But the little old man with a bag on his back was left out in the
dusk, and aunt Corinne and her party went into the tavern parlor. The
landlady brought a pair of candles in brass candlesticks, setting one
on each end of the mantel. Between them were snuffers on a snuffer-tray,
and a tall mass of paper roses under a glass case. The fireplace
was covered by a fireboard on which was pasted wallpaper like that
adorning the room. Grandma Padgett sat down in a rocking settee, and
Corinne and Bobaday on two of the chairs ranged in solemn rows along
the wall. They felt it would be presumption to pull those chairs an
inch out of line.
It was a very depressing room. Two funeral urns hung side by side,
done in India ink, and framed in chipped-off mahogany. Weeping
willows hung over the urns, and a weeping woman leaned on each. There
was also a picture of Napoleon in scarlet standing on the green rock
of St. Helena, holding a yellow three-cornered hat under his elbow.
The house had a fried-potato odor, to which aunt Corinne did not
object. She was hungry. But, besides this, the parlor enclosed a
dozen other scents; as if the essences of all the dinners served in
the house were sitting around invisible on the chairs. There was not
lacking even that stale cupboard smell which is the spirit of hunger
itself.
The landlady was very fat and red and also melancholy. She began
talking at once to Grandma Padgett about the loss of her children
whom the funeral urns commemorated, and Grandma Padgett sympathized
with her and tried to outdo her in sorrowful experiences. But this
was impossible; for the landlady had-lived through more ordeals than
anybody else in town, and her manner said plainly, that no passing
stranger should carry off her championship.
So she made the dismal room so doleful with her talk that aunt
Corinne began to feel terribly about life, and Robert Day wished he
had gone to the barn with Zene.
Then the supper-bell rung, and the landlady showed them into the big
bare dining-room where she forgot all her troubles in the clatter of
plates and cups. A company of men rushed from what was called the bar-room,
though its shelves and counter were empty of decanters and glasses.
They had the greater part of a long table to themselves, and Zene sat
among them. These men the landlady called the boarders: she placed
Grandma Padgett's family at the other end of the table; it seemed the
decorous thing to her that a strip of empty table should separate the
boarders and women-folks.
There were stacks of eatables, including mango stuffed with cabbage
and eggs pickled red in beet vinegar. All sorts of fruit butters and
preserves stood about in glass and earthen dishes. One end of the
table was an exact counterpart of the other, even to the stacks of
mighty bread-slices. Boiled cabbage and onions and thick corn-pone
with fried ham were there to afford a strong support through the
night's fast. Nothing was served in order: you helped yourself from
the dishes or let them alone at your pleasure. The landlord appeared
just as jolly as his wife was dismal. He sat at the other end of the
table and urged everybody with jokes to eat heartily; yet all this
profusion was not half so appetizing as some of Grandma Padgett's
fried chicken and toast would have been.
After supper Bobaday went out to the barn and saw a whole street of
horse-stalls, the farthest horse switching his tail in dim distance;
and such a mow of hay as impressed him with the advantages of travel.
A hostler was forking down hay for the evening's feeding, and Robert
climbed to his side, upon which the hostler good-naturedly took him
by the shoulders and let him slide down and alight upon the spongy
pile below. This would have been a delightful sensation had Bobaday
not bitten his tongue in the descent. But he liked it better than the
house where his aunt Corinne wandered uneasily up stairs which were
hollowed in the middle of each step, and along narrow passages where
bits of plaster had fallen off.
There was a dulcimer in the room aunt Corinne occupied with her
mother. She took the hammer and beat on its rusty wires some time
before going to bed. It tinkled a plea to her to let it alone, but
what little girl could look at the queer instrument and keep her
hands off it? The landlady said it was left there by a travelling
showman who could not pay his board. He hired the bar-room to give a
concert in, and pasted up written advertisements of his performance
in various parts of the town. He sent free tickets to the preacher
and schoolmaster, and the landlord's family went in for nothing.
Nobody else came, though he played on the flute and harmonium,
besides the dulcimer, and sang _Lilly Dale_, and _Roll on,
Silver Moon_, so touchingly that the landlady wiped her eyes at
their mere memory. As he had no money to pay stage-fare further, and
the flute and harmonium--a small bellows organ without legs--were
easier to carry than the dulcimer, he left it and trudged eastward.
And no one at that tavern could tell whether he and his instruments
had perished piecemeal along the way, or whether he had found crowded
houses and forgotten the old dulcimer in the tide of prosperity.
Grandma Padgett's party ate breakfast before day, by the light of a
candle covering its candlestick with a tallow glacier. It made only a
hole of shine in the general duskiness of the big dining-room. The
landlady bade them a pathetic good-by. She was sure there were
dangers ahead of them. The night stage had got in three hours late,
owing to a breakdown, and one calamity she said, is only the
forerunner of another.
Zene had driven ahead with the load. It was a foggy morning, and
drops of moisture hung to the carriage curtains. There was the
morning star yet trembling over the town. Aunt Corinne hugged her
wrap, and Bobaday stuck his hands deep in his pockets. But Grandma
sat erect and drove away undaunted and undamped. She merely searched
the inside of the carriage with her glasses, inquiring as a last
precaution:
“Have we left anything behind?”
“I got all my things,” said Robert. “And my gold dollar's in my
pocket.”
At this aunt Corinne arose and plunged into the carriage pocket on
her side.