At night-fall, the boy did not return to his home.
Anxiously did the time pass with Mrs. Howland until ten o'clock, and yet he was away. Eleven—twelve—one o'clock, pealed on the ear of the watching mother, but he came not. It was all in vain that her husband remonstrated with her. His words passed her unheeded; and she remained waiting and watching, until near the hour of morning, but her waiting and watching were all in vain.
Two days passed—yet there came no tidings of the absent boy. On the third day, Mrs. Howland received the following letter:—
"MY DEAR MOTHER:—I have left my home—forever! What is to become of me, I do not know. But I can remain with you no longer. Father treats me like a dog—or worse than a dog; and he has never treated me much better. I have tried to do right a great many times; but it was of no use. The harder I tried to do right, the more he found fault with me. He was always blaming me for something I didn't do. It is all a lie of the watchman's about my setting the house on fire. Such a thing never entered my mind. Father wouldn't let me in, and I had to sleep somewhere. He wouldn't speak a word for me in the Mayor's office. So it's all his fault that I am to be tried before the Court. But I'm not going to be sent to the Penitentiary. Father is my bail for a thousand dollars. I shall be sorry if he has to pay it; but it will be better for him to do that, than for me to go to the Penitentiary for nothing. So, good-by, mother, I love you! You have always been good to me. If father had been as good, I would have been a better boy. Don't grieve about me. It's better that I should leave home. You'll all be happier. If I ever return to you, I will be different from what I am now. Farewell mother! Don't forget me. I will never forget you. Don't grieve about me. The thought of that troubles me the most. But it is better for me to go away, mother—better for us all. Farewell.
"ANDREW."
CHAPTER X
A YEAR elapsed before any tidings of the wanderer came. Then Mrs. Howland received a few lines from him, dated in a Southern city, where he spoke of having just arrived from South America. He had little to say of himself, beyond that he was well; and did not speak of visiting home.
After reading this letter, Mrs. Howland placed it in the hands of her husband, who read it also, and then gave it back without a remark. He checked an involuntary sigh as he did so. Not the slightest reference was made to him by his son; a fact that he did not overlook, and that he did not observe without a sense of disappointment. The long absence of his wayward boy had softened his feelings toward him; and with pain he remembered many acts of harshness that now seemed to have in them too much of the element of severity. At the term of the Court, which was held soon after Andrew went away, the Grand Jury failed to obtain sufficient evidence to justify the finding of a bill against him, and released the security given for his appearance at Court. This fact, with a previous questioning of the policeman by whom Andrew had been arrested, satisfied Mr. Howland that the boy had been unjustly suspected of an intention to commit a crime. But this conviction had come too late. The effects of that unjust accusation had already fallen in sad consequences upon the head of the poor boy; and the father could not force from his mind the painful conviction that he was, mainly, responsible for these consequences.
Another year went by, but during all the time, no further tidings came of Andrew. To his first letter, Mrs. Howland had immediately replied, urging him, by every tender consideration, to return to his home. But she had no means of knowing whether it had ever been received. Upon her the effect of his absence had been, for a time, of the most serious character. For a few weeks after he went away, both body and mind were prostrated; to this succeeded a state of mental depression, which continued so long that her friends began to fear for her reason. Not until after the lapse of a year, when she received the above-mentioned letter from her son, did her mind attain to anything like its former state. The knowledge that he was yet, alive, that he thought of her, and still cherished her memory, gave a new impulse to her fainting spirit, and a quicker motion to the circle of life. There was yet room to hope for him. But, as time went on, there came not back even a faint echo to the voice she had sent after him, her heart failed her again. Yet time, which imparts strength to all in trouble, had done its work for her also. The care and labor that ever attend the mother's position among her children, had bent her thoughts so much away from Andrew, that, while his absence left a constant weight upon her feelings, it did not crush them down as before, into a waveless depression.
The second year of Andrew's absence came to a close; but nothing further was heard from him. And it was the same with the third, fourth, and fifth years. In the meantime, there had been many changes in Mr. Howland's family. Mary had married against her father's wishes, and both herself and husband had been so unkindly treated by him on the occasion and afterward, that neither of them visited at his house.
