CHAPTER I

INTENTIONS, BEFORE HAVING HIS HAIR CUT, OF A WAGONER

In this company, and with this highly appropriate beginning of legs dangling carelessly above the dusty highroad from a stolen seat on the tail-board of a wagon, there began to befall Mr. Wriford many adventures which, peculiar and unusual for any man, were, for one of Mr. Wriford's station in life and of his character and antecedents, in the highest degree extraordinary. His dangling legs--and the fact that he swung them as they dangled--were, indeed, emblematic of the frame of mind which took him into these adventures and which--save when the old torments clutched him and held him--carried him through each and very irresponsibly into the next. Through all the later years of his former life he had very much cared what happened to him and what people thought of him when they looked at him. He was filled now with a spirit of not caring at all. It was more than a reckless spirit; it was a conscious spirit. He had often, in the days of his torment, cried aloud that he wished he might die. He told himself now that he did not mind if he did die, and did not mind if he was hurt or what suffering befell him. Through all the later years of his former life he often had cried aloud, his brain most dreadfully surging, his panic desire to get out of it all. He told himself that he now was out of it all. He had been frantic to be free; he now was free. A very giddiness of freedom possessed him and caused him, at the dizziness of it, to laugh aloud. A very intoxication of irresponsibility filled him and caused in him a fierce lust to exercise it in feats of maddest folly. He only wanted to laugh, as before he very often had wanted to cry or scream. He only wanted to perform wild, senseless pranks, as before he only had desired to be shut away from people--by himself, alone, in the dark. All this increased with every day of the early days in Mr. Puddlebox's company. Now, as he sat beside Mr. Puddlebox on the tail-board of the wagon, and swung his legs and often laughed aloud, he sometimes reflected upon where the wagon was taking them and what would happen, and at the thought that he did not care whither or what, laughed again; and more than once looked at Mr. Puddlebox, blowing and puffing in exhaustion beside him, and scarcely could control an impulse to push him off the tail-board and laugh to see him clutch and expostulate and fall; and once struck his fist against the revolving wheel beside him and laughed aloud to feel the pain and to see his bruised and dusty knuckles.

"Loony," said Mr. Puddlebox, catching the gleaming eyes that were turned upon him in mischievous thought to push him off, "Loony, you're getting unspooked already."

"It's very jolly," said Mr. Wriford, and laughed. "I like this."

"You shall learn to like everything," said Mr. Puddlebox, "and so to be jolly always."

"How do you live?" inquired Mr. Wriford.

"Why," said Mr. Puddlebox, "by liking everything, for that is the only way to live. Sun, snow; rain, storm; heat, cold; hunger, fullness; fatigue, rest; pain, pleasure; I take all as they come and welcome each by turn or all together. They come from the Lord, boy, and that is how I take them, love them, and return them to the Lord again in form of praise. Selah."

"Dash it," said Mr. Wriford, "you might be a Salvationist, you know."

"Curse me," returned Mr. Puddlebox very cheerfully, "I am nothing of the sort. Would that I were. I will tell you what I am, boy. I am the most miserable sinner that any man could be, and I am the most miserable in this--that I know where mercy comes from, which most poor sinners do not and therefore am less miserable than I. I have outraged my parents, and I outrage heaven in every breath I draw, particularly when, as, curse me, too often it is, my breath is whisky-ladened: which thing is abominable to the nose of godliness and very comfortable to my own. I know where mercy comes, loony, on the one hand because I was trained for the ministry, and on the other because I see it daily with my eyes. I know where mercy comes, yet I never can encompass it, for my flesh is ghastly weak and ghastly vile and, curse me, I have worn it thus so long that I prefer it so. But if I cannot encompass mercy, boy, I can return thanks for it; and if it comes in form of scourge--cold, hunger, pain, they are the three that fright me most--why, I deserve it the more surely and return it in praise the more lustily. That is how I live."

Many days hence it was to befall Mr. Wriford--in very bitter lesson, in hour of deepest anguish--to know a certain beauty in this odd testament of faith.

Just now, of his dizzy mood and of the teller's merry eye as he told it, little more than its whimsicality touched him; and when it was done, "Well, but that doesn't feed you," he said. "In that way--feeding and clothing and the rest of it--how do you live in that way?"

"Why, much in the same," returned Mr. Puddlebox. "Taking what comes, and if need be, which it is my constant prayer it need not, turning my hand to work, of which there is plenty. There is bread and raiment in every house, some for asking, some for working, and always some to get rid of me when I begin to work. What there is not in every house, boy, is whisky, and it is for that my brow has to sweat when, as now, my bottle is empty. But there are," continued Mr. Puddlebox, beginning to wriggle in his seat and draw up his legs with the evident intention of standing upon them, "there are, happily, or, curse me, unhappily, other ways of getting whisky; and the first is never to lose an opportunity of looking for it."

Mr. Puddlebox's feet were now upon the tail-board and he was clutching at the sacks, in great exertion to stand upright.

"What now?" inquired Mr. Wriford, beginning to laugh again.

