Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio | Page 3

Byron, whom Mrs. Markham did not want him to read, recommending, instead, Young's Night Thoughts, and Pollock's Course of Time, and Southey--the dear good woman!
And then came a time when he was in the store of Markham & Co., and finally was taken from the counter, because of his sharp words to customers, and set at the books, and sent away from that post because he illustrated them with caricatures on the margins, and smart personal rhymes. Julia was sixteen, and as sweet a romping, hoydenish, laughing, brave, strong girl as ever bewitched the heart of dreaming youth; and he had taught her to ride on horseback; and then she was sent off, away "down country," to the centre of the world, to Boston, where were uncles and aunts, and was gone, oh, ever and ever so long!--half a lifetime--nearly two years--and came back; and then his thoughts became confused. Then he thought of Judge Markham, and now he was sure that the Judge did not like him; and he remembered that Julia's mother, as he came towards manhood, was kind and patronizing, and that when he went to say good-by to Julia, three months ago, although she knew he was coming, she was not at home, and he only saw her mother and Nell Roberts. Then he thought of all the things he had tried to do within the last two years, and how he had done none of them. People had not liked him, and he had not suspected why, and had not cared. People liked his elder brothers, and he was glad and proud of it; and a jumble of odds and ends and fragments became tangled and snarled in his mind. What would people say of his return? Did he care? He asked nobody's leave to go, and came back on his own account. But his mother--she would look sad; but she would be glad. It certainly was a mistake, his going; could it be a blunder, his returning?
He was thinking shallowly; but deeper thoughts came to him. He began to believe that easy places did not exist; and he scorned to seek them for himself, if they did. The world was as much to be struggled with in one place as another; and, after all, was not the struggle mainly with one's own self, and could that be avoided? Then what in himself was wrong? what should be fought against? Who would tell him? Men spoke roughly to him, and he answered back sharply. He couldn't help doing that. How could he be blamed? He suspected he might be.
He knew there were better things than to chop and clear land, and make black salts, or tend a saw-mill, or drive oxen, or sell tape and calico; but, in these woods, poor and unfriended, how could he find them? Was not his brother Henry studying law at Jefferson, and were they not all proud of him, and did not everybody expect great things of him? But Henry was different from him. Dr. Lyman believed in him; Judge Markham spoke with respect of him. Julia Markham--how inexpressibly lovely and radiant and distant and inaccessible she appeared! And then he felt sore, as if her father had dealt him a blow, and he thought of his sending him away the year before, and wished he had explained. No matter. How he writhed again and again under the sting of his contemptuous sarcasm! "He wouldn't even pick me up; would leave me to lie by the wayside."
Towards sundown, weary and saddened, he reached the centre, "Jugville," as he had named it, years before, in derision. He was a mile and a half from home, and paused a moment to sit on the platform in front of "Marlow's Hotel," and rest. The loungers were present in more than usual force,--Jo and Biather Alexander, old Neaze Savage, old Cal Chase, Tinker,--any number of old and not highly-esteemed acquaintances.
"Hullo, Bart Ridgeley! is that you?"
Bart did not seem to think it necessary to affirm or deny.
"Ben away, hain't ye? Must a-gone purty much all over all creation, these last three months. How's all the folks where you ben?"
No reply. A nod to one or two of the dozen attracted towards him was the only notice he took of them, seeming not to hear the question and comments of Tinker. His silence tempted old Cal, the small joker of the place, to open:
"You's gone an everlastin' while. S'pose you hardly know the place, it's changed so."
"It has changed some," he answered to this; "its bar-room loafers are a good deal more unendurable, and its fools, always large, have increased in size."
A good-natured laugh welcomed this reply.
"There, uncle Cal, it 'pears to me you've got it," said one.
"'Pears to me we've all got it," was