Chapter 2 STUDYING TO ANSWER.

Major Bergan—to give him the title by which he was known throughout the country round—displayed no alacrity of welcome. He first scanned his visitor closely from head to foot, and then silently extended his hand for the letter which the young man had drawn forth from an inner pocket.

"Hold that light here!" were his first words, in a tone deep as a thunder-peal, and addressed not to Bergan Arling, but to the aforesaid torch-bearer. "And quit your staring, and mind your business, or I'll—"

The sentence died away in an inarticulate growl, but the boy was plainly at no loss to understand its purport. With a startled look, he fixed his eyes on the torch, and only ventured to withdraw them for an occasional, furtive glance at the object of his curiosity. Meanwhile, his master opened the letter, and read it deliberately from beginning to end. The light of the torch fell full upon his face as he did so, giving Bergan Arling an opportunity to study him, in his turn.

His face was a striking one; in youth it had doubtless been handsome. Now, his brow was too massive, his mouth too stern, his eyes too cold, his beard too gray and heavy, to bear any relation to mere personal beauty. All soft lights and lines had long gone out of them; what remained was hard, bold, and rugged, as a rocky headland in winter. The rude strength which was the marked characteristic of his form, repeated itself emphatically in his face. Comparing it with the mental portrait, carefully touched and retouched by his mother's hand, which Bergan had carried in his mind since childhood, he felt that the one resembled the other only as a tree in autumn, stripped bare of its foliage and its blossoms, resembles the same tree in its gracious summer bloom and verdure. Little trace of the frank, proud lineaments, the warm, yet generous temper, of that ideal picture, was to be found in this harsh, stubborn, sarcastic face; the face of a man long given over to the hardening influences of a solitary and a selfish life. In short, Major Bergan confirmed anew the old truth that no man can live long for himself alone, shutting out all gentler ties and amenities, and driving straight at his own practical ends, unmindful of either the ways, the opinions, or the feelings of others, without reaping his due reward in a loss of moral health, and a gradual decay of all his finer sensibilities and higher instincts.

The only point wherein the real man resembled the ideal one, was in a certain ineffaceable pride of birth, showing itself not only in his port, but darkening his harsh features with a heavy shade of hauteur.

Yet a smile might do much to light up and soften the Major's face; and the smile came when he had finished the letter, and did its work all the more effectually because it was a somewhat sad one.

"Forty and two years," said he, musingly, "since Eleanor went! Yet I can see her now, with her bright face and her arch ways! She was the sunshine of the old Hall; it has never been the same place since she left it. And she would hardly know it, if she were to come back now! But times change; and we are fools if we do not change with them. Well, my boy! I'm glad to see you, and that is not what I would say to many,—I'm not much in the way of having visitors. But Eleanor's son is heartily welcome to the old place."

He took his nephew's hand, shook it cordially, and continued to hold it in a vice-like grasp, while he once more attentively scanned the young man's features.

"You are a true Bergan," he said, at length, "I'm glad to see that! And you have her eyes, too. Ah, what eyes they used to be! as soft and bright as any fawn's! Well! well! it's no use to think of the old times—they can't come back. But I am right glad to see you, my boy; and I take it very kind of Eleanor to have sent you to me. Is she much changed?"

"I suppose so," said Bergan, smiling,—"that is, since you knew her. She has not changed greatly during my remembrance. She is a young-looking woman yet, for her years; her eyes are still bright, and her cheeks rosy. Our western climate and life have agreed with her well. Yet I cannot fancy her a young lady."

"Ah, but you shall see her as a young lady! There's a portrait of her in the old house, taken not long before she went away, that does everything but speak and move. Indeed, I used to imagine that it did both, when I had it in my quarters out here, as I did for a time. But it gave me the blues so, to look at it, and think how things used to be, and see how they had altered, that I finally sent it back to its old place in the portrait gallery. But how did you get here, at this hour?"

"I walked from Savalla, leaving my baggage—except this portmanteau—to come on by stage to-morrow."

"Walked! A nice little tramp of thirteen miles or more! Why in the name of sense didn't you ride?"

"I was too late for the stage, and could not readily find a hack. To be sure, I wasted but little time in looking for one; I do not mind walking, I am used to it."

"That may do very well for the West. But you'll lose caste, my boy, if you walk here. You must have a horse."

"When I can afford it," replied the young man, lightly shrugging his shoulders. "Meanwhile, doubtless I shall find my western habit useful, if vulgar. But I am not prepared to admit that it is vulgar. A young English nobleman, who spent some months in our neighborhood, was a practised walker; he thought nothing of fifteen or twenty miles, on occasion. And if it was 'caste' for him, why not for me?"

