The Complete Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne - All 8 Books in One Edition. Nathaniel Hawthorne
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The traveller, coming on at a moderate pace, alighted, and gave his horse to the ragged hostler. He then advanced towards the door near which Hugh was seated, whose agitation was manifested by no perceptible sign, except by the shorter and more frequent puffs with which he plied his pipe. Their eyes did not meet till just as the stranger was about to enter, when he started apparently with a surprise and alarm similar to those of Hugh Crombie. He recovered himself, however, sufficiently to return the nod of recognition with which he was favored, and immediately entered the house, the landlord following.
“This way, if you please, sir,” said Hugh. “You will find this apartment cool and retired.”
He ushered his guest into a small room the windows of which were darkened by the creeping plants that clustered round them. Entering, and closing the door, the two gazed at each other a little space without speaking. The traveller first broke silence.
“Then this is your living self, Hugh Crombie?” he said. The landlord extended his hand as a practical reply to the question. The stranger took it, though with no especial appearance of cordiality.
“Ay, this seems to be flesh and blood,” he said, in the tone of one who would willingly have found it otherwise. “And how happens this, friend Hugh? I little thought to meet you again in this life. When I last heard from you, your prayers were said, and you were bound for a better world.”
“There would have been small danger of your meeting me there,” observed the landlord, dryly.
“It is an unquestionable truth, Hugh,” replied the traveller. “For which reason I regret that your voyage was delayed.”
“Nay, that is a hard word to bestow on your old comrade,” said Hugh Crombie. “The world is wide enough for both of us; and why should you wish me out of it?”
“Wide as it is,” rejoined the stranger, “we have stumbled against each other,— to the pleasure of neither of us, if I may judge from your countenance. Methinks I am not a welcome guest at Hugh Crombie’s inn.”
“Your welcome must depend on the cause of your coming, and the length of your stay,” replied the landlord.
“And what if I come to settle down among these quiet hills where I was born?” inquired the other. “What if I, too, am weary of the life we have led,— or afraid, perhaps, that it will come to too speedy an end? Shall I have your good word, Hugh, to set me up in an honest way of life? Or will you make me a partner in your trade, since you know my qualifications? A pretty pair of publicans should we be; and the quart pot would have little rest between us.”
“It may be as well to replenish it now,” observed Hugh, stepping to the door of the room, and giving orders accordingly. “A meeting between old friends should never be dry. But for the partnership, it is a matter in which you must excuse me. Heaven knows I find it hard enough to be honest, with no tempter but the Devil and my own thoughts; and, if I have you also to contend with, there is little hope of me.”
“Nay, that is true. Your good resolutions were always like cobwebs, and your evil habits like five-inch cables,” replied the traveller. “I am to understand, then, that you refuse my offer?”
“Not only that; but, if you have chosen this valley as your place of rest, Dame Crombie and I must look through the world for another. But hush! here comes the wine.”
The hostler, in the performance of another part of his duty, now appeared, bearing a measure of the liquor that Hugh had ordered. The wine of that period, owing to the comparative lowness of the duties, was of more moderate price than in the mother-country, and of purer and better quality than at the present day.
“The stuff is well chosen, Hugh,” observed the guest, after a draught large enough to authorize an opinion. “You have most of the requisites for your present station; and I should be sorry to draw you from it. I trust there will be no need.”
“Yet you have a purpose in your journey hither,” observed his comrade.
“Yes; and you would fain be informed of it,” replied the traveller. He arose, and walked once or twice across the room; then, seeming to have taken his resolution, he paused, and fixed his eye steadfastly on Hugh Crombie. “I could wish, my old acquaintance,” he said, “that your lot had been cast anywhere rather than here. Yet, if you choose it, you may do me a good office, and one that shall meet with a good reward. Can I trust you?”
“My secrecy, you can,” answered the host, “but nothing further. I know the nature of your plans, and whither they would lead me, too well to engage in them. To say the truth, since it concerns not me, I have little desire to hear your secret.”
“And I as little to tell it, I do assure you,” rejoined the guest. “I have always loved to manage my affairs myself, and to keep them to myself. It is a good rule; but it must sometimes be broken. And now, Hugh, how is it that you have become possessed of this comfortable dwelling and of these pleasant fields?”
“By my marriage with the Widow Sarah Hutchins,” replied Hugh Crombie, staring at a question which seemed to have little reference to the present topic of conversation.
“It is a most excellent method of becoming a man of substance,” continued the traveller; “attended with little trouble, and honest withal.”
“Why, as to the trouble,” said the landlord, “it follows such a bargain, instead of going before it. And for honesty,— I do not recollect that I have gained a penny more honestly these twenty years.”
“I can swear to that,” observed his comrade. “Well, mine host, I entirely approve of your doings, and, moreover, have resolved to prosper after the same fashion myself.”
“If that be the commodity you seek,” replied Hugh Crombie, “you will find none here to your mind. We have widows in plenty, it is true; but most of them have children, and few have houses and lands. But now to be serious, — and there has been something serious in your eye all this while,— what is your purpose in coming hither? You are not safe here. Your name has had a wider spread than mine, and, if discovered, it will go hard with you.”
“But who would know me now?” asked the guest.
“Few, few indeed!” replied the landlord, gazing at the dark features of his companion, where hardship, peril, and dissipation had each left their traces. “No, you are not like the slender boy of fifteen, who stood on the hill by moonlight to take a last look at his father’s cottage. There were tears in your eyes then; and, as often as I remember them, I repent that I did not turn you back, instead of leading you on.”
“Tears, were there? Well, there have been few enough since,” said his comrade, pressing his eyelids firmly together, as if even then tempted to give way to the weakness that he scorned. “And, for turning me back, Hugh, it was beyond your power. I had taken my resolution, and you did but show me the way to execute it.”
“You have not inquired after those you left behind,” observed Hugh Crombie.
“No — no; nor will I have aught of them,” exclaimed the traveller, starting from his seat, and pacing rapidly across the room. “My father, I know, is dead, and I have forgiven him. My mother — what could I hear of her but misery? I will hear nothing.”
“You must have passed the cottage as you rode hitherward,” said Hugh. “How could you forbear to enter?”
“I did not see it,” he replied. “I closed my eyes, and turned away my head.”
“Oh, if I had had a mother, a loving mother! if there had been one being in the world that loved me, or cared for me, I should not have become an utter castaway,” exclaimed Hugh Crombie.
The landlord’s pathos, like all pathos that flows from the winecup, was sufficiently ridiculous; and his companion, who had already overcome his own brief feelings of sorrow and remorse, now laughed aloud.
“Come, come, mine host of the Hand and Bottle,” he cried in his usual hard, sarcastic tone; “be a man as much