 | Condensed novels and other papers |  |
A NIGHT AT WINGDAM.
I had been stage-ridden and bewildered all day,
and when we swept down with the darkness into the
Arcadian hamlet of “Wingdam,” I resolved to go no
further, and rolled out in a gloomy and dyspeptic
state. The effects of a mysterious pie, and some
sweetened carbonic acid known to the proprietor of
the “Half Way House” as “lemming sody,” still
oppressed me. Even the facetiæ of the gallant expressman
who knew everybody's christian name
along the route, who rained letters, newspapers and
bundles from the top of the stage, whose legs frequently
appeared in frightful proximity to the
wheels, who got on and off while we were going at
full speed, whose gallantry, energy and superior
knowledge of travel crushed all us other passengers
to envious silence, and who just then was talking
with several persons and manifestly doing something
else at the same time—even this had failed to interest
me. So I stood gloomily, clutching my shawl
and carpet bag, and watched the stage roll away,
taking a parting look at the gallant expressman as
he hung on the top rail with one leg, and lit his
turned toward the Wingdam Temperance Hotel.
It may have been the weather, or it may have
been the pie, but I was not impressed favorably with
the house. Perhaps it was the name extending the
whole length of the building, with a letter under
each window, making the people who looked out
dreadfully conspicuous. Perhaps it was that “Temperance”
always suggested to my mind, rusks and
weak tea. It was uninviting. It might have been
called the “Total Abstinence” Hotel, from the lack
of anything to intoxicate or enthrall the senses. It
was designed with an eye to artistic dreariness. It
was so much too large for the settlement, that it appeared
to be a very slight improvement on out-doors.
It was unpleasantly new. There was the forest flavor
of dampness about it, and a slight spicing of
pine. Nature outraged, but not entirely subdued,
sometimes broke out afresh in little round, sticky,
resinous tears on the doors and windows. It seemed
to me that boarding there must seem like a perpetual
picnic. As I entered the door, a number of the regular
boarders rushed out of a long room, and set
about trying to get the taste of something out of
their mouths, by the application of tobacco in various
forms. A few immediately ranged themselves around
the fire-place, with their legs over each other's chairs,
and in that position silently resigned themselves to
indigestion. Remembering the pie, I waived the invitation
of the landlord to supper, but suffered myself
to be conducted into the sitting-room. “Mine
specimen of the animal man. He reminded me of
somebody or something connected with the drama. I
was sitting beside the fire, mutely wondering what it
could be, and trying to follow the particular chord of
memory thus touched, into the intricate past, when
a little delicate-looking woman appeared at the door,
and leaning heavily against the casing, said in an exhausted
tone. “Husband!” As the landlord turned
toward her, that particular remembrance flashed before
me, in a single line of blank verse. It was this:
“Two souls with but one single thought, two hearts
that beat as one.”
It was Ingomar and Parthenia his wife. I imagined
a different denouement from the play. Ingomar
had taken Parthenia back to the mountains,
and kept a hotel for the benefit of the Alemanni,
who resorted there in large numbers. Poor Parthenia
was pretty well fagged out, and did all the work
without “help.” She had two “young barbarians,”
a boy and a girl. She was faded—but still good
looking.
I sat and talked with Ingomar, who seemed perfectly
at home and told me several stories of the Alemanni,
all bearing a strong flavor of the wilderness, and being
perfectly in keeping with the house. How he, Ingomar,
had killed a certain dreadful “bar,” whose
skin was just up “yar,” over his bed. How he, Ingomar,
had killed several “bucks,” whose skins had
been prettily fringed and embroidered by Parthenia,
and even now clothed him. How he, Ingomar, had
himself. All this with that ingenious candor which
is perfectly justifiable in a barbarian, but which a
Greek might feel inclined to look upon as “blowing.”
