University of Virginia Library

2. II.
PARSON DODD AND THE BAY MARE.

Parson Dodd was to be that day a partner in a triangular
exchange. That is, Dodd was to preach for Selwyn,
Selwyn was to preach for Burdick, and Burdick was to
preach for Dodd.

From Dodd's parish at Coldwater to Selwyn's at Longtrot
was a distance of some fourteen miles. Just a nice
little Sunday morning's drive in fine weather; and one to
which Dodd looked forward with interest, for two or three
reasons.

To begin with, Dodd was a bachelor of full five-and-forty.
He had always intended to marry, but being one
of your procrastinating gentlemen, who make it a rule to
put off until to-morrow whatever they are not absolutely
compelled to do to-day, he had, with other things, put off
matrimony. He had even paid somewhat marked and
prolonged attentions — at different periods, of course — to
three or four ladies, each of whom had in turn been
snatched up by a more enterprising suitor, while he was

slowly making up his mind on the subject of a proposal.
Very much as if he had been contemplating a fair morsel
on his fork, expecting in due time to swallow it, but in no
haste to do so, when some puppy had rushed in and swallowed
it for him, with a celerity that quite took the good
man's breath away.

Not that Garcey was a puppy, by any means. He was
a brother clergyman, and Selwyn's predecessor at Longtrot;
and there was a time when he liked wonderfully
well to come over and preach for Dodd. And that is the
way he became connected with the romance of Dodd's life.

To the last of the estimable ladies alluded to — namely,
Miss Melissa Wortleby, of his parish — Dodd did actually
propose matrimony, after taking about five years to think
of it. But Miss Wortleby was then aghast at an offer
which would have made her the happiest of women three
days ago.

“Dear me, Mr. Dodd!” said she. “Why did n't you
ever tell me, if you had such a thing in your mind?”

The parson stammered out that a serious step of that
nature was not to be taken in haste. “There 's always
time enough, you are aware, Miss Wortleby.”

“Yes,” said poor Miss Wortleby, with a look of distress;
“but Mr. Garcey — he — he proposed to me last Sunday,
and I —”

“You accepted him?” said Parson Dodd, turning pale
at this unexpected stroke.

Miss Wortleby's tears were a sufficient confession.

“The traitor!” said Parson Dodd. “He took advantage
of our exchange to offer himself to you. He has taken
advantage of many another exchange, I suppose, to come
over and cultivate your acquaintance. Always teasing me
for an exchange — the vil —”

“No, no, dear Mr. Dodd!” pleaded Melissa Wortleby,

clasping his hands. “He is no traitor and no villain. He
had no idea, any more than I had, that you —”

“To be sure,” said Parson Dodd, resuming that serene
behavior and those just sentiments which were habitual
with him. “I have nobody to blame but myself, dear
Miss Wortleby.”

Dodd must have seen that he was really the young
lady's choice, and that it would have been no very difficult
task to prevail upon her to cancel her hasty engagement
with Garcey. But we must do him the justice to say that
if he was given to procrastination in matters of right, he
was still more slow to decide upon any course of doubtful
morality. So he stepped gracefully aside, and gave the
pair to each other in a very literal sense, himself performing
the wedding ceremony.

Garcey was settled, as I said, in what was now Selwyn's
parish; there he lived with his gentle Melissa, preached
two or three times a week (exchanging very rarely with
Dodd in those days, however), and laid the foundations of
a wide reputation and a large family. Then he died, leaving
to his afflicted widow a barrel of sermons and six children.

Melissa still lived at the parsonage over at Longtrot,
and boarded Selwyn, the young theological sprig, lately
slipped from the academical tree and planted in that parish
in the hope that he might take root there. It was
even whispered that he was likely to take root there in a
double sense, succeeding the lamented Garcey not only in
the pulpit, but also in Mrs. Garcey's affections. But of
course there was no truth in that suspicion. Parson Dodd
must have known there was no truth in it, for he would
have been the last man to serve another as poor Garcey
had served him. And somehow Dodd liked to preach for
Selwyn.

To be quite frank about the matter, Parson Dodd had
lately awakened one morning and discovered to his surprise
the marks of age creeping over him. His crown was getting
bald, his waistcoat round, his hair (what there was of
it) silvery (but he wore a wig), his frontal ivory golden.
Until yesterday he had said of growing old, as of everything
else, “Time enough for that.” But however man
may procrastinate, the old fellow with the scythe and the
forelock is always about his work; and here was Dodd's
field of life more than half mown before he knew it.
“Only a little patch of withered herbage left!” thought
he with consternation.

