|In those days I knew Hamilton only by the light in the south; for in
Hagar men said, “That light in the south is Hamilton,” as they would
say, “The sunrise in the east, the sunset in the west, the aurora in the
north,” illuminations that were native in their places. Hamilton was a
yellow glimmer on clear nights, and on cloudy nights a larger glow. It
crouched low in the sky, pale, secret, enticing.
Also I knew that Hamilton was twenty miles away, like Sheridan's ride.
How great and full of palaces and splendors that must be which shone so
far! How golden its streets, and jewelled its gates, like the Celestial
City, which is described in Revelations and “The Progress” in an
unmistakable manner, if not as one would wish in the matter of some
details. Yet to speak justly, “The Progress” was considered a passable
good story, though not up to the “Arabian Nights”; and Revelations had
its points, though any one could see the writer was mixed in his mind,
and upset probably by the oddness of his adventures, and rather stumped
how to relate them plainly.
But this story does not include the city of Hamilton, although touching
on the lights in the south. It left its mark upon me and cast a shadow
over many things that did not seem connected with it, being a kind of
introduction for me to what might be called the Greater Melancholies.
There are four roads that meet in Hagar: the Cattle Ridge, the Salem,
the Windless Mountain, and the Red Rock. The Salem is broad, level,
and straight; the Windless sweeps around the mountain, deep through
the pines, the jungle of other woods, and the gorge of the falling Mill
Stream; the Red Rock is a high, clean hill road, open and bare; the
Cattle Ridge Road comes down from highest of all, from far up on the
windy brows of the Ridge, and dips and courtesies all the way into
Hagar. Some time I would like to make more plain the nature and
influence of the Four Roads. But the adventure began on the Cattle Ridge
Road with a wide-armed chestnut tree, where certain red squirrels lived
who were lively and had thin tails. I went out over the road on a long
limb with Moses Durfey and Chub Leroy, seeing Mr. Cummings driving a
load of hay down from the Cattle Ridge: it seemed desirable to drop on
the hay when it passed beneath. Mr. Cummings was sleepy. He sat nodding
far down in front, while we lit softly on the crest and slid over
behind.
And next you are to know that Chub Leroy's feet came down thump on the
head of a monstrous man, half buried in the hay, who sat up and looked
around, vast, shaggy, black-bearded, smoking a corncob pipe, composed,
and quite ragged in his clothes.
“Humph!” he said mildly, and rubbed his head.
After a few moments looking us over, he pointed with his thumb through
the hay at Mr. Cummings, and leaned toward us and winked.
“Same as me,” he whispered, and shook all over his fatness, silently,
with the laughter and pleasure he was having inside.
It is a good thing in this world to have adventures, and it is only a
matter of looking around a bit in country or city. For each fellow
his quest is waiting at the street corner, or hides in the edge of the
woods, peering out of green shadows. On all highways it is to be met
with and is seldom far to seek--though no harm if it were--because the
world is populous with men and animals, and no moment like another. It
may be, if you drop on a hay-load, you will have a row with the driver,
or you will thump on the head such a free traveller as ours, vast,
shaggy, primeval, pipe-smoking, of wonderful fatness.
He seemed a sleepy, contented man, not in point of fact minding thumps
on the head. The hay-cart rolled on gently in the dust. Mr. Cummings
drowsed in front, unaware, and the Free Traveller drowsed behind,
smoking listlessly. The rest of us grew sleepy too and liked everything.
For it was odd but pleasant in a way to look down from the secrecy of
the hay on familiar things, on the village dooryards and the tops of
hats. We seemed to fall into silent league with the Free Traveller, to
be interested in things, but not anxious, observing the hats of labor
and ambition, careless of appearance, primitive, easy, seeing little
importance in where the cart might go, because anywhere was good enough.
Instead of turning east at the cross-roads, Mr. Cummings drove drowsily
ahead on the Windless Road, although the Cummings place is east on the
Salem; so that the hay was plainly going to the little pasture barn,
three miles off, all one to us, and better for the Free Traveller, as it
appeared after. But he was not interested then, being in a fair way to
sleep. We lay deep in the hay and looked up at the blue of the sky and
the white of the creeping clouds, till the pine trees closed suddenly
over the road, the cliffs of Windless Mountain on one side and the Mill
Stream on the other, deep under its bank. A strong south wind came under
the pines, skirting the corner of the mountain, hissed through the pine
needles, and rumpled the hay.
