HOW SHE SPED.
The night drave on * * *
The wind blew as ’twad blaun its last,
The rattling showers rushed on the blast,
The speedy gleams the darkness swallowed.
Deep, lang and loud the tempest bellowed,
From heav’n the clouds pour all their floods,
The doubling storm roars through the woods.—BURNS.
Light here and there, like sparks of fire in seas of darkness. Darkness
within and without. The two red lamps that flanked the coachman’s seat,
the single lantern carried by the guard, and the bright point of Dick’s
cigar as he sat smoking on the top of the coach, only seemed by contrast
to make that darkness deeper.
The coach slowly clawed up a long hill at the summit of which was a
country inn, with its usual accessories of grocery-store, blacksmith’s
shop and post-office.
Here all was cheerful bustle, with the glancing lights, the voices of
men, the tramp of steeds, and all the merry movement of a way station.
And here the coach stopped to change horses.
The outside passenger jumped down and went into the little bar-room of
the inn, which Drusilla could see from her window was half filled with
country loafers and village politicians, drinking, smoking, discussing
the news, and settling the elections. In two minutes the outside
passenger was “hail fellow, well met,” with every one of them, and
generously treating the whole company with the best in the bar. Ah, poor
Dick!
Meanwhile the guard came to the coach door with his lantern, and
inquired if any of the ladies or gentlemen desired to get out for
refreshments, as they should stop there fifteen minutes.
The two gentlemen on the front seat at once left the coach. As they got
out, Drusilla saw that one was the Reverend Mr. Hopper. The other was
the stranger they had taken up first in Washington.
When they had disappeared, the guard turned to Drusilla and repeated his
question, whether she or her attendant would like to leave the coach.
Drusilla politely declined to do so. But mammy got up and tumbled out of
the coach, and called to one of the hostlers;
“Hey! I say! Come here, you sir, and fetch a light this way.”
The man who was thus summoned, thinking that some accident had happened,
ran to the spot, demanding:
“What is it?”
“I want you just to look in that there leather place behind, and see if
them there little red morocky trunks is all right.”
“Blast you and your trunks too! Who do you think is going to be bothered
with them?” angrily retorted the man as he left her.
“Come in, nurse. Oh, _do_ come in,” pleaded Drusilla, from the window.
“I am _sure_ the trunks are all safe.”
But mammy was not in a very compliant humor. She ran splashing through
slop and mire, and burst into the bar-room, exclaiming:
“Oh, do, kind gentlemen, some of you come out and see if them there two
little red morocky trunks of the madam’s is all right.”
The company around the fire stared at her in astonishment and ridicule.
But Dick, the most good-natured of all creatures, took up a light and
followed her.
“Here, sir,” she said, leading the way to the boot, “just you pull apart
these here flaps and hold the light so I can peep in and see.”
Dick laughingly complied with her request.
“Yes, there they is, thank goodness, safe as _yet_. Thanky’ sir. Now
I’ll get in the coach, please,” she said, with a courtesy as she
returned to the side of her charge.
“Is it raining?” inquired Drusilla.
“No, honey, but black as Beelzebub; so it must come down heavy enough
afore long. And now, honey, while them there men is all out’n the way
let me make you comfortable for the night. You come over on this middle
seat while I make you a bed on the back one.”
Drusilla complied, for she was very, very weary with sitting up so long.
Mammy, with the help of a softly-packed carpet bag, that served for a
pillow, with a clean pocket handkerchief spread over it for a case, and
two large shawls for coverings, made a very comfortable couch.
Drusilla took off her bonnet and hung it up, and loosened her hair and
her clothes, and lay down. And mammy tucked her up.
Just at this moment came the guard with a tray and a tumbler.
“One of the gentlemen from the inn has sent this to the lady with his
respectful compliments, and begs she will take it,” he said, as he
handed the oiler in at the window.
“Yes, honey, you take it, and drink it, too. It’s a hot mulled port wine
negus, spiced; and it will warm you and put you to sleep,” said mammy,
as she took the glass from the messenger and passed it to the mistress.
The poor, chilled, tired and nervous creature really needed and felt
that she needed just such a cordial at just that hour. She inhaled its
steamy, spicy fragrance with satisfaction and desire, yet she hesitated
to take it.