Of course no young lady would think of having him now.
He might have deemed his case hopeless, but there was
the mother of Garcey's innocents! I 'll not say that these
living monuments to the memory of his late friend were
not just a little dampening to the ardor of his reviving
attachment. Of all the ready-made articles with which the
world abounds, one of the least desirable is a ready made
family. To bear with easy grace a weighty domestic responsibility
(and a wife and six may be considered such),
one should begin with it at the beginning, like the man in
the fable, who, by shouldering the calf daily, came at last
to carry the ox. But to commence married life where
another man has left off, that requires courage. But Dodd
was a man of courage; one of those who, irresolute and
dilatory in ordinary matters, show unexpected pluck in the
face of formidable undertakings. He had thought of all
these things. And, as I have said, he liked to preach for
Selwyn.

Usually, when he had that privilege, he drove over to
Longtrot early in the morning, put up his horse at the parsonage,
and had a good hour with the relict of the lamented
Garcey before the ringing of the second bell. An hour

spent probably in Scriptural readings and conversations, or
perhaps in drilling the little Garceys in their Sunday-school
lessons. Whatever the pious task, his heart was
evidently in it; for it was always noticeable afterward
when he walked to church with the widow and her little
tribe, leading the youngest between them, that his kind
face beamed with peculiar satisfaction.

But, as I have hinted, there was other cause for the
interest with which Parson Dodd looked forward to this
particular Sunday morning's ride. Shall I confess it? The
worthy man, having no family, was a lover of animals, especially
of horses, — more especially of fine horses. He had
lately exchanged nags (an act which in a layman is termed
“swapping”) and got a bay mare; to his experienced eye
a very superior beast to the one he put away. He had
as yet had no opportunity to try her paces for more than
a short spirt; but he liked the way she carried her hoofs,
and he believed her to be “sound and true.” He had her
of a townsman, — Colonel Jakes, — who, though something
of a jockey, was never known actually to lie about a horse;
and Colonel Jakes had said, as he turned the quid in his
cheek, and squinted with a professional air across the
mare's fetlocks, and looked candid as a summer's day,
“There 's lots of travel in that beast, Parson. You see
how she goes off; and it 's my experience she 's poorest at
the start. Yes, Parson, I give ye my word, you 'll find
that creatur's generally poorest at the start. You 'll say
so when you 've drove her a little.”

It was a lovely morning, and the heart of Parson Dodd
was happy in his breast, when he set off, at half past seven
o'clock, alone in his buggy, driving the bay mare, to go
over and preach for Selwyn.

He was very carefully dressed in his dark brown wig,
his suit of handsome blue-black cloth, and ruffled shirtbosom

of snowy whiteness, which distinguished him among
clergymen far and near. “Let me see that coat and that
shirt-bosom anywhere, and I should know it was you,” said
Mrs. Bean, with just pride in her washing and in her minister,
that very morning. “But,” her eye resting with
some surprise on his neckcloth, “where did you git that
imbroidered new white neck-handkerchief?”

“A gift, — a gift from a lady,” replied Parson Dodd,
evasively.

He was not quite prepared to inform her that his appearance
in it foreboded a change in her housekeeping.
But so it was. In the note that came with it a few days
before, Melissa had written with a trembling hand: “I embroidered
it for my dear husband. Will you accept and
wear it?” Of course, these simple, pathetic words were
not in any way designed as a nudge to Dodd's well-known
procrastinating disposition. Yet he could not but feel that
putting on the neckcloth that morning was as good as
tying the matrimonial halter under his chin.

“Wal, I don't care, it 's perty anyhow!” said Mrs. Bean.

So Parson Dodd started off, wearing the fatal neckcloth,
and driving the bay mare. Her coat was glossy as silk;
the air was exhilarating; the birds sang sweetly; she
stepped off beautifully. He knew Melissa would be expecting
him, and he was happy.

“But hold on!” said he, pulling the rein all at once.
“Bless me, my sermon!” The bay mare and the embroidered
neckcloth had quite put that out of his head.
“If I had really gone without it, I should have had to
overhaul some of poor Garcey's,” thought he, as he wheeled
about.

He wheeled again as he drove up to the gate, and called
to Mrs. Bean to go into his study and hand him down his
sermon-case, which she would find lying on his desk. As

she reached it to him over the gate, he remarked, “You
have n't seen how she moves off.”

“No, I ha'n't,” said Mrs. Bean.

