MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Near a milestone, under the moonlight, crouched the figure of a woman,
huddled with her head against her knees, and careless hair falling to
the summer’s dust. Evan came upon this sight within a few miles of
Fallowfield. At first he was rather startled, for he had inherited
superstitious emotions from his mother, and the road was lone, the moon
full. He went up to her and spoke a gentle word, which provoked no
reply. He ventured to put his hand on her shoulder, continuing softly
to address her. She was flesh and blood. Evan stooped his head to catch
a whisper from her mouth, but nothing save a heavier fall of the breath
she took, as of one painfully waking, was heard.
A misery beyond our own is a wholesome picture for youth, and though we
may not for the moment compare the deep with the lower deep, we, if we
have a heart for outer sorrows, can forget ourselves in it. Evan had
just been accusing the heavens of conspiracy to disgrace him. Those
patient heavens had listened, as is their wont. They had viewed and had
not been disordered by his mental frenzies. It is certainly hard that
they do not come down to us, and condescend to tell us what they mean,
and be dumb-foundered by the perspicuity of our arguments—the argument,
for instance, that they have not fashioned us for the science of the
shears, and do yet impel us to wield them. Nevertheless, they to whom
mortal life has ceased to be a long matter perceive that our appeals
for conviction are answered, now and then very closely upon the call.
When we have cast off the scales of hope and fancy, and surrender our
claims on mad chance, it is given us to see that some plan is working
out: that the heavens, icy as they are to the pangs of our blood, have
been throughout speaking to our souls; and, according to the strength
there existing, we learn to comprehend them. But their language is an
element of Time, whom primarily we have to know.
Evan Harrington was young. He wished not to clothe the generation. What
was to the remainder of the exiled sons of Adam simply the brand of
expulsion from Paradise, was to him hell. In his agony, anything less
than an angel, soft-voiced in his path, would not have satisfied the
poor boy, and here was this wretched outcast, and instead of being
relieved, he was to act the reliever!
Striving to rouse the desolate creature, he shook her slightly. She now
raised her head with a slow, gradual motion, like that of a wax-work,
showing a white young face, tearless,—dreadfully drawn at the lips.
After gazing at him, she turned her head mechanically to her shoulder,
as to ask him why he touched her. He withdrew his hand, saying:
“Why are you here? Pardon me; I want, if possible, to help you.”
A light sprang in her eyes. She jumped from the stone, and ran forward
a step or two, with a gasp:
“Oh, my God! I want to go and drown myself.”
Evan lingered behind her till he saw her body sway, and in a fit of
trembling she half fell on his outstretched arm. He led her to the
stone, not knowing what on earth to do with her. There was no sign of a
house near; they were quite solitary; to all his questions she gave an
unintelligible moan. He had not the heart to leave her, so, taking a
sharp seat on a heap of flints, thus possibly furnishing future
occupation for one of his craftsmen, he waited, and amused himself by
marking out diagrams with his stick in the thick dust.
His thoughts were far away, when he heard, faintly uttered:
“Why do you stop here?”
“To help you.”
“Please don’t. Let me be. I can’t be helped.”
“My good creature,” said Evan, “it’s quite impossible that I should
leave you in this state. Tell me where you were going when your illness
seized you?”
“I was going,” she commenced vacantly, “to the sea—the water,” she
added, with a shivering lip.
The foolish youth asked her if she could be cold on such a night.
“No, I’m not cold,” she replied, drawing closer over her lap the ends
of a shawl which would in that period have been thought rather gaudy
for her station.
“You were going to Lymport?”
“Yes,—Lymport’s nearest, I think.”
“And why were you out travelling at this hour?”
She dropped her head, and began rocking to right and left.
While they talked the noise of waggon-wheels was heard approaching.
Evan went into the middle of the road, and beheld a covered waggon, and
a fellow whom he advanced to meet, plodding a little to the rear of the
horses. He proved kindly. He was a farmer’s man, he said, and was at
that moment employed in removing the furniture of the farmer’s son, who
had failed as a corn-chandler in Lymport, to Hillford, which he
expected to reach about morn. He answered Evan’s request that he would
afford the young woman conveyance as far as Fallowfield:
“Tak’ her in? That I will.
