As John Effingham spoke, he handed his kinsman a small handbill, which purported to call a meeting for that night, of the inhabitants of Templeton, to resist his arrogant claim to the disputed property.
This handbill had the usual marks of a feeble and vulgar malignancy about it, affecting to call Mr. Effingham, "_one_ Mr. Effingham," and it was anonymous.
"This is scarcely worth our attention, John," said Mr. Effingham, mildly. "Meetings of this sort cannot decide a legal t.i.tle, and no man who respects himself will be the tool of so pitiful an attempt to frighten a citizen from maintaining his rights."
"I agree with you, as respects the meeting, which has been conceived in ignorance and low malice, and will probably end, as all such efforts end, in ridicule. But----"
"Excuse me, Mr. John," interrupted Aristabulus, "there is an awful excitement! Some have even spoken of Lynching!"
"Then," said Mr. Effingham, "it does, indeed, require that we should be more firm. Do _you_, sir, know of any person who has dared to use such a menace?"
Aristabulus quailed before the stern eye of Mr. Effingham, and he regretted having communicated so much, though he had communicated nothing but the truth. He stammered out an obscure and half- intelligible explanation, and proposed to attend the meeting in person, in order that he might be in the way of understanding the subject, without falling into the danger of mistake. To this Mr.
Effingham a.s.sented, as he felt too indignant at this outrage on all his rights, whether as a citizen or a man, to wish to pursue the subject with his agent that night. Aristabulus departed, and John Effingham remained closeted with his kinsman until the family retired. During this long interview, the former communicated many things to the latter, in relation to this very affair, of which the owner of the property, until then, had been profoundly ignorant.
Chapter XV.
"There shall be, in England, seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny, the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common, and, in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to gra.s.s."--JACK CADE.
Though the affair of the Point continued to agitate the village of Templeton next day, and for many days, it was little remembered in the Wigwam. Confident of his right, Mr. Effingham, though naturally indignant at the abuse of his long liberality, through which alone the public had been permitted to frequent the place, and this too, quite often, to his own discomfort and disappointment, had dismissed the subject temporarily from his mind, and was already engaged in his ordinary pursuits. Not so, however, with Mr. Bragg. Agreeably to promise, he had attended the meeting; and now he seemed to regulate all his movements by a sort of mysterious self-importance, as if the repository of some secret of unusual consequence. No one regarded his manner, however; for Aristabulus, and his secrets, and opinions, were all of too little value, in the eyes of most of the party, to attract peculiar attention. He found a sympathetic listener in Mr. Dodge, happily; that person having been invited, through the courtesy of Mr.
Effingham, to pa.s.s the day with those in whose company, though very unwillingly on the editor"s part certainly, he had gone through so many dangerous trials. These two then, soon became intimate, and to have seen their shrugs, significant whisperings, and frequent conferences in corners, one who did not know them, might have fancied their shoulders burthened with the weight of the state.
But all this pantomime, which was intended to awaken curiosity, was lost on the company in general. The ladies, attended by Paul and the Baronet, proceeded into the forest on foot, for a morning"s walk, while the two Messrs. Effinghams continued to read the daily journals, that were received from town each morning, with a most provoking indifference. Neither Aristabulus, nor Mr. Dodge, could resist any longer; and, after exhausting their ingenuity, in the vain effort to induce one of the two gentlemen to question them in relation to the meeting of the previous night, the desire to be doing fairly overcame their affected mysteriousness, and a formal request was made to Mr. Effingham to give them an audience in the library. As the latter, who suspected the nature of the interview, requested his kinsman to make one in it, the four were soon alone, in the apartment so often named.
Even now, that his own request for the interview was granted, Aristabulus hesitated about proceeding until a mild intimation from Mr. Effingham that he was ready to hear his communication, told the agent that it was too late to change his determination.
"I attended the meeting last night, Mr. Effingham," Aristabulus commenced, "agreeably to our arrangement, and I feel the utmost regret at being compelled to lay the result before a gentleman for whom I entertain so profound a respect."
"There was then a meeting?" said Mr. Effingham, inclining his body slightly, by way of acknowledgment for the other"s compliment.
"There was, sir; and I think, Mr. Dodge, we may say an overflowing one."
"The public was fairly represented," returned the editor, "as many as fifty or sixty having been present."
"The public has a perfect right to meet, and to consult on its claims to anything it may conceive itself ent.i.tled to enjoy," observed Mr.
Effingham; "I can have no possible objection to such a course, though I think it would have consulted its own dignity more, had it insisted on being convoked by more respectable persons than those who, I understand, were foremost in this affair, and in terms better suited to its own sense of propriety."
Aristabulus glanced at Mr. Dodge, and Mr. Dodge glanced back at Mr.
Bragg, for neither of these political mushrooms could conceive of the dignity and fair-mindedness with which a gentleman could view an affair of this nature.
