Chapter 18

The consequence to country-people of this last-mentioned fact was, that everybody who went anywhere took everybody's letters, and, as there were no expresses, added, of course, everybody's packages and messages. And the consequence of this was, that everybody made everybody's purchases, whether gowns, books, bonnets, or what not. It mattered little who did errands, so only they were done. Generally, the one store-keeper bought our bonnets when he went to Boston for his yearly stock of goods, and our one bonnet lasted in those days a year, being retrimmed for winter weather. I remember, too, when our one store-keeper, mingling in the æsthetic conversation at one of our parties, where Art was on the _tapis_, made a comical mistake, but one natural enough, too,--stating that he could buy, and had bought, Vandykes for ten dollars. We were not thinking of exactly the same kind of Vandyke that he was.

Many a time have I carried in my trunk more letters than the mail-bag did to Boston, and conscientiously finished all the parish's business before touching my own.

A certain amount of self-complacency and satisfaction is felt, and laudably earned, by being intrusted with commissions; and I flatter myself few persons ever set off for New York with such an array of them as I did on this occasion.

Looking over my list, I must confess to a flush of real enjoyment at finding _carte blanche_ for a scarf. "Now, that is something like!" said I. "I can see now how pleasantly an artist feels, or would feel, at an order for a picture,--'your own subject,--your own terms.' Miss Patty Jones knows what is what, and shall be my patroness."

And did I not vindicate triumphantly Miss Patty's confidence? I knew better than to buy her a gray and brown thing, merely because she, too, was gray and brown. I wreathed her with lilies and hyacinths and French green leaves, and she blossomed under it like a rose. If she were not the garland, she wore it, and so borrowed bloom and gay freshness. She extolled my taste to all Weston.

Then Mrs. Eben Loring had concluded on the whole that I should buy her a hat, in Maiden Lane, at the very tip-top milliner's. The thought of my return was somewhat embittered by the prospective necessity of carrying two very large bandboxes in my lap, in case of rain. Rain might not unreasonably be expected in the course of a three days' journey. Think of all the bandboxes that in such a case would be put in at the coach-window by the driver, to be held in the hapless laps of the nine passengers! Almost I was persuaded to leave my own black satin bonnet, and perambulate the streets of New York in my travelling-calash, which looked exactly like, and was nearly of the size of, a "bellows-top shay."

I was thinking of this last sacrifice, when my husband said, in a dreamy, bewildered way,--

"Here are five boxes, mother, two bundles, and the rest of these books. I give up!"

"Give up? Not I! Now, where a man's energies are exhausted, a woman's just begin to show themselves. First and foremost, lock this trunk, and let me put the key in my pocket. That's one thing done, and can't be undone."

He stepped back from the trunk.

"What's this? all your clothes on the floor!"

"Well, yes, my dear, most of 'em. You see, I couldn't leave Zipporah Haven's shawl out, which she sends to her grandmother; and I must put in these bundles of the Burts's, and Mary Skinner's box of linen thread. If my own things are lost, why, they must be replaced, you know, my dear; that is all."

"And we must keep a good lookout, ourselves, that our bandboxes and bundles don't fall off behind," replied the Dominie, faintly.

"Yes; and you can put the small trunk under my feet, and the big basket under your own, and you will keep an eye on my red shawl,--and pray don't lose the umbrella, nor your great-coat, nor your cane. I will, on my part, see to these three small bundles, and my parasol. Doubtless we shall go on smoothly as need be, only I am afraid you won't be able to think up many sermons on the highway. There! I forgot the jar of currant-jelly to go to Ruth Hoyt's aunt! However, we must manage somehow. You are sure our names are down at the stage-office?"

But, like Charles XII., "after Pultowa's dreadful day," when the tale-teller listened for his sympathy,

"The king had been an hour asleep."

I am ashamed to say that I must have lost myself after that, though I thought I was only thinking of the Day of Judgment. But I must have dreamed it, or how should I have thought it the last trumpet, when it was only the stage-driver's warning knock?

