 | The luck of Roaring Camp, and other sketches |  |
A LONELY RIDE.
AS I stepped into the Slumgullion stage I saw
that it was a dark night, a lonely road, and
that I was the only passenger. Let me assure the
reader that I have no ulterior design in making
this assertion. A long course of light reading has
forewarned me what every experienced intelligence
must confidently look for from such a statement.
The story-teller who wilfully tempts Fate by such
obvious beginnings; who is to the expectant reader
in danger of being robbed or half murdered, or
frightened by an escaped lunatic, or introduced to
his lady-love for the first time, deserves to be detected.
I am relieved to say that none of these
things occurred to me. The road from Wingdam
to Slumgullion knew no other banditti than the
regularly licensed hotel-keepers; lunatics had not
yet reached such depth of imbecility as to ride
of their own free-will in California stages; and my
Laura, amiable and long-suffering as she always is,
could not, I fear, have borne up against these depressing
circumstances long enough to have made
the slightest impression on me.
I stood with my shawl and carpet-bag in hand,
darkness the red dust of Wingdam was visible
on its roof and sides, and the red slime of Slumgullion
clung tenaciously to its wheels. I opened
the door; the stage creaked uneasily, and in the
gloomy abyss the swaying straps beckoned me,
like ghostly hands, to come in now, and have my
sufferings out at once.
I must not omit to mention the occurrence of a
circumstance which struck me as appalling and
mysterious. A lounger on the steps of the hotel,
whom I had reason to suppose was not in any way
connected with the stage company, gravely descended,
and, walking toward the conveyance, tried
the handle of the door, opened it, expectorated
in the carriage, and returned to the hotel with a
serious demeanor. Hardly had he resumed his
position, when another individual, equally disinterested,
impassively walked down the steps,
proceeded to the back of the stage, lifted it, expectorated
carefully on the axle, and returned
slowly and pensively to the hotel. A third spectator
wearily disengaged himself from one of the
Ionic columns of the portico and walked to the
box, remained for a moment in serious and expectorative
contemplation of the boot, and then returned
to his column. There was something so
weird in this baptism that I grew quite nervous.
Perhaps I was out of spirits. A number of infinitesimal
persistency of the clerk at the stage-office
to enter my name misspelt on the way-bill, had
not predisposed me to cheerfulness. The inmates
of the Eureka House, from a social view-point,
were not attractive. There was the prevailing
opinion — so common to many honest people —
that a serious style of deportment and conduct
toward a stranger indicates high gentility and
elevated station. Obeying this principle, all hilarity
ceased on my entrance to supper, and general
remark merged into the safer and uncompromising
chronicle of several bad cases of diphtheria,
then epidemic at Wingdam. When I left the
dining-room, with an odd feeling that I had been
supping exclusively on mustard and tea-leaves, I
stopped a moment at the parlor door. A piano,
harmoniously related to the dinner-bell, tinkled responsive
to a diffident and uncertain touch. On the
white wall the shadow of an old and sharp profile
was bending over several symmetrical and shadowy
curls. “I sez to Mariar, Mariar, sez I, `Praise to the
face is open disgrace.”' I heard no more. Dreading
some susceptibility to sincere expression on the
subject of female loveliness, I walked away, checking
the compliment that otherwise might have
risen unbidden to my lips, and have brought
shame and sorrow to the household.
It was with the memory of these experiences
before the stage door. The driver, about to mount,
was for a moment illuminated by the open door of
the hotel. He had the wearied look which was
the distinguishing expression of Wingdam. Satisfied
that I was properly way-billed and receipted
for, he took no further notice of me. I looked
longingly at the box-seat, but he did not respond
to the appeal. I flung my carpet-bag into the
chasm, dived recklessly after it, and — before I
was fairly seated — with a great sigh, a creaking
of unwilling springs, complaining bolts, and
harshly expostulating axle, we moved away.
Rather the hotel door slipped behind, the sound
of the piano sank to rest, and the night and its
shadows moved solemnly upon us.
To say it was dark expressed but faintly the
pitchy obscurity that encompassed the vehicle.
The roadside trees were scarcely distinguishable as
deeper masses of shadow; I knew them only by
the peculiar sodden odor that from time to time sluggishly
flowed in at the open window as we rolled
by. We proceeded slowly; so leisurely that, leaning
from the carriage, I more than once detected
the fragrant sigh of some astonished cow, whose
ruminating repose upon the highway we had ruthlessly
disturbed. But in the darkness our progress,
more the guidance of some mysterious instinct
than any apparent volition of our own, gave an
a moment's hesitation or indecision on the part of
the driver would have destroyed.
I had indulged a hope that in the empty vehicle
I might obtain that rest so often denied me
in its crowded condition. It was a weak delusion.
When I stretched out my limbs it was only to find
that the ordinary conveniences for making several
people distinctly uncomfortable were distributed
throughout my individual frame. At last, resting
my arms on the straps, by dint of much gymnastic
effort I became sufficiently composed to be
aware of a more refined species of torture. The
springs of the stage, rising and falling regularly,
produced a rhythmical beat, which began to painfully
absorb my attention. Slowly this thumping
merged into a senseless echo of the mysterious
female of the hotel parlor, and shaped itself into
this awful and benumbing axiom,—“Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace.
Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace.”
Inequalities of the road only quickened
its utterance or drawled it to an exasperating
length.
It was of no use to seriously consider the statement.
It was of no use to except to it indignantly.