Henry Markland, the husband of Mary, had been rather a gay young man, and this, with some other things which had come to his ears, created a prejudice in the mind of Mr. Howland against him. As to what was good in Markland, and likely to overbalance defects, he did not inquire. The hue of his prejudice colored everything. Men like Mr. Howland, who seek to bend everything into forms suited to their own narrow range of ideas, are rarely successful in attaining their ends. The principle of freedom is too deeply interwoven with all the tissues of the human mind to admit of this. From earliest infancy there is a reaction against arbitrary power; and, those who are wise, have long since discovered that it is a much easier task to lead than force the young into right ways. Those who would truly govern children, must first learn to govern themselves. Let a parent break his own imperious will before he tries to break the will of his child; and he will be far more successful in the work he essays. to perform. But not so had Mr. Howland learned his duty in life. Without being, aware of the fact, he was a domestic tyrant, and sought to establish a family despotism. And the worst of the whole was, he did nearly all this work in the name of religion! Not that he was a hypocrite. No; Mr. Howland was sincere in his professions of piety. But he was a narrow-minded man, and did much in the name of religion, that in no way harmonized with its true character. His faith was a blind faith, and he sacrificed to the god of his imagination in the unyielding spirit of a dehumanizing superstition. Of necessity, he marred everything upon which he sought to impress the form of his own mind.
Erroneous judgment of others is almost certain to mark the conclusions of such a man's mind; and it is no wonder that Mr. Howland erred in his conclusions respecting the true character of his daughter's husband, who had in him many good qualities, and was sincerely attached to Mary. The great defect appertaining to him, was the fact that he was not a church member. Mr. Howland did not look past the veil of a profession, to see if there was in the ground work of the young man's character a basis of right principles—the only true foundation upon which a religious structure can be built. Because he did not belong to the church, and make an open profession, he classed him with the irreligious, and considered him as one whose feet were moving swiftly along the road to destruction.
And so, instead of wisely seeking to win the confidence of the young man, that he might gain an influence over him for good, Mr. Howland, offended because his daughter could not obey him in a matter so vital to her happiness, angrily repulsed and insulted both of them, even after he saw that a marriage was inevitable. The consequence was, as has been mentioned, that Markland, who possessed an independent spirit, would not go to the house of his father-in-law; and Mary, resenting the wanton attacks that had been made upon her husband's feelings in more than one or two instances, absented herself also. Mr. Howland, however much he might regret the hardness of his unavailing opposition, was not the man to yield anything; and so the breach remained open, in spite of all the grieving mother's efforts to heal it.
Of all his children, Mr. Howland saw most to hope for in Edward, who early perceived it to be his best policy to humor his father, and, by that means, gain the ends he had in view. Cold in his temperament, he was generally able to control himself in a way to deceive his father as to the real motives that were in his heart. Thus, while Mr. Howland, by his peculiar treatment of his children, drove some of them off, he made this one a hypocrite.
Not the smallest affection existed between Edward and the other children, who knew too well the selfish and evil qualities that lay concealed beneath an external of propriety, put on especially for his father's eyes. The mother, too, saw beneath the false exterior assumed by her son, who treated her, except when his father was present, with little respect or affection.
Martha, the youngest, was a sweet tempered girl, who had managed to keep, as a general thing, beyond the sphere of antagonism that marked the intercourse of the other children. To her mother, as she grew up, she proved a source of comfort; and she could, at almost any time, dispel by her smiles the cloud that too often rested on the brow of her morose father.
