Nathaniel Hawthorne
Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe
From Twice-Told Tales
A young fellow, a tobacco pedlar by trade, was on his way from Morristown,
where he had dealt largely with the Deacon of the Shaker settlement, to the
village of Parker's Falls, on Salmon River. He had a neat little cart, painted
green, with a box of cigars depicted on each side panel, and an Indian chief,
holding a pipe and a golden tobacco stalk, on the rear. The pedlar drove a smart
little mare, and was a young man of excellent character, keen at a bargain, but
none the worse liked by the Yankees; who, as I have heard them say, would rather
be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one. Especially was he beloved by the
pretty girls along the Connecticut, whose favor he used to court by presents of
the best smoking tobacco in his stock; knowing well that the country lasses of New
England are generally great performers on pipes. Moreover, as will be seen in the
course of my story, the pedlar was inquisitive, and something of a tattler, always
itching to hear the news and anxious to tell it again.
After an early breakfast at Morristown, the tobacco pedlar, whose name was
Dominicus Pike, had travelled seven miles through a solitary piece of woods,
without speaking a word to anybody but himself and his little gray mare. It being
nearly seven o'clock, he was as eager to hold a morning gossip as a city
shopkeeper to read the morning paper. An opportunity seemed at hand when, after
lighting a cigar with a sun-glass, he looked up, and perceived a man coming over
the brow of the hill, at the foot of which the pedlar had stopped his green cart.
Dominicus watched him as he descended, and noticed that he carried a bundle over
his shoulder on the end of a stick, and travelled with a weary, yet determined
pace. He did not look as if he had started in the freshness of the morning, but
had footed it all night, and meant to do the same all day.
"Good morning, mister," said Dominicus, when within speaking distance. "You go
a pretty good jog. What's the latest news at Parker's Falls?"
The man pulled the broad brim of a gray hat over his eyes, and answered,
rather sullenly, that he did not come from Parker's Falls, which, as being the
limit of his own day's journey, the pedlar had naturally mentioned in his inquiry.
"Well then," rejoined Dominicus Pike, "let's have the latest news where you
did come from. I'm not particular about Parker's Falls. Any place will answer."
Being thus importuned, the traveller - who was as ill looking a fellow as one
would desire to meet in a solitary piece of woods - appeared to hesitate a little,
as if he was either searching his memory for news, or weighing the expediency of
telling it. At last, mounting on the step of the cart, he whispered in the ear of
Dominicus, though he might have shouted aloud and no other mortal would have heard
him.
"I do remember one little trifle of news," said he. "Old Mr. Higginbotham, of
Kimballton, was murdered in his orchard, at eight o'clock last night, by an
Irishman and a nigger. They strung him up to the branch of a St. Michael's
pear-tree, where nobody would find him till the morning."
As soon as this horrible intelligence was communicated, the stranger betook
himself to his journey again, with more speed than ever, not even turning his head
when Dominicus invited him to smoke a Spanish cigar and relate all the
particulars. The pedlar whistled to his mare and went up the hill, pondering on
the doleful fate of Mr. Higginbotham whom he had known in the way of trade, having
sold him many a bunch of long nines, and a great deal of pigtail, lady's twist,
and fig tobacco. He was rather astonished at the rapidity with which the news had
spread. Kimballton was nearly sixty miles distant in a straight line; the murder
had been perpetrated only at eight o'clock the preceding night; yet Dominicus had
heard of it at seven in the morning, when, in all probability, poor
Mr. Higginbotham's own family had but just discovered his corpse, hanging on the
St. Michael's pear-tree. The stranger on foot must have worn seven-league boots to
travel at such a rate.
"Ill news flies fast, they say," thought Dominicus Pike; "but this beats
railroads. The fellow ought to be hired to go express with the President's
Message."
The difficulty was solved by supposing that the narrator had made a mistake of
one day in the date of the occurrence; so that our friend did not hesitate to
introduce the story at every tavern and country store along the road, expending
a whole bunch of Spanish wrappers among at least twenty horrified audiences. He
found himself invariably the first bearer of the intelligence, and was so pestered
with questions that he could not avoid filling up the outline, till it became
quite a respectable narrative. He met with one piece of corroborative evidence.
Mr. Higginbotham was a trader; and a former clerk of his, to whom Dominicus
related the facts, testified that the old gentleman was accustomed to return home
through the orchard about nightfall, with the money and valuable papers of the
store in his pocket. The clerk manifested but little grief at Mr. Higginbotham's
catastrophe, hinting, what the pedlar had discovered in his own dealings with him,
that he was a crusty old fellow, as close as a vice. His property would descend to
a pretty niece who was now keeping school in Kimballton.
