Hills of the Shatemuc Part 48

"Being wet through at this rate?"

"Don't signify whether a man's killed one way or another," was the somewhat unhopeful answer. "Come to the same thing in the long run, I expect."

"Might as well make as long a run as you can of it. Why don't you wear some sort of an overcoat?"

"I keep it -- same way you do yourn. -- No use to spoil a thing for nothing. There's no good of an overcoat but to hold so much heft of water, and a man goes lighter without it. As long as you've got to be soaked through, what's the odds?"

"I didn't lay my account with this sort of thing when I set out," said Winthrop.

"O _I_ did. I have it about a third of the time, I guess. This and March is the plaguiest months in the hull year. They do use up a man."

Some thread of a.s.sociation brought his little sister's open book and pointed finger on the sudden before Winthrop, and for a moment he was silent.

"Yours is rather bad business this time of year," he remarked.

"Like all other business," said the man; "aint much choice.

There's a wet and a dry to most things. What's yourn? if I may ask."

"Wet," said Winthrop.

"How? --" said the man.

"You need only look at me to see," said Winthrop.

"Well -- I thought --" said his companion, looking at him again -- "Be you a dominie?"

"No."

"Going to be? -- Hum! -- Get ap! --" said the driver touching up one of his horses.

"What makes you think so?" said Winthrop.

"Can't tell -- took a notion. I can mostly tell folks, whether they are one thing or another."

"But you are wrong about me," said Winthrop; "I am neither one thing nor the other."

"I'll be shot if you aint, then," said his friend after taking another look at him. "Ben't you? -- You're either a dominie or a lawyer -- one of the six."

"I should like to know what you judge from. Are clergymen and lawyers so much alike?"

"I guess I aint fur wrong," said the man, with again a glance, a very benign one, of curiosity. "I should say, your eye was a lawyer and your mouth a clergyman."

"You can't tell what a man is when he is as wet as I am," said Winthrop.

"Can't tell what he's goin' to be, nother. Well, if the rain don't stop, we will, that's one thing."

The rain did not stop; and though the coach did, it was not till evening had set in. And that was too late. The wet and cold had wrought for more days than one; they brought on disease from which even Winthrop's strong frame and spirit could not immediately free him. He lay miserably ill all the next day and the next night, and yet another twelve hours; and then finding that his dues paid would leave him but one dollar unbroken, Winthrop dragged himself as he might out of bed and got into the stage-coach for Mannahatta which set off that same evening.

CHAPTER XVI.

I reckon this always -- that a man is never undone till he be hanged; nor never welcome to a place, till some certain shot be paid, and the hostess say, welcome.

TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.

What a journey that was, of weariness and pain and strong will. Unfit, and almost unable to travel, empty of means and resources almost alike, he would go, -- and he was going; and sheer determination stood in the place and filled the want of all things beside. It was means and resources both; for both are at the command of him who knows how to command them. But though the will stand firm, it may stand very bare of cheering or helping thoughts; and so did Winthrop's that live-long night. There was no wavering, but there was some sadness that kept him company.

The morning broke as cheerless as his mood. It had rained during the night and was still raining, or sleeting, and freezing as fast as it fell. The sky was a leaden grey; the drops that came down only went to thicken the sheet of ice that lay upon everything. No face of the outer world could be more unpromising than that which slowly greeted him, as the night withdrew her veil and the stealthy steps of the dawn said that no bright day was chasing her forward. Fast enough it lighted up the slippery way, the glistening fences, the falling sleet which sheathed fields and houses with glare ice.

And the city, when they came to it, was no better. It was worse; for the dolefulness was positive here, which before in the broad open country was only negative. The icy sheath was now upon things less pure than itself. The sleet fell where cold and cheerlessness seemed to be the natural state of things. Few people ventured into the streets, and those few looked and moved as if they felt it a sad morning, which probably they did. The very horses stumbled along their way, and here and there a poor creature had lost footing entirely and gone down on the ice. Slowly and carefully picking its way along, the stage-coach drew up at last at its pace in Court St.

