The Christmas Peace | Page 2

a

political campaign. It had to be considered in every invitation and in
every discussion.
It is not meant that there was no intercourse between the two families.
Major Drayton and Judge Hampden regularly paid each other a visit
every year--and oftener when there was serious illness in one house or
the other--but even on such occasions their differences were liable to
crop out. One of them held an opinion that when one gentleman was
spending the night in another gentleman's house, it was the part of the
host to indicate when bedtime had arrived; whilst the other maintained
with equal firmness the doctrine that no gentleman could inform his
guest that he was fatigued: that this duty devolved upon the guest
himself. This difference of opinion worked comfortably enough on
both sides until an occasion when Judge Hampden, who held the
former view, was spending the night at Colonel Drayton's. When
bedtime arrived, the rest of the household retired quietly, leaving the
two gentlemen conversing, and when the servants appeared in the
morning to open the blinds and light the fires, the two gentlemen were
still found seated opposite each other conversing together quite as if it
were the ordinary thing to sit up and talk all night long.
On another occasion, it is said that Major Drayton, hearing of his
neighbor's serious illness, rode over to make inquiry about him, and
owing to a slip of the tongue, asked in a voice of deepest sympathy,
"Any hopes of the old gentleman dying!"

II
Yet, they had once been friends.
Before Wilmer Drayton and Oliver Hampden were old enough to
understand that by all the laws of heredity and custom they should be
enemies, they had learned to like each other. When they were only a
few years old, the little creek winding between the two plantations
afforded in its strip of meadow a delightful neutral territory where the
two boys could enjoy themselves together, safe from the interference of

their grave seniors; wading, sailing mimic fleets upon its uncertain
currents, fishing together, or bathing in the deepest pools it offered in
its winding course.
It looked, indeed, for a time as if in the fellowship of these two lads the
long-standing feud of the Hampdens and Draytons might be ended, at
last. They went to school together at the academy, where their only
contests were a generous rivalry. At college they were known as
Damon and Pythias, and though a natural rivalry, which might in any
event have existed between them, developed over the highest prize of
the institution--the debater's medal--the generosity of youth saved them.
It was even said that young Drayton, who for some time had apparently
been certain of winning, had generously retired in order to defeat a
third candidate and throw the prize to Oliver Hampden.
They came home and both went to the Bar, but with different results.
Young Drayton was learned and unpractical. Oliver Hampden was
clever, able, and successful, and soon had a thriving practice; while his
neighbor's learning was hardly known outside the circle of the Bar.
Disappointed in his ambition, Drayton shortly retired from the Bar and
lived the life of a country gentleman, while his former friend rapidly
rose to be the head of the Bar.
The old friendship might have disappeared in any event, but a new
cause arose which was certain to end it.
Lucy Fielding was, perhaps, the prettiest girl in all that region. Oliver
Hampden had always been in love with her. However, Fortune, ever
capricious, favored Wilmer Drayton, who entered the lists when it
looked as if Miss Lucy were almost certain to marry her old lover. It
appeared that Mr. Drayton's indifference had counted for more than the
other's devotion. He carried off the prize with a dash.
If Oliver Hampden, however, was severely stricken by his
disappointment, he masked it well; for he married not long afterward,
and though some said it was from pique, there was no more happily
married pair in all the county.

A year later a new Oliver came to keep up the name and tenets of the
Hampdens. Oliver Hampden, now the head of the Bar, would not have
envied any man on earth had not his wife died a few years later and left
him alone with his boy in his big house.
Lucy Drayton was born two years after young Oliver Hampden.
The mammies of the two children, as the mammies of their parents had
done before them, used to talk them over on the edge of the shaded
meadow which divided the places, and thus young Oliver Hampden, a
lusty boy of five, came to know little Lucy Drayton fully three years
before his father ever laid eyes on her.
Mr. Hampden was riding around