And there was a great smoke and blaze about us. “Humph!” said the Free
Traveller.
He went off the back of the hay-cart into the middle of the road, and we
too fell off immediately, each in his own way, on the pine needles.
Mr. Cummings came up over the top of the load with a tumult of mixed
language, and the horses ran away.
The great load sped down the green avenue smoking, crackling, blazing,
taking with it Mr. Cummings to unknown results, and leaving the Free
Traveller sitting up in the middle of the road and looking after it
mildly. He heaved himself up puffing. “There!” he said. “There goes my
pipe.”
“It's all your fault,” shouted Moses Durfey. “You shouldn't smoke on
hay-loads.”
“Maybe Mr. Cummings is a deader,” said Chub Leroy, thoughtfully.
The Free Traveller rubbed his leg.
“You're same as me. If he ain't dead he'll come back with a strap and
lam some of us. That ain't me. I'm going to light out.”
He slid under the rail and down the bank to the stream, handling himself
wonderfully for so weighty a man; for he seemed to accommodate himself
to obstacles like a jellyfish, and somehow to get around them. So he was
over the bowlders and across the stream, which there divides Windless
Mountain from the Great South Woods.
We were indignant that he should leave us to be “lammed” for his
carelessness. We shouted after, and Moses Durfey said he was a “chump.”
“You might come along,” retorted the Free Traveller with an injured
manner. “What's hindering? I lugs nobody. I lets folks alone.”
He was at the wood's edge by this time, where a dim green path went in,
looked over his shoulder a moment, and then disappeared. We scrambled
down the bank and over the bowlders, for it was not desirable to wait
for Mr. Cummings, and Hagar itself would be no refuge. Hagar was a place
where criticisms were made, while the green woods have never a comment
on any folly, but are good comrades to all who have the temper to like
them. We caught up with him by dint of running and followed silently.
It grew dusky with the lateness of the afternoon, the pale green light
turning dark, and we were solemn and rather low in our minds. The Free
Traveller seemed to grow more vast in outline. Being short of wind he
wheezed and moaned and what with his swaying as he walked, and his great
humpy shoulders and all, he looked less and less like a man, and more
and more like a Thing. Sometimes a tree would creak suddenly near at
hand, and I fancied there were other people in the woods, whispering and
all going the way we went, to see what would come to us in the end.
So it went on till we came on a little clearing, between the forest and
a swamp. A black pond, tinted a bit with the sunset, lay below along
the edge of the swamp; and we knew mainly where we were, for there was
a highway somewhere beyond the swamp, connecting the valleys of the
Wyantenaug and the Pilgrim. But none the less for the highway it seemed
a lonely place, fit for congregations of ghosts. The pond was unknown to
me, and it looked very still and oily. The forest seemed to crowd about
and overhang the clearing. On the western side was a heap of caverned
bowlders, and a fire burned in front with three persons sitting beside
it.
The Free Traveller slid along the wood's edge noiselessly but without
hesitation, and coming to the fire was greeted. One of those who sat
there was a tall old man with very light blue eyes and prominent, his
beard white and long. As we came to know, he was called the “Prophet.”
He said:
“How do, Humpy?” so that we knew the Free Traveller was called Humpy,
either for the shape of his shoulders or for the word he used to express
himself. There was a younger man, with a retreating chin, and a necktie,
but no collar, and there was a silent woman with a shawl over her head.
“These are friends o' mine,” said the Free Traveller to the older man.
“Make you acquainted. That's Showman Bobby, and that's the Prophet.”
A vast chuckle of mirth started then from deep within him and surged
through his throat,--such a laugh as would naturally come from a whale
or some creature of a past age, whose midriff was boundless.
“Ho!” he said. “Bloke with a hay-load lit under him. Ho, Ho!”
“Gen'leman,” said the Prophet with a fluent wave of his hand. “Friends
of Humpy's. That's enough. Any grub, Humpy?”
The Free Traveller brought out a round loaf and some meat done up in
a newspaper. He might have carried a number of such things about him
without making any great difference in his contour. The Prophet did not
ask about the hay-load, or where the bread and meat came from.