“She won’t hurt the harses,” he pursued, pointing his whip at the
vehicle: “there’s my mate, Garge Stoakes, he’s in there, snorin’ his
turn. Can’t you hear ’n asnorin’ thraugh the wheels? I can; I’ve been
laughin’! He do snore that loud—Garge do!”
Proceeding to inform Evan how George Stokes had snored in that
characteristic manner from boyhood, ever since he and George had slept
in a hayloft together; and how he, kept wakeful and driven to
distraction by George Stokes’ nose, had been occasionally compelled, in
sheer self-defence, madly to start up and hold that pertinacious alarum
in tight compression between thumb and forefinger; and how George
Stokes, thus severely handled, had burst his hold with a tremendous
snort, as big as a bull, and had invariably uttered the exclamation,
“Hulloa!—same to you, my lad!” and rolled over to snore as fresh as
ever;—all this with singular rustic comparisons, racy of the soil, and
in raw Hampshire dialect, the waggoner came to a halt opposite the
stone, and, while Evan strode to assist the girl, addressed himself to
the great task of arousing the sturdy sleeper and quieting his trumpet,
heard by all ears now that the accompaniment of the wheels was at an
end.
George, violently awakened, complained that it was before his time, to
which he was true; and was for going off again with exalted
contentment, though his heels had been tugged, and were dangling some
length out of the machine; but his comrade, with a determined blow of
the lungs, gave another valiant pull, and George Stokes was on his
legs, marvelling at the world and man. Evan had less difficulty with
the girl. She rose to meet him, put up her arms for him to clasp her
waist, whispering sharply in an inward breath: “What are you going to
do with me?” and indifferent to his verbal response, trustingly yielded
her limbs to his guidance. He could see blood on her bitten underlip;
as, with the help of the waggoner, he lifted her on the mattress,
backed by a portly bundle, which the sagacity of Mr. Stokes had
selected for his couch.
The waggoner cracked his whip, laughing at George Stokes, who yawned
and settled into a composed ploughswing, without asking questions;
apparently resolved to finish his nap on his legs.
“Warn’t he like that Myzepper chap, I see at the circus, bound athert
gray mare!” chuckled the waggoner. “So he’d ’a gone on, had ye ’a let
’n. No wulves waddn’t wake Garge till he’d slept it out. Then he’d say,
‘marnin’!’ to ’m. Are ye ’wake now, Garge?”
The admirable sleeper preferred to be a quiet butt, and the waggoner
leisurely exhausted the fun that was to be had out of him; returning to
it with a persistency that evinced more concentration than variety in
his mind. At last Evan said: “Your pace is rather slow. They’ll be shut
up in Fallowfield. I’ll go on ahead. You’ll find me at one of the
inns—the Green Dragon.”
In return for this speech, the waggoner favoured him with a stare,
followed by the exclamation:
“Oh, no! dang that!”
“Why, what’s the matter?” quoth Evan.
“You en’t goin’ to be off, for to leave me and Garge in the lurch
there, with that ther’ young woman, in that ther’ pickle!” returned the
waggoner.
Evan made an appeal to his reason, but finding that impregnable, he
pulled out his scanty purse to guarantee his sincerity with an offer of
pledgemoney. The waggoner waved it aside. He wanted no money, he said.
“Look heer,” he went on; “if you’re for a start, I tells ye plain, I
chucks that ther’ young woman int’ the road.”
Evan bade him not to be a brute.
“Nark and crop!” the waggoner doggedly ejaculated.
Very much surprised that a fellow who appeared sound at heart, should
threaten to behave so basely, Evan asked an explanation: upon which the
waggoner demanded to know what he had eyes for: and as this query
failed to enlighten the youth, he let him understand that he was a man
of family experience, and that it was easy to tell at a glance that the
complaint the young woman laboured under was one common to the
daughters of Eve. He added that, should an emergency arise, he, though
a family man, would be useless: that he always vacated the premises
while those incidental scenes were being enacted at home; and that for
him and George Stokes to be left alone with the young woman, why they
would be of no more service to her than a couple of babies newborn
themselves. He, for his part, he assured Evan, should take to his
heels, and relinquish waggon, and horses, and all; while George
probably would stand and gape; and the end of it would be, they would
all be had up for murder. He diverged from the alarming prospect, by a
renewal of the foregoing alternative to the gentleman who had
constituted himself the young woman’s protector. If he parted company
with them, they would immediately part company with the young woman,
whose condition was evident.
