with propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not
fortunate. He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently to
kick Uncle Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle Billy was
sober enough to recognize in Mr. Oakhurst's kick a superior power that
would not bear trifling. He then endeavored to dissuade Tom Simson
from delaying further, but in vain. He even pointed out the fact that
there was no provision, nor means of making a camp. But, unluckily,
the Innocent met this objection by assuring the party that he was
provided with an extra mule loaded with provisions, and by the
discovery of a rude attempt at a log-house near the trail. "Piney can
stay with Mrs. Oakhurst," said the Innocent, pointing to the Duchess,
"and I can shift for myself."
Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst's admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from
bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to
retire up the cañon until he could recover his gravity. There he
confided the joke to the tall pine-trees, with many slaps of his leg,
contortions of his face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned
to the party, he found them seated by a fire--for the air had
grown strangely chill and the sky overcast--in apparently amicable
conversation. Piney was actually talking in an impulsive, girlish
fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest and
animation she had not shown for many days. The Innocent was holding
forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother
Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability. "Is this yer a
d---d picnic?" said Uncle Billy, with inward scorn, as he surveyed the
sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the tethered animals in the
foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the alcoholic fumes that
disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular nature, for he
felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist into his mouth.
As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze rocked
the tops of the pine-trees, and moaned through their long and gloomy
aisles. The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine-boughs, was
set apart for the ladies. As the lovers parted they unaffectedly
exchanged a kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard
above the swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother
Shipton were probably too stunned to remark upon this last evidence
of simplicity, and so turned without a word to the hut. The fire was
replenished, the men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes
were asleep.
Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed and
cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing
strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to leave
it--snow!
He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the sleepers,
for there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had
been lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and
a curse to his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had been
tethered; they were no longer there. The tracks were already rapidly
disappearing in the snow.
The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the fire with
his usual calm. He did not waken the sleepers. The Innocent slumbered
peacefully, with a smile on his good-humored, freckled face; the
virgin Piney slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetly as though
attended by celestial guardians, and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his blanket
over his shoulders, stroked his mustaches and waited for the dawn.
It came slowly in a whirling mist of snowflakes, that dazzled and
confused the eye. What could be seen of the landscape appeared
magically changed. He looked over the valley, and summed up the
present and future in two words--"Snowed in!"
A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately for the
party, had been stored within the hut, and so escaped the felonious
fingers of Uncle Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and prudence
they might last ten days longer. "That is," said Mr. Oakhurst,
_sotto voce_ to the Innocent, "if you're willing to board us. If you
ain't--and perhaps you'd better not--you can wait till Uncle Billy
gets back with provisions." For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could
not bring himself to disclose Uncle Billy's rascality, and so offered
the hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp and had accidentally
stampeded the animals. He dropped a warning to the Duchess and Mother
Shipton, who of course knew the facts of their associate's defection.
"They'll find out the truth about us _all_ when they find out
anything," he added, significantly, "and there's no good frightening
them now."
Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of
Mr. Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced
seclusion. "We'll have a good camp for a week, and then the snow'll
melt, and we'll all go back together." The cheerful gayety of the
young man and Mr. Oakhurst's calm infected the others. The Innocent,
with the aid of pine-boughs, extemporized a thatch for the roofless
cabin, and the Duchess directed Piney in the rearrangement of the
interior with a taste and tact that opened the blue eyes of that
provincial maiden to their fullest extent. "I reckon now you're used
to fine things at Poker Flat," said Piney. The Duchess turned away
sharply to conceal something that reddened her cheeks through
their professional tint, and Mother Shipton requested Piney not to
"chatter." But when Mr. Oakhurst returned from a weary search for the
trail, he heard the sound of happy laughter echoed from the rocks. He
stopped in some alarm, and his thoughts first naturally reverted
to the whiskey, which he had prudently _cachéd_. "And yet it don't
somehow sound like whiskey," said the gambler. It was not until he
caught sight of the blazing fire through the still blinding storm and
the group around it that he settled to the conviction that it was
"square fun."
Whether Mr. Oakhurst had _cachéd_ his cards with the whiskey as
something debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say.
