CHAPTER LV. LYNCH LAW AGAIN.
The reader next beholds Clayton at Magnolia Grove, whither he had fled to recruit his exhausted health and spirits. He had been accompanied there by Frank Russel.
Our readers may often have observed how long habits of intimacy may survive between two persons who have embarked in moral courses, which, if pursued, must eventually separate them forever.
For such is the force of moral elements, that the ambitious and self-seeking cannot always walk with those who love good for its own sake. In this world, however, where all these things are imperfectly developed, habits of intimacy often subsist a long time between the most opposing affinities.
The fact was that Russel would not give up the society of Clayton. He admired the very thing in him which he wanted himself; and he comforted himself for not listening to his admonitions by the tolerance and good-nature with which he had always heard them. When he heard that he was ill, he came to him and insisted upon travelling with him, attending him with the utmost fidelity and kindness.
Clayton had not seen Anne before since his affliction—both because his time had been very much engaged, and because they who cannot speak of their sorrows often shrink from the society of those whose habits of intimacy and affection might lead them to desire such confidence. But he was not destined in his new retreat to find the peace he desired. Our readers may remember that there were intimations conveyed through his sister some time since of discontent arising in the neighborhood.
The presence of Tom Gordon soon began to make itself felt. As a conductor introduced into an electric atmosphere will draw to itself the fluid, so he became an organizing point for the prevailing dissatisfaction.
He went to dinner-parties and talked; he wrote in the nearest paper; he excited the inflammable and inconsiderate; and, before he had been there many weeks, a vigilance association was formed among the younger and more hot-headed of his associates, to search out and extirpate covert abolitionism. Anne and her brother first became sensible of an entire cessation of all those neighborly acts of kindness and hospitality, in which southern people, when in a good humor, are so abundant.
At last, one day Clayton was informed that three or four gentlemen of his acquaintance were wishing to see him in the parlor below.
On descending, he was received first by his nearest neighbor, Judge Oliver, a fine-looking elderly gentleman, of influential family connection.