minus million in quaternions, and is used by surveyors to determine the
logarithm of the cube root. That is, its use has hitherto been forbidden
to the government surveyors on account of the uncertainty of the
formula. That, however, has been finally determined by Prof. Lipsius, of
Munich, and hereafter it may be applied to delicate calculations in
determining the altitude of mountains too lofty for ascent. Gentlemen, I
should like to ask you in to take a night-cap with me, but, under the
circumstances, you understand.... Doctor, I don’t think we shall need
you to-night. Good-evening, friends.”
The Doctor and the Head Burgess ruminated over this new acquisition to
their stock of knowledge as they strolled on down the street. At last
the latter broke the silence and said, in a tone in which conviction
struggled with sleepiness:
“Doctor, I have often thought what a hard life those poor devils on the
mainland must have with their impassable mountains, and their railroads
that kill and mangle you if they get a millionth part of a cube root out
of the way, and the boundary-lines they are everlastingly quarreling
about. Why, here in Ausserland, see how simple it all is! We never have
any trouble about our boundary-lines. Where the land stops the water
begins, and where the land begins the water stops; and that’s all there
is to it!”
[Illustration]
And with these words, as the last puff of his pipe rose heavenward, the
Burgess dismissed the matter from his mind, and the Emperor’s
proclamation legitimizing the Third Figure of the Cotillion vanished
from his memory--and from that of all Ausserland--passing into oblivion
with those that had told of Ausserland’s change of nationality, of the
conscription of her exempt citizens, and of the death of the
great-grandmother of the hereditary Prince.
“SAMANTHA BOOM-DE-AY.”
It was a long, rough, sunlit stretch of stony turnpike that climbed
across the flanks of a mountain range in Maine, and skirted a great
forest for many miles, on its way to an upland farming-country near the
Canada border.
As you ascended this road, on your right hand was a continuous wall of
dull-hued evergreens, straggly pines and cedars, crowded closely and
rising high above a thick underbrush. Behind this lay the vast,
mysterious, silent wilderness. Here and there the emergence of a foamy,
rushing river, or the entrance of a narrow corduroy road or trail,
afforded a glimpse into its depths, and then you saw the slopes of hills
and valleys, clad ever in one smoky, bluish veil of fir and pine.
On the other hand, where you could see through the roadside brush, you
looked down the mountain slope to the plains below, where the brawling
mountain streams quieted down into pleasant water-courses; where broad
patches of meadow land and wheat field spread out from edges of the
woods, and where, far, far off, clusters of farm-houses, and further
yet, towns and villages, sent their smoke up above the hazy horizon.
It was a road of so much variety and sweep of view, as it kept its
course along the boundary of the forest’s dateless antiquity, and yet in
full view of the prosperous outposts of a well-established civilization,
that the most calloused traveler might have been expected to look about
him and take an interest in his surroundings. But the three people who
drove slowly up this hill one August afternoon might have been passing
through a tunnel for all the attention they paid to the shifting scene.
Their vehicle was a farm-wagon; a fine, fresh-painted Concord wagon. The
horses that drew it were large, sleek, and a little too fat. A
comfortable country prosperity appeared in the whole outfit; and,
although the raiment of the three travelers was unfashionably plain,
they all three had an aspect of robust health and physical well-being,
which was much at variance with their dismal countenances--for the
middle-aged man who was driving looked sheepish and embarrassed; the
good-looking, sturdy young fellow by his side was clearly in a state of
frank, undisguised dejection, and the black-garbed woman, who sat behind
in a splint-bottomed chair, had the extra-hard granite expression of the
New England woman who particularly disapproves of something; whether
that something be the destruction of her life’s best hopes or her
neighbor’s method of making pie.
For mile after mile they jogged along in silence. Occasionally the elder
man would make some brief and commonplace remark in a tentative way, as
though to start a conversation. To these feeble attempts the young man
made no response whatever. The woman in black sometimes nodded and
sometimes said “Yes?” with a rising inflection, which is a form of
torture invented and much practiced in the New England States.
[Illustration]
It was late in the afternoon when a noise behind and below them made
them all glance round. The middle-aged man drew his horses to one side;
and, in a cloud of dust, a big, old-fashioned stage of a dull-red color
overtook them and lumbered on its way, the two drivers interchanging
careless nods.
