 | V. The Sparrowgrass papers, or, Living in the
country |  |
5. V.
There was a thin cloud, like lace, over the moon
that night; just enough to make objects painfully
distinct, as Captain Belgrave turned out from Mewker's
gate, and took the high road toward home.
He jogged along, however, quite comfortably, and
had just reached the end of Mewker's fence, when
he saw a figure on horseback, emerging from the
little lane that ran down, behind the garden, to the
pond at the back of the house. The apparition
had a sort of red cape around its shoulders; a soldier-cap,
with a tall plume (very like the one the
Captain used to wear on parade), was upon its
head; in its hand was a long, formidable-looking
staff; and the horse of the spectre was enveloped
in a white saddle-cloth, that hung down almost to
the ground. What was remarkable, Old Shatter,
as if possessed with the devil, actually drew out of
the road toward the stranger, and gave a whinny,
which was instantly responded to in the most frightful
tones by the horse of the spectre. Almost paralyzed,
the Captain suffered the apparition to
of hair, like tow, waved around features that
seemed to have neither shape nor color. Its face
seemed like a face of brown paper, so formless and
flat was it, with great hideous eyes and a mouth of
intolerable width. As it approached, the figure
seemed to have a convulsion—it rolled so in the
saddle; but, recovering, it drew up beside the
shaft, and, whirling its long staff, brought such a
whack upon Shatter's flank, that the old horse
almost jumped out of his harness. Away went the
wagon and the Captain, and away went the spectre
close behind; fences, trees, bushes, dust, whirled
in and out of sight; bridges, sedges, trout-brooks,
mills, willows, copses, plains, in moonlight and
shadow, rolled on and on; but not an inch was lost
or won; there, behind the wagon, was the goblin
with his long plume bending, and waving, and
dancing, and his staff whirling with terrible menaces.
On, and on, and on, and ever and anon the
goblin steed gave one of those frightful whinnies
that seemed to tear the very air with its dissonance.
On, and on, and on! The Captain drove with his
head turned back over his shoulder, but Shat knew
the road. On, and on, and on! A thought flashes
“The horse-pistol!” It is under the cushions. He
seizes it nervously, cocks it, and—bang! goes the
plume of the goblin. “By gosh!” said a voice
under the soldier-cap, “I didn't cal'late on that;”
and then, “I vum ef old Shat hain't run away!”
Sure enough, Shatto has run away; the wagon is
out of sight in a turn of the road; the next instant,
it brings up against a post; off goes Shat, with
shafts and dislocated fore-wheels; and old Jim soon
after finds the remains of the wagon, and the senseless
body of his master, in a ditch, under the moon,
and a willow. To take the red blanket from his
shoulders, which he had worn like a Mexican poncho
by putting his head through a hole in the middle,
is done in an instant; and then, with big tears
rolling down his cheeks, the old boy brings water
from a spring, in the crown of the soldier-cap, to
bathe the face of the Captain. The report of the
pistol has alarmed a neighbor; and the two, with
the assistance of the hind wheels and the body of
the wagon, carry poor Belgrave through the moonlit
streets of Little-Crampton, to the Oakery.
When the Captain opened his eye (for the other
was under the tuition of a large patch of brown
at home, surrounded and fortified, as usual, by
Augusta, Adolphus, Hannah, the help, and Jim, in
picturesque attitudes. How he came there, was a
mystery. Stay; he begins to take up the thread:
Mewkers, fence, the figure, the race for life, and
the pistol! What else? Nothing—blank—oblivion.
So he falls into a tranquil state of comfort,
and feels that he does not care about it. No getting
up that steep ladder to-night! Never mind.
It is a labor to think, so he relapses into thought-lessness,
and finally falls asleep. There was a
stranger in the room behind the bed's head, a tall,
astringent-looking man, Dr. Butternuts, by whom
the Captain had been let blood. If Belgrave had
seen him, he would have fainted. “No injuries of
any consequence,” says the doctor, departing and
waving his brown hand. “Terribly skart, though,”
Augusta responds, in a whisper. “Yes, he will
get over that; to-morrow he will be better;” and
the doctor waves himself out. Adolphus retires,
and then Hannah, the help; but Augusta and Jim
watch by the bedside until morning. The Captain,
every now and then, among the snowy sheets and
coverlet, turns up a side of face that looks like a
but Augusta whispers soothingly, “Never mind,
Jim, it's for his good; I'm glad you skart him;
you skart him a leetle too much this time, that's
all; next time you'll be more careful, won't you,
and not skear him so bad?”