It was delightful to hear the knock, and the simultaneous clang of pots and pans which assured us, that, though night had been no night to us, the dark morning would usher in our breakfast with coffee by the faithful Polly. The driver coming in again before we had finished, we seduced him without scruple into taking a cup of boiling comfort, while we guiltily collected the waifs and strays of our multifarious luggage. Many a time I have waited, myself, in the coach, while similar orgies were going on among the unready, so I know just how vexed and impatient the passengers were. But what use to go on without the driver? At last we squeezed into the full stage.

III.

No sooner in than out, however. I was determined not to die before my time, as I was sure to do on the back-seat of an overloaded stage, with nine passengers, besides numerous, because gratuitously earned, children. "For who," as it was sometimes pertinently asked, "would charge anything for a poor little innocent child?" The younger, the more innocent, of course, and the more numerous.

"If you'll set up here 'long o' me, Miss Prince, there's a plenty o' room,--and for you, too, Parson," said the good-natured driver.

Extricating ourselves from the Black Hole, we delightedly clambered to the heights above, regardless of risk, and catching at wheel and step like Alpine hunters. How comfortable the seat was, with the fresh, early morning air blowing freely in our faces! How small the horses looked in the dim light of three o'clock! How oddly the wheel-horses looked, all backs and no legs!--and how mysteriously many were the reins that were tied round and round the iron lantern-rod!

"Just let me put the mail-bag under your feet, Miss Prince. Here we are, now, all right, and nothin' to do but go along!"

"Now, then!"

"Come up! come! come!"

But in vain were caresses; in vain were chirrups, duckings, and kisses, wafted to the nigh leader. Like the rebellious South of to-day, he had taken his attitude, and stood now on four legs, now on two, pawing only the dark air, and regardless of the general welfare behind him.

"Now what will you do, driver?" said cowardly I, who, always mortally afraid of horse-flesh, felt on this occasion a strange confidence: partly in the staid, heavy mass of determination beside me, who looked so calm and good-natured; and partly in the queer, elfin look of the beast, who seemed so far off as to have no necessary connection with our safety or ultimate progress. It seemed quite possible for us to get on with the other three pulling, while our demoniacal friend ornamented the occasion by plunges, rearings, and kickings.

Still gathering the reins lightly in his large hand, the stable and sure intelligence beside me calmly chirruped, and then as calmly switched his long whip at the distant rebel brute. How the switching and snapping galled his proud neck! How his black back curved, and his small head tossed! Still, he would not pull an ounce, but just pawed like a fairy horse, or as if he were born to tread on clouds alone, or to herald in the morning.

"He'll start by-'m-by,--he's a devil of a spirit in him, when he doos start," remarked our Phoebus, composedly, giving, through the darkness, the unerring switch every half minute.

What acted on the capricious thing at last,--whether the Inevitability behind him, or the folly exhausting itself, nobody knows; but the "beautiful disdain" left his black back and tossing mane in a moment, and he buckled down to his work with an energy worthy of the cause, and with a good-will that was an example to the other three.

"There! you see he can do well enough, 'f he's jest a mind to! nothin' wantin' but the will! There's a pair on 'em," said the driver, "but I won't never drive 'em together. Staples drove the pair last summer. He says they'd run till they dropped down dead. I guess they would. He's a putty critter enough, and well made, but dreadful ugly. Now, I like that 'ere wheeler!"--he pointed his whip towards the horse below my foot. "She's kind,--that mare is; and she's fast enough, and handsome. Broad back,--short legs,--goes like a duck!"

In such pleasant chat (and why not? for wasn't the driver a cousin of my own?--a man of means,--owning his team,--and with more knowledge of his district than most members of Congress have? Indeed, I believe he's in Congress this minute!) we pulled up hill and tore down dale. Nobody knows a hill by experience but New-Hampshire travellers. The Green Mountains are full of comparatively gentle slopes, and verdure crowns their highest and tallest tops; but the hills of New Hampshire are Alpine in their steepness and barrenness, and the roads of old time made by the Puritans took the Devil by the horns. There was no circuitous, soothing, easy passage. The road ran straight over mountains and pitched deep down ravines, the surveyors having evidently kept only in view the shortest air-line between places.