Thinking of the wearied Parthenia, I began
to consider for the first time that perhaps she had
better married the old Greek. Then she woiuld at
least have always looked neat. Then she would not
have worn a woolen dress flavored with all the dinners
of the past year. Then she would not have been
obliged to wait on the table with her hair half down.
Then the two children would not have hung about
her skirts with dirty fingers, palpably dragging her
down day by day. I suppose it was the pie which
put such heartless and improper ideas in my head,
and so I rose up and told Ingomar I believed I'd go
to bed. Preceded by that redoutable barbarian and
a flaring tallow candle, I followed him up stairs to
my room. It was the only single room he had, he
told me; he had built it for the convenience of
married parties who might stop here, but that event
not happening yet, he had left it half furnished. It
had cloth on one side, and large cracks on the other.
The wind, which always swept over Wingdam at
night time, puffed through the apartment from
different apertures. The window was too small for
the hole in the side of the house where it hung, and
rattled noisily. Everything looked cheerless and dispiriting.
Before Ingomar left me, he brought that
“bar-skin,” and throwing it over the solemn bier
which stood in one corner, told me he reckoned that
I undressed myself, the light blowing out in the
middle of that ceremony, crawled under the “bar-skin,”
and tried to compose myself to sleep.
But I was staringly wide awake. I heard the
wind sweep down the mountain side, and toss the
branches of the melancholy pine, and then enter the
house, and try all the doors along the passage. Sometimes
strong currents of air blew my hair all over
the pillow, as with strange whispering breaths. The
green timber along the walls seemed to be sprouting,
and sent a dampness even through the bar-skin.” I
felt like Robinson Crusoe in his tree, with the ladder
pulled up—or like the rocked baby of the nursery
song. After lying awake half an hour, I regretted
having stopped at “Wingdam;” at the end of the
third quarter, I wished I had not gone to bed, and
when a restless hour passed, I got up and dressed
myself. There had been a fire down in the big room.
Perhaps it was still burning. I opened the door and
groped my way along a passage, vocal with the
snores of the Alemanni and the whistling of the night
wind; I partly fell down stairs, and at last entering
the big room, saw the fire still burning. I drew a
chair toward it, poked it with my foot, and was astonished
to see, by the up-springing flash, that Parthenia
was sitting there also, holding a faded looking baby.
I asked her why she was sitting up?
She did not go to bed on Wednesday night, before
the mail arrived, and then she awoke her husband,
and there were passengers to 'tend to.”
“Did she not get tired, sometimes?”
“A little, but Abner,” (the Barbarian's Christian
name,) “had promised to get her more help next
spring, if business was good.”
“How many boarders had she?”
“She believed about forty came to regular meals,
and there was transient custom, which was as much
as she and her husband could 'tend to. But he did
a great deal of work.” “What work?” “Oh! bringing
in the wood, and looking after the traders' things.”
“How long had she been married?” “About nine
years. She had lost a little girl and boy. Three
children living. He was from Illinois. She from
Boston. Had an education, (Boston Female High
School—Geometry, Algebra, a little Latin and Greek.)
Mother and father died. Came to Illinois alone, to
teach school. Saw him—yes—a love match, (`Two
souls,' etc., etc.) Married and emigrated to Kansas.
Thence across the Plains to California. Always on
the outskirts of civilization. He liked it.”
“She might sometimes have wished to go home.
Would like to, on account of her children. Would
like to give them an education. Had taught them a
little herself, but couldn't do much on account of other
work. Hoped that the boy would be like his
father—strong and hearty. Was fearful the girl
would be more like her. Had often thought she was
not fit for a pioneer's wife.”
“Why?”
“Oh she was not strong enough, and had seen some
of his friends' wives in Kansas who could do more
—(“Two souls,” etc.)