"They pa.s.sed a set of resolutions, Mr. Effingham;" Aristabulus resumed, with the gravity with which he ever spoke of things of this nature. "A set of resolutions, sir!"
"That was to be expected," returned his employer, smiling; "the Americans are a set-of-resolutions-pa.s.sing people. Three cannot get together, without naming a chairman and secretary, and a resolution is as much a consequence of such an "organization,"--I believe that is the approved word,--as an egg is the accompaniment of the cackling of a hen."
"But, sir, you do not yet know the nature of those resolutions!"
"Very true, Mr. Bragg; that is a piece of knowledge I am to have the pleasure of obtaining from you."
Again Aristabulus glanced at Steadfast, and Steadfast threw back the look of surprise, for, to both it was matter of real astonishment that any man should be so indifferent to the resolutions of a meeting that had been regularly organized, with a chairman and secretary at its head, and which so unequivocally professed to be the public.
"I am reluctant to discharge this duty, Mr. Effingham, but as you insist on its performance it must be done. In the first place, they resolved that your father meant to give them the Point."
"A decision that must clearly settle the matter, and which will destroy all my father"s own resolutions on the same subject. Did they stop at the Point, Mr. Bragg or did they resolve that my father also gave them his wife and children?"
"No, sir, nothing was said concerning the latter."
"I cannot properly express my grat.i.tude for the forbearance, as they had just as good a right to pa.s.s this resolution, as to pa.s.s the other."
"The public"s is an awful power, Mr. Effingham!"
"Indeed it is, sir, but fortunately, that of the republic is still more awful, and I shall look to the latter for support, in this "crisis"--that is the word, too, is it not, Mr. John Effingham?"
"If you mean a change of administration, the upsetting of a stage, or the death of a cart-horse; they are all equally crisises, in the American vocabulary."
"Well, Mr. Bragg, having resolved that it knew my late father"s intentions better than he knew them himself, as is apparent from the mistake he made in his will, what next did the public dispose of, in the plenitude of its power?"
"It resolved, sir, that it was your duty to carry out the intentions of your father."
"In that, then, we are perfectly of a mind; as the public will most probably discover, before we get through with this matter. This is one of the most pious resolutions I ever knew the public to pa.s.s. Did it proceed any farther?"
Mr. Bragg, notwithstanding the long-encouraged truckling to the sets of men, whom he was accustomed to dignify with the name of the public, had a profound deference or the principles, character, and station of Mr. Effingham, that no sophistry, or self-encouragement in the practices of social confusion, could overcome; and he paused before he communicated the next resolution to his employers. But perceiving that both the latter and his cousin were quietly waiting to hear it, he was fain to overcome his scruples.
"They have openly libelled you, by pa.s.sing resolutions declaring you to be odious."
"That, indeed, is a strong measure, and, in the interest of good manners and of good morals, it may call for a rebuke. No one can care less than myself, Mr. Bragg, for the opinions of those who have sufficiently demonstrated that their opinions are of no value, by the heedless manner in which they have permitted themselves to fall into this error; but it is proceeding too far, when a few members of the community presume to take these liberties with a private individual, and that, moreover, in a case affecting a pretended claim of their own; and I desire you to tell those concerned, that if they dare to publish their resolution declaring me to be odious, I will teach them what they now do not appear to know, that we live in a country of laws. I shall not prosecute them, but I shall indict them for the offence, and I hope this is plainly expressed."
Aristabulus stood aghast! To indict the public was a step he had never heard of before, and he began to perceive that the question actually had two sides. Still, his awe of public meetings, and his habitual regard for popularity, induced him not to give up the matter, without another struggle.
"They have already ordered their proceedings to be published, Mr.
Effingham!" he said, as if such an order were not to be countermanded.
"I fancy, sir, that when it comes to the issue, and the penalties of a prosecution present themselves, their readers will begin to recollect their individuality, and to think less of their public character. They who hunt in droves, like wolves, are seldom very valiant when singled out from their pack. The end will show."
"I heartily wish this unpleasant affair might be amicably settled,"
added Aristabulus.
"One might, indeed, fancy so," observed John Effingham, "since no one likes to be persecuted."
"But, Mr. John, the public thinks _itself_ persecuted, in this affair."
"The term, as applied to a body that not only makes, but which executes, the law, is so palpably absurd, that I am surprised any man can presume to use it. But, Mr. Bragg, you have seen doc.u.ments that cannot err, and know that the public has not the smallest right to this bit of land."
"All very true, sir; but you will please to remember, that the people do not know what I now know."
"And you will please to remember, sir, that when people choose to act affirmatively, in so high-handed a manner as this, they are _bound_ to know what they are about. Ignorance in such a matter, is like the drunkard"s plea of intoxication; it merely makes the offence worse."
"Do you not think, Mr. John, that Mr. Effingham might have acquainted these citizens with the real state of the case? Are the people so very wrong that they have fallen into a mistake?"