It was of no use to recall the many instances
where praise to the face had redounded to the
everlasting honor of praiser and bepraised; of no
use to dwell sentimentally on modest genius and
of no use to except to the mysterious
female, — to picture her as rearing a thin-blooded
generation on selfish and mechanically repeated
axioms, — all this failed to counteract the monotonous
repetition of this sentence. There was nothing
to do but to give in, — and I was about to accept
it weakly, as we too often treat other illusions
of darkness and necessity, for the time being, —
when I became aware of some other annoyance
that had been forcing itself upon me for the last
few moments. How quiet the driver was!
Was there any driver? Had I any reason to
suppose that he was not lying, gagged and bound
on the roadside, and the highwayman, with blackened
face who did the thing so quietly, driving me
— whither? The thing is perfectly feasible. And
what is this fancy now being jolted out of me. A
story? It 's of no use to keep it back, — particularly
in this abysmal vehicle, and here it comes:
I am a Marquis, — a French Marquis; French, because
the peerage is not so well known, and the
country is better adapted to romantic incident, —
a Marquis, because the democratic reader delights
in the nobility. My name is something ligny. I
am coming from Paris to my country-seat at St.
Germain. It is a dark night, and I fall asleep and
tell my honest coachman, André, not to disturb me,
and dream of an angel. The carriage at last stops
I do not recognize the face of the footman who
holds the carriage door. But what of that? — peste!
I am heavy with sleep. The same obscurity also
hides the old familiar indecencies of the statues
on the terrace; but there is a door, and it opens
and shuts behind me smartly. Then I find myself
in a trap, in the presence of the brigand who has
quietly gagged poor André and conducted the carriage
thither. There is nothing for me to do, as a
gallant French Marquis, but to say, “Parbleu!”
draw my rapier, and die valorously! I am found a
week or two after, outside a deserted cabaret near
the barrier, with a hole through my ruffled linen
and my pockets stripped. No; on second thoughts,
I am rescued, — rescued by the angel I have been
dreaming of, who is the assumed daughter of the
brigand, but the real daughter of an intimate
friend.
Looking from the window again, in the vain
hope of distinguishing the driver, I found my eyes
were growing accustomed to the darkness. I could
see the distant horizon, defined by India-inky
woods, relieving a lighter sky. A few stars widely
spaced in this picture glimmered sadly. I noticed
again the infinite depth of patient sorrow in their
serene faces; and I hope that the Vandal who first
applied the flippant “twinkle” to them may not be
driven melancholy mad by their reproachful eyes.
a sense of individual solitude to each integer
of the densest constellation, involving the smallest
star with immeasurable loneliness. Something of
this calm and solitude crept over me, and I dozed in
my gloomy cavern. When I awoke the full moon
was rising. Seen from my window, it had an
indescribably unreal and theatrical effect. It was
the full moon of Norma, — that remarkable celestial
phenomenon which rises so palpably to a hushed
audience and a sublime andante chorus, until the
Casta Diva is sung, — the “inconstant moon” that
then and thereafter remains fixed in the heavens as
though it were a part of the solar system inaugurated
by Joshua. Again the white-robed Druids
filed past me, again I saw that improbable mistle-toe
cut from that impossible oak, and again cold
chills ran down my back with the first strain of the
recitative. The thumping springs essayed to beat
time, and the private-box-like obscurity of the
vehicle lent a cheap enchantment to the view.
But it was a vast improvement upon my past experience,
and I hugged the fond delusion.
My fears for the driver were dissipated with the
rising moon. A familiar sound had assured me of
his presence in the full possession of at least one
of his most important functions. Frequent and
full expectoration convinced me that his lips were
as yet not sealed by the gag of highwaymen, and
from my mind, and assisted by the mild presence
of Diana, who left, as when she visited Endymion,
much of her splendor outside my cavern, — I
looked around the empty vehicle. On the forward
seat lay a woman's hair-pin. I picked it up with
an interest that, however, soon abated. There was
no scent of the roses to cling to it still, not even
of hair-oil. No bend or twist in its rigid angles
betrayed any trait of its wearer's character. I
tried to think that it might have been “Mariar's.”
I tried to imagine that, confining the symmetrical
curls of that girl, it might have heard the
soft compliments whispered in her ears, which
provoked the wrath of the aged female. But in
vain. It was reticent and unswerving in its upright
fidelity, and at last slipped listlessly through
my fingers.
I had dozed repeatedly, — waked on the threshold
of oblivion by contact with some of the angles
of the coach, and feeling that I was unconsciously
assuming, in imitation of a humble insect
of my childish recollection, that spherical
shape which could best resist those impressions,
when I perceived that the moon, riding high in
the heavens, had begun to separate the formless
masses of the shadowy landscape. Trees isolated,
in clumps and assemblages, changed places before
my window. The sharp outlines of the distant
in the dry, cold, dewless air of a California summer
night. I was wondering how late it was, and
thinking that if the horses of the night travelled as
slowly as the team before us, Faustus might have
been spared his agonizing prayer, when a sudden
spasm of activity attacked my driver. A succession
of whip-snappings, like a pack of Chinese
crackers, broke from the box before me. The stage
leaped forward, and when I could pick myself
from under the seat, a long white building had in
some mysterious way rolled before my window.
It must be Slumgullion! As I descended from the
stage I addressed the driver: —
“I thought you changed horses on the road?”
“So we did. Two hours ago.”
“That's odd. I did n't notice it.”
“Must have been asleep, sir. Hope you had a
pleasant nap. Bully place for a nice quiet snooze,
— empty stage, sir!”
| The luck of Roaring Camp, and other sketches | |