What with telling the news for the public good, and driving bargains for his
own, Dominicus was so much delayed on the road that he chose to put up at
a tavern, about five miles short of Parker's Falls. After supper, lighting one of
his prime cigars, he seated himself in the bar-room, and went through the story of
the murder, which had grown so fast that it took him half an hour to tell. There
were as many as twenty people in the room, nineteen of whom received it all for
gospel. But the twentieth was an elderly farmer, who had arrived on horseback
a short time before, and was now seated in a corner smoking his pipe. When the
story was concluded, he rose up very deliberately, brought his chair right in
front of Dominicus, and stared him full in the face, puffing out the vilest
tobacco smoke the pedlar had ever smelt.
"Will you make affidavit," demanded he, in the tone of a country justice
taking an examination, "that old Squire Higginbotham of Kimballton was murdered in
his orchard the night before last, and found hanging on his great pear-tree
yesterday morning?"
"I tell the story as I heard it, mister," answered Dominicus, dropping his
half-burnt cigar; "I don't say that I saw the thing done. So I can't take my oath
that he was murdered exactly in that way."
"But I can take mine," said the farmer, "that if Squire Higginbotham was
murdered night before last, I drank a glass of bitters with his ghost this
morning. Being a neighbor of mine, he called me into his store, as I was riding
by, and treated me, and then asked me to do a little business for him on the road.
He didn't seem to know any more about his own murder than I did."
"Why, then, it can't be a fact!" exclaimed Dominicus Pike.
"I guess he'd have mentioned, if it was," said the old farmer; and he removed
his chair back to the corner, leaving Dominicus quite down in the mouth.
Here was a sad resurrection of old Mr. Higginbotham! The pedlar had no heart
to mingle in the conversation any more, but comforted himself with a glass of gin
and water, and went to bed where, all night long, he dreamed of hanging on the
St. Michael's pear-tree. To avoid the old farmer (whom he so detested that his
suspension would have pleased him better than Mr. Higginbotham's), Dominicus rose
in the gray of the morning, put the little mare into the green cart, and trotted
swiftly away towards Parker's Falls. The fresh breeze, the dewy road, and the
pleasant summer dawn, revived his spirits, and might have encouraged him to repeat
the old story had there been anybody awake to hear it. But he met neither ox team,
light wagon chaise, horseman, nor foot traveller, till, just as he crossed Salmon
River, a man came trudging down to the bridge with a bundle over his shoulder, on
the end of a stick.
"Good morning, mister," said the pedlar, reining in his mare. "If you come
from Kimballton or that neighborhood, may be you can tell me the real fact about
this affair of old Mr. Higginbotham. Was the old fellow actually murdered two or
three nights ago, by an Irishman and a nigger?"
Dominicus had spoken in too great a hurry to observe, at first, that the
stranger himself had a deep tinge of negro blood. On hearing this sudden question,
the Ethiopian appeared to change his skin, its yellow hue becoming a ghastly
white, while, shaking and stammering, he thus replied: "No! no! There was no
colored man! It was an Irishman that hanged him last night, at eight o'clock.
I came away at seven! His folks can't have looked for him in the orchard yet."
Scarcely had the yellow man spoken, when he interrupted himself, and though he
seemed weary enough before, continued his journey at a pace which would have kept
the pedlar's mare on a smart trot. Dominicus stared after him in great perplexity.
If the murder had not been committed till Tuesday night, who was the prophet that
had foretold it, in all its circumstances, on Tuesday morning? If
Mr. Higginbotham's corpse were not yet discovered by his own family, how came the
mulatto, at above thirty miles' distance, to know that he was hanging in the
orchard, especially as he had left Kimballton before the unfortunate man was
hanged at all? These ambiguous circumstances, with the stranger's surprise and
terror, made Dominicus think of raising a hue and cry after him, as an accomplice
in the murder; since a murder, it seemed, had really been perpetrated.
"But let the poor devil go," thought the pedlar. "I don't want his black blood
on my head; and hanging the nigger wouldn't unhang Mr. Higginbotham. Unhang the
old gentleman; It's a sin, I know; but I should hate to have him come to life
a second time, and give me the lie!"