The woman did not alter her rigid attitude, and kept her eyes cast down;
but the passing of the stage awakened a noticeable interest in the two
men on the front seat. The elder gazed with surprise and curiosity at
the freight that the top of the stage-coach bore--three or four
traveling trunks of unusual size, shape and color, clamped with iron and
studded with heavy nails.
“Be them trunks?” he inquired, staring open-mouthed at the sight. “I
never seen trunks like them before.”
[Illustration]
Neither of his companions answered him; but a curious new expression
came into the young man’s face. He sat up straight for the first time;
and, as the wagon drew back into the narrow road, he began to whistle
softly and melodiously.
* * * * *
When Samantha Spaulding was left a widow with a little boy, she got, as
one of her neighbors expressed it, “more politeness than pity.” In
truth, in so far as the condition has any luck about it, Samantha was
lucky in her widowhood. She was a young widow, and a well-to-do widow.
Old man Spaulding had been a good provider and a good husband; but he
was much older than his wife, and had not particularly engaged her
affections. Now that he was dead, after some eighteen months of married
life, and had left her one of the two best farms in the county,
everybody supposed that Mis’ Spaulding would marry Reuben Pett, who
owned the other best farm, besides a saw-mill and a stage-route. That
is, everybody thought so, except Samantha and Pett. They calmly kept on
in their individual ways, and showed no inclination to join their two
properties, though these throve and waxed more and more valuable year by
year. They were good friends, however. Reuben Pett was a sagacious
counselor, and a prudent man of affairs; and when Samantha’s boy became
old enough to work, he was apprenticed to Mr. Pett, to the end that he
might some day take charge of the saw-mill business, which his mother
stood ready to buy for him.
[Illustration]
But the youthful Baxter Spaulding had not reached the age of twenty when
he cast down his mother’s hopes in utter ruin by coming home from a
business trip to Augusta and announcing that he was going to marry, and
that the bride of his choice was a young lady of the variety stage who
danced for a living, her specialty being known as “hitch-and-kick.”
Now, this may not seem, to you who read this, quite a complete, perfect
and unimprovable thing in the way of the abomination of desolation; but
then you must remember that you were not born and raised in a far corner
of the Maine hills, and that you probably have so frequently seen
play-actoress-women of all sorts that the mere idea of them has ceased
to give you cold creeps down your back. And to Samantha Spaulding the
whole theatrical system, from the Tragic Muse to the “hitch-and-kick
artiste,” was conceived in sin and born in iniquity; and what her son
proposed to do was to her no whit better than forgery, arson, or any
other ungodliness. To you of a less distinctively Aroostook code of
morals, I may say that the enchainer of young Spaulding’s heart was
quite as good a little girl in her morals and her manners as you need
want to find on the stage or off it; and “hitch-and-kick” dancing was to
her only a matter of business, as serio-comic singing had been to her
mother, as playing Harlequin had been to her father, and as
grinning through a horse-collar had been to her grandfather and
great-grandfather, famous old English clowns in their day, one of whom
had been a partner of Grimaldi. She made her living, it is true, by
traveling around the country singing a song called “Ta-ra-ra
Boom-de-ay,” which required a great deal of high-kicking for its just
and full artistic expression; but then, it should be remembered, it was
the way she had always made her living, and her mother’s living, too,
since the old lady lost her serio-comic voice. And as her mother had
taught her all she knew about dancing, and as she and her mother had
hardly been separated for an hour since she was out of her cradle,
Little Betty Billington looked on her profession, as you well may
imagine, with eyes quite different from those with which Mrs. Samantha
Spaulding regarded it. It was a lop-sided contest that ensued, and that
lasted for months. On one side were Baxter and his Betty and Betty’s
mama--after that good lady got over her natural objections to having
her daughter marry “out of the profession.” On the other side was
Samantha, determined enough to be a match for all three of them. Mr.
Reuben Pett hovered on the outskirts, asking only peace.
At last he was dragged into the fight. Baxter Spaulding went to Bangor,
where his lady’s company happened to be playing, with the avowed
intention of wedding Betty out of hand. When his mother found it out,
she took Reuben Pett and her boy’s apprenticeship-indenture to Bangor
with her, caught the youngster ere the deed was done, and, having the
majesty of the law behind her, she was taking her helpless captive home
on this particular August afternoon. He was on the front seat of the
wagon, Samantha was on the splint-bottomed chair, and Reuben Pett was
driving.