Sometimes we chained the wheels, but not often. Oftenest we ran down a steep place, and the impetus carried us up the opposite hill. At the foot of a long hill, of a two-mile stretch, the driver generally stopped, to indicate the propriety of the male passengers, at least, ascending the hill on foot. And often the whole stage-load gladly availed itself of the permission. It was handy for the owners of bandboxes, to pick them up from the rocky road, as they tumbled off now and then; and the four beasts, like those in Revelation, said "Amen" to the kindly impulse of humanity that lightened their load, and left them to scramble comfortably from one side to the other of the still ascending path. When they did get to the top of some of those Walpole hills, would they could have taken in the living glory and beauty of the far-reaching and most magnificent landscape!

IV.

We had the mails to change at the post-offices, and a seemingly inexhaustible store, intrusted to the care and courtesy of the driver, and surrounding him like a rampart,--of newspapers, bundles, cans, pillow-cases full of dried apples, and often letters.

At the red house near the mill below Surrey, a sweet-looking girl ran out, as we passed, holding her hand forward for a letter, which our driver pretended to drop half a dozen times, on purpose to tantalize her. It was pretty to see her blushing, sparkling face, as the blood danced to her brow with hope, and back with the baffled expectancy to her heart.

"Neouw, Sil, be still! give to me, yeouw!"

If it hadn't been Yankee, it was soft and melodious enough for an Italian peasant. As picturesque, too, was her short, blue woollen petticoat, and white short-gown, that "half hid and half revealed" the unconstrained grace of healthy mountain-nature; and more modest the happy look with which she received the letter at last, and flew with it like a bird back to the red nest.

"A love-letter, I suppose," said I, answering the twinkle of the driver's good-natured eye.

"Wal, I expect 's likely. They've been sparking now over a year. And it's a pity, too, such a real clever girl as that is! She a'n't so dreadful bright, but she's real clever, and ough' to hev a better chance 'n Jim Ruggles."

"A bad match for her?"

"Wal, Jim's a good feller enough, but he drinks. I don't mean to say nothin' agin moderate drinkin'. I drink myself moderately. But Jim's a real sponge. He'd drink all day hard and never show it, without it is bein' cross, maybe, and paler 'n common. Now I say,--and I a'n't no 'reformed inebriate,' nor Father Matthew sort,--but I do say, and will hold to it, such a man at twenty-one makes a poor beginnin'. If he lives, he'll be a poor shote, and no mistake. I'm sorry for the gal."

"Somebody ought to tell her. Why not you?"

"Wal, what's the good on 't? She wouldn't hear a word. When a woman's once sot her mind, don't do no good to talk. For that matter, talkin' never did do much, I'm thinkin',--exceptin' preachin'. We're bound to hear that, Parson," he added, laughing, and with a nod which might seem respectful.

In three hours we had driven thirteen miles. Pretty good progress this of a warm day, and with a full complement of passengers. We had watched the sun rise over Walpole hills, and the specks in the distance where the early farmers were ploughing and sowing. The breaking day, the bursting spring, and all the outward melodies with which the welcoming day rings as we toil on, are so many incentives to appetite, and we are all sharp for the ready breakfast, at six o'clock.

Then, as I am talking of the past, and not of the present, there was time enough: time enough for the comfortable discussion of breakfast, for the changing of raiment among the babies, for chatting in the bar-room, for the interchange of news among the men, and even for glasses of milk-punch. Tell it not in modern Gath that even the Dominie spiced his half-mug of flip with an anecdote, and that every man and woman took cider as well as coffee.

How can I describe the events and vicissitudes that befell us during this journey of three days and a half to New York? Modern travellers, who are, or are not, as it happens, run off the track, smashed up, or otherwise suddenly and summarily disposed of, have little notion of our successive and amusing accidents, and of how they diversified and occupied the mind, so as entirely to preclude the _ennui_ which comes from railroad-travelling, with its ninety-nine chances of safety to one of accident.

