck in a
slippernoose at one eend of a halter, 'n' a hors on th' full spring at t'
other eend!"

He looked at him from' head to foot as a naturalist inspects a new
specimen. His clothes had suffered in his fall, especially on the leg
which had been caught under the horse.

"Hullo! look o' there, naow! What's that 'ere stickin' aout o' y'r
boot?"

It was nothing but the handle of an ugly knife, which Abel instantly
relieved him of.

The party now took up the line of march for old Doctor Kittredge's house,
Abel carrying the pistol and knife, and Mr. Bernard walking in silence,
still half-stunned, holding the hay-fork, which Abel had thrust into his
hand. It was all a dream to him as yet. He remembered the horseman
riding at him, and his firing the pistol; but whether he was alive, and
these walls around him belonged to the village of Rockland, or whether he
had passed the dark river, and was in a suburb of the New Jerusalem, he
could not as yet have told.

They were in the street where the Doctor's house was situated.

"I guess I'll fire off one o' these here berrils," said Abel.

He fired.

Presently there was a noise of opening windows, and the nocturnal
head-dresses of Rockland flowered out of them like so many developments
of the Nightblooming Cereus. White cotton caps and red bandanna
handkerchiefs were the prevailing forms of efflorescence. The main point
was that the village was waked up. The old Doctor always waked easily,
from long habit, and was the first among those who looked out to see what
had happened.

"Why, Abel!" he called out, "what have you got there? and what 's all
this noise about?"

"We've ketched the Portagee!" Abel answered, as laconically as the hero
of Lake Erie, in his famous dispatch. "Go in there, you fellah!"

The prisoner was marched into the house, and the Doctor, who had
bewitched his clothes upon him in a way that would have been miraculous
in anybody but a physician, was down in presentable form as soon as if it
had been a child in a fit that he was sent for.

"Richard Veneer!" the Doctor exclaimed. "What is the meaning of all
this? Mr. Langdon, has anything happened to you?"

Mr. Bernard put his hand to his head.

"My mind is confused," he said. "I've had a fall.--Oh, yes!--wait a
minute and it will all come back to me."

"Sit down, sit down," the Doctor said. "Abel will tell me about it.
Slight concussion of the brain. Can't remember very well for an hour or
two,--will come right by to-morrow."

"Been stunded," Abel said. "He can't tell nothin'."

Abel then proceeded to give a Napoleonic bulletin of the recent combat of
cavalry and infantry and its results,--none slain, one captured.

The Doctor looked at the prisoner through his spectacles.

"What 's the matter with your shoulder, Venner?"

Dick answered sullenly, that he didn't know, fell on it when his horse
came down. The Doctor examined it as carefully as he could through his
clothes.

"Out of joint. Untie his hands, Abel"

By this time a small alarm had spread among the neighbors, and there was
a circle around Dick, who glared about on the assembled honest people
like a hawk with a broken wing.

When the Doctor said, "Untie his hands," the circle widened perceptibly.

"Isn't it a leetle rash to give him the use of his hands? I see there's
females and children standin' near."

This was the remark of our old friend, Deacon Soper, who retired from the
front row, as he spoke, behind a respectable-looking, but somewhat
hastily dressed person of the defenceless sex, the female help of a
neighboring household, accompanied by a boy, whose unsmoothed shock of
hair looked like a last year's crow's-nest.

But Abel untied his hands, in spite of the Deacon's considerate
remonstrance.

"Now," said the Doctor, "the first thing is to put the joint back."

"Stop," said Deacon Soper,--"stop a minute. Don't you think it will be
safer--for the women-folks--jest to wait till mornin', afore you put that
j'int into the socket?"

Colonel Sprowle, who had been called by a special messenger, spoke up at
this moment.

"Let the women-folks and the deacons go home, if they're scared, and put
the fellah's j'int in as quick as you like. I 'll resk him, j'int in or
out."

"I want one of you to go straight down to Dudley Venner's with a
message," the Doctor said. "I will have the young man's shoulder in
quick enough."

"Don't send that message!" said Dick, in a hoarse voice;--"do what you
like with my arm, but don't send that message! Let me go,--I can walk,
and I'll be off from this place. There's nobody hurt but myself. Damn
the shoulder!--let me go! You shall never hear of me again!"

Mr. Bernard came forward.

"My friends," he said, "I am not injured,--seriously, at least. Nobody
need complain against this man, if I don't. The Doctor will treat him
like a human being, at any rate; and then, if he will go, let him. There
are too many witnesses against him here for him to want to stay."

The Doctor, in the mean time, without saying a word to all this, had got
a towel round the shoulder and chest and another round the arm, and had
the bone replaced in a very few minutes.

"Abel, put Cassia into the new chaise," he said, quietly. "My friends
and neighbors, leave this young man to me."

"Colonel Sprowle, you're a justice of the peace," said Deacon Soper, "and
you know what the law says in cases like this. It a'n't so clear that it
won't have to come afore the Grand Jury, whether we will or no."

"I guess we'll set that j'int to-morrow mornin'," said Colonel
Sprowle,--which made a laugh at the Deacon's expense, and virtually
settled the question.

"Now trust this young man in my care," said the old Doctor, "and go home
and finish your naps. I knew him when he was a boy and I'll answer for
it, he won't trouble you any more. The Dudley blood makes folks proud, I
can tell you, whatever else they are."

The good people so respected and believed in the Doctor that they left
the prisoner with him.

