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 | CHAPTER II. Peter Pilgrim, or, A rambler's recollections |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
This traveller's room was the garret, or
the half thereof, the other moiety being partitioned
off, and applied to some other purpose;
and as it was neither ceiled nor plastered,
it presented no very striking look of
luxury or comfort. But it exhibited the rare
and captivating spectacle of a dozen different
beds, in which each man was to possess, for
one night at least, the happiness of sleeping
without a bedfellow. The beds were, moreover,
all single ones, one only excepted, which
was neither single nor double, and, indeed,
was a mere plank stretched between two
stools, with a feather-bed hung over it, pannier-wise;
and so far, it appeared to us, that
our landlord, even in his out-of-the-world
nook, must have been visited with some inklings
of civilization; but upon further consideration,
well as the number of the couches, to the necessity
of the case, the garret being of such
a figure as to stow a dozen truckle-beds
much more commodiously than half that
number of double ones.
Nevertheless, we were all well pleased
with the arrangement; nor did any difficulty
present itself, until the braying gentleman,
regaling us first with a moderate burst of his
music, by way of calling attention, demanded
“Who the nation was to sleep with the
Yankee?” a question that no one answered,
until he had first popped into, and so secured
possession of, his cot; after which,
each swore, with an oath as terrible as was
ever sworn in Flanders, the Yankee should
not sleep with him. Upon this point the determination
was quite unanimous. I might,
indeed, except myself, having made no rash
vow on the occasion; which was the more
unnecessary as I had, partly by accident, and
partly from choice, fallen heir to the narrow
bed of plank, spoken of before, in which there
was no fear of my being troubled with a bedfellow.
We had scarce arranged this important
matter, when the supernumerary guest and
securing his property for the night, came up
stairs, bearing his saddle-bags and a candle,
and with hesitating step and modest countenance,
stole through the room, looking for
an empty bed, but of course without finding
any.
“Perhaps, gentlemen,” said he, with an extremely
solemn, wo-begone voice, of inquiry,
“some of you can tell me where I am to
sleep to-night?”
“In paradise, I suppose,” said the braying
gentleman; “for I'll be hanged if there's any
room for you here. You see, the beds are
all full.”
“I do,” quoth the stranger, looking disconsolately
round, “and they are shocking
narrow ones, too. But I rather calculate, the
landlord meant me to have half a one, some
where or other among you?”
“Well, that seems but reasonable,” said
the Mississippian; “and I should be very willing
to let you have half of mine; only—”
here he turned over the bed clothes and displayed
a huge bowie-knife lying on one side
of him, and a pistol on the other—“only that
I never sleep without my arms, and they are
somewhat dangerous when I dream at night,
soul, sir, I always dream the niggers are murdering
me, and so fall to at 'em in a way that's
quite a caution! 'Pon my soul, sir, if you
had seen me, how I slashed the bed to pieces
last night, and shot off the bed-post! Had
to pay ten dollars damages to old Skinflint,
the landlord!”
The Yankee recoiled with trepidation from
this perilous bedfellow, and preferred his request
to the Tennessean, representing very
piteously, that he had an “affection of the
head”—though of what kind he did not inform
us—which was always aggravated by want
of, or even by uncomfortable, sleep. The Tennessean,
however, swore he was just as
bad as his neighbour, the Mississippian,
though in another way; he never could sleep
with any body, without beginning to fight, the
moment he fell asleep; and it was but a fortnight
ago, he said, that he had gouged an unlucky
bedfellow's eyes out.
The Alabamian declared he chewed tobacco
in his sleep, and that his quids were to the
full as dangerous to a bedmate's eyes as the
Tennessean's fingers. The second Mississippian
had taken a position directly across the
bed, his head sticking out on one side, his
swore, he could sleep with any comfort; and
therefore desired the Yankee to apply to some
one else; which he did, though with no better
fortune, some excusing themselves on pretences
as ridiculous as those I have mentioned,
while one or two others, whose wit was
not so ready, met his supplicating glances
and hesitating applications with downright
refusals. As for myself, the narrowness of
my couch was so manifest, as to secure me
from application.
The poor Yankee, thus rejected on all
sides, and with the prospect of remaining
bedless for the night, took the desperate resolution
of preferring a complaint to his majesty
the innkeeper. For this purpose, he
opened the door, and called twice or thrice,
but with timid tones, to mine host; who,
having already retired to his bed, and not
choosing to be troubled, took no notice of
the first calls, and only replied to the last by
threatening to turn his unfortunate customer
out of the house, if he did not keep quiet.
