Home as Found - James Fenimore Cooper (ebook reader wifi txt) 📗

of weight.

 

"Of all the names you have mentioned," returned Mr. Effingham, "I

never heard but three, and these are the names of mere boys. The

first dozen are certainly the names of persons who can know no more

of this village than they have gleaned in the last few years; and

several of them, I understand, have dwelt among us but a few weeks;

nay, days."

 

"Have I not told you, Ned," interrupted John Effingham, "that, an

American 'always' means eighteen months, and that 'time immemorial'

is only since the last general crisis in the money market!"

 

"The persons I have mentioned compose a part of the population, sir,"

added Mr. Bragg, "and, one and all, they are ready to swear that your

father, by some means or other, they are not very particular as to

minutiae, gave them the right to use this property."

 

"They are mistaken, and I should be sorry that any one among them

should swear to such a falsehood. But here are my titles--let them

show better, or, if they can, any, indeed."

 

"Perhaps your father abandoned the place to the public; this might

make a good claim."

 

"That he did not, I am a living proof to the contrary; he left it to

his heirs at his death, and I myself exercised full right of

ownership over it, until I went abroad. I did not travel with it in

my pocket, sir, it is true; but I left it to the protection of the

laws, which, I trust, are as available to the rich as to the poor,

although this is a free country."

 

"Well, sir, I suppose a jury must determine the point, as you seem

firm; though I warn you, Mr. Effingham, as one who knows his country,

that a verdict, in the face of a popular feeling, is rather a

hopeless matter. If they prove that your late father intended to

abandon or give this property to the public, your case will be lost."

 

Mr. Effingham looked among the papers a moment, and selecting one, he

handed it to Mr. Bragg, first pointing out to his notice a particular

paragraph.

 

"This, sir, is my late father's will," Mr. Effingham said mildly;

"and, in that particular clause, you will find that he makes a

special devise of this very 'Point,' leaving it to his heirs, in such

terms as to put any intention to give it to the public quite out of

the question. This, at least, is the latest evidence I, his only son,

executor, and heir possess of his final wishes; if that wondering and

time-immemorial public of which you speak, has a better, I wait with

patience that it may be produced."

 

The composed manner of Mr. Effingham had deceived Aristabulus, who

did not anticipate any proof so completely annihilating to the

pretensions of the public, as that he now held in his hand. It was a

simple, brief devise, disposing of the piece of property in question,

and left it without dispute, that Mr. Effingham had succeeded to all

the rights of his father, with no reservation or condition of any

sort.

 

"This is very extraordinary!" exclaimed Mr. Bragg, when he had read

the clause seven times, each perusal contributing to leave the case

still clearer in favour of his employer, the individual, and still

stronger against the hoped-for future employers, the people. "The

public ought to know of this bequest of the late Mr. Effingham."

 

"I think it ought, sir, before it pretended to deprive his child of

his property; or, rather, it ought to be certain, at least, that

there was no such devise."

 

"You will excuse me, Mr. Effingham, but I think it is incumbent on a

private citizen, in a case of this sort, when the public has taken up

a wrong notion, as I now admit is clearly the fact as regards the

Point, to enlighten it, and to inform it that it does not own the

spot."

 

"This has been done already, Mr. Bragg, in the advertisement you had

the goodness to carry to the printers, although I deny that there

exists any such obligation."

 

"But, sir, they object to the mode you have chosen to set them

right."

 

"The mode is usual, I believe in the case of trespasses."

 

"They expect something different, sir, in an affair in which the

public is--is--is--all--"

 

"Wrong," put in John Effingham, pointedly. "I have heard something of

this out of doors, Ned, and blame you for your moderation. Is it true

that you had told several of your neighbours that you have no wish to

prevent them from using the Point, but that your sole object is

merely to settle the question of right, and to prevent intrusions on

your family when it is enjoying its own place of retirement?"

 

"Certainly, John, my only wish is to preserve the property for those

to whom it is especially devised, to allow those who have the best,

nay, the only right to it, its undisturbed possession, occasionally,

and to prevent any more of that injury to the trees that has been

committed by some of those rude men, who always fancy themselves so

completely all the public, as to be masters, in their own particular

persons, whenever the public has any claim. I can have no wish to

deprive my neighbours of the innocent pleasure of visiting the Point,

though I am fully determined they shall not deprive me of my

property."

 

"You are far more indulgent than I should be, or perhaps, than you

will be yourself, when you read this."

 

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 title, 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 assented, 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 grass."--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 pass 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 entitled 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 passed 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-passing 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 gratitude for the forbearance, as they

had just as good a right to pass