Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio | Page 2

in the situation. The horses were held in a walk as they came down near where the young man stood, with a half ashamed, yet eager, expression of countenance, and turned partly away, as if he expected--in fact, wished for nothing.
"What are you doing here?" called out the Judge.
It was not a wholly courteous inquiry, and scarcely necessary, though not purposely offensive; but the tone and manner struck like an insult on the young man's sensitive spirit, and his answer went back a little sharply:
"I am waiting for the river to run by,"
"Ah! I see. Well, I am glad you have found something that suits you."
There was no mistaking the sarcasm of this remark, and perhaps its sting was deeper than was meant. The Judge was not an unkind man, though he did not relish the reply to his question; he held up his horses on the margin of the water, and perhaps he wanted to be asked by this pert youth for the favor of a passage over. Of course the petition was not, and never would have been made. He lingered a moment, and without another word entered the river, and, turning his horses' heads up stream for a short distance, drove out on the other side; as he turned into the regular track again, he caught a view of the young man standing impassive on the same spot where he first saw him.
It is possible that Judge Markham, the most wealthy and popular man of his region, did not feel wholly at ease as, with his fine team and empty carriage, he drove away, leaving the weary, travel-stained youth standing on the other side of the river; and it is possible that the form of the deserted one may be brought to his memory in the hereafter.
"'Something that suits me'--'something that suits me!' All right, Judge Markham!" and as the carriage was hidden in the woods, the waters that rolled on between them were as nothing to the bitter, swelling tide that, for a moment, swept through the young man's bosom. He was undecided no longer.
Removing his boots and stockings, he entered the river at the point, and, following the course taken by the Judge, he passed out, and resumed his journey homeward.
As he walked rapidly onward, the momentary bitterness subsided. He was not one to hate, or cherish animosities, but he was capable of deep impressions, and of forming strong resolutions. There was a chord of melancholy running through his nature, which, under excitement, often vibrated the longest; and almost any strong emotion left behind a tone of sadness that lingered for hours, and sometimes for days, although his mind was normally buoyant and hopeful.
As he went on over the hills, in the rude pioneer country of Northern Ohio, thirty-six or seven years ago, he thought sad-colored thoughts of the past, or, rather, he recalled sombre memories of the, to him, far-off time, when, with his mother and brothers, he formed one of a sobbing group around a bed whereon a gasping, dying man was vainly trying to say some last words; of afterwards awakening in the deep nights, and listening to the unutterably sweet and mournful singing of his mother, unable to sleep in her loneliness; of the putting away of his baby brother, and the jubilee when he was brought back; of the final breaking up of the family, and of his own first goings away; of the unceasing homesickness and pining with which he always languished for home in his young boy years; of the joy with which he always hurried home, the means by which he would prolong his stay, and the anguish with which he went away again. His mother was to him the chief good. For him, like Providence, she always was, and he could imagine no possible good, or even existence, without her--it would be the end of the world when she ceased to be. And he remembered all the places where he had lived, and the many times he had run away. And then came the memory of Julia Markham, as she was years ago, when he lived in her neighborhood, and her sweet and beautiful mother used to intrust her to his care, in the walks to and from school, down on the State road--Julia, with her great wonderful eyes, and world of wavy hair, and red lips; and then, as she grew into beautiful and ever more beautiful girlhood, he used to be more and more at Judge Markham's house, and used to read to Julia's mother and herself. It was there that he discovered Shakespeare, and learned to like him, and Milton, whom he didn't like and wouldn't read, and the Sketch Book, and Knickerbocker's History, and Cooper's novels, and Scott, and, more than all,