"Why, to look for it," said Mr. Puddlebox. "In every new and likely place I always look for whisky. If none, I sing very heartily 'O ye disappointments' and am the better both for the praise and for the fact there is none. If some, I am both grateful and, curse me, happy. The top of these sacks is a new place, my loony, and a very likely. Our kind coachman, as I observed, wore no coat and had no bundle, nor were these beside him. They are likely on top."

"I'll come with you," said Mr. Wriford. "It's a devil of a climb."

"It's a devil of a prize," responded Mr. Puddlebox, "if it's there."

It proved to be both the one and the other. The sacks, stacked in ridges, provided steps of a sort, but each was of prodigious height, of very brief foothold, and the sacks so tightly stuffed as to afford but a scraping, digging hold for the fingers. When to these difficulties was added the swaying of the whole as the wagon jolted along, there was caused on the part of the climbers much panic clutching at each other, at the ropes which bound the sacks, and at the sacks themselves, together with much blowing and sounds of fear from Mr. Puddlebox, vastly incommoded by his bulging coattails, and much hysterical mirth from Mr. Wriford, incommoded no little by laughter at the absurdity of the escapade and at imagination of the grotesque spectacle they must present as they swarmed.

He was first to reach the summit. "By Jove, there's a coat here, anyway!" he cried.

Mr. Puddlebox bulged up and plunged forward on his face with a last convulsive scramble. "And, by my sins, a bottle!" cried Mr. Puddlebox, drawing the coat aside. "Beer, I fear me--a filling and unsatisfactory drink." He drew the cork and applied his nose. "Whisky!" and applied his mouth.

"Good Lord!" cried Mr. Wriford, astonished at a thought that came to him with the length of Mr. Puddlebox's drink. "Man alive! Do you drink it neat?"

"_Hup!_ Curse me," said Mr. Puddlebox, "I do. It takes less room. _Hup!_ This is the most infernal torment, this hupping. I must, but I never can, drink more, _hup!_ slowly. As a rule," continued Mr. Puddlebox, balancing on his knees and fumbling in his coattail pockets, "as a rule I never rob a man of his bottle. If a man has a bottle, he has an encouragement towards thrift and sobriety. It is a persuasion to put his whisky there instead of at one draught into his mouth. For the moment I must suspend the by-law. I cannot decant this gentleman's whisky into my own bottle, for our carriage shakes and would cause loss. And I cannot exchange for this bottle my own, for to mine I am deeply attached. Therefore--" Mr. Puddlebox fumbled the bottle into his pocket, appeared to find some difficulty in accommodating it, produced it again and took another drink from it and, as if this had indeed diminished its bulk, this time slid it home, where Mr. Wriford heard it clink a greeting with its empty fellow. "Therefore," said Mr. Puddlebox--"_hup!_"

"Well, mind they don't break," said Mr. Wriford. "Let's have a look where we're getting to," and he squirmed himself on elbows and knees towards the front of the sacks and stretched out, face downwards.

"I never yet," said Mr. Puddlebox proudly, "committed the crime of breaking a bottle." From his knees he took an observation down the road ahead of him, announced: "We are getting towards the pretty hamlet of Ditchenhanger," and coming forward lay full length by Mr. Wriford's side.

This position brought their heads, overhanging the sacks, immediately above the wagoner seated a long arm's length below them, his horses walking, the reins slack in his hands and himself, to all appearances, in something of a doze. A very large man, as Mr. Wriford had previously noticed, with prodigious arms, bare to the elbow; and at his unconsciousness of their presence, hanging immediately above him, and at his sullen face and the rage upon it if he knew, Mr. Wriford was moved to silent squirms of laughter, and turned a laughing face to Mr. Puddlebox's, suspended over the sacks beside him.

"_Hup!_" said Mr. Puddlebox with shattering violence.

The wagoner started not less violently, looked about him with jerking, savage head, while Mr. Wriford held his breath and dared not move, uttered an oath of extraordinarily unsavoury character, grabbed at his whip, and lashed with all the force of his arm at his horses.

The nature of their response exercised a very obvious result upon the wagon. It suffered a jerk that caused from Mr. Wriford a frantic clutch at the sacks and from Mr. Puddlebox a double explosion that cost him (as he afterwards narrated) very considerable pain.

"_Huppup!_" said Mr. Puddlebox. "Blink! Hup!" and with this his pudding-bowl hat detached itself from his head and dropped lightly into the wagoner's lap. That gentleman immediately produced another oath, compared with which his earlier effort was as a sweet smelling rose at dewy morn, drew up his unfortunate team even more violently than he had urged them forward, with very loud bellows bounded to the road and, whip in hand, completed a very rapid circuit of his wagon, bawling the while a catalogue of astoundingly blood-curdling intentions which he proposed to wreak upon somebody before, as he phrased it, he had his blinking hair cut.

His passengers, considerably alarmed at these proceedings, withdrew to the exact centre of the sacks and there reflected, each in the other's face, his own dismay.

"Now you've done it, you silly ass," said Mr. Wriford.

"It's not over yet," said Mr. Puddlebox. "I'm afraid this is going to be very rough."