That Captain Belgrave had been thrown from
his wagon, and badly hurt, was known all over
Little-Crampton, next morning. Some said he had
been shot at by a highwayman; some said he had
shot a highwayman. The story took a hundred
shapes, and finally was rolled up at the door of the
Rev. Melchior Spat, who at once took his wagon,
and drove off to the Mewkery. There the rumor
was unfolded to Mr. Mewker, who, enjoying it
immensely, made so many funny remarks thereon,
that the Rev. Melchior Spat was convulsed with
laughter, and then the two drove down to the Oakery
to condole with the sufferer. On the way
there, the Rev. Melchior was so wonderfully facetions,
that Mewker, who never enjoyed any person's
jokes but his own, was actually stimulated
into mirth, and had it not been for happily catching
a distant sight of the tower, would have so forgotten
himself as to drive up to the door with a
they both entered grave as owls, and inquired, in
faint and broken voices, how the Captain was, and
whether he was able to see friends. Augusta, who
received them, led them up to the room, where the
Captain, with his face like the globe in the equinox,
sitting propped up in bed, shook both feebly
by the hand, and then the Rev. Melchior proposed
prayer, to which Mewker promptly responded by
dropping on his knees, and burying his face in the
bottom of an easy chair. This was a signal for
Adolphus to do likewise; and the Captain, not to
be behind, struggling up into a sitting posture,
leaned forward in the middle of the coverlet, with
his toes and the end of his shirt deployed upon the
pillows. Then the Rev. Melchior, in a crying
voice, proceeded according to the homoœopathic
practice—that is, making it short and sweet as possible—touched
upon the excellent qualities of the
sufferer, the distress of his beloved friends, and
especially of the anxiety which would be awakened
in the bosom of one now absent, “whose
heart was only the heart of a woman, a heart not
strong and able to bear up against calamity, but
weak, and fragile, and loving, and pitiful, and ten
pitiful, and tender, and fragile, that it could not
bear up against calamity; no, it could not; no, it
could not; it was weak, it was pitiful, it was loving,
it was tender, it was fragile like a flower, and
against calamity it could not bear up.”
So great was the effect of the Rev. Melchior
Spat's eloquence, that the Captain fairly cried, so
as to leave a round wet spot in the middle of the
coverlet, and Mr. Mewker wiped his eyes frequently
with his handkerchief, as he rose from the
chair. And although the voice of the Reverend
Melchior had been heard distinctly, word for word,
by Jim, in the far-off stable, yet it sank to the
faintest whisper when he proceeded to inquire of
the Captain how he felt, and what was this dread
ful story. And then the Captain, in a voice still
fainter, told how he was attacked by a man of
immense size, mounted on a horse of proportionate
dimensions, and how he had defended himself, and
did battle bravely until, in the fight, “Shatto got
skeared, and overset the wagon, and then the man
got onto him, and pounded the life out of him,
while he was entangled with reins.” Then Mr.
Mewker and the Rev. Mr. Spat took leave with
renewed the jocularity which had been interrupted
somewhat by the visit to the Oakery.
To say that Mr. Mewker neglected his friend,
the Captain, during his misfortunes, would be doing
a great injustice to that excellent man. Every day
he was at the Oakery, to inquire after his health;
and rarely did he come without some little present,
a pot of sweetmeats, a bouquet, or something of the
kind, from the lovely Lasciver. How good it was
of him to buy jelly at two shillings a pound at the
store, and bring it to the Captain, saying, “This
little offering is from Harriet, who thought some
delicacy of the kind would be good for you.”
Was it not disinterested? Hiding his own modest
virtues in a pot of jelly, and presenting it in the
name of another! The truth is, Mewker's superior
tactics were too profound for Augusta to contend
against; she felt, as it were, the sand sliding from
under her feet. Nor was Mewker without a powerful
auxiliary in the Reverend Melchior Spat,
who, by his prerogative, had free access to the
house at all times, and made the most of it, too.
Skillfully turning to common topics when Augusta
was present, and as skillfully returning to the old
with such desire for the lovely widow, that, had it
not been for his black eye, he would assuredly have
gone off and proposed on the spot. This feeling,
however, subsided when the Rev. Melchior was
gone; the Captain did not think of marrying; he
was a true old bachelor, contented with his lot, and
not disposed to change it even for a better; besides,
he was timid.
| V. The Sparrowgrass papers, or, Living in the
country | |