To be turned out of a house in which he
was so inhospitably treated, might have seemed
no very disagreeable alternative; but, unluckily,
a dismal rain had now commenced,
within eight or ten miles.
Nothing remained for the extra lodger but
to stretch himself upon the floor; which he at
last did, but with sundry groans and complaints,
pillowing his head upon his saddle
bags; in which position he lay until his fellow-travellers,
myself with the rest, had all
dropt sound asleep.
We had not slept, I imagine, more than a
quarter of an hour, when we were all, at the
same moment, roused up by a terrible voice
crying, in the midst of the room, “If there's
no other way with them, cut their aristocratical
throats!”
The words and voice were alike alarming;
but judge our astonishment when, starting
from our beds, we beheld the Yankee, rising
half naked from the floor, as grim and gaunt
as Don Quixotte himself, holding a bowie-knife,
to which the Mississippian's was as a
penknife to a razor, and brandishing it with
looks of blood and fury. “By snakes and
niggers!” cried the braying gentleman, with
something like alarm, “he dreams harder than
I do!”
“Wake him up, he'll do a mischief,” exclaimed
others; for we all thought the poor
dream.
The Tennessean, bolder than the rest,
seized him by the arm; upon which he dropped
his knife, and, his countenance changing
from rage to trepidation, immediately exclaimed,—“I
give myself up; I am your prisoner.
But take notice, gentlemen, and bear
witness for me, I yield to superior force—Give
me five minutes to say my prayers!”
“Death and thunder!” cried the Varmint
of Tennessee, starting back, “the man is
mad!”
And so, indeed, it seemed to us all.
“Give me five minutes to say my prayers,”
quoth the Yankee; who, however, instead of
dropping upon his knees to pray, burst into
tears, and harangued us in somewhat the following
words: “I am an honest man and
patriot, a democrat and man of the people: I
have fought the battle of my country, and I
die a Roman hero. You are too many for
me, gentlemen—twelve hundred men against
one, and a regiment of scalping savages behind
you! I surrender, and I am ready to die.
I am a democrat. But what is one democrat
among twelve hundred hired myrmidons of
power? I know you'll kill me, but I don't
memory, to bear witness before the world”—
(here his voice was almost drowned in sobs,)
—“to bear witness that I die like a brave man
—die like a hero—die like a patriot—the
victim of despots and martyr of freedom!”
Great were the consternation and confusion
that now prevailed. The man was mad—
mad north-north-west, and all round the compass,
politically mad—a mad patriot; nobody
doubted that. Some asked, what was to be
done: others would have argued the madman
out of his frenzy; others again slipped out of
the door, and stood ready for a run.
In the meanwhile, the maniac, reinspired
by his own eloquence, or the pusillanimity of
his enemies, which even a madman might
perceive, lifted up his voice again, but lifted
it in a tone of defiance.
“You are the hired myrmidons of power!”
he cried, “purse-proud rich men—tyrants
that grind the face of the poor—that live on
the sweat of the poor man's labour, and rob
his hungry children of their food! I am a
poor man, and the poor man's friend: I hate
you, I defy you, I call you to the reckoning.
Yes!” he roared, snatching up his knife from
the floor, and then waving it aloft, as if to
your hour has come: I call you to the reckoning—to
the reckoning of blood!—Advance,
men of the people, and cut their tyrannical
throats!”
And with that, he advanced himself, flourishing
his ferocious weapon against our
aristocratic breasts. There was no withstanding
that terrific charge: pellmell we
went, one over the other, out the door, which
we esteemed ourselves fortunate in being able
to close, and thus secure upon the distracted
assailant.
We then made our way down to the barroom,
where we found the glum host and his
haughty spouse in as great alarm and as
elegant deshabille as ourselves, they, and,
indeed, every soul in the house, having been
aroused by the madman's vociferations.
What was now, to be done? The unfortunate
man was still raging; we could hear
him thumping against the door, as if endeavouring
to break through, and roaring all
the while a frenzied cry of “victory!” With
that savage knife in his hand—nay, with a
dozen knives perhaps—for arms and clothes
were all, in the hurry of our flight, left together
in the room—who should dare attack
for the enterprise; and although the ugly
landlady proposed, in her ecstacy of terror,
a plan that might have ended the difficulty—
namely, that some of us should take her husband's
gun, and shoot the bedlamite through
the key hole, (and, really, she did not seem
to consider the shooting a mad Yankee any
very atrocious crime,)—the business was ended
by our sitting up all night in the bar-room,
in extremely simple costume, debating the
difficulty.