It was certain that, in Mother Shipton's words, he "didn't say
cards once," during that evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an
accordion, produced somewhat ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his
pack. Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the manipulation
of this instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluctant
melodies from its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair
of bone castanets. But the crowning festivity of the evening was
reached in a rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining hands,
sang with great earnestness and vociferation. I fear that a certain
defiant tone and Covenanter's swing to its chorus, rather than any
devotional quality, caused it speedily to infect the others, who at
last joined in the refrain:
"I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And I'm bound to die in His army."
The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the miserable
group, and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward, as if in token
of the vow.
At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and the
stars glittered keenly above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose
professional habits had enabled him to live on the smallest possible
amount of sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom Simson, somehow
managed to take upon himself the greater part of that duty. He excused
himself to the Innocent by saying that he had "often been a week
without sleep." "Doing what?" asked Tom. "Poker!" replied Oakhurst,
sententiously; "when a man gets a streak of luck--nigger-luck--he
don't get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck," continued the
gambler, reflectively, "is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it
for certain is that it's bound to change. And it's finding out when
it's going to change that makes you. We've had a streak of bad luck
since we left Poker Flat--you come along, and slap you get into it,
too. If you can hold your cards right along, you're all right. For,"
added the gambler, with cheerful irrelevance--
"'I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And I'm bound to die in His army,'"
The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-curtained
valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store of
provisions for the morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of
that mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the
wintry landscape, as if in regretful commiseration of the past. But it
revealed drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut--a hopeless,
uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below the rocky shores to
which the castaways still clung. Through the marvellously clear air
the smoke of the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away.
Mother Shipton saw it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky
fastness hurled in that direction a final malediction. It was her last
vituperative attempt, and perhaps for that reason was invested with a
certain degree of sublimity. It did her good, she privately informed
the Duchess. "Just you go out there and cuss, and see." She then set
herself to the task of amusing "the child," as she and the Duchess
were pleased to call Piney. Piney was no chicken, but it was a
soothing and original theory of the pair thus to account for the fact
that she didn't swear and wasn't improper.
When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of the
accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the
flickering camp-fire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching
void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by
Piney--story-telling. Neither Mr., Oakhurst nor his female companions
caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have
failed, too, but for the Innocent. Some months before he had chanced
upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious translation of the
_Iliad_. He now proposed to narrate the principal incidents of that
poem--having thoroughly mastered the argument and fairly forgotten the
words--in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of
that night the Homeric demigods again walked the earth. Trojan bully
and wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and the great pines in the cañon
seemed to bow to the wrath of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened
with quiet satisfaction. Most especially was he interested in the
fate of "Ash-heels," as the Innocent persisted in denominating the
"swift-footed Achilles."
So with small food and much of Homer and the accordion, a week passed
over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again
from leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the land. Day by day
closer around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked
from their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white, that towered
twenty feet above their heads. It became more and more difficult to
replenish their fires, even from the fallen trees beside them, now
half hidden in the drifts. And yet no one complained. The lovers
turned from the dreary prospect and looked into each other's eyes, and
were happy. Mr. Oakhurst settled himself coolly to the losing game
before him. The Duchess, more cheerful than she had been, assumed
the care of Piney. Only Mother Shipton--once the strongest of the
party--seemed to sicken and fade. At midnight on the tenth day she
called Oakhurst to her side. "I'm going," she said, in a voice of
querulous weakness, "but don't say anything about it. Don't waken the
kids. Take the bundle from under my head and open it." Mr. Oakhurst
did so. It contained Mother Shipton's rations for the last week,
untouched. "Give 'em to the child," she said, pointing to the sleeping
Piney. "You've starved yourself," said the gambler. "That's what they
call it," said the woman, querulously, as she lay down again, and,
turning her face to the wall, passed quietly away.
The accordion and the bones were put aside that day, and Homer was
forgotten. When the body of Mother Shipton had been committed to the
snow, Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside and showed him a pair of
snow-shoes, which he had fashioned from the old pack-saddle. "There's
one chance in a hundred to save her yet," he said, pointing to Piney;
"but it's there," he added, pointing toward Poker Flat. "If you can
reach there in two days she's safe." "And you?" asked Tom Simson.
"I'll stay here," was the curt reply.
The lovers parted with a long embrace. "You are not going, too?" said
the Duchess, as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to accompany
him. "As far as the cañon," he replied. He turned suddenly and kissed
the Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame and her trembling limbs
rigid with amazement.
Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm again and the
whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found that some
one had quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few days
longer. The tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them from Piney.
The women slept but little. In the morning, looking into each other's
faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke; but Piney, accepting the
position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the
Duchess's waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That
night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the
protecting pines, invaded the very hut.
Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which
gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept
closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: "Piney, can you
pray?" "No, dear," said Piney, simply. The Duchess, without knowing
exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney's
shoulder, spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer
pillowing the head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they
fell asleep.
The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of
snow, shaken from the long pine-boughs, flew like white-winged birds,
and settled about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted
clouds looked down upon what had been the camp. But all human stain,
all trace of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle
mercifully flung from above.
They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices
and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers
brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told,
from the equal peace that dwelt upon them, which was she that had
sinned. Even the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away,
leaving them still locked in each other's arms.
But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine-trees, they
found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie-knife. It
bore the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:
+
BENEATH THIS TREE
LIES THE BODY
OF
JOHN OAKHURST,
WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK
ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,
AND
HANDED IN HIS CHECKS
ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.
+
And pulseless and cold, with a derringer by his side and a bullet in
his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who
was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker
Flat.
THE THREE STRANGERS[1]
[Footnote 1: From _Wessex Tales_.]
_Thomas Hardy_ (1840)
Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an
appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be
reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases,
as they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain
counties in the south and southwest. If any mark of human occupation
is met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage
of some shepherd.
Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may
possibly be standing there now. In spite of its loneliness, however,
the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from
a county-town. Yet that affected it little. Five miles of irregular
upland, during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows,
rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon
or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less
repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who
"conceive and meditate of pleasant things."
Some old earthen camp or barrow, some clump of trees, at least some
starved fragment of ancient hedge is usually taken advantage of in the
erection of these forlorn dwellings. But, in the present case, such a
kind of shelter had been disregarded. Higher Crowstairs, as the house
was called, stood quite detached and undefended. The only reason for
its precise situation seemed to be the crossing of two footpaths at
right angles hard by, which may have crossed there and thus for a good
five hundred years. Hence the house was exposed to the elements on
all sides. But, though the wind up here blew unmistakably when it did
blow, and the rain hit hard whenever it fell, the various weathers of
the winter season were not quite so formidable on the coomb as they
were imagined to be by dwellers on low ground. The raw rimes were
not so pernicious as in the hollows, and the frosts were scarcely so
severe. When the shepherd and his family who tenanted the house were
pitied for their sufferings from the exposure, they said that upon the
whole they were less inconvenienced by "wuzzes and flames" (hoarses
and phlegms) than when they had lived by the stream of a snug
neighboring valley.
The night of March 28, 182-, was precisely one of the nights that
were wont to call forth these expressions of commiseration. The level
rainstorm smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the clothyard shafts
of Senlac and Crecy. Such sheep and outdoor animals as had no shelter
stood with their buttocks to the winds; while the tails of little
birds trying to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown inside-out like
umbrellas. The gable-end of the cottage was stained with wet, and the
eavesdroppings flapped against the wall. Yet never was commiseration
for the shepherd more misplaced. For that cheerful rustic was
entertaining a large party in glorification of the christening of his
second girl.
The guests had arrived before the rain began to fall, and they were
all now assembled in the chief or living room of the dwelling. A
glance into the apartment at eight o'clock on this eventful evening
would have resulted in the opinion that it was as cosy and comfortable
a nook as could be wished for in boisterous weather. The calling of
its inhabitant was proclaimed by a number of highly-polished sheep
crooks without stems that were hung ornamentally over the fireplace,
the curl of each shining crook varying from the antiquated type
engraved in the patriarchal pictures of old family Bibles to the most
approved fashion of the last local sheep-fair. The room was lighted
by half-a-dozen candles, having wicks only a trifle smaller than the
grease which enveloped them, in candlesticks that were never used but
at high-days, holy-days, and family feasts. The lights were scattered
about the room, two of them standing on the chimney-piece. This
position of candles was in itself significant. Candles on the
chimney-piece always meant a party.
On the hearth, in front of a back-brand to give substance, blazed a
fire of thorns, that crackled "like the laughter of the fool."