Parson Dodd tightened the reins, — those electric conductors
through which every born driver knows how to
send magnetic intelligence, the soul of the man at one
end inspiring the soul of the horse at the other. And Parson
Dodd clucked lightly. But Queen Bess (that was the
name of her) did not move. A louder cluck, and a closer
tension of the quivering ribbons. Queen Bess merely laid
her ears back, curled down her tail as if she expected a blow,
and — Dodd could see by the sparkling black eye turned
back at him — looked vicious.

“Go 'long!” said Parson Dodd, showing the whip.

Queen Bess quietly braced herself. She was evidently
used to this sort of thing, and prepared for a struggle.
Parson Dodd saw the situation at a glance, remembered
the jockey's declaration that she was “generally poorest
at the start,” and blushed to the apex of his bald crown.

“What is the matter with him?” cried sympathetic Mrs.
Bean.

“Him 's balky, that 's what 's the matter,” replied the
irritated parson. “Go 'long, Bess, I tell you!” And he
touched her shoulder with the whip.

The touch was followed by a sharp cut; but Bess only
cringed her tail more closely, and looked wickeder than
ever. Then he tried coaxing. All to no purpose. It was
a dead balk.

Notwithstanding his burning shame at having been
shaved by a layman who “paltered with him in a double
sense,” and his wrath at the perverse brute, and his irritation
at Mrs. Bean, who always would call a mare a him,
Parson Dodd controlled his temper, and begged the lady's
pardon, but told her she had better go into the house, for

it might be her presence that put the devil into the brute
(she declares that he said “devil”), then got out of the
buggy, went to the animal's head, stroked her, patted her,
spoke gently to her, and led her out into the street.

Then he once more got up into his seat. But Queen
Bess saw through the transparent artifice; she had taken
serious offence at the indecision shown at starting, and
now she refused to start at all without leading. So Parson
Dodd got out again, gave her another start with his
hand on the bridle, then sprang back into the buggy, at
the risk of his limbs, while she was going. “I wonder if
I shall have to start in this way when I leave Melissa's?”
thought he, and wondered what people would say to see
him with a balky horse!

He let her go her own gait for a mile or two, then, by
way of experiment, stopped her, and started her again.
She seemed to have got over her miff by this time, for she
went off readily at a word. Having repeated this experiment
two or three times with encouraging success, (as if
the cunning creature did n't know perfectly well what he
was up to!) Parson Dodd began to think he had n't made
such a fatally bad bargain after all. “With careful management,
I can cure her of that trick,” thought he.

When he had made about ten miles of the journey, he
came to a stream where it was his custom always to “stop
and water” when going over to preach for Selwyn. There
was then an easy trot of four miles beyond, which he thought
well for a horse after drinking; and, besides, he considered
a little soaking good for his wheels in dry weather.

Parson Dodd got out, let down the mare's check-rein,
got into the buggy again, and, turning aside from the
bridge, drove down into the water, purposing to drive
through it and up the opposite bank, country fashion.

In mid-channel, he let Queen Bess stop and drink. She

seemed pretty thirsty, and the cautious parson, to keep her
from drinking too fast and too much, found it necessary to
pull her head up now and then. This, I suppose, vexed
her; for she was a testy creature, and could not bear to
be trifled with. At last she would not put down her head,
and, when requested to start, she would not start. In
short, Queen Bess had balked again, this time in the middle
of the stream.

Parson Dodd's lips tightened across his teeth, and his
knuckles grew white about his whip-handle. But the cringing
tail and the leering eye told him that he might spare his
blows. Madam had fully made up her mind not to budge.

The parson stood up and reconnoitred. The stream was
thigh-deep, and it was a couple of rods to either shore.
The bridge was just out of jumping distance. There was
no help within call. Parson Dodd looked at the water,
then at his neatly fitting polished boots, ruffled shirt-bosom,
and blue-black suit, grinned, and sat down again.

“Queen Bess,” said he, “you think you 've got me now.
It does look so. How long do you intend to keep me here?
Take your own time, madam! But mind, you make up
for this delay when you do start.”

It was difficult, however, for a person of even so equitable
a temper as his own to possess his soul in patience very
long under the circumstances. Suppose Queen Bess should
conclude not to start at all that forenoon? What would
Melissa think? And who would preach for Selwyn?

There was another consideration. Queen Bess had had
her fill of cold water when she was warm, — a dangerous
thing for a horse that has been driven, and that is not kept
in exercise afterward. Before many minutes, Dodd had no
doubt she would be fatally foundered; though he did not
know but the cold water about her feet might do something
toward keeping the fever from settling in them.