That we were tipped out and over repeatedly,--that one of the leaders had fits, (which amiable weakness was understood and allowed for by our driver, who was in hopes the critter wouldn't have 'em that day,)--that the coach wholly collapsed once, letting all the patient passengers into a promiscuous heap of unbroken bones,--this, and such as this, will be easily believed by any New-England traveller who remembers thirty years back. But how we fell so softly that the brains were never damaged,--why falling into ditches at night wasn't an unhealthy process,--and, above all, how the driver's stock of leathern straps, strings, and nails should always prove exhaustless, and be always so wonderfully adapted to every emergency,--that was a wonder, and is a wonder still to me. No amount of mechanical skill, though the Yankee has made machines that almost think, and altogether do, for him, has superseded or exhausted his natural tact, expediency, and invention. With string and nail in his pocket, I would defy the horses of Phoebus to get away from a Yankee, or his chariot to get out of gear; and if Phaeton had only been a Vermonter, the deserts of Ethiopia might to this day have been covered with roses instead of sand. Our driver, though he didn't know his own powers, knew all about Phoebus, and had read Virgil and Ovid by the light of a pine-knot in his father's kitchen. This rude culture is the commonest fact among our mountaineers.

We "stopped over" one day in Hartford, to see the deaf-mutes. Their bright, concentrated, eager looks haunted me long after. I should like to know who would stop anywhere now to see anything! One might as well be put into a gun and fired off to New York as go there now by steam-cars. Line a gun with red plush, and it is not unlike a "resonant steam-eagle." And you would see as much in one as in the other.

But travelling in 1830 enlarged your mind. A journey then was one as _was_ a journey. You saw people, you made their acquaintance, you entered their hearts and took lodgings,--sometimes for life.

Then the country! You saw that, too,--not the poorest part of it, scooting round wherever it is most level, till you pronounce the whole way flat, and are glad to shut your eyes and listen to the engine, rather than have them ache with seeing everything you would never wish to look at!

All these days were full of great, beautiful pictures. From the time we leave the Granite State, with it a wild, fierce grandeur, its long, dreary reaches of unfertile pastures, and its wealth of stone wall,--so abundant that travellers wonder where the stones came from to build it, seeing no lack in the road or field,--from the time we enter on trim, well-kept Massachusetts, the panorama shifts with ever new interest and beauty. We leave the pretentious brick houses, or the glaring white ones, which mark the uncultivated taste of the American Switzerland, and enter for the first time regions impressed with the necessary element of fine landscape, maturity. With and under the old oaks and birches rest the sad-colored houses that have held life and experience,--birth, death, and old historic adventure.

Looking over the broad meadows that skirt the Connecticut by Hadley and Northampton, one seems to see under the distant oaks spectral shapes of Indian struggle, or wandering regicides, hiding their noble heads in caves, or bursting out like white spirits to lead and avenge. The air is peopled with traditions far back from the present, but with which the grave, imposing, characteristic landscape seems still to sympathize.

In two days we emerged from the brown chrysalis of a New-Hampshire spring into the exultant richness of the winged butterfly,--into white, fragrant fields of blossoming fruit, and the odor of tree-lilacs.

In my enchantment at the bounteous panorama that spread out before me in ever varying abundance, I forgot to cultivate any interest in my fellow-passengers, and, except in listening to some communicative old women, might really, as far as society was concerned, as well have been travelling in the style of to-day. Beyond the casual acquaintances I made when rain compelled me to indoor chat, I saw nobody who interested me until we reached Springfield. There, at the top of the first short hill outside the town, after looking back on the white houses standing in the river-mist like so many ghosts in white muslin, I saw somebody whom my prophetic soul announced as a companion, looking wholly unlike a ghost, and very unlike a mist. He raised his hand, just as we were about passing him, as if signalling an omnibus, and our driver suddenly reined in his team.

A full, hearty voice, not a bit nasal, but fresh from the broad chest, showed us a traveller by the road-side, waiting to be taken up.

He sprang with two bounds to the top of the coach, and made room for himself just above us among the countless boxes.