Nineteen persons were gathered here. Of these, five women, wearing
gowns of various bright hues, sat in chairs along the wall; girls shy
and not shy filled the window-bench; four men, including Charley Jake
the hedge-carpenter, Elijah New the parish-clerk, and John Pitcher,
a neighboring dairyman, the shepherd's father-in-law, lolled in
the settle; a young man and maid, who were blushing over
tentative _pourparlers_ on a life-companionship, sat beneath the
corner-cupboard; and an elderly engaged man of fifty or upward moved
restlessly about from spots where his betrothed was not to the spot
where she was. Enjoyment was pretty general, and so much the more
prevailed in being unhampered by conventional restrictions. Absolute
confidence in each other's good opinion begat perfect ease, while the
finishing stroke of manner, amounting to a truly princely serenity,
was lent to the majority by the absence of any expression or trait
denoting that they wished to get on in the world, enlarge their minds,
or do any eclipsing thing whatever--which nowadays so generally nips
the bloom and _bonhomie_ of all except the two extremes of the social
scale.
Shepherd Fennel had married well, his wife being a dairyman's
daughter from a vale at a distance, who brought fifty guineas in
her pocket--and kept them there, till they should be required for
ministering to the needs of a coming family. This frugal woman had
been somewhat exercised as to the character that should be given
to the gathering. A sit-still party had its advantages; but an
undisturbed position of ease in chairs and settles was apt to lead
on the men to such an unconscionable deal of toping that they would
sometimes fairly drink the house dry. A dancing-party was the
alternative; but this, while avoiding the foregoing objection on the
score of good drink, had a counterbalancing disadvantage in the matter
of good victuals, the ravenous appetites engendered by the exercise
causing immense havoc in the buttery. Shepherdess Fennel fell back
upon the intermediate plan of mingling short dances with short periods
of talk and singing, so as to hinder any ungovernable rage in either.
But this scheme was entirely confined to her own gentle mind: the
shepherd himself was in the mood to exhibit the most reckless phases
of hospitality.
The fiddler was a boy of those parts, about twelve years of age, who
had a wonderful dexterity in jigs and reels, though his fingers were
so small and short as to necessitate a constant shifting for the high
notes, from which he scrambled back to the first position with sounds
not of unmixed purity of tone. At seven the shrill tweedle-dee of this
youngster had begun, accompanied by a booming ground-bass from Elijah
New, the parish-clerk, who had thoughtfully brought with him his
favorite musical instrument, the serpent. Dancing was instantaneous,
Mrs. Fennel privately enjoining the players on no account to let the
dance exceed the length of a quarter of an hour.
But Elijah and the boy, in the excitement of their position, quite
forgot the injunction. Moreover, Oliver Giles, a man of seventeen,
one of the dancers, who was enamoured of his partner, a fair girl of
thirty-three rolling years, had recklessly handed a new crown-piece to
the musicians, as a bribe to keep going as long as they had muscle
and wind. Mrs. Fennel, seeing the steam begin to generate on the
countenances of her guests, crossed over and touched the fiddler's
elbow and put her hand on the serpent's mouth. But they took no
notice, and fearing she might lose her character of genial hostess if
she were to interfere too markedly, she retired and sat down helpless.
And so the dance whizzed on with cumulative fury, the performers
moving in their planet-like courses, direct and retrograde, from
apogee to perigee, till the hand of the well-kicked clock at the
bottom of the room had travelled over the circumference of an hour.
While these cheerful events were in course of enactment within
Fennel's pastoral dwelling, an incident having considerable bearing
on the party had occurred in the gloomy night without. Mrs. Fennel's
concern about the growing fierceness of the dance corresponded in
point of time with the ascent of a human figure to the solitary hill
of Higher Crowstairs from the direction of the distant town. This
personage strode on through the rain without a pause, following
the little-worn path which, further on in its course, skirted the
shepherd's cottage.
It was nearly the time of full moon, and on this account, though the
sky was lined with a uniform sheet of dripping cloud, ordinary objects
out of doors were readily visible. The sad wan light revealed the
lonely pedestrian to be a man of supple frame; his gait suggested that
he had somewhat passed the period of perfect and instinctive agility,
though not so far as to be otherwise than rapid of motion when
occasion required. At a rough guess, he might have been about forty
years of age. He appeared tall, but a recruiting sergeant, or other
person accustomed to the judging of men's heights by the eye, would
have discerned that this was chiefly owing to his gauntness, and that
he was not more than five-feet-eight or nine.