A Lonely Ride
As I stepped into the Slumgullion stage I saw that it was a dark
night, a lonely road, and that I was the only passenger. Let me
assure the reader that I have no ulterior design in making this
assertion. A long course of light reading has forewarned me what
every experienced intelligence must confidently look for from such
a statement. The storyteller who willfully tempts Fate by such
obvious beginnings; who is to the expectant reader in danger of
being robbed or half-murdered, or frightened by an escaped lunatic,
or introduced to his ladylove for the first time, deserves to be
detected. I am relieved to say that none of these things occurred
to me. The road from Wingdam to Slumgullion knew no other banditti
than the regularly licensed hotelkeepers; lunatics had not yet
reached such depth of imbecility as to ride of their own free will
in California stages; and my Laura, amiable and long-suffering as
she always is, could not, I fear, have borne up against these
depressing circumstances long enough to have made the slightest
impression on me.
I stood with my shawl and carpetbag in hand, gazing doubtingly on
the vehicle. Even in the darkness the red dust of Wingdam was
visible on its roof and sides, and the red slime of Slumgullion
clung tenaciously to its wheels. I opened the door; the stage
creaked easily, and in the gloomy abyss the swaying straps beckoned
me, like ghostly hands, to come in now and have my sufferings out
at once.
I must not omit to mention the occurrence of a circumstance which
struck me as appalling and mysterious. A lounger on the steps of
the hotel, who I had reason to suppose was not in any way connected
with the stage company, gravely descended, and walking toward the
conveyance, tried the handle of the door, opened it, expectorated
in the carriage, and returned to the hotel with a serious demeanor.
Hardly had he resumed his position when another individual, equally
disinterested, impassively walked down the steps, proceeded to the
back of the stage, lifted it, expectorated carefully on the axle,
and returned slowly and pensively to the hotel. A third spectator
wearily disengaged himself from one of the Ionic columns of the
portico and walked to the box, remained for a moment in serious and
expectorative contemplation of the boot, and then returned to his
column. There was something so weird in this baptism that I grew
quite nervous.
Perhaps I was out of spirits. A number of infinitesimal
annoyances, winding up with the resolute persistency of the clerk
at the stage office to enter my name misspelt on the waybill, had
not predisposed me to cheerfulness. The inmates of the Eureka
House, from a social viewpoint, were not attractive. There was the
prevailing opinion--so common to many honest people--that a serious
style of deportment and conduct toward a stranger indicates high
gentility and elevated station. Obeying this principle, all
hilarity ceased on my entrance to supper, and general remark merged
into the safer and uncompromising chronicle of several bad cases of
diphtheria, then epidemic at Wingdam. When I left the dining-room,
with an odd feeling that I had been supping exclusively on mustard
and tea leaves, I stopped a moment at the parlor door. A piano,
harmoniously related to the dinner bell, tinkled responsive to a
diffident and uncertain touch. On the white wall the shadow of an
old and sharp profile was bending over several symmetrical and
shadowy curls. "I sez to Mariar, Mariar, sez I, 'Praise to the
face is open disgrace.'" I heard no more. Dreading some
susceptibility to sincere expression on the subject of female
loveliness, I walked away, checking the compliment that otherwise
might have risen unbidden to my lips, and have brought shame and
sorrow to the household.
It was with the memory of these experiences resting heavily upon me
that I stood hesitatingly before the stage door. The driver, about
to mount, was for a moment illuminated by the open door of the
hotel. He had the wearied look which was the distinguishing
expression of Wingdam. Satisfied that I was properly waybilled and
receipted for, he took no further notice of me. I looked longingly
at the box seat, but he did not respond to the appeal. I flung my
carpetbag into the chasm, dived recklessly after it, and--before I
was fairly seated--with a great sigh, a creaking of unwilling
springs, complaining bolts, and harshly expostulating axle, we
moved away. Rather the hotel door slipped behind, the sound of the
piano sank to rest, and the night and its shadows moved solemnly
upon us.
To say it was dark expressed but faintly the pitchy obscurity that
encompassed the vehicle. The roadside trees were scarcely
distinguishable as deeper masses of shadow; I knew them only by the
peculiar sodden odor that from time to time sluggishly flowed in at
the open window as we rolled by. We proceeded slowly; so leisurely
that, leaning from the carriage, I more than once detected the
fragrant sigh of some astonished cow, whose ruminating repose upon
the highway we had ruthlessly disturbed. But in the darkness our
progress, more the guidance of some mysterious instinct than any
apparent volition of our own, gave an indefinable charm of security
to our journey that a moment's hesitation or indecision on the part
of the driver would have destroyed.
I had indulged a hope that in the empty vehicle I might obtain that
rest so often denied me in its crowded condition. It was a weak
delusion. When I stretched out my limbs it was only to find that
the ordinary conveniences for making several people distinctly
uncomfortable were distributed throughout my individual frame. At
last, resting my arms on the straps, by dint of much gymnastic
effort I became sufficiently composed to be aware of a more refined
species of torture. The springs of the stage, rising and falling
regularly, produced a rhythmical beat which began to absorb my
attention painfully. Slowly this thumping merged into a senseless
echo of the mysterious female of the hotel parlor, and shaped
itself into this awful and benumbing axiom--"Praise-to-the-face-is-
open-disgrace. Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace." Inequalities
of the road only quickened its utterance or drawled it to an
exasperating length.