“I don’t know who sent it, nurse,” she said.
“Now what the mischief _that_ got to do with it? Do _that_ make it
hotter or worse? I s’pect the good-natured young man who ’cused me o’
scalping him and breaking of his legs sent it. But that’s nyther here
nor there. Whoever sent it, sent it in kindness; and don’t you ever
’fuse human kindness when you needs it, come from where it will, ’cause
it hurts the feelings in the saftest place. Here, honey, drink it while
it’s steaming hot—hot as love.”
“Well,” said Drusilla, taking the glass and sipping the cordial, “when
you return the glass, send word to the gentleman that I thank him very
much for his thoughtfulness in sending me this restorative, and that I
know it will do me good.”
Five minutes after, when Drusilla, having finished her cordial, was
comfortably reposing on her couch, and the guard came for the glass,
mammy delivered her message thus:
“Tell the young man as sent this that the madam says how she’s very much
obleeged to him for the hot stuff, which it has gone right to the right
place, and done her good and no mistake.”
The next moment the three gentlemen passengers took their places inside
the coach, two of them sitting on the front seat in opposite corners,
and one of them, Dick, sitting on the middle seat beside mammy.
The coach started again. The night was so dark, and the down-hill road
so steep, that its progress was cautiously slow.
The male passengers wrapped themselves closely in their “mauds,” pulled
their caps down over their eyes, and composed themselves to sleep.
Mammy opened her luncheon basket, and, having first hospitably offered
to share its contents with each and all of her fellow-passengers and
been politely refused, set to work and ate a very hearty supplementary
supper off the best it contained of food and drink, and then gathered up
the fragments and put them away.
Finally, she took off her best bonnet—of the Quaker or Methodist
pattern,—hung it up beside her mistress’s, tied a little woollen shawl
over her head, wrapped a big one around her shoulders, and resigned
herself to rest.
Soon all were sleeping except Drusilla, who, physically speaking, was
more favorably placed for sleep than any of the others. She lay very
comfortably, really rocked, not racked, by the swinging motion of the
coach as it rolled down hill. She was very tired, and so, in a bodily
sense, she almost enjoyed this soft reposing and easy rocking; but she
was not sleepy, for her mind was too active with the thoughts of what
lay around and before her.
Where was Dick Hammond and Mr. Hopper going? Who was the tall, dark
gentleman they had taken up at Washington, and who certainly seemed to
be of the same party, since she had seen him signalling to Mr. Hopper?
Was their errand in the country connected with the same sad business
that was taking herself thither?
Dick might be only going down in answer to his uncle’s invitation to the
wedding, she reflected. “But, no, not so!” she thought, instantly
repudiating the idea that Richard Hammond, after all that he had said in
reprobation of the iniquitous marriage, could possibly sanction it by
his presence.
But what then was he going for? and why was he taking Mr. Hopper and
that other gentleman—who looked as if he were in some way connected with
the law, along with him?
Was he going to denounce Alick to his uncle and cousin? Was he taking
Mr. Hopper down as a witness to Alick’s former marriage? And the
mysterious legal-looking gentleman as a prosecutor?
As these thoughts chased themselves through her mind, she clasped her
hands and moaned.
Oh, were they all three combining to go and overwhelm her Alick, and
cover him with humiliation and confusion? she asked herself; and for the
moment her Alick appeared to her, not as a criminal pursued by the just
avengers, but as a victim hunted down by relentless persecutors, of whom
she saw herself the chief.
“Oh, why—oh, why couldn’t I have kept still and let him marry his cousin
and be happy with her? Oh, Alick! oh, poor Alick! But that would have
been a crime. Ah, Heaven, how hard is my lot to have to choose between
making him wretched or leaving him criminal!” she moaned, twisting her
fingers and weeping.
She dreaded the coming of the morning. She feared the daylight that
might discover her face to these men, who she thought were confederated
to ruin her husband. She dreaded their recognizing and speaking to her.
But she was determined to have nothing to say to them, or to do with
them; for, under present circumstances she felt that any intercourse
between her and them would look too much like entering into their
conspiracy. And now her whole gentle soul revolted in horror from those
three harmless and unconscious gentlemen, who were reclining on the
seats before her, and “sleeping the sleep of innocence.”
