And so we went, not through the town but around it.
My attendants were heavy with sleep. Seating Rebecca next me I called
Euonymus into the coach and let mother, son, and daughter slumber at
ease.
To the few persons we met I paraded my bonnet and curls. Some, in
Southern fashion, I questioned. I was a widow who had sold her
plantation in order to go and live with a widowed brother. Euonymus
too I showed off, who, waking at every halt, presented a face that
seemed any boy's rather than a runaway's. So natural to these Africans
was the supernatural that I could be one of the men who plucked Lot
from Sodom and yet a becurled widow.
When at noon, at a farmhouse, we had fed horses and dined, I at the
planter's board, my "slaves" under the house-grove trees, Euonymus took
the lines, and for five hours Luke slept inside. Then they changed
places again, and Euonymus and I, face to face, watched the long hot
day wane, and pass through gorgeous changes into twilight. Often I saw
questions in the young eyes that watched me so reverently, but I dared
not encourage them; dared not be a talkative angel. Also my brain had
its questions. How was I to get out of the most perilous trap into
which a sane man--if sane I was--ever thrust himself? There was no
sign that we were being pursued, but it was a harrowing puzzle how,
without drawing suspicion upon the runaways, to get them once more
separated from me and the coach while I should vanish as a lady and
reappear as a gentleman.
"Euonymus, boy, if I should by and by dress as a man could you put
these woman things on, over what you're wearing, and be a lady in my
place?"
"Why, eh, y'--yass'm. Oh, yass'm, ef you say so, my--mistress;
howsomever, you know what de good book say' 'bout de Ethiopium."
"Can't change--yes, I know; but this would be only for an hour or two
and in the dark."
"It'd have to be pow'ful dahk," sighed Euonymus, and from Robelia's
sunbonnet came--"Unh!"
Rebecca interposed: "An' still, o' co'se, we all gwine do ezac'ly what
you say."
"Well," I responded, "maybe we won't do that." And we never did. I
was still "Mrs. Southmayd," as we came into a small railway station.
At the ticket-window I asked if any one had come up in the train of
half an hour before, inquiring for a lady in a coach.
"No, ma'am, nobody got off that train. But there's another train at
half past eight."
"Oh," I whined, "he won't come on that; he's overrated my speed and
gone on to the next station, making five miles more going for me!"
"Why, no, you can give three of your servants a pass to go on with the
carriage, keep your maid and wait for the train."
"Ah, no! No lady can choose to travel by rail where she can go in her
own coach!"
They said no more except to warn Luke of a bad piece of road about two
miles on. Sure enough, in its very middle--crack!--we broke down. "De
kingbolt done gone clean in two!" said Luke, and Robelia repeated the
news explosively.
"We'll leave the coach," I announced. "Fold the lap-robes on the backs
of the two horses, for Rebecca and me. You-all can walk beside us."
After a while, so going, we passed a large plantation house, its
windows ruddy with home cheer. A second quarter-mile brought dimly to
view a railroad water-tank and an empty flag-station house, and in the
next bit of woods I spoke to Euonymus: "Have you that bundle? Ah, yes.
Luke, this boy and I are going off here a step for me to change my
dress. If any passer questions you, say I'll be right back."
"Yass, madam, but, er, eh--wouldn' you sooner take yo' maid, Robelia,
instid?"
"No, for as to dress I'll be as much of a man, when I get back, as
Euonymus."
"Is Euonymus gwine change dress too?"
"No, these things that I take off, your wife and Robelia may divide
between them."
I started away but Luke lifted a hand. I thought he was going to claim
every dud for Robelia. Not so.
"We all thanks you mighty much, madam, but in fac', ef de trufe got to
be tol'----"
"It hasn't got to be told _me_, Luke, if I----"
"Oh, no, madam, o' co'se. I 'uz on'y gwine say--a-concernin'
Euonymus----"
I hurried off while the wife chided her good man: "Why don't you dess
hide all dem thing' in yo' heart like _dey_ used to do when d' angel
'pear' unto _dem_?"
Alone with Euonymus, as I whipped off my feminine garb and whirled into
the other, I began to say that however suddenly I might leave the
fugitives they must rest assured that I was not deserting them. To
which----
"Oh, my Lawd," Euonymus replied, "us know dat!"
We reached the pike again. "Rebecca, dismount. Hand me your bridle.
Luke, for you-all's better safety I'm going back and return these
horses. We may not see one another again----"
"Oh, Lawdy, Lawdy!" moaned Rebecca.
"In dis vain worl' you mean," Luke said.
"That's all. Come, don't waste time. You'd better walk on for a short
way in the pike before taking to the woods. Now go all night for all
you're worth. Good-by." I turned abruptly. But my led horse was
averse to abruptness, and all the family except the torpid Robelia
poured up their blessings and rained kisses on my very feet.
In my half-intelligent plan I intended first to stop at the house we
had gone by, and had reached the gate of its front lane when I met one
of its household, a lad of sixteen, on the pike.
"Yes, he had just seen the disabled coach."
I said that by business appointment with the lady who had just left the
coach I had gone to the next railway station northward in order to meet
her. That I had come down the turnpike on a hired horse and met her
and her servants pushing forward to our appointment as best they could.
Now, I said, our business, a law matter, was accomplished and she was
gone on on my hired horse. This span I was taking back to the stable
whence I had hired them for her in the morning.
The boy's graciousness shamed me through and through. "Why, certainly!
He would have the coach drawn up to the house before sunrise and would
keep it as long as I liked." He asked me in, but I went on to the
little railway town, repeated my tarradiddle at its "hotel," and soon
was asleep.
["'Tarradi'l','" said Mme. Castanado, "tha'z may be a species of
paternoster, I suppose, eh?"
"No," said Scipion, "I think tha'z juz' a fashion of speech that he
took a drink. I do that myself, going to bed."
Chester explained, but said that to admit one's untruthfulness by even
a nickname implied _some_ compunction. Whereat two or three put in:
"Ah! if he acknowledge' his compunction he's all right! But we are
stopping the story."