________________________________________________
CHAPTER I. Olive
A long, wide, and smoothly macadamized road stretched itself from the
considerable town of Glenford onward and northward toward a gap in the
distant mountains. It did not run through a level country, but rose and
fell as if it had been a line of seaweed upon the long swells of the
ocean. Upon elevated points upon this road, farm lands and forests could
be seen extending in every direction. But there was nothing in the
landscape which impressed itself more obtrusively upon the attention of
the traveler than the road itself. White in the bright sunlight and gray
under the shadows of the clouds, it was the one thing to be seen which
seemed to have a decided purpose. Northward or southward, toward the gap
in the long line of mountains or toward the wood-encircled town in the
valley, it was always going somewhere.
About two miles from the town, and at the top of the first long hill
which was climbed by the road, a tall white pole projected upward
against the sky, sometimes perpendicularly, and sometimes inclined at a
slight angle. This was a turnpike gate or bar, and gave notice to all in
vehicles or on horses that the use of this well-kept road was not free
to the traveling public. At the approach of persons not known, or too
well known, the bar would slowly descend across the road, as if it were
a musket held horizontally while a sentinel demanded the password.
Upon the side of the road opposite to the great post on which the
toll-gate moved, was a little house with a covered doorway, from which
toll could be collected without exposing the collector to sun or rain.
This tollhouse was not a plain whitewashed shed, such as is often seen
upon turnpike roads, but a neat edifice, containing a comfortable room.
On one side of it was a small porch, well shaded by vines, furnished
with a settle and two armchairs, while over all a large maple stretched
its protecting branches. Back of the tollhouse was a neatly fenced
garden, well filled with old-fashioned flowers; and, still farther on, a
good-sized house, from which a box-bordered path led through the garden
to the tollhouse.
It was a remark that had been made frequently, both by strangers and
residents in that part of the country, that if it had not been for the
obvious disadvantages of a toll-gate, this house and garden, with its
grounds and fields, would be a good enough home for anybody. When he
happened to hear this remark Captain John Asher, who kept the toll-gate,
was wont to say that it was a good enough home for him, even with the
toll-gate, and its obvious disadvantages.
It was on a morning in early summer, when the garden had grown to be so
red and white and yellow in its flowers, and so green in its leaves and
stalks, that the box which edged the path was beginning to be
unnoticed, that a girl sat in a small arbor standing on a slight
elevation at one side of the garden, and from which a view could be had
both up and down the road. She was rather a slim girl, though tall
enough; her hair was dark, her eyes were blue, and she sat on the back
of a rustic bench with her feet resting upon the seat; this position she
had taken that she might the better view the road.
With both her hands this girl held a small telescope which she was
endeavoring to fix upon a black spot a mile or more away upon the road.
It was difficult for her to hold the telescope steadily enough to keep
the object-glass upon the black spot, and she had a great deal of
trouble in the matter of focusing, pulling out and pushing in the
smaller cylinder in a manner which showed that she was not accustomed to
the use of this optical instrument.
"Field-glasses are ever so much better," she said to herself; "you can
screw them to any point you want. But now I've got it. It is very near
that cross-road. Good! it did not turn there; it is coming along the
pike, and there will be toll to pay. One horse, seven cents."
She put down the telescope as if to rest her arm and eye. Presently,
however, she raised the glass again. "Now, let us see," she said, "Uncle
John? Jane? or me?" After directing the glass to a point in the air
about two hundred feet above the approaching vehicle, and then to
another point half a mile to the right of it, she was fortunate enough
to catch sight of it again. "I don't know that queer-looking horse," she
said. "It must be some stranger, and Jane will do. No, a little boy is
driving. Strangers coming along this road would not be driven by little
boys. I expect I shall have to call Uncle John." Then she put down the
glass and rubbed her eye, after which, with unassisted vision, she gazed
along the road. "I can see a great deal better without that old thing,"
she continued. "There's a woman in that carriage. I'll go myself." With
this she jumped down from the rustic seat, and with the telescope under
her arm, she skipped through the garden to the little tollhouse.