It was of no use to consider the statement seriously. It was of no
use to except to it indignantly. It was of no use to recall the
many instances where praise to the face had redounded to the
everlasting honor of praiser and bepraised; of no use to dwell
sentimentally on modest genius and courage lifted up and
strengthened by open commendation; of no use to except to the
mysterious female, to picture her as rearing a thin-blooded
generation on selfish and mechanically repeated axioms--all this
failed to counteract the monotonous repetition of this sentence.
There was nothing to do but to give in--and I was about to accept
it weakly, as we too often treat other illusions of darkness and
necessity, for the time being, when I became aware of some other
annoyance that had been forcing itself upon me for the last few
moments. How quiet the driver was!
Was there any driver? Had I any reason to suppose that he was not
lying gagged and bound on the roadside, and the highwayman with
blackened face who did the thing so quietly driving me--whither?
The thing is perfectly feasible. And what is this fancy now being
jolted out of me? A story? It's of no use to keep it back--
particularly in this abysmal vehicle, and here it comes: I am a
Marquis--a French Marquis; French, because the peerage is not so
well known, and the country is better adapted to romantic incident--
a Marquis, because the democratic reader delights in the nobility.
My name is something LIGNY. I am coming from Paris to my country
seat at St. Germain. It is a dark night, and I fall asleep and
tell my honest coachman, Andre, not to disturb me, and dream of an
angel. The carriage at last stops at the chateau. It is so dark
that when I alight I do not recognize the face of the footman who
holds the carriage door. But what of that?--PESTE! I am heavy
with sleep. The same obscurity also hides the old familiar
indecencies of the statues on the terrace; but there is a door, and
it opens and shuts behind me smartly. Then I find myself in a
trap, in the presence of the brigand who has quietly gagged poor
Andre and conducted the carriage thither. There is nothing for me
to do, as a gallant French Marquis, but to say, "PARBLEU!" draw my
rapier, and die valorously! I am found a week or two after outside
a deserted cabaret near the barrier, with a hole through my ruffled
linen and my pockets stripped. No; on second thoughts, I am
rescued--rescued by the angel I have been dreaming of, who is the
assumed daughter of the brigand but the real daughter of an
intimate friend.
Looking from the window again, in the vain hope of distinguishing
the driver, I found my eyes were growing accustomed to the
darkness. I could see the distant horizon, defined by India-inky
woods, relieving a lighter sky. A few stars widely spaced in this
picture glimmered sadly. I noticed again the infinite depth of
patient sorrow in their serene faces; and I hope that the vandal
who first applied the flippant "twinkle" to them may not be driven
melancholy-mad by their reproachful eyes. I noticed again the
mystic charm of space that imparts a sense of individual solitude
to each integer of the densest constellation, involving the
smallest star with immeasurable loneliness. Something of this calm
and solitude crept over me, and I dozed in my gloomy cavern. When
I awoke the full moon was rising. Seen from my window, it had an
indescribably unreal and theatrical effect. It was the full moon
of NORMA--that remarkable celestial phenomenon which rises so
palpably to a hushed audience and a sublime andante chorus, until
the CASTA DIVA is sung--the "inconstant moon" that then and
thereafter remains fixed in the heavens as though it were a part of
the solar system inaugurated by Joshua. Again the white-robed
Druids filed past me, again I saw that improbable mistletoe cut
from that impossible oak, and again cold chills ran down my back
with the first strain of the recitative. The thumping springs
essayed to beat time, and the private-box-like obscurity of the
vehicle lent a cheap enchantment to the view. But it was a vast
improvement upon my past experience, and I hugged the fond
delusion.
My fears for the driver were dissipated with the rising moon. A
familiar sound had assured me of his presence in the full
possession of at least one of his most important functions.
Frequent and full expectoration convinced me that his lips were as
yet not sealed by the gag of highwaymen, and soothed my anxious
ear. With this load lifted from my mind, and assisted by the mild
presence of Diana, who left, as when she visited Endymion, much of
her splendor outside my cavern--I looked around the empty vehicle.
On the forward seat lay a woman's hairpin. I picked it up with an
interest that, however, soon abated. There was no scent of the
roses to cling to it still, not even of hair oil. No bend or twist
in its rigid angles betrayed any trait of its wearer's character.
I tried to think that it might have been "Mariar's." I tried to
imagine that, confining the symmetrical curls of that girl, it
might have heard the soft compliments whispered in her ears which
provoked the wrath of the aged female. But in vain. It was
reticent and unswerving in its upright fidelity, and at last
slipped listlessly through my fingers.
I had dozed repeatedly--waked on the threshold of oblivion by
contact with some of the angles of the coach, and feeling that I
was unconsciously assuming, in imitation of a humble insect of my
childish recollection, that spherical shape which could best resist
those impressions, when I perceived that the moon, riding high in
the heavens, had begun to separate the formless masses of the
shadowy landscape. Trees isolated, in clumps and assemblages,
changed places before my window. The sharp outlines of the distant
hills came back, as in daylight, but little softened in the dry,
cold, dewless air of a California summer night. I was wondering
how late it was, and thinking that if the horses of the night
traveled as slowly as the team before us, Faustus might have been
spared his agonizing prayer, when a sudden spasm of activity
attacked my driver. A succession of whip-snappings, like a pack of
Chinese crackers, broke from the box before me. The stage leaped
forward, and when I could pick myself from under the seat, a long
white building had in some mysterious way rolled before my window.
It must be Slumgullion! As I descended from the stage I addressed
the driver:
"I thought you changed horses on the road?"
"So we did. Two hours ago."
"That's odd. I didn't notice it."
"Must have been asleep, sir. Hope you had a pleasant nap. Bully
place for a nice quiet snooze--empty stage, sir!"
-THE END-
Bret Harte's short story: A Lonely Ride
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