On reaching his seventeenth year, Edward had been placed in a store by his father, for the purpose of acquiring knowledge of mercantile affairs. A young man in this position, if he has any ambition to make his way in the world, soon gets his mind pretty well filled with money-making ideas, and sees the way to wealth opening in a broad vista before him. Every day he hears about this, that, and the other one, who started in business but a few years before, with little or no capital, and who are now worth their tens of thousands; and he thus learns to aspire after wealth, without being made to feel sensibly the fact, that the number who grow rich rapidly are as one to a hundred compared with those who succeed as the result of small beginnings united with long continued and untiring application. Long before Edward reached his twenty-first year, he had so fully imbibed the spirit of the atmosphere in which he breathed, that his mind was made up to go into business for himself as soon as he attained his majority. This idea Mr. Howland sought to discourage in his son; but Edward never gave it up. Soon after he was twenty-one, an offer to go into a business, that promised a large return was made, provided a few thousand dollars capital could be furnished. Not a moment did Edward rest until he had prevailed upon his father, ever too ready to yield a weak compliance to the wishes of this son, to place in his hands the amount of money required. To do this, was, at the time, no easy matter for Mr. Howland, whose own business was far from being as good as usual and whose pecuniary affairs were not in the most easy condition. Six thousand dollars was the amount of capital he was obliged to raise, and it was not accomplished without considerable sacrifice.
Edward and his partner were what are usually called "enterprising young men," and they drove ahead in the business they had undertaken at a kind of railroad speed, calculating their profits at an exceedingly high range. It is not surprising that, by the end of the first year, they required a little more capital to help them through with their engagements, the furnishing of which fell upon Mr. Howland; who, in this emergency, passed his notes to the new firm for several thousand dollars.
It is not our purpose to trace, step by step, the progress of this young man in the work of ruining his father and disgracing himself by dishonest practices in business. Enough, that in the course of three years, the "enterprising young men," who made from the beginning such rapid strides toward fortune, found their course suddenly checked, and themselves involved in hopeless bankruptcy. But, with themselves rested not the evil consequences of failure; others were included in the disaster, and among them Mr. Howland, who was so badly crippled as to be obliged to call his creditors together, and solicit a reduction and extension of the claims they had against him. To Mr. Howland, this was a crushing blow. He was not only a man who strictly regarded honesty in his dealings, but he was proud of his honesty, and in his pride, had often been harsh in his judgment of others when in circumstances similar to those in which he was now placed. To be forced to ask of his creditors both a reduction and an extension, humiliated him to a degree, that for a time, almost deprived him of the power of doing business. From that time, there was a perceptible change in the man of iron. His tall, erect form seemed to shrink downward; his head bent toward his bosom, and the harsh lines on his brow and around his less tightly closed lips grew softer. His indignation against Edward was so great, when he finally comprehended the character of the transactions in which he had been engaged, involving as they did a total absence of integrity, that he turned his back upon him angrily, saying, as he did so—
"Never come into my presence again, until you come an honest man!"
On the day after this utterance of the father's indignant feelings, Edward left the city; and it was the opinion of many that he went with a pocket full of money. They were not far wrong.
Thus, of all his children, only the youngest remained with Mr. Howland. All the rest were estranged from him; and in spite of all his efforts to push the conviction from his mind, he could not help feeling that he was to blame for the estrangement.
CHAPTER XI
NEARLY eight years from the time Andrew Howland left his home have passed, and we now bring him before the reader as a discharged United States' dragoon, having just concluded a five years' service in the far West. He had enlisted, rather than steal, at a time when he found it impossible to obtain employment, and had gone through the hard and humiliating service of a trooper on our extreme frontier, under an assumed name, omitting to write home during the entire period, lest by any chance a knowledge of his position might be communicated to his mother, and (her memory had never faded) to Emily Winters. The images of these two, the only ones he loved in the world, were green in his bosom. They were drawing him homeward with a force of attraction that grew stronger and stronger as the end of his service approached. Nearly three years had elapsed since he had met any one recently from the East who was able to answer, satisfactorily, the few inquiries he ventured to make; and now he was all impatience to return.
Steadily, for a long time, had the young man looked forward to this period; and in order to have the means of effecting a thorough change in his external appearance, and to be able to support himself after his return East, until he obtained some kind of employment, he had left nearly all his pay in the hands of the disbursing officer. It now amounted to nearly two hundred dollars.
It was in Santa Fe that Andrew obtained his discharge from the United States' service. This was soon after the conclusion of the peace with Mexico, and about the time when the first exciting news came of golden discoveries on the tributaries of the Sacramento.