Yes; all in the coach were at rest except herself. Nor could she, with
all her mental distress, very long resist the influences that were
wooing her to repose. Her excessive bodily fatigue, combined with the
soporific qualities of the spiced cordial she had taken, the swinging
motion of the coach and the lulling sound of the falling rain, soon
overcame her consciousness, and she too slumbered in forgetfulness of
all her sorrows.
She slept on for several hours, until she was awakened by the flashing
of lights, the hallooing of men and the trampling of beasts, as the
coach stopped to change horses at one of the nosiest post-houses on the
road.
The other passengers were aroused at the same time.
Mammy awoke from some dream of her professional duties, yawned,
stretching her jaws almost to dislocation, and thereby discovering a
most fearful abyss, and still dreaming, exclaiming:
“Yaw-aw! Yes, honey! Tell the madam I’ll be up and dressed in one
minute. And tell that boy to run for the doctor. Ow! Yaw-aw!”
But at this noisy station the people were very active. And before the
good woman could collect her faculties the coach started, and she
herself was again precipitated down into the land of “Nod.”
Drusilla could not sleep again, so to ease her position she sat up and
reclined back in the corner of her seat, and in a dreamy, half-conscious
condition she gazed through the opposite window.
At first it seemed but a solid wall of darkness past which the coach was
so swiftly whirling; but gradually, as her eyes accustomed themselves to
the circumstances, this darkness grew less opaque, this obscurity less
impenetrable, until at length she could dimly discern the boundaries of
mountains, valleys, forests, and the outlines of rocks, trees and
buildings.
At long intervals she could perceive the form of some solitary
farm-house, with its barn, shed, cattle-pen, field, orchard and garden.
Half waking, she would wonder who lived and worked there; and half
sleeping, she would people the place with the beings of her dream.
Sometimes she saw a lonely woodcutter’s cottage on the edge of a forest,
and vaguely conjectured what sort of life its denizens led. Once in such
a place she saw a single light burning in the tiny window of a little
upper chamber, in the interior of which the shadow of a woman was
bending over the shadow of a sick-bed. She had but a glimpse of all
this, as the coach rolled past, yet her ready sympathies went forth to
the poor watcher and the suffering invalid.
Once she was treated to a brilliant picture in the darkness—an oasis in
the desert. It was a bran new, commodious country house, well seated on
a hill; lights were glancing from every window; music was borne forth
upon the wind; even in that inclement weather, somebody seemed to be
giving a great party and to be keeping it up all night. But before she
could observe more the coach had rushed by and left the festive scene
far behind.
Once she noticed a little road-side hut, and in its doorway, a poor, old
woman, thinly clad, holding a lantern in her hand and bending outward in
an attitude of intense anxiety, as if looking for some one. “In her poor
way, she is watching and waiting, as I used to do. Has she a husband, or
perhaps a son, who is breaking her heart?” mused Drusilla, as the coach
swung onward and left this sad picture also in its rear.
Such signs of life, however, were very rare, on that lonely road, at
that late hour. The few hamlets, farms and huts they passed were for the
most part shut up, dark and silent as graves.
But they were now penetrating deeper and deeper into the mountain
fastnesses; and farm-houses and villages were fewer and farther between.
For miles and miles nothing but the most savage solitudes loomed in the
blackness of darkness through which they passed. And Drusilla, reclining
back in her corner, dreamily gazing forth through the rain-dimmed window
upon this obscure scene, vaguely wondered when these solitudes would be
peopled, when this wilderness would “bloom and blossom as the rose.”
And so, while all her fellow-passengers were deeply buried in
unconsciousness, she dreamed on her waking dream. But often in the midst
of these reveries the sudden sharp recollection of her own trouble
pierced her heart like a sword and drew from her lips a bitter groan.
Then again the influence of the scene and hour, the obscurity, the
picturesqueness, the rocking motion of the coach, the soothing sound of
the falling rain without, the silence and stillness of all within,
lulled her senses to repose if not to sleep.
Thus, slumbering, dreaming, starting, waking, she passed this weird
night, that ever in her after life seemed to her less like the reality
than like the phantasmagoria of a hasheesh-conjured vision.
Towards morning, being very much wearied with sitting up, she lay down
again, and, as is usual with uneasy sleepers, just at daylight she fell
into a deep and dreamless sleep.