* * * * *
It was a two-days’ drive from the railroad station at Byram’s Pond
around the spur of the mountain to their home. The bi-weekly stage did
it in a day; but it was unwonted traveling for Mr. Pett’s easy-going
team. Therefore, the three travelers put up at Canada Jake’s camp; so
called, though it was only on the edge of the wilderness, because it was
what Maine people generally mean when they talk of a “camp”--a large
shanty of rough, unpainted planks, with a kitchen and eating-room below,
and rudely partitioned sleeping-rooms in the upper story. It stood by
the roadside, and served the purpose of an inn.
Canada Jake was lounging in the doorway as they came up, squat,
bullet-headed and bead-eyed; a very ordinary specimen of mean French
Canadian. He welcomed them in as if he were conferring a favor upon
them, fed them upon black, fried meat and soggy, boiled potatos, and
later on bestowed them in three wretched enclosures overhead.
He himself staid awake until the sound of two bass and one treble snore
penetrated the thin partition planks; and then he stole softly up the
ladder that served for stairway, and slipped into the moonlit little
room where Baxter Spaulding was lying on a cot-bed six inches too short
for him. Putting his finger upon his lips, he whispered to the wakeful
youth:
“Sh-h-h-h-h-h! You got you’ boots on?”
“No,” said Baxter softly.
“Come wiz me and don’ make no noise!”
And the next thing that Baxter Spaulding knew, he was outside of the
house, behind the wood-pile, holding a slight but charming figure in his
arms, and saying:
“Why, Betty! why, Betty!” in a dazed sort of way, while a fat and
motherly lady near by stood shaking with silent sobs, like a jelly-fish
convulsed with sympathy and affection.
“We ’eaded you off in the stage-coach!” was all she said.
* * * * *
The next morning Mr. Reuben Pett was called out of the land of dreams by
a familiar feminine voice from the next room.
“Reuben Pett!” it said; “_where is Baxter?_”
“Baxter!” yelled Mr. Pett; “your ma wants yer!”
[Illustration]
But Baxter came not. His room was empty. Mr. Pett descended and found
his host out by the wood-pile, splitting kindling. Canada Jake had seen
nothing whatever of the young man. He opined that the youth most ’ave
got up airlee, go feeshin’.
Reuben Pett went back and reported to Samantha Spaulding through the
door. Samantha’s voice came back to him as a voice from the bottom
sub-cellar of abysmal gloom.
“Reuben,” she said; “them women have been here!”
“Why, Samantha!” he said; “it ain’t possible!”
“I heard them last night,” returned Samantha, in tones of conviction. “I
know, now. I did. I thought then I was dreamin’.”
“Most likely you was, too!” said Mr. Pett, encouragingly.
“Well, I wa’n’t!” rejoined Mrs. Spaulding, with a suddenness and an
acerbity that made her listener jump. “_They’ve stole my clothes!_”
“Whatever do you mean, Samantha?” roared Reuben Pett.
“I mean,” said Mrs. Spaulding, in a tone that left no doubt whatever
that what she did mean she meant very hard; “I mean that that hussy has
been here in the night, and has took every stitch and string of my
clothing, and ain’t left me so much as a button-hole,
except--except--except--”
“Except what?” demanded Reuben, in stark amazement.
“Except that there idolatrous flounced frock the shameless critter doos
her stage-dancing in!”
Mr. Pett might, perhaps, have offered appropriate condolences on this
bereavement had not a thought struck him which made him scramble down
the ladder again and hasten to the woodshed, where he had put up his
team the night before. The team was gone--the fat horses and fresh
painted wagon, and the tracks led back down the road up which they had
ridden the day before.
Once more Mr. Pett climbed the ladder; but when he announced his loss he
was met, to his astonishment, with severity instead of with sympathy.
“I don’t care, Reuben Pett,” Samantha spoke through the door; “if you’ve
lost ten horses and nineteen wagons. You got to hitch some kind of a
critter to _suthin’_, for we’re goin’ to ketch them people to-day or my
name’s not Samantha Spaulding.”
“But Law Sakes Alive, Samantha!” expostulated Mr. Pett; “you ain’t goin’
to wear no circus clothes, be ye?”
“You go hunt a team, Mr. Pett,” returned his companion, tartly; “I know
my own business.”