On the day after Andrew received his discharge, and while making preparations for his journey eastward, a company, in which were several new recruits arrived from the Wachita. Among them he discovered a young man from P—, to whom he put the direct question.
"Do you know a Mr. Howland of your city?"
"Andrew Howland, the merchant?" inquired the young man, who was not over twenty-one years of age.
"Yes," returned Andrew, in a tone of affected indifference.
"His store is in the same block with my father's."
"Indeed! What is your father's name?"
The young man's eyes fell to the ground, and his face became overspread with crimson.
"Winters," he replied, at length recovering himself.
Andrew turned partly away to conceal the sudden emotion this intelligence had created. Mastering his feelings with a vigorous effort, he lifted his eyes to the countenance of the young man and at once recognized in him the brother of Emily. Restraining the eagerness he felt to press many questions, Andrew asked him about his journey from the last military post, and after getting a number of answers to which he scarcely listened, said—
"How long is it since you left P—?"
"About six months," replied young Winters.
"Do your friends know where you are?"
"No, indeed! Nor would I have them. So, please bear that in mind. I answered your question almost on the spur of the moment."
"Do you know anything about Mr. Howland or his family?" asked Andrew, without seeming to notice the young man's remark.
"Nothing very particular; only that the old gentleman failed in business about a year ago."
"Ah! How came that?"
"His son Edward broke him up."
"His son Edward?"
"Yes. The old man set him a going in business; but he soon run himself under, and his father into the bargain. He made a terrible bad failure of it."
"Who?"
"Edward Howland. He went off soon after, and they do say, carried his pockets full of money. And I imagine there is some truth in it. He wasn't exactly the clear grit. Some people called him a smooth-faced hypocrite, and I guess they were not very far wrong."
Andrew asked no more questions for some time, but sat, thoughtful, with his face so far turned away from the young man, that its expression could not be seen.
"Mrs. Howland is living, I presume?" said he, at length, in a tone as indifferent as he could assume; but which was, nevertheless, unsteady.
"Yes. She was living when I came away."
Andrew drew a quick breath, and then his laboring chest found relief in a long expiration.
"Poor old man! I'm sorry for him," came from his lips in a few moments afterwards. The tone was half indifferent, yet expressed some sympathy.
"Everybody seems sorry for him," said Winters. "It has broken him down very much. He looks ten years older."
"Is he entirely out of business?" asked Andrew.
"No; he is still going on; but he doesn't appear to do much. I think the family is poor. They've sold their handsome house, and are living in a much smaller one. I heard father say that Mr. Howland had received an extension from his creditors, but that he was too much crippled to be able to go through, and would, in the end, break down entirely."
There was another pause, and then Andrew changed the subject by asking the young man something about himself, and led on the conversation, from step to step, until he got him to mention the fact that he had a sister named Emily.
"Is she older than yourself?" inquired Andrew.
"Oh, yes. Some four years older," was replied.
"Married, of course," said Andrew.
The very effort he made to say this with seeming unconcern gave so unnatural an expression to his tone of voice, that young Winters looked at him with momentary surprise.
"No, she is not married," he answered.
"She's old enough," said Andrew, speaking now in a tone of more real indifference.
"Yes; but she'll probably die an old maid. She's had two or three good offers; but no one appears just to suit her fancy. Father was very angry about her rejecting a young man some two or three years ago, who afterwards disgraced himself, and broke the heart of a young creature who had been weak enough to marry him."
"Then I should say that your sister was a sensible girl," remarked Andrew, in a cheerful voice.
"Yes, she is a sensible girl; and, what is more, a good girl. Ah, me! I wish I were half as sensible and half as good."
With what a free motion did the heart of Andrew beat after receiving this intelligence!
"Is Mary Howland married?" he asked. He knew that she was, for he had seen the fact noticed in a newspaper.
"Yes; she married a Mr. Markland."
"Who is he?"
"I don't know much about, him. He's a teller in one of the banks."
"How did the family like her marriage?"
"Not at all. They don't visit."
"Indeed! Why?"