Sitting there with her head leaning pensively on
one hand, holding the poor, wearied and limp-looking
baby wearily on the other arm—dirty, drabbled and
forlorn, with the firelight playing upon her features
no longer fresh or young, but still refined and delicate,
and even in her grotesque slovenliness, still bearing a
faint reminiscence of birth and breeding, it was not
to be wondered that I did not fall into excessive raptures
over the barbarian's kindness. Emboldened by
my sympathy, she told me how she had given up,
little by little, what she imagined to be the weakness
of her early education, until she found that she acquired
but little strength in her new experience.
How, translated to a backwoods society, she was hated
by the women and called proud and “fine,” and how
her dear husband lost popularity on that account with
his fellows. How, led partly by his roving instincts,
and partly from other circumstances, he started with
her to California. An account of that tedious journey.
How it was a dreary, dreary waste in her memory, only
a blank plain marked by a little cairn of stones—a
child's grave. How she had noticed that little Willie
failed. How she had called Abner's attention to it,
but, man like, he knew nothing about children, and
pooh-poohed it, and was worried by the stock. How it
happened that after they had passed Sweetwater, she
was walking beside the wagon one night, and looking
at the western sky, and she heard a little voice say
“mother.” How she looked into the wagon and saw
wish to wake him. How that in a few moments more
she heard the same voice saying “mother.” How she
came back to the wagon and leaned down over him,
and felt his breath upon her face, and again covered
him up tenderly, and once more resumed her weary
journey beside him, praying to God for his recovery.
How with her face turned to the sky she heard the same
voice saying “mother,” and directly a great bright
star shot away from its brethren and expired. And
how she knew what had happened, and ran to the
wagon again only to pillow a little pinched and cold
white face upon her weary bosom. The thin, red
hands went up to her eyes here, and for a few moments
she sat still. The wind tore round the house
and made a frantic rush at the front door, and from
his coach of skins in the inner room—Ingomar, the
barbarian, snored peacefully.
Of course she always found a protector from insult
and outrage in the great courage and strength of her
husband?
Oh yes; when Ingomar was with her she feared
nothing. But she was nervous and had been frightened
once!
How?
They had just arrived in California. They kept
house then, and had to sell liquor to traders. Ingomar
was hospitable, and drank with everybody, for
the sake of popularity and business, and Ingomar
got to like liquor, and was easily affected by it. And
how one night there was a boisterous crowd in the
only succeeded in awakening the coarse gallantry of
the half crazed revelers. And how, when she had at
last got him in the room with her frightened children,
he sank down on the bed in a stupor, which made
her think the liquor was drugged. And how she sat
beside him all night, and near morning heard a step
in the passage, and looking toward the door, saw the
latch slowly moving up and down, as if somebody
were trying it. And how she shook her husband,
and tried to waken him, but without effect. And
how at last the door yielded slowly at the top, (it was
bolted below,) as if by a gradual pressure without;
and how a hand protruded through the opening.
And how as quick as lightning she nailed that hand
to the wall with her scissors, (her only weapon,) but
the point broke, and somebody got away with a fearful
oath. How she never told her husband of it, for
fear he would kill that somebody; but how on one
day a stranger called here, and as she was handing
him his coffee, she saw a queer triangular scar on the
back of his hand.
She was still talking, and the wind was still blowing,
and Ingomar was still snoring from his couch of
skins, when there was a shout high up the straggling
street, and a clattering of hoofs, and rattling of wheels
The mail had arrived. Parthenia ran with the faded
baby to awaken Ingomar, and almost simultaneously
the gallant expressman stood again before me addressing
me by my Christian name, and inviting me to
drink out of a mysterious black bottle. The horses
expressman concluded, and bidding Parthenia
good-bye, I got on the stage, and immediately fell
asleep, and dreamt of calling on Parthenia and Ingomar,
and being treated with pie to an unlimited extent
until I woke up the next morning in Sacramento.
I have some doubts as to whether all this
was not a dyspeptic dream, but I never witness the
drama, and hear that noble sentiment concerning
“Two souls,” etc., without thinking of Wingdam and
poor Parthenia.
| Condensed novels and other papers | |