"Humph! we Southerners boast a good deal of our English ancestors, but we don't feel called upon to imitate them!"

With the softening recollections of his youth, the Major had also laid aside his unwonted gentleness of manner; and the freezing satire of his last words, though it was doubtful whether he meant it for himself or his nephew, pained the young man's ear. Instinctively he dropped the discussion.

"I forgot to mention," said he, "that I did not walk quite the whole distance. A queer old character whom I overtook, insisted upon giving me a lift to Berganton."

"To Berganton! What had you to do with Berganton, I should like to know?"

"I was not aware that the road had been changed; I supposed that I must needs pass through the village on my way to Bergan Hall. I intended to stay there over night, and come to you early in the morning,—I did not think it right to descend upon you suddenly, late at night. But finding myself unexpectedly on the road hither, and almost in sight of the Hall, I regarded it as an indication of Providence not to be misunderstood."

"And well you did!" returned the Major, with rude emphasis, "well you did! I should have taken it as a direct insult if my sister's son had slept anywhere in this region, but on the old place. I wish I could say, under the old roof," he went on, in a friendlier tone, "but that leaks like a sieve, and I quitted it long ago. Of course, it might have been mended; but, to tell the truth, the old house was much too big and gloomy and damp and disagreeable to keep bachelor's hall in comfortably, and I was glad to get out of it. Besides, I'd had all sorts of trouble with my overseers, and I decided that the only way to have things managed to my mind was to manage them myself. In order to do that, it was necessary to be on the spot. So I fixed up my overseer's cottage into a snug little box for myself, where I'm as cosey and comfortable as a rat in a rice-heap. But come in, and see for yourself how it looks. Jip, you rascal! why don't you take your young master's portmanteau?"

The torch-boy caught the portmanteau, and Bergan followed his uncle into a small cottage at one corner of the quadrangle, so situated as to command a view both of the mill and the cabins. The room into which he was ushered was plainly but comfortably furnished. A fire of pitch-pine knots blazed on the hearth, reddening the rough walls and the bare floor with its pleasant glow. A slipshod negress, with a gay turban, was busy laying the table for supper. The effect was, upon the whole, cheery, and ought to have been especially so to a tired and hungry traveller; yet Bergan looked around him with a manifest air of disappointment. His uncle noticed it, and remarked, apologetically,

"You would prefer to see the Hall, eh? Well, you shall see it in the morning, and I reckon you'll agree with me that it's anything but a cheerful-looking abode. Though, if I had known that a nephew of mine was coming to keep me company, I don't know but I should have stayed there."

The negress now signified that supper was on the table, the food having been brought in, ready cooked, from the nearest cabin; and Major Bergan pointed to a chair opposite his own.

"Sit down, Harry, and fall to. Your tramp must have given you a right sharp appetite."

"Thank you. But, uncle, my name is Bergan, not Harry."

"Not Harry!" repeated the Major, sharply,—"I should like to know the reason why! Didn't your mother write that she had named you for me?"

"Yes, certainly. But she regarded you as the head of the family, and in giving me the family name—"

"She named you for the whole breed—my degenerate half-brother and all!" interrupted the Major, bringing his clenched fist down upon the table with a force that threatened to demolish it. "I tell you what it is, sir, I shall not stand any half-way work! If you are named after me, you've got to go the whole figure. Harry Bergan Arling you are, and Harry Bergan Arling you shall be,—at least as long as you stay in these parts."

The imperious tone of this speech was by no means agreeable to Bergan's ear; it was not without an effort that he replied, pleasantly;—

"Call me what you like, uncle. I shall not refuse to answer to any name that you are pleased to give me."

Major Bergan was evidently much gratified. "That's right, my boy!—we'll shake hands upon that!" he exclaimed, heartily. "I'm glad to see that Eleanor has raised her son in the good old fashion of submission to elders. Bless my soul! I thought it was entirely obsolete. Young men round here know more at twenty than the fathers that begot them. As for obedience, they leave that to the negroes."

The meal was abundant and substantial. It consisted of a single course, of bacon, vegetables, and corn-bread, very simply, not to say rudely, served. It would seem that the master of the feast cared no more for refinements of table than of manner. Here, as elsewhere, were to be seen the pernicious effects of his solitary mode of life. He ate greedily; he forgot his duties as host, or they came but tardily to his remembrance; he fell into fits of abstraction, and started as from a dream at the sound of his nephew's voice. Yet tokens were not wanting that he had once been well versed in the art of external manners. At intervals, answering involuntarily, as it were, to the touch of Bergan's fine, natural courtesy, the gentlemanly instincts of earlier days revived, and flung a momentary grace around his words and actions. It was like the sunbeams that occasionally glimmer out over a cloudy landscape, attracting the gaze even more surely than any full blaze of splendor, yet causing a certain impatience, as if they ought either to kindle into satisfactory brightness, or be wholly extinguished. The rudeness of his ordinary manner was only thrown into bolder relief by these flashes of a half-extinct good breeding.

