“I am, sir,” said he, firmly, “for it's not at this time o' day Shaver Quackinboss has to learn life. All the pepperin' and lemon-squeezin' in the world won't make a toad taste like a terrapin: that crittur's gold chains don't impose upon me! You remember that he was n't aboard four-and-twenty hours when I said, 'That sheep's mangy.'”
“Perhaps I like your plan the less because it separates us,” said Layton, who now perceived that the Colonel seemed to smart under anything that reflected on his acuteness.
“That's jest what galls me too,” said he, frankly. “It's been all sunshine in my life, since we 've been together. All the book-learnin' you 've got has stolen into your nature so gradually as to make part of yourself, but what you tell me comes like soft rain over a dry prairie, and changing the parched soil into something that seems to say, 'I 'm not so barren, after all, if I only got my turn from fortune.' You 've shown me one thing, that I often had a glimmerin' of, but never saw clearly till you pointed it out, that the wisest men that ever lived felt more distrust of themselves than of their fellows. But we only part for a while, Layton. In less than a month we 'll meet again, and I hope to have good news for you by that time.”
“Where are we to rendezvous, then?” asked Layton, for he saw how fruitless would be the attempt at further opposition.
“I'll have the map out this evening, and we 'll fix it,” said the Colonel. “And now leave me to smoke, and think over what's afore us. There's great thoughts in that bit of twisted 'bacco there, if I only have the wit to trace 'em. Every man that has had to use his head in life finds out by the time he's forty what helps him to his best notions. Bonaparte used to get into a bath to think, Arkwright went to bed, and my father, Methuselah Grip Quackinboss, said he never was so bright as standing up to his neck in the mill-race, with the light spray of the wheel comin' in showers over him. 'I feel,' says he, 'as if I was one-half Lord Bacon and the other John C. Colhoun.' Now my brain-polisher is a long Cuban, a shady tree, and a look-out seaward,—all the better if the only sails in sight be far away.”
CHAPTER XLII. A NEW LOCATION
After a great deal of discussion it was agreed between Layton and the Colonel that they should meet that day month at St. Louis. Layton was to employ the interval in seeing as much as he could of the country and the people, and preparing himself to appear before them at the first favorable opportunity. Indeed, though he did not confess it, he yielded to the separation the more willingly, because it offered him the occasion of putting into execution a plan he for some time had been ruminating over. In some measure from a natural diffidence, and in a great degree from a morbid dread of disappointing the high expectations Quackinboss had formed of the success he was to obtain, Layton had long felt that the presence of his friend would be almost certain to insure his failure. He could neither venture to essay the same flights before him, nor could he, if need were, support any coldness or disinclination of his audience were Quackinboss there to witness it. In fact, he wanted to disassociate his friend from any pain failure should occasion, and bear all alone the sorrows of defeat.
Besides this, he felt that, however personally painful the ordeal, he was bound to face it. He had accepted Quackinboss's assistance under the distinct pledge that he was to try this career. In its success was he to find the means of repaying his friend; and so confidently had the Colonel always talked of that success, it would seem mere wilfulness not to attempt it.
There is not, perhaps, a more painful position in life than to be obliged to essay a career to which all one's thoughts and instincts are opposed; to do something against which self-respect revolts, and yet meet no sympathy from others,—to be conscious that any backwardness will be construed into self-indulgence, and disinclination be set down as indolence. Now this was Alfred Layton's case. He must either risk a signal failure, or consent to be thought of as one who would rather be a burden to his friends than make an honorable effort for his own support. He was already heavily in the Colonel's debt; the thought of this weighed upon him almost insupportably. It never quitted him for an instant; and, worse than all, it obtruded through every effort he made to acquit himself of the obligation; and only they who have experienced it can know what pain brain labor becomes when it is followed amidst the cares and anxieties of precarious existence; when the student tries in vain to concentrate thoughts that will stray away to the miserable exigencies of his lot, or struggle hopelessly to forget himself and his condition in the interest of bygone events or unreal incidents. Let none begrudge him the few flitting moments of triumph he may win, for he has earned them by many a long hour of hardship!