“This, then, is the creatur' that 's usually poorest at
starting! I should say so!” thought he. “I wish Colonel
Jakes was lashed to her back, like another Mazeppa, and
that I had the starting of her then; I 'd be willing to
sacrifice the mare. Come, come, Bess! good Queen Bess!
Will you go 'long?”

She would not, of course.

Parson Dodd looked wistfully at both banks again, and
at the inaccessible bridge, and at the hub-deep water, and
said, grimly, after a moment's profound meditation, —
“There 's only one way; I must get out and lead her!”

It is said that the brains of drowning men are lighted
at the supreme moment by a thousand vivid reflections.
Parson Dodd experienced something of this phenomenon,
even before he got into the water. He saw himself preaching
for Selwyn in unpresentable, drenched garments, — he,
the well-dressed, immaculate bachelor parson; or begging
a change of the widow, and exciting great scandal in
the congregation by entering the pulpit in a well-known
suit of Garcey's, (“'T will be said I might at least have let
his clothes alone until after I had married into them!”)
or waiting to be found where he was, at the mercy of a
vicious mare, by the first church-going teams that came
that way. Would he ever take pride in driving a neat
nag, or care to preach for Selwyn, after either of these contingencies?

“I 'll pull off my boots anyway; yes, and my coat;
there 's no use of wetting that.” He stood up on his
buggy-seat and looked anxiously both up and down the
road, and, seeing no one, said, “I may as well save my
pantaloons.” Then why not his linen and underclothes?
“The bath won't hurt me. Why did n't I think of this
before?” said he, pulling up the buggy-top for a screen.

He began with his embroidered white neckcloth, which

he took off and placed in his hat, along with his watch,
and pocket-book, and sermon, saying, at the same time,
“Some leisure day, Queen Bess, you and I are going to
have a settlement. Lucky for you this is n't a very favorable
time for it. I 'll break your temper, or I 'll break
your neck!”

Thus talking to the shrew, and quoting exemplary
Petruchio, he packed his clothes carefully in the wagon-bottom,
and then — laughing at the ludicrousness of the
situation, in spite of himself — stepped cautiously down
into the water.

“Aha!” said he, at the first chill: “I must give my
head a plunge, or the blood will rush into it.” So he took
off his wig and laid it in his hat. Then he ducked himself
once or twice. Then he waded to the mare's head,
took her gently by the bridle and led her out.

In going up the oozy bank from the water's edge, the
animal's plashing hoofs bespattered him with mud from
head to foot. He therefore left her on the roadside, and,
taking his handkerchief, ran back to wash and dry himself
a little before putting on his clothes.

He had cleansed himself of the mud, and was standing
on a log beside the bridge, making industrious use of his
handkerchief, when he thought he heard a wagon. Fearing
to be caught in that most unclerical condition, without
even his wig, he looked up hastily over the bridge. There
was no wagon coming, but there was one going. It was
his own. Queen Bess was deliberately walking away; for
there was a nice sense of justice in that mare, and having
refused to start when he wanted her to, it was meet that
she should balance that fault by starting when he did not
want her to. Poor Dodd had not thought of that.

Taken quite by surprise, and appalled by the horrible
possibility that presented itself to his mind, he immediately

started in pursuit. Bess had been either too obstinate
or too mad to be frightened at the apparition of him
in the water, deeming it perhaps a device to make her “go
'long.” But now a glimpse of the unfamiliar white object
flashing after her was enough, and away she went.

“Now do thy speedy utmost,” Dodd! Remember that
your clothes are in the buggy; and think not of the stones
that bruise your feet. Ah! what a race! But it is unequal,
and it is brief. The rascally jockey said too truly,
“There 's lots of travel in that beast, Parson!” The
faster Dodd runs, the more frightened is she; and since
he failed at the first dash to grasp the flying vehicle, there
is no hope for him. He has lost his breath utterly before
she has fairly begun to run. He sees that he may as well
stop, and he stops. Broken-winded, asthmatic, gasping,
despairing, he stands, a statue of distress (or very much
like a statue, indeed), on the roadside, and watches horse
and buggy disappearing in the distance. Was ever respectable,
middle-aged, slightly corpulent, slightly bald
country parson in just such a predicament?

Melissa would certainly look in vain for his coming, that
sweet Sunday morning. And who — who would preach for
Selwyn?