To meet the demands of thirst, a bottle of brandy, and another of water, stood by Major Bergan's plate; which, after filling his own glass, he pushed over to his nephew.

"There, Harry! that is what will put new life into you, after your journey."

"Thank you; but I seldom use brandy."

"A little too strong for you, eh?" returned the Major, indulgently. "Well, there's a stock of wine in the cellar of the Hall,—I reckon some of it must be fifty or sixty years old, it has been there ever since I can remember,—I'll send for a bottle or two of that." And he uplifted a stentorian call of "Jip," which brought that urchin-of-all-work to the door, in breathless haste.

"Uncle,"—began Bergan, but the Major was thundering out minute directions about cellars, and keys, and tiers, and labels, and either could not, or would not, hear.

"I am sorry that you have given yourself the trouble," said Bergan, when quiet was restored. "I do not care for wine."

Major Bergan set down his glass, and looked at his nephew sternly and gloomily. "Don't tell me that you are a mean-spirited teetotaller," he growled. "I can't say how I might take it. There never was a milksop in the family yet."

"No, I am hardly that. But I am not accustomed to use spirituous liquors of any sort. And I certainly do not need them. I am in perfect health; I hardly know what it is to feel tired."

"I wish I didn't!" muttered his uncle, a little less savagely. "I'm pretty hearty, for my years, to be sure. But an ache gets into my bones now and then, just to remind me that I am not so young as I was once. And the best thing to rout it is a good glass of brandy. Better take one?"

"Not if you will be so good as to excuse me," replied Bergan, with a smile so frank, and a gesture so courteous, that the Major was irresistibly mollified.

"A guest's wish is a command," said he, with one of his rare glimmers of courtesy. "But here comes the wine! I really cannot excuse you from that,—at least, I should be very loath to do so. I'll even join you in a glass. Here's to your mother's health and happiness!—you won't refuse to drink that, not on the place where she was raised."

If Bergan was annoyed by his uncle's persistency, he forebore to show it. But, having duly honored the toast, he pushed his glass aside, and declined every invitation to have it refilled.

"Well, well," said his uncle, at last, in a tone of resignation, "we won't quarrel about it now. But I see that your education is incomplete, and I shall take it upon myself to finish it. If I don't teach you to drink like a gentleman, in a month, I shall know that you are no true Bergan, in spite of your looks."

Bergan only smiled.

"Your temperance is the one thing I don't like about you," pursued his uncle, filling his own glass to the brim. "Ah, yes, there's one more;—your mother writes that you have studied law, and mean to practise it."

"Yes; I received my license just two months ago."

"Humph! it's well named! 'License,' indeed! Licensed to lie, cheat, steal,—or, at least, to help others to do so, which amounts to the same thing. No, no, Harry; it may be well to know law enough to keep from being imposed upon, but a Bergan can't stoop to practise it. Lawyers are, without exception, a set of miserable, lying, sneaking pettifoggers. You could drop the souls of a dozen into a child's thimble, and they'd rattle in the end of it after she had put it on her finger."

Bergan's cheek flushed a little, but he was more impressed by the comic than the provoking side of his uncle's dogged prejudice, and he only answered, good-humoredly;—

"I am sorry that you should have had occasion to think so badly of the profession. I shall feel that it is incumbent upon me to make you change your opinion."

"Never!" growled Major Bergan, with an oath. "You would find it easier to lift the Gibraltar rock on the point of a needle. Unless," he added, after a moment, "you can tell me how to make a suit lie against Godfrey Bergan. I've been trying it for ten years, and I've spent money enough to buy another plantation as large as this."

"My uncle Godfrey!" exclaimed Bergan, in much surprise. "Why, what has he done?"