The terrible din with which we had been
ousted from the garret, did not continue long;
but was succeeded, first, by a dead, portentous
calm, then by a strange half groaning,
half snorting kind of noise, that was represented
by some who had the courage once
or twice to creep slyly to the garret door to
listen, to be peculiarly terrific, and which, indeed,
lasted all night long.
When the morning broke, we held another
consultation, and finally, growing more courageous
as the day grew broader, wrought
ourselves to the resolution of proceeding in
a body to the traveller's room, the landlord
magnanimously leading the van, armed with
a broad-axe; ourselves intrepidly following at
as could be gathered up, and others
cart-ropes and bed-cords to tie the madman,
and mine hostess behind with a bulldog.
We paused a moment at the door, listening
to the groaning sound, which was still kept
up, and then soft y entered the room; where
we had the satisfaction of finding the poor
fellow lying very soundly and comfortably
asleep in the best bed, sending from his upturned
nostrils those anomalous and horrid
sounds, which now appeared to us the natural
music of sleep. He opened his eyes,
stared upon us somewhat inquiringly, yet
with a look so extremely natural and lucid
that we refrained from laying hands upon
him, as we supposed would have been necessary.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” said he, quite
like a sensible person; “a fine morning we
have after the rain. And a very fine sleep
I've had too,” he added: “I hope you can
say the same?”
“It's his lucid moment, poor devil,” said
the Varmint; and gathering up our indispensables,
we all went down to breakfast.
The Yankee was now the observed of all
observers—as solemn, as sad, as modest as
of his late paroxysm. We were all
too prudent, or generous, to remind him of it,
even by a distant hint; and, for the same
reasons, we all took care not to cross him in
any thing at table. Whatever dish he looked
at was immediately surrendered to him; even
the ugly landlady requested his acceptance of
a tumbler of cream she had poured out for
her own use, but on which he chanced to
cast his eye. And thus it happened that
our gentleman, whose appetite had by no
means suffered from his affliction, ate the
best, as well as the hugest breakfast of all;
after which, he ordered his horse, called for
and paid his bill, with every air of sanity;
and then, with every air of sanity, departed.
A few moments after, we were ourselves
upon the road thundering along in our mail-coach;
and by and by caught sight of our
extra lodger on the top of a hill, at a cross
road, where, indeed, he seemed waiting for
us, as he looked back upon us frequently,
while we slowly mounted the hill.
“Mad again!” quoth the braying gentleman,
with an air of commiseration—“Poor
devil!”
“Gentlemen,” said the madman, touching
the sweetest intonation to his sepulchral
voice, “I believe I forgot to bid you farewell:
at all events, I omitted to express my thanks
for the uncommon kindness you all displayed
in giving me, a poor afflicted Yankee pedler,
so much more bed-room than I had any occasion
for.”
“Oh,” said the Tennessean, having some
doubt about the poor fellow's meaning, but
willing to humour him to the best of his
power—“it is our southern way; hospitality,
sir, mere hospitality.”
“Sir,” said the pedler, with a grateful look,
“I shall always remember it. But I do assure
you, one bed would have served my purpose
just as well as a dozen.”
“No doubt, sir,” said the Varmint; “but
the truth is, as you were a sick man —”
“Only a little affliction in my head,” said
the stranger, touching his cracked os frontis.
“Yes, sir—a little affliction”—rejoined the
Tennessean; “for which reason, each man
desired to give you his bed; and that,” added
the gentleman, pleased at his ingenuity, “is
the reason you had all the beds!”
The pedler gave us a satanic grin, and
touching his forehead again, exclaimed, after
natural manner, “Remember me, gentlemen!
I have an affliction here, to be sure, but—I
never lost a bed by it!”
With that, he whipped up his horse, and
cheering him on the way with a laugh that
sounded like the chuckle of a kettle-drum, it
was so deep and tremendous, left us to our
meditations.
“Bitten!” said the Varmint, giving a sneaking
look around him.
“Choused out of bed—humbugged, every
man of us!” growled the Alabamian.
The Mississippian jumped on his feet, and
roaring—“Bray, gentlemen, bray—we are all
jackasses together!” set us the example, by
pouring his most exquisitely donkeyish note
upon the ears of morning.
| CHAPTER II. Peter Pilgrim, or, A rambler's recollections | |