“Why, couldn’t you tall that?” said the waggoner, as Evan, tingling at
the ears, remained silent.
“I know nothing of such things,” he answered, hastily, like one hurt.
I have to repeat the statement, that he was a youth, and a modest one.
He felt unaccountably, unreasonably, but horridly, ashamed. The thought
of his actual position swamped the sickening disgust at tailordom.
Worse, then, might happen to us in this extraordinary world! There was
something more abhorrent than sitting with one’s legs crossed, publicly
stitching, and scoffed at! He called vehemently to the waggoner to whip
the horses, and hurry ahead into Fallowfield; but that worthy, whatever
might be his dire alarms, had a regular pace, that was conscious of no
spur: the reply of “All right!” satisfied him at least; and Evan’s
chaste sighs for the appearance of an assistant petticoat round a turn
of the road, were offered up duly, to the measure of the waggoner’s
steps.
Suddenly the waggoner came to a halt, and said “Blest if that Garge
bain’t a snorin’ on his pins!”
Evan lingered by him with some curiosity, while the waggoner thumped
his thigh to, “Yes he be! no he bain’t!” several times, in eager
hesitation.
“It’s a fellow calling from the downs,” said Evan.
“Ay, so!” responded the waggoner. “Dang’d if I didn’t think ’twere that
Garge of our’n. Hark awhile.”
At a repetition of the call, the waggoner stopped his team. After a few
minutes, a man appeared panting on the bank above them, down which he
ran precipitately, knocked against Evan, apologized with the little
breath that remained to him, and then held his hand as to entreat a
hearing. Evan thought him half-mad; the waggoner was about to imagine
him the victim of a midnight assault. He undeceived them by requesting,
in rather flowery terms, conveyance on the road and rest for his limbs.
It being explained to him that the waggon was already occupied, he
comforted himself aloud with the reflection that it was something to be
on the road again for one who had been belated, lost, and wandering
over the downs for the last six hours.
“Walcome to git in, when young woman gits out,” said the waggoner.
“I’ll gi’ ye my sleep on t’ Hillford.”
“Thanks, worthy friend,” returned the new comer. “The state of the case
is this—I’m happy to take from humankind whatsoever I can get. If this
gentleman will accept of my company, and my legs hold out, all will yet
be well.”
Though he did not wear a petticoat, Evan was not sorry to have him.
Next to the interposition of the Gods, we pray for human fellowship
when we are in a mess. So he mumbled politely, dropped with him a
little to the rear, and they all stepped out to the crack of the
waggoner’s whip.
“Rather a slow pace,” said Evan, feeling bound to converse.
“Six hours on the downs makes it extremely suitable to me,” rejoined
the stranger.
“You lost your way?”
“I did, sir. Yes; one does not court those desolate regions wittingly.
I am for life and society. The embraces of Diana do not agree with my
constitution. If classics there be who differ from me, I beg them to
take six hours on the downs alone with the moon, and the last prospect
of bread and cheese, and a chaste bed, seemingly utterly extinguished.
I am cured of my romance. Of course, when I say bread and cheese, I
speak figuratively. Food is implied.”
Evan stole a glance at his companion.
“Besides,” the other continued, with an inflexion of grandeur, “for a
man accustomed to his hunters, it is, you will confess, unpleasant—I
speak hypothetically—to be reduced to his legs to that extent that it
strikes him shrewdly he will run them into stumps.”
The stranger laughed.
The fair lady of the night illumined his face, like one who recognized
a subject. Evan thought he knew the voice. A curious struggle therein
between native facetiousness and an attempt at dignity, appeared to
Evan not unfamiliar; and the egregious failure of ambition and triumph
of the instinct, helped him to join the stranger in his mirth.
“Jack Raikes?” he said: “surely?”
“The man!” it was answered to him. “But you? and near our old
school—Viscount Harrington? These marvels occur, you see—we meet again
by night.”
Evan, with little gratification at the meeting, fell into their former
comradeship; tickled by a recollection of his old schoolfellow’s
India-rubber mind.
Mr. Raikes stood about a head under him. He had extremely mobile
features; thick, flexible eyebrows; a loose, voluble mouth; a
ridiculous figure on a dandified foot. He represented to you one who
was rehearsing a part he wished to act before the world, and was not
aware that he took the world into his confidence.