The daylight was fading now in the clearing, and presently a few thin
stars were out. It might have occurred to persons of better regulated
fancies than ours that they were due at supper long since with other
friends of staider qualities, and that now the wood-paths were too dark
to follow. Perhaps it did; but it could not have seemed a fair reason to
be troubled, that we were last seen in company with the Free Traveller,
so fat and friendly a man. I remember better that the Black Pond
reflected no stars, that the gleams from the fire played fearful games
along the wood's edge and the bowlders, and how, beyond the Black Pond,
the swamp and the close-cuddled hills, the lights of Hamilton crouched
low under the sky. Opposite us across the fire sat that woman who said
nothing, and her face was shadowed by her shawl.
Showman Bobby and the Free Traveller went to sleep, Bobby on his face
and the Free Traveller accommodating himself. The Prophet sat up and
kept us company; for we asked him questions naturally, and he seemed
interested to answer, and was fluent and striking in his speech. They
were a runout Company and very low in their luck; and it seemed that
Bobby was the manager, a tumbler himself by profession and in that
way of life since childhood; and the Free Traveller was apt to be an
Australian giant now, but in earlier years had been given to footing
from place to place and living as he might. The Prophet called him a
skilful man at getting things out of women, partly by experience, and
partly by reason of his size and the mildness of his manners. As for the
Black Pond Clearing, it was well known to people of the road, even to
orange-men and pack-peddlers, being a hidden place with wood and water
and shelter in the caves from rain.
“That light in the south is Hamilton,” said Chub Leroy.
The Prophet started and looked anxiously across the fire, but the woman
did not move. Then he drew nearer us and spoke lower.
“You look out,” he said. “She ain't right in her head. Bobby painted the
kid for a pappoose. It took the shakes and died queer. You'd better lie
down, Cass,” speaking across the fire to the woman, who turned her head
and stared at him directly. “You'd better lie down.”
She drew back from the fire noiselessly and lay down, wrapping her shawl
about her head.
“I ain't been a circus heeler all my time,” began the Prophet. “I been a
gentleman. Neither has Humpy, I reckon. When I met Bobby it was West and
he ran a dime museum. He took me in for being a gifted talker, and I
was that low in my luck. She and Bobby was married sometime, and she did
acts like the Circassian Beauty, and the Headless Woman, and the Child
of the Aztecs. Humpy's gifts lies in his size, and he's a powerful
strong man, too, more than you'd think, and he can get himself up for a
savage to look like a loose tornado. Look at him now. Ain't he a heap?
There was a three-eyed dog in the show that you could n't tell that the
extra eye was n't so hardly, and a snake that was any kind of a snake
according as you fixed him, his natural color being black. We came
East with Forepaugh's. Bobby bought a tent in Chicago, and we came to
Hamilton a fortnight ago. Now there's Hamilton that's a-shining off
there with its lights. And we run away from it in the night a week come
to-morrow, or next day, I forget. We left the tent and outfit which was
come down on by a Dutch grocer for debt, and Cassie's baby was dead
in the tent. Bobby painted him too thick. And there was a lot of folks
looking for us with sticks. Now, that was n't right. Think Bobby'd have
poisoned his own kid if he'd known better about painting him, a kid
that was a credit to the show! That's what they said. Think folks coming
round with sticks and a-howling blasphemous is going to help out any
family mourning! That ain't my idea.
“Then a fellow says, 'I don't know anything about it,' he says, 'and I
don't want to, but I know you get out of here quick.'
“And they drove us out of Hamilton that night ten miles in a covered
cart, and left us in the road. And the Dutch grocer got the outfit. I
reckon the circus and the city has buried the kid between 'em. Hey?
Sh! She's got a quirk. All I know is Fore-paugh's shook us as if we was
fleas.”
The Prophet looked over to where Cassie lay, but she did not stir.
Anyway, if she heard, it was the Prophet's fault. “They're awful poor
company,” he said plaintively, “Bobby and Cass. She takes on terrible.
She's took a notion that baby ain't buried right. She thinks--well, I
don't know. Now that ain't my way of looking at things, but I did n't
own the outfit. It was Bobby's outfit, and the Dutch grocer got it.”
He was silent for a moment. We could hear the Free Traveller asleep and
rumbling in his throat.
“Where might you chaps come from?” asked the Prophet, suddenly. “Not
that it's my business. Maybe there might be a town over there? Hey?
Yes.”
He grumbled in his beard a few moments more, and then lay down to sleep.
We drew together and whispered. The three men slept, and the woman said
nothing.