"You had better not call him your 'uncle Godfrey' in my hearing," responded the Major, grimly. "In ceasing to be my half-brother, he ceased to be your uncle. Done! What hasn't he done? First, he got his head filled with cursed abolitionist notions, and freed all his slaves. Next, he offered the greater part of his land for sale at public auction;—just think of it! some of the old lands of Bergan Hall put up to be knocked down to the highest bidder! But I settled that business, by proclaiming far and wide that whoever bid for them might expect to reckon with me for his impertinence; and as I'm known to be a man of my word, no one dared to lift his voice at the sale, and I got them at my own price. Finally Godfrey capped the climax of his degeneracy by opening a hardware store in Berganton. Think of that, Hairy!—a Bergan of Bergan Hall, with a long pedigree of warriors and nobles at his back, standing behind a counter, selling hoes and tea-kettles to negroes and crackers!"

Bergan was silent. Though not without some touch of family pride, derived from his mother, he had nevertheless been taught to believe all upright labor honorable, to hold that life was ennobled from within, by its motive and aim, rather than from without, by its place and form. He could not help suspecting, therefore, that his host, deliberately leading the narrow life of an overseer of slaves, on his ancestral estate, was in reality a more degenerate son of his house than the relative whom he so bitterly contemned. Yet he foresaw that any attempt to defend Godfrey Bergan would but result in bringing down upon himself a torrent of fierce, half-drunken vituperation. Seasoned vessel though he were, the Major's repeated draughts of brandy, very little diluted, had not been without effect, in flushing his face, and inflaming his habitually irritable temper. His present mood would ill brook contradiction.

Fortunately, he neither expected nor waited for an answer. Hastily emptying his glass and filling it again, he went on.

"Now, Harry, if you can tell me any way by which I can ruin his business, turn him out of his house, and make him quit the country, I'll own that I've done the law an injustice, and give you a handsome fee besides. Can the thing be done?"

Bergan silently shook his head; he would not trust himself to speak.

"Just as I told you!" exclaimed the Major, with great virulence of expression. "The law has plenty of quibbles and quirks for the help of rogues and scoundrels, but it can't lend a hand to an honest cause, at a pinch! I'll none of it, Harry! I'll none of it! Get what you know of it out of your head as soon as you can."

The Major paused long enough to empty his glass, and then resumed, in a more amiable tone. "The best thing you can do, Harry, is to stay here with me; I'll make a rice-planter of you. It doesn't take a ninny for that, by any means; your talents will not be thrown away. And if we suit each other,—as I think we shall,—I'll give you Bergan Hall when my title to it expires. To be sure, I'm strong and hearty yet; but no one lasts forever. And as you are named for me, and I like your looks, I would rather give it to you than anybody else. In fact, I've had it in my mind, for some time, to write to Eleanor and ask her to do just what she has done,—send one of her boys to live with me, and be my heir."

"You mistake," said Bergan, quickly, "neither my mother nor myself had any such idea. She merely wished me to consult you about commencing my profession in—"

"Tut! tut! Harry," interrupted his uncle, "I meant it, if you and she did not. And I mean it more than ever now; that is, if you'll yield to my wish about the law. But if you persist in sticking to that, I give you up, once for all—mind, I give you up!"

"I should deserve to be given up," replied Bergan, smiling, "if I were lightly to forsake a vocation for which I am fitted both by taste and education, to enter upon one of which I know absolutely nothing. I may reasonably hope to succeed as a lawyer; I fear I should make but a poor planter. Moreover, it would not suit me to be dependent upon any one."

"Stuff! nonsense!" exclaimed Major Bergan, bluntly. "I defy you to make a poor planter under my tuition,—I claim to understand that business. As for dependence, never you fear but that I shall get aid and comfort enough out of you to make our accounts square. For, after all, Harry, it is a dreary kind of a life that I'm leading, without chick or child, kith or kin, to speak to, or to care for. I cannot help asking myself, sometimes, what is the good of it all, and how Is it to end. But with a fine young fellow like you here, to enter into my plans now, and carry them out after I'm gone,—why, it would be like a fresh lease of life to me! We'll rebuild the old house, you shall drop the 'Arling,' and behold the seventh Harry Bergan of Bergan Hall, on this side the water! And really, I don't see how you can do better, Harry. Here are wealth, position, influence, and a chance to oblige your old uncle,—ready to your hand. Stay, my boy, stay!"

The Major's bluff voice had sunken to a hoarse tone of sadness, in his confession of loneliness, and finally, to one of entreaty, that touched his nephew's heart. Nor was the prospect held up before him without its own peculiar and powerful attraction. He looked thoughtfully into the fire, debating with himself what and how he should reply. His uncle watched him keenly for a moment, and then said, in his kindest tone and manner;—

"Well, Harry, I won't press you for an answer, now. Stay here a month or two, and look around you; and then, we'll talk the matter over again, and see if we cannot settle upon something that shall be mutually satisfactory. For so long, surely, you can afford to be my guest."