[Illustration]
Mr. Pett remonstrated. He pointed out that there was neither horse nor
vehicle to be had in the neighborhood, and that pursuit was practically
hopeless in view of the start which the runaways had. But Mrs. Spaulding
was obdurate with an obduracy that made the heart of Reuben Pett creep
into his boots. After ten minutes of vain combating, he saw, beyond a
doubt, that the chase would have to continue even if it were to be
carried on astraddle a pair of confiscated cows. Having learned that
much, he went drearily down again to discuss the situation with Canada
Pete. Canada Pete was indisposed to be of the slightest assistance,
until Mr. Pett reminded him of the danger of the law in which he stands
who aids a runaway apprentice in his flight. After that, the sulky
Canadian awoke to a new and anxious interest; and, before long, he
remembered that a lumberer who lived “a piece” up the road had a bit of
meadow-land reclaimed from the forest, and sometimes kept an old horse
in it. It was a horse, however, that had always positively refused to go
under saddle, so that a new complication barred the way, until suddenly
the swarthy face of the _habitant_ lit up with a joyful, white-toothed
grin.
“My old calèche zat I bring from Canada! I let you have her, hey? You
come wiz me!”
And Canada Pete led the way through the underbrush to a bit of a
clearing near his house, where were accumulated many years’ deposits of
household rubbish; and here, in a desert of tin-cans and broken bottles
and crockery, stood the oldest of all old calashes.
There are calashes and calashes, but the calash or calèche of Canada is
practically of one type. It is a high-hung, tilting chaise, with a
commodious back seat and a capacious hood, and with an absurd, narrow,
cushioned bar in front for the driver to sit on. It is a
startling-looking vehicle in its mildest form, and when you gaze upon a
calash for the first time you will probably wonder whether, if a stray
boy should catch on behind, the shafts would not fly up into the air,
bearing the horse between them. Canada Pete’s calash had evidently stood
long a monument of decay, yet being of sturdy and simple construction,
it showed distinct signs of life when Pete seized its curved shafts and
ran it backward and forward to prove that the wheels could still revolve
and the great hood still nod and sway like a real calash in commission.
It was ragged, it was rusty, it was water-soaked and weather-beaten,
blistered and stained; but it hung together, and bobbed along behind
Canada Pete, lurching and rickety, but still a vehicle, and entitled to
rank as such.
[Illustration]
The calash was taken into Pete’s back-yard; and then, after a brief and
energetic campaign, Pete secured the horse, which was a very good match
for the calash. He was an old horse, and he had the spring-halt. He held
his long ewe-neck to one side, being blind in one eye; and this gave him
the coquettish appearance of a mincing old maid. A little polka step,
which he affected with his fore-feet, served to carry out this idea.
Also, he had been feeding on grass for a whole Summer, and his spirits
were those of the young lambkin that gambols in the mead. He was happy,
and he wanted to make others happy, although he did not seem always to
know the right way to go about it. When Mr. Pett and Canada Pete had
got this animal harnessed up with odds and ends of rope and leather,
they sat down and wiped their brows. Then Mr. Pett started off to notify
Mrs. Samantha Spaulding.
Mr. Pett was a man unused to feminine society, except such as he had
grown up with from early childhood, and he was of a naturally modest,
even bashful disposition. It is not surprising, therefore, that he was
startled when, on re-entering the living-room of Canada Pete’s camp, he
found himself face to face with a strange lady, and a lady, at that, of
a strangeness that he had never conceived of before. She wore upon her
head a preposterously tall bonnet, or at least a towering structure that
seemed to be intended to serve the purpose of a bonnet. It reminded
him--except for its shininess and newness--of the hood of the calash;
indeed, it may have suggested itself vaguely to his memory that his
grandmother had worn a piece of head-gear something similar, though not
so shapely, which in very truth was nicknamed a “calash” from this
obvious resemblance. The lady’s shapely and generously feminine figure
was closely drawn into a waist of shining black satin, cut down in a V
on the neck, before and behind, and ornamented with very large sleeves
of a strange pattern. But her skirts--for they were voluminous beyond
numeration--were the wonder of her attire. Within fold after fold they
swathed a foamy mystery of innumerable gauzy white underpinnings. As Mr.
Pett’s abashed eye traveled down this marvel of costume it landed upon a
pair of black stockings, the feet of which appeared to be balanced
somewhat uncertainly in black satin slippers with queer high heels.
“Reuben Pett,” said the lady suddenly and with decision, “don’t you say
nothing! If you knew how them shoes was pinching me, you’d know what I
was goin’ through.”
Mr. Pett had to lean up against the door-post before recovering himself.
“Why, Samantha!” he said at last; “seems to me like you _had_ gone
through more or less.”