How he had come there his elastic tongue explained in tropes and puns
and lines of dramatic verse. His patrimony spent, he at once believed
himself an actor, and he was hissed off the stage of a provincial
theatre.
“Ruined, the last ignominy endured, I fled from the gay vistas of the
Bench—for they live who would thither lead me! and determined, the day
before the yesterday—what think’st thou? why to go boldly, and offer
myself as Adlatus to blessed old Cudford! Yes! a little Latin is all
that remains to me, and I resolved, like the man I am, to turn, hic,
hac, hoc, into bread and cheese, and beer: Impute nought foreign to me,
in the matter of pride.”
“Usher in our old school—poor old Jack!” exclaimed Evan.
“Lieutenant in the Cudford Academy!” the latter rejoined. “I walked the
distance from London. I had my interview with the respected principal.
He gave me of mutton nearest the bone, which, they say, is sweetest;
and on sweet things you should not regale in excess. Endymion watched
the sheep that bred that mutton! He gave me the thin beer of our
boyhood, that I might the more soberly state my mission. That beer, my
friend, was brewed by one who wished to form a study for pantomimic
masks. He listened with the gravity which is all his own to the recital
of my career; he pleasantly compared me to Phaethon, congratulated the
river Thames at my not setting it on fire in my rapid descent, and
extended to me the three fingers of affectionate farewell. ‘You an
usher, a rearer of youth, Mr. Raikes? Oh, no! Oh, no!’ That was all I
could get out of him. ’Gad! he might have seen that I didn’t joke with
the mutton-bone. If I winced at the beer it was imperceptible. Now a
man who can do that is what I call a man in earnest.”
“You’ve just come from Cudford?” said Evan.
“Short is the tale, though long the way, friend Harrington. From Bodley
is ten miles to Beckley. I walked them. From Beckley is fifteen miles
to Fallowfield. Them I was traversing, when, lo! near sweet eventide a
fair horsewoman riding with her groom at her horse’s heels. ‘Lady,’
says I, addressing her, as much out of the style of the needy as
possible, ‘will you condescend to direct me to Fallowfield?’—‘Are you
going to the match?’ says she. I answered boldly that I was. ‘Beckley’s
in,’ says she, ‘and you’ll be in time to see them out, if you cut
across the downs there.’ I lifted my hat—a desperate measure, for the
brim won’t bear much—but honour to women though we perish. She bowed: I
cut across the downs. In fine, Harrington, old boy, I’ve been wandering
among those downs for the last seven or eight hours. I was on the point
of turning my back on the road for the twentieth time, I believe when I
heard your welcome vehicular music, and hailed you; and I ask you,
isn’t it luck for a fellow who hasn’t got a penny in his pocket, and is
as hungry as five hundred hunters, to drop on an old friend like this?”
Evan answered with the question:
“Where was it you said you met the young lady?”
“In the first place, O Amadis! I never said she was young. You’re on
the scent, I see.”
Nursing the fresh image of his darling in his heart’s recesses, Evan,
as they entered Fallowfield, laid the state of his purse before Jack,
and earned anew the epithet of Amadis, when it came to be told that the
occupant of the waggon was likewise one of its pensioners.
Sleep had long held its reign in Fallowfield. Nevertheless, Mr. Raikes,
though blind windows alone looked on him, and nought foreign was to be
imputed to him in the matter of pride, had become exceedingly
solicitous concerning his presentation to the inhabitants of that quiet
little country town; and while Evan and the waggoner consulted—the
former with regard to the chances of procuring beds and supper, the
latter as to his prospect of beer and a comfortable riddance of the
feminine burden weighing on them all—Mr. Raikes was engaged in
persuading his hat to assume something of the gentlemanly polish of its
youth, and might have been observed now and then furtively catching up
a leg to be dusted. Ere the wheels of the waggon stopped he had gained
that ease of mind which the knowledge that you have done all a man may
do and circumstances warrant, establishes. Capacities conscious of
their limits may repose even proudly when they reach them; and, if Mr.
Raikes had not quite the air of one come out of a bandbox, he at least
proved to the discerning intelligence that he knew what sort of manner
befitted that happy occasion, and was enabled by the pains he had taken
to glance with a challenge at the sign of the hostelry, under which
they were now ranked, and from which, though the hour was late, and
Fallowfield a singularly somnolent little town, there issued signs of
life approaching to festivity.