It is seen that sometimes your most battered and world-worn of men is
the simplest in his way of looking at things. Or else it was because the
Prophet was a talker by nature, and Bobby and Cass such poor company,
that he fell into speech with us on such equal terms. I have set down
but little of what he said, only enough for the story of the Company,
and as I happen to recollect it.
It should have been something earlier than nine o'clock when the Prophet
lay down to sleep, and half an hour later when we first noticed that
the woman, Cass, was sitting up. She had her back to us and was looking
toward the lights of Hamilton. There was no moon and the stars only
shone here and there between clouds that hurried across the sky, making
preparations for the storm that came in the morning. The fire burned
low, but there was no need of it for warmth. The outlines of the hills
could be seen. The swamp, the pond, and most of the clearing were dark
together.
Presently she looked cautiously around, first at the three sleepers, and
then at us. She crept nearer slowly and crouched beside the dull fire,
throwing back her shawl. Her hair was black and straggled about her
face, and her eyes were black too, and glittering. The glow of the
embers, striking upward, made their sockets cavernous, but the eyes
stood out in the midst of the caverns. One knows well enough that
tragedies walk about and exchange agreeable phrases with each other.
Your tragedy is yours, and mine is mine, and in the meanwhile see to
it that we look sedate, and discuss anything, provided it is of no
importance to either. One does not choose to be an inscribed monument to
the fame of one's private affair. But Cassie had lost that instinct of
reserve, and her desolation looked out of her eyes with dreadful candor.
The lines of her face, the droop of her figure and even little motions
of the hand, signified but one thought. I suppose all ideas possible
to the world had become as one to her, so that three boys cowering away
from her seemed only a natural enough part of the same subject. It was
all one; namely, a baby painted brown, who died queerly in a side tent
in Hamilton Fair Grounds.
We stared at her breathlessly.
“You tell 'em I'm going,” she whispered.
“Where?” asked Chub.
“They ain't no right to--to--Who are you?”
But this was only in passing. She did not wait to be answered.
“You tell 'em I'm going.”
“What for?” persisted Chub.
“It's six days. Maybe they throwed him where the tin cans are. You tell
'em I'm going.”
And she was gone. She must have slipped along the edge of the woods
where the shadows were densest.
We listened a moment or two stupidly. Then we sprang up. It seems as if
the three men were on their feet at the same instant, wakened by some
common instinct or pressure of fear. It was a single sound of splashing
we heard off in the darkness. Bobby was gone, then the Free Traveller,
then the Prophet. We fell into hollows, over rocks and stumps, and came
to the pond. The reflection of a star or two glimmered there. The water
looked heavy, like melted lead, and any ripple that had been was gone,
or too slight to see. The Free Traveller and Bobby went in and waded
about.
“Don't you step on her,” said Bobby, hoarsely.
The bottom seemed to shelve steeply from the shore. They moved along
chest-deep, feeling with their feet, and we heard them whispering. The
Prophet sat down and whimpered softly. They waded a distance along the
shore, and back. They came close in, whispered together, and went out
again.
“Here! I got it,” said the Free Traveller. They came out, carrying
something large and black, and laid it on the ground.
“It ain't Cassie!” whimpered the Prophet. “It ain't Cassie, is it?”
They all stood about it. The face was like a dim white patch on the
ground.
“Hold your jaw,” said Bobby. “Hark!”
There were voices in the woods above, and a crashing of the branches.
They were coming nearer and lights were twinkling far back in the
wood-path, where we had entered the clearing. I do not know what thought
it was--some instinct to flee and hide--that seized the outcasts. They
slid away into the darkness together, swiftly and without speaking. The
Free Traveller had Cassie's body on his shoulder, carrying it as a child
carries a rag doll. The darkness swallowed them at a gulp, and we
stood alone by the Black Pond. Several men came into the clearing with
lanterns, villagers from Hagar, Harvey Cummings, the minister, and
others, who swung their lanterns and shouted.
Now, I suppose that Cassie lies buried to-day somewhere in the South
Woods, and it may be that no man alive knows where. For none of the
Company were ever seen again in that part of the country, nor have
been heard of anywhere now these many years. We can see the lights of
Hamilton from Hagar as of old, but we seldom think of the Celestial
City, or any palaces and splendors, but of the multitude of various
people who go to and fro, each carrying a story.
The coming and going of aliens made little difference with Hagar. I
suppose it was more important there, that Harvey Cummings's hay-load
went up lawlessly in smoke and flame, and never came to the little
pasture barn on the Windless Mountain Road.