With these meditations, Dominicus Pike drove into the street of Parker's
Falls, which, as everybody knows, is as thriving a village as three cotton
factories and a slitting mill can make it. The machinery was not in motion, and
but a few of the shop doors unbarred, when he alighted in the stable yard of the
tavern, and made it his first business to order the mare four quarts of oats. His
second duty, of course, was to impart Mr. Higginbotham's catastrophe to the
hostler. He deemed it advisable, however, not to be too positive as to the date of
the direful fact, and also to be uncertain whether it were perpetrated by an
Irishman and a mulatto, or by the son of Erin alone. Neither did he profess to
relate it on his own authority, or that of any one person; but mentioned it as
a report generally diffused.
The story ran through the town like fire among girdled trees, and became so
much the universal talk that nobody could tell whence it had originated.
Mr. Higginbotham was as well known at Parker's Falls as any citizen of the place,
being part owner of the slitting mill, and a considerable stockholder in the
cotton factories. The inhabitants felt their own prosperity interested in his
fate. Such was the excitement, that the Parker's Falls Gazette anticipated its
regular day of publication, and came out with half a form of blank paper and
a column of double pica emphasized with capitals, and headed Horrid Murder Of
Mr. Higginbotham! Among other dreadful details, the printed account described the
mark of the cord round the dead man's neck, and stated the number of thousand
dollars of which he had been robbed; there was much pathos also about the
affliction of his niece, who had gone from one fainting fit to another, ever since
her uncle was found hanging on the St. Michael's pear-tree with his pockets inside
out. The village poet likewise commemorated the young lady's grief in seventeen
stanzas of a ballad. The selectmen held a meeting, and, in consideration of
Mr. Higginbotham's claims on the town, determined to issue handbills, offering
a reward of five hundred dollars for the apprehension of his murderers, and the
recovery of the stolen property.
Meanwhile the whole population of Parker's Falls, consisting of shopkeepers,
mistresses of boarding-houses, factory girls, millmen, and schoolboys, rushed into
the street and kept up such a terrible loquacity as more than compensated for the
silence of the cotton machines, which refrained from their usual din out of
respect to the deceased. Had Mr. Higginbotham cared about posthumous renown, his
untimely ghost would have exulted in this tumult. Our friend Dominicus, in his
vanity of heart, forgot his intended precautions, and mounting on the town pump,
announced himself as the bearer of the authentic intelligence which had caused so
wonderful a sensation. He immediately became the great man of the moment, and had
just begun a new edition of the narrative, with a voice like a field preacher,
when the mail stage drove into the village street. It had travelled all night, and
must have shifted horses at Kimballton, at three in the morning.
"Now we shall hear all the particulars," shouted the crowd.
The coach rumbled up to the piazza of the tavern, followed by a thousand
people; for if any man had been minding his own business till then, he now left it
at sixes and sevens, to hear the news. The pedlar, foremost in the race,
discovered two passengers, both of whom had been startled from a comfortable nap
to find themselves in the centre of a mob. Every man assailing them with separate
questions, all propounded at once, the couple were struck speechless, though one
was a lawyer and the other a young lady.
"Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham! Tell us the particulars about old
Mr. Higginbotham!" bawled the mob. "What is the coroner's verdict? Are the
murderers apprehended? Is Mr. Higginbotham's niece come out of her fainting fits?
Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham!!"
The coachman said not a word, except to swear awfully at the hostler for not
bringing him a fresh team of horses. The lawyer inside had generally his wits
about him even when asleep; the first thing he did, after learning the cause of
the excitement, was to produce a large, red pocketbook. Meantime Dominicus Pike,
being an extremely polite young man, and also suspecting that a female tongue
would tell the story as glibly as a lawyer's, had handed the lady out of the
coach. She was a fine, smart girl, now wide awake and bright as a button, and had
such a sweet pretty mouth, that Dominicus would almost as lief have heard a love
tale from it as a tale of murder.
"Gentlemen and ladies," said the lawyer to the shopkeepers, the millmen, and
the factory girls, "I can assure you that some unaccountable mistake, or, more
probably, a wilful falsehood, maliciously contrived to injure Mr. Higginbotham's
credit, has excited this singular uproar. We passed through Kimballton at three
o'clock this morning, and most certainly should have been informed of the murder
had any been perpetrated. But I have proof nearly as strong as Mr. Higginbotham's
own oral testimony, in the negative. Here is a note relating to a suit of his in
the Connecticut courts, which was delivered me from that gentleman himself. I find
it dated at ten o'clock last evening."
So saying, the lawyer exhibited the date and signature of the note, which
irrefragably proved, either that this perverse Mr. Higginbotham was alive when he
wrote it, or - as some deemed the more probable case, of two doubtful ones - that
he was so absorbed in worldly business as to continue to transact it even after
his death. But unexpected evidence was forthcoming. The young lady, after
listening to the pedlar's explanation, merely seized a moment to smooth her gown
and put her curls in order, and then appeared at the tavern door, making a modest
signal to be heard.