The name of this girl was Olive Asher. Captain John Asher, who took the
toll, was her uncle, and she had now been living with him for about six
weeks. Olive was what is known in certain social circles as a navy girl.
About twenty years before she had come to her uncle's she had been born
in Genoa, her father at the time being a lieutenant on an American
war-vessel lying in the harbor of Villa Franca. Her first schooldays
were passed in the south of France, and she spent some subsequent years
in a German school in Dresden. Here she was supposed to have finished
her education but when her father's ship was stationed on our Pacific
coast and Olive and her mother went to San Francisco they associated a
great deal with army people, and here the girl learned so much more of
real life and her own country people that the few years she spent in the
far West seemed like a post-graduate course, as important to her true
education as any of the years she had spent in schools.
After the death of her mother, when Olive was about eighteen, the girl
had lived with relatives, East and West, hoping for the day when her
father's three years' cruise would terminate, and she could go and make
a home for him in some pleasant spot on shore. Now, in the course of
these family visits she had come to stay with her father's brother, John
Asher, who kept the toll-gate on the Glenford pike.
Captain John Asher was an older man than his brother, the naval officer,
but he was in the prime of life, and able to hold the command of a ship
if he had cared to do it. But having been in the merchant service for a
long time, and having made some money, he had determined to leave the
sea and to settle on shore; and, finding this commodious house by the
toll-gate, he settled there. There were some people who said that he had
taken the position of toll-gate keeper because of the house, and there
were others who believed that he had bought the house on account of the
toll-gate. But no matter what people thought or said, the good captain
was very well satisfied with his home and his official position. He
liked to meet with people, and he preferred that they should come to him
rather than that he should go to them. He was interested in most things
that were going on in his neighborhood, and therefore he liked to talk
to the people who were going by. Sometimes a good talking acquaintance
or an interesting traveler would tie his horse under the shade of the
maple-tree and sit a while with the captain on the little porch. Certain
it was, it was the most hospitable toll-gate in that part of the
country.
There was a road which branched off from the turnpike, about a mile from
the town, and which, after some windings, entered the pike again beyond
the toll-gate, and although this road was not always in very good
condition, it had seen a good deal of travel, which, in time, gave it
the name of the shunpike. But since Captain Asher had lived at the
toll-gate it was remarked that the shunpike was not used as much as in
former times. There were penurious people who had once preferred to go a
long way round and save money whose economical dispositions now gave way
before the combined attractions of a better road, and a chat with
Captain Asher.
It had been predicted by some of her relatives that Olive would not be
content with her life in her uncle's somewhat peculiar household. He was
a bachelor, and seldom entertained company, and his ordinary family
consisted of an elderly housekeeper and another servant. But Olive was
not in the least dissatisfied. From her infancy up, she had lived so
much among people that she had grown tired of them; and her good-natured
uncle, with his sea stories, the garden, the old-fashioned house, the
fields and the woods beyond, the little stream, which came hurrying down
from the mountains, where she could fish or wade as the fancy pleased
her, gave her a taste of some of the joys of girlhood which she had not
known when she was really a girl.
Another thing that greatly interested her was the toll-gate. If she had
been allowed to do so, she would have spent the greater part of her time
taking money, making change, and talking to travelers. But this her
uncle would not permit. He did not object to her doing some occasional
toll-gate work, and he did not wonder that she liked it, remembering how
interesting it often was to himself, but he would not let her take toll
indiscriminately.
So they made a regular arrangement about it. When the captain was at his
meals, or shaving, or otherwise occupied, old Jane attended to the
toll-gate. At ordinary times, and when any of his special friends were
seen approaching, the captain collected toll himself, but when women
happened to be traveling on the road, then it was arranged that Olive
should go to the gate.
Two or three times it had happened that some young men of the town,
hearing their sisters talk of the pretty girl who had taken their toll,
had thought it might be a pleasant thing to drive out on the pike, but
their money had always been taken by the captain, or else by the
wooden-faced Jane, and nothing had come of their little adventures.
The garden hedge which ran alongside the road was very high.
Read next: Chapter 2. Maria Port
Read previous: A Memorial Sketch
Table of content of Captain's Toll-Gate
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