"Don't let me disturb you, Madam All right. Just room for my bag. Go on, driver."

"Fine day," said we.

"A warm morning. I have been walking for the last fifteen miles,--but the sun is too hot for me."

He took off his travelling-hat of weather-beaten Panama, and dried his broad brow with his handkerchief. Then he looked at us with clear blue eyes, and tossed back his curling brown hair. He had a gray travelling-dress, such as everybody wears now, but which was then a novelty; and something in his curt, clear accents, and his crimson lips, and the fresh life in his limbs and action, betrayed that he was not an American. So much the better.

V.

I said he looked sharply at us two. He seemed to have a habit of investigating, at least to a certain extent; and he took us in at once, evidently. A country-parson and his wife. If I say his pretty wife, I will promise faithfully that it shall be the last time I will refer to myself or my prettiness, the whole way, further than may be absolutely necessary; and it isn't every woman who will do as much. For with this man and his belongings I came to have much to do in the course of the next five years. Little thought I, as I heard him chatting soberly with my husband, and nodding from time to time gravely at me, as If to take me into the conversation,--little thought I of the shadow he would one day cast over both of our lives!

He showed us his travelling-apparatus for making a cup of tea in ten minutes, toasting bread, and boiling eggs. It was like a doll's cooking-stove six inches square, a curious invention, new then, and a wonderful convenience.

"With my tea and this," said he, "I can go over the United States. Good bread and sweet butter I can always get at your farm-houses, and I often walk fifty miles together."

We looked and spoke our New-English astonishment. In our part of the world nobody walked anywhere. Everybody, however poor, had a wagon, if not a chaise; and he must be miserable indeed who did not own at least one horse. Nobody in his sober senses demeaned himself to walking. Perhaps it was the climate. Perhaps our fathers instituted the custom, to be as unlike the British as possible,--as they did of making their houses like lanterns, to show they had no window-tax to pay.

This man's hearty voice and healthy frame, charged, as it seemed, with fresh air, jollity, and strength, made us think better of walking. We looked at his six feet of height, his broad chest, and his firmly knit limbs, and fancied how Antaeus gained supernatural vigor from natural contact: he trod the earth with a loving and free step, as a child approaches and caresses his mother. So, too, his voice, and the topics he chose in talking, gave us the feeling of out-door existence always connected with him: of singing-birds, and the breeze of mountain-tops, of great walnut- and chesnut-trees, and children gathering nuts beneath; never of the solemn hush of pines, or twilight, or anything "sough"-ing or whispering: no, all about him sounded like the free, dashing, rushing water. So were his bright blue eyes, merry lips, and wind-crimsoned cheeks, interpreters of his nature. They linked him firmly to the outward. The man's soul was made up of joyfulness, strength, and a sort of purposeless activity,--energy for its own sake. While his energies harmonized with the right, or were exercised in the pursuit of knowledge, one felt that he would have much power for good. But suppose his activities to take a wrong direction, all his powers would help him to be and enjoy the wrong. In either case, his nature would have the same harmonious energy, and the moral part of him would not disturb the balance of his character. He had no special liking for evil, I am sure; yet, according to all the theories, his intense love of Nature ought to have elevated and refined him far more than it had done.

Before we had been an hour together, I had also observed that he was good-natured, impulsive, and, in a sort, kindly,--that he loved himself and his own enjoyment too well ever knowingly to annoy or distress another. There is a little difference between this and kindness. No matter how I found him out. He who runs may read, if he looks sharply enough; and in travelling, people betray and assert character continually. I was also as sure as I was years afterwards, that he would walk rough-shod over heart-violets and -daisies, nor once notice them bleeding under his heel. It was in the grain of the man's nature. He had lived at least thirty-five years, and was too old to be made over into anything else by any experience.

His bag was half full of tulip-bulbs which he had bought and begged, he said. He had a passion at present for cultivating tulips, and was quite sure, that, if he had lived in the seventeenth instead of the nineteenth century, he would have ruined himself twenty times over for a favorite bulb, even without being a Dutchman.