"Good people," said she, "I am Mr. Higginbotham's niece."
A wondering murmur passed through the crowd on beholding her so rosy and
bright; that same unhappy niece, whom they had supposed, on the authority of the
Parker's Falls Gazette, to be lying at death's door in a fainting fit. But some
shrewd fellows had doubted, all along, whether a young lady would be quite so
desperate at the hanging of a rich old uncle.
"You see," continued Miss Higginbotham, with a smile, "that this strange story
is quite unfounded as to myself; and I believe I may affirm it to be equally so in
regard to my dear uncle Higginbotham. He has the kindness to give me a home in his
house, though I contribute to my own support by teaching a school. I left
Kimballton this morning to spend the vacation of commencement week with a friend,
about five miles from Parker's Falls. My generous uncle, when he heard me on the
stairs, called me to his bedside, and gave me two dollars and fifty cents to pay
my stage fare, and another dollar for my extra expenses. He then laid his
pocketbook under his pillow, shook hands with me, and advised me to take some
biscuit in my bag, instead of breakfasting on the road. I feel confident,
therefore, that I left my beloved relative alive, and trust that I shall find him
so on my return."
The young lady courtesied at the close of her speech, which was so sensible
and well worded, and delivered with such grace and propriety, that everybody
thought her fit to be preceptress of the best academy in the State. But a stranger
would have supposed that Mr. Higginbotham was an object of abhorrence at Parker's
Falls, and that a thanksgiving had been proclaimed for his murder; so excessive
was the wrath of the inhabitants on learning their mistake. The millmen resolved
to bestow public honors on Dominicus Pike, only hesitating whether to tar and
feather him, ride him on a rail, or refresh him with an ablution at the town pump,
on the top of which he had declared himself the bearer of the news. The selectmen,
by advice of the lawyer, spoke of prosecuting him for a misdemeanor, in
circulating unfounded reports, to the great disturbance of the peace of the
Commonwealth. Nothing saved Dominicus, either from mob law or a court of justice,
but an eloquent appeal made by the young lady in his behalf. Addressing a few
words of heartfelt gratitude to his benefactress, he mounted the green cart and
rode out of town, under a discharge of artillery from the school-boys, who found
plenty of ammunition in the neighboring clay-pits and mud holes. As he turned his
head to exchange a farewell glance with Mr. Higginbotham's niece, a ball, of the
consistence of hasty pudding, hit him slap in the mouth, giving him a most grim
aspect. His whole person was so bespattered with the like filthy missiles, that he
had almost a mind to ride back, and supplicate for the threatened ablution at the
town pump; for, though not meant in kindness, it would now have been a deed of
charity.
However, the sun shone bright on poor Dominicus, and the mud, an emblem of all
stains of undeserved opprobrium, was easily brushed off when dry. Being a funny
rogue, his heart soon cheered up; nor could he refrain from a hearty laugh at the
uproar which his story had excited. The handbills of the selectmen would cause the
commitment of all the vagabonds in the State; the paragraph in the Parker's Falls
Gazette would be reprinted from Maine to Florida, and perhaps form an item in the
London newspapers; and many a miser would tremble for his money bags and life, on
learning the catastrophe of Mr. Higginbotham. The pedlar meditated with much
fervor on the charms of the young schoolmistress, and swore that Daniel Webster
never spoke nor looked so like an angel as Miss Higginbotham, while defending him
from the wrathful populace at Parker's Falls.
Dominicus was now on the Kimballton turnpike, having all along determined to
visit that place, though business had drawn him out of the most direct road from
Morristown. As he approached the scene of the supposed murder, he continued to
revolve the circumstances in his mind, and was astonished at the aspect which the
whole case assumed. Had nothing occurred to corroborate the story of the first
traveller, it might now have been considered as a hoax; but the yellow man was
evidently acquainted either with the report or the fact; and there was a mystery
in his dismayed and guilty look on being abruptly questioned. When, to this
singular combination of incidents, it was added that the rumor tallied exactly
with Mr. Higginbotham's character and habits of life; and that he had an orchard,
and a St. Michael's pear-tree, near which he always passed at nightfall: the
circumstantial evidence appeared so strong that Dominicus doubted whether the
autograph produced by the lawyer, or even the niece's direct testimony, ought to
be equivalent. Making cautious inquiries along the road, the pedlar further
learned that Mr. Higginbotham had in his service an Irishman of doubtful
character, whom he had hired without a recommendation, on the score of economy.