"Dear knows! Old Mr. Howland is a hard sort of a man when he takes up a prejudice against any one. He didn't like Markland, and said that Mary shouldn't marry him. She felt differently, and did marry him. The consequence was, that the old man said and did so much that was offensive, that he and Markland have had no intercourse since."
"Mary comes home, I suppose?"
"I rather think not. I believe that she and her father have not spoken in two years. At least, so I heard sister once say."
"That is bad! Poor man! He is unfortunate with his children."
Andrew, as he spoke, felt that he was unfortunate, and an emotion of pity stirred along the surface of his feelings.
"Indeed he is!" said Winters, who was disposed to be communicative. "But I presume it is a good deal his own fault. They say that his harsh treatment drove his oldest son from home."
"Ah?"
"Yes. He was a wild sort of a boy, and his father didn't show him any mercy. The consequence was, that instead of leading him into the right way, he drove him into the wrong way. He ran off from home a great while ago, and has never been heard from since. It is thought that he is dead. I once heard father say that, with all his faults, he was the best of the bunch."
Something interrupted the conversation of the two young men at this point, and they separated. A couple of hours afterward, as Andrew walked along one of the streets of Santa Fe, musing over the intelligence he had gleaned from young Winters, a fellow soldier, whose time of service had also just expired, met him, and said—
"You're not going back to the States, are you?"
"Such has been my intention," replied Andrew.
"I'm not going."
"I thought you were."
"I've altered my mind. A party sets off to-morrow for the gold regions of California, and I'm going with them."
"Indeed! That's a sudden change of resolution. But you don't believe all the stories you hear of this El Dorado?
"No, not all of them. But if even the half be true, there's a golden harvest to be reaped by all who put in the sickle."
"Yes, the half is encouraging enough," said Andrew, in a tone of abstraction. The fact is, since he had heard from home, his desire to return immediately was lessened. News of his father's altered circumstances had softened his feelings toward him very much, and created a strong desire to aid him in the extremity to which he had been reduced. But he had no ability to do this. All he possessed in the world was about two hundred dollars, and it would take at least half of this to pay his passage home. Already had his thoughts been reaching Westward, as the only point where, by any possibility, he could better his fortunes to an extent that would enable him to help his father. But there was so much of apparent romance in the stories that reached his ears, that he had many strong doubts as to even the main facts reported.
"You'd better join us," remarked the comrade.
"How many are going?" inquired Andrew.
"Seven. And we'd very much like to add you to the number."
"I'm really half-inclined to go with you," said Andrew, speaking with a good deal of animation in his voice.
"You'll never regret it," said the other. "Not only are the stories about an abundance of gold authentic, but I have good reasons for believing that the half has not been told. I talked with a man last night, who says that he knew of several instances where lumps of the precious metal, weighing several pounds, have been picked up. One man collected ten thousand dollars worth of lumps of pure gold in a week."
"That's a large story," replied Andrew, smiling.
"Perhaps so; but it is not all a fabrication. At any rate, I am off to this region, and my advice to you is, to join our little party."
"When do you start?
"To-morrow morning."
"I'll think about it," said Andrew Howland.
"You must think quickly," was answered. "There is no time to spare. It is but two hours to nightfall; and we are to be in the saddle by sunrise. So, if you conclude to join our party you have but small space left for preparation."
Andrew stood with his eyes upon the ground for nearly a minute; then looking up, he said, in a firm voice—
"I will go."
"And, my word for it, you'll never repent the decision. Gathering up lumps of gold by the peck is a quicker way to fortune than dragooning it at five dollars a month—ha?"
"My anticipations lie within a much narrower circle than yours," was quietly answered to this; "but one thing is certain, if gold is to be had in California for the mere digging, you may depend on Andrew Howland getting his share of the treasure."
"That's the spirit, my boy!" said the other, clapping him on the shoulder—"the very spirit of every member of our little party. And if we don't line our pockets with the precious stuff, it will be because none is to be found."
On the next morning, Andrew Howland started on his long and perilous journey for the region of gold, with a new impulse in his heart, and a hope in the future, such as, up to this time, he had never known. But it was not a mere selfish love of gold that was influencing him. He was acted on by a nobler feeling.