Presently, Cassia, the fast Morgan mare, came up to the front-door, with
the wheels of the new, light chaise flashing behind her in the moonlight.
The Doctor drove Dick forty miles at a stretch that night, out of the
limits of the State.

"Do you want money?" he said, before he left him.

Dick told him the secret of his golden belt.

"Where shall I send your trunk after you from your uncle's?"

Dick gave him a direction to a seaport town to which he himself was
going, to take passage for a port in South America.

"Good-bye, Richard," said the Doctor. "Try to learn something from
to-night's lesson."

The Southern impulses in Dick's wild blood overcame him, and he kissed
the old Doctor on both cheeks, crying as only the children of the sun can
cry, after the first hours in the dewy morning of life. So Dick Venner
disappears from this story. An hour after dawn, Cassia pointed her fine
ears homeward, and struck into her square, honest trot, as if she had not
been doing anything more than her duty during her four hours' stretch of
the last night.

Abel was not in the habit of questioning the Doctor's decisions.

"It's all right," he said to Mr. Bernard. "The fellah 's Squire Venner's
relation, anyhaow. Don't you want to wait here, jest a little while,
till I come back? The's a consid'able nice saddle 'n' bridle on a dead
boss that's layin' daown there in the road 'n' I guess the' a'n't no use
in lettin' on 'em spite,--so I'll jest step aout 'n' fetch 'em along. I
kind o' calc'late 't won't pay to take the cretur's shoes 'n' hide off
to-night,--'n' the' won't be much iron on that hose's huffs an haour
after daylight, I'll bate ye a quarter."

"I'll walk along with you," said Mr. Bernard; "I feel as if I could get
along well enough now."

So they set off together. There was a little crowd round the dead
mustang already, principally consisting of neighbors who had adjourned
from the Doctor's house to see the scene of the late adventure. In
addition to these, however, the assembly was honored by the presence of
Mr. Principal Silas Peckham, who had been called from his slumbers by a
message that Master Langdon was shot through the head by a
highway-robber, but had learned a true version of the story by this time.
His voice was at that moment heard above the rest,--sharp, but thin, like
bad cider-vinegar.

"I take charge of that property, I say. Master Langdon 's actin' under
my orders, and I claim that hoss and all that's on him. Hiram! jest slip
off that saddle and bridle, and carry 'em up to the Institoot, and bring
down a pair of pinchers and a file,--and--stop--fetch a pair of shears,
too; there's hosshair enough in that mane and tail to stuff a bolster
with."

"You let that hoss alone!" spoke up Colonel Sprowle. "When a fellah goes
out huntin' and shoots a squirrel, do you think he's go'n' to let another
fellah pick him up and kerry him off? Not if he's got a double-berril
gun, and t'other berril ha'n't been fired off yet! I should like to see
the mahn that'll take off that seddle 'n' bridle, excep' the one th't hez
a fair right to the whole concern!"

Hiram was from one of the lean streaks in New Hampshire, and, not being
overfed in Mr. Silas Peckham's kitchen, was somewhat wanting in stamina,
as well as in stomach, for so doubtful an enterprise, as undertaking to
carry out his employer's orders in the face of the Colonel's defiance.

Just then Mr. Bernard and Abel came up together. "Here they be," said
the Colonel. "Stan' beck, gentlemen!"

Mr. Bernard, who was pale and still a little confused, but gradually
becoming more like himself, stood and looked in silence for a moment.

All his thoughts seemed to be clearing themselves in this interval. He
took in the whole series of incidents: his own frightful risk; the
strange, instinctive, nay, Providential impulse, which had led him so
suddenly to do the one only thing which could possibly have saved him;
the sudden appearance of the Doctor's man, but for which he might yet
have been lost; and the discomfiture and capture of his dangerous enemy.

It was all past now, and a feeling of pity rose in Mr. Bernard's heart.

"He loved that horse, no doubt," he said,--"and no wonder. A beautiful,
wild--looking creature! Take off those things that are on him, Abel, and
have them carried to Mr. Dudley Veneer's. If he does not want them, you
may keep them yourself, for all that I have to say. One thing more. I
hope nobody will lift his hand against this noble creature to mutilate
him in any way. After you have taken off the saddle and bridle, Abel,
bury him just as he is. Under that old beech-tree will be a good place.
You'll see to it,--won't you, Abel?"

Abel nodded assent, and Mr. Bernard returned to the Institute, threw
himself in his clothes on the bed, and slept like one who is heavy with
wine.

Following Mr. Bernard's wishes, Abel at once took off the high-peaked
saddle and the richly ornamented bridle from the mustang. Then, with the
aid of two or three others, he removed him to the place indicated.
Spades and shovels were soon procured, and before the moon had set, the
wild horse of the Pampas was at rest under the turf at the wayside, in
the far village among the hills of New England.




CHAPTER XXVI.

THE NEWS REACHES THE DUDLEY MANSION.

Early the next morning Abel Stebbins made his appearance at Dudley
Veneer's, and requested to see the maan o' the haouse abaout somethin' o'
consequence. Mr. Veneer sent word that the messenger should wait below,
and presently appeared in the study, where Abel was making himself at
home, as is the wont of the republican citizen, when he hides the purple
of empire beneath the apron of domestic service.

"Good mornin', Squire!" said Abel, as Mr. Venner entered. "My name's
Stebbins, 'n' I'm stoppin' f'r a spell 'ith of Doctor Kittredge."

"Well, Stebbins," said Mr. Dudley Veneer, "have you brought any special
message from the Doctor?"