Here Mrs. Spaulding reached out in an irritation that carried her beyond
all speech, and boxed Mr. Pett’s ears. Then she drew back, startled at
her own act, but even more surprised at Mr. Pett’s reception of it. He
was neither surprised nor disconcerted. He leaned back against the
door-post and gazed on unperturbed.
“My!” he said; “Samantha, be them that play-actresses’ clo’es?”
Mrs. Spaulding nodded grimly.
“Well, all I’ve got to say, Samantha,” remarked Reuben Pett, as he
straightened himself up and started out to bring their chariot to the
door; “all I’ve got to say, and all I want to say, is that she must be a
mighty fine figure of a woman, and that you’re busting her seams.”
Down the old dusty road the old calash jiggled and juggled, “weaving”
most of the way in easy tacks down the sharp declivities. On the front
seat--or, rather, on the upholstered bar--sat Reuben Pett, squirming
uncomfortably, and every now and then trying to sit side-saddle fashion
for the sake of easier converse with his fair passenger. Mrs. Spaulding
occupied the back seat, lifted high above her driver by the tilt
[Illustration]
of the curious vehicle, which also served to make the white foundation
of her costume particularly visible, so that there were certain jolting
moments when she suggested a black-robed Venus rising from a snowy
foam-crest. At such moments Mr. Pett lost control of his horse to such
an extent that the animal actually danced and fairly turned his long
neck around as though it were set on a pivot. When such a crisis was
reached, Mrs. Spaulding would utter a shrill and startling “hi!” which
would cause the horse to stop suddenly, hurling Mr. Pett forward with
such force that he would have to grab his narrow perch to save his neck,
and for the next hundred yards or so of descent his attention would be
wholly concentrated upon his duties as driver--for the horse insisted
upon waltzing at the slightest shock to his nerves.
Mr. Pett’s tendency to turn around and stare should not be laid up
against him. For twenty years he had seen his neighbor, Mrs. Samantha
Spaulding, once, at least; perhaps twice or thrice; mayhap even six or
seven times a week; and yet, on this occasion, he had fair excuse for
looking over his shoulder now and then to assure himself that the fair
passenger at whose feet he--literally--sat, was indeed that very
Samantha of his twenty years’ knowledge. How was he, who was only a man,
and no ladies’ man at that, to understand that the local dressmaker and
the local habit of wearing wrinkly black alpaca and bombazine were to
blame for his never having known that his next door neighbor had a
superb bust and a gracious waist? How was he to know that the blindness
of his own eyes was alone accountable for his ignorance of the whiteness
of her teeth, and the shapeliness of the arms that peeped from the big,
old-fashioned sleeves? Samantha’s especial care upon her farm was her
well-appointed dairy, and it is well known that to some women work in
the spring-house imparts a delicate creaminess of complexion; but he was
no close observer, and how was he to know that that was the reason why
the little V in the front of Samantha’s black satin bodice melted so
softly into the fresh bright tint of her neck and chin? How, indeed,
was a man who had no better opportunities than Reuben Pett had enjoyed,
to understand that the pretty skirt-dancer dress, a dainty, fanciful
travesty of an old-time fashion, had only revealed and not created an
attractive and charming woman in his life-long friend and neighbor?
[Illustration]
Samantha was not thinking in the least of herself. She had accepted her
costume as something which she had no choice but to assume in the
exercise of an imperative duty. She wore it for conscience sake only,
just as any other New England martyr to her New England convictions of
right might have worn a mealsack or a suit of armor had circumstances
imposed such a necessity.
But when Reuben Pett had looked around three or four times, she grasped
her skirts in both hands and pushed them angrily down to their utmost
length. Then, with a true woman’s dislike of outraging pretty dress
material, she made a furtive experiment or two to see if her skirts
would not answer all the purposes of modesty without hanging wrong.
Perhaps she had a natural talent that way; at any rate, she found that
they would.
“Samantha,” said Reuben Pett, over his shoulder, “what under the sun
sense be there in chasin’ them two young fools up? If they want to
marry, why not let ’em marry? It’s natural for ’em to want to, and it’s
agin nature to stop ’em. May be it wouldn’t be sech a bad marriage,
after all. Now you look at it in the light of conscience--”
“_You_’re a nice hand to be advocating marriage, Reuben Pett,” said
Mrs. Spaulding; “you jest hurry up that horse and I’ll look out for the
light of conscience.”