"May I be hanged myself," exclaimed Dominicus Pike aloud, on reaching the top
of a lonely hill, "if I'll believe old Higginbotham is unhanged till I see him
with my own eyes, and hear it from his own mouth! And as he's a real shaver, I'll
have the minister or some other responsible man for an indorser."
It was growing dusk when he reached the toll-house on Kimballton turnpike,
about a quarter of a mile from the village of this name. His little mare was fast
bringing him up with a man on horseback, who trotted through the gate a few rods
in advance of him, nodded to the toll-gatherer, and kept on towards the village.
Dominicus was acquainted with the tollman, and, while making change, the usual
remarks on the weather passed between them.
"I suppose," said the pedlar, throwing back his whiplash, to bring it down
like a feather on the mare's flank, "you have not seen anything of old
Mr. Higginbotham within a day or two?"
"Yes," answered the toll-gatherer. "He passed the gate just before you drove
up, and yonder he rides now, if you can see him through the dusk. He's been to
Woodfield this afternoon, attending a sheriff's sale there. The old man generally
shakes hands and has a little chat with me; but to-night, he nodded, - as if to
say, 'Charge my toll,' and jogged on; for wherever he goes, he must always be at
home by eight o'clock."
"So they tell me," said Dominicus.
"I never saw a man look so yellow and thin as the squire does," continued the
toll-gatherer. "Says I to myself, to-night, he's more like a ghost or an old mummy
than good flesh and blood."
The pedlar strained his eyes through the twilight, and could just discern the
horseman now far ahead on the village road. He seemed to recognize the rear of
Mr. Higginbotham; but through the evening shadows, and amid the dust from the
horse's feet, the figure appeared dim and unsubstantial; as if the shape of the
mysterious old man were faintly moulded of darkness and gray light. Dominicus
shivered.
"Mr. Higginbotham has come back from the other world, by way of the Kimballton
turnpike," thought he.
He shook the reins and rode forward, keeping about the same distance in the
rear of the gray old shadow, till the latter was concealed by a bend of the road.
On reaching this point, the pedlar no longer saw the man on horseback, but found
himself at the head of the village street, not far from a number of stores and two
taverns, clustered round the meeting-house steeple. On his left were a stone wall
and a gate, the boundary of a woodlot, beyond which lay an orchard, farther still,
a mowing field, and last of all, a house. These were the premises of
Mr. Higginbotham, whose dwelling stood beside the old highway, but had been left
in the background by the Kimballton turnpike. Dominicus knew the place; and the
little mare stopped short by instinct; for he was not conscious of tightening the
reins.
"For the soul of me, I cannot get by this gate!" said he, trembling. "I never
shall be my own man again, till I see whether Mr. Higginbotham is hanging on the
St. Michael's pear-tree!"
He leaped from the cart, gave the rein a turn round the gate post, and ran
along the green path of the wood-lot as if Old Nick were chasing behind. Just then
the village clock tolled eight, and as each deep stroke fell, Dominicus gave
a fresh bound and flew faster than before, till, dim in the solitary centre of the
orchard, he saw the fated pear-tree. One great branch stretched from the old
contorted trunk across the path, and threw the darkest shadow on that one spot.
But something seemed to struggle beneath the branch!
The pedlar had never pretended to more courage than befits a man of peaceful
occupation, nor could he account for his valor on this awful emergency. Certain it
is, however, that he rushed forward, prostrated a sturdy Irishman with the butt
end of his whip, and found - not indeed hanging on the St. Michael's pear-tree,
but trembling beneath it, with a halter round his neck - the old, identical
Mr. Higginbotham!
"Mr. Higginbotham," said Dominicus tremulously, "you're an honest man, and
I'll take your word for it. Have you been hanged or not?"
If the riddle be not already guessed, a few words will explain the simple
machinery by which this "coming event" was made to "cast its shadow before." Three
men had plotted the robbery and murder of Mr. Higginbotham; two of them,
successively, lost courage and fled, each delaying the crime one night by their
disappearance; the third was in the act of perpetration, when a champion, blindly
obeying the call of fate, like the heroes of old romance, appeared in the person
of Dominicus Pike.
It only remains to say, that Mr. Higginbotham took the pedlar into high favor,
sanctioned his addresses to the pretty schoolmistress, and settled his whole
property on their children, allowing themselves the interest. In due time, the old
gentleman capped the climax of his favors, by dying a Christian death, in bed,
since which melancholy event Dominicus Pike has removed from Kimballton, and
established a large tobacco manufactory in my native village.
"New England Magazine", 1834
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