The disease had spent itself, or Winthrop's excellent const.i.tution had made good its rights; for he got out of the coach feeling free from pain, though weak and unsteady as if he had been much longer ill. It would have been pleasant to take the refreshment of brushes and cold water, for his first step; but it must have been a pleasure paid for; so he did not go into the house. For the same reason he did not agree to the offer of the stage-driver to carry him and his baggage to the end of his journey. He looked about for some more humble way of getting his trunk thither, meaning to take the humblest of all for himself. But porters seemed all to have gone off to breakfast or to have despaired of a job. None were in sight.

Only a man was shuffling along on the other side of the way, looking over at the stage-coach.

"Here, Jem -- Tom -- Patrick!" -- cried the stage-driver, -- "can't you take the gentleman's trunk for him?"

"Michael, at your service, and if it's all one t' ye," said the person called, coming over. "I'm the boy! Will this be the box?"

"That is it; but how will you take it?" said Winthrop.

"Sure I'll carry it -- asy -- some kind of a way," said Michael, handling the trunk about in an unsettled fashion and seeming to meditate a hoist of it to his shoulders. "Where will it go, sir-r?"

"Stop, -- that won't do -- that handle won't hold," said the trunk's master. "Haven't you a wheelbarrow here?"

"Well that's a fact," said Michael, letting the end of the trunk down into the street with a force that threatened its frail const.i.tution; -- "if the handle wouldn't hould, there'd be no hoult onto it, at all. Here! -- can't you let us have a barrow, some one amongst ye? -- I'll be back with it afore you'll be wanting it, I'll engage."

Winthrop seconded the application; and the wheelbarrow after a little delay came forth. The trunk was bestowed on it by the united efforts of the Irishman and the ostler.

"Now, don't let it run away from you, Pat," said the latter.

"It'll not run away from Michael, I'll engage," said that personage with a capable air, pulling up first his trowsers band and then the wheelbarrow handles, to be ready for a start. "Which way, then, sir, will I turn?"

Winthrop silently motioned him on, for in spite of weakness of body and weariness of spirit he felt too nervously inclined to laugh, to trust his mouth with any demonstrations. Michael and the wheelbarrow went on ahead and he followed, both taking the middle of the street where the ice was somewhat broken up, for on the sidewalk there was no safety for anybody. Indeed safety anywhere needed to be cared for. And every now and then some involuntary movement of Michael and the barrow, together with some equally unlooked-for exclamation of the former, by way of comment or explanation, startled Winthrop's eye and ear, and kept up the odd contrast of the light with the heavy in his mind's musings. It had ceased to rain, but the sky was as leaden grey as ever, and still left its own dull look on all below it. Winthrop's walk along the streets was a poor emblem of his mind's travelling at the time; -- a painful picking the way among difficulties, a struggle to secure a footing where foothold there was not; the uncertain touch and feeling of a cold and slippery world. All true, -- not more literally than figuratively. And upon this would come, with a momentary stop and push forward of the wheelbarrow, --

"'Faith, it's asier going backwards nor for'ards! -- Which way _will_ I turn, yer honour? is it up or down?"

"Straight ahead."

"Och, but I'd rather the heaviest wheeling that ever was invinted, sooner nor this little slide of a place. -- Here we go! -- Och, stop us! -- Och, but the little carriage has taken me to itself intirely. It was all I could do to run ahint and keep up wid the same. Would there be much more of the hills to go down, yer honour, the way we're going?"

"I don't know. Keep in the middle of the street."

"Sure I'm blessed if I can keep any place!" said Michael, whose movements were truly so erratic and uncertain that Winthrop's mood of thoughtfulness was more than once run down by them. -- "The trunk's too weighty for me, yer honour, -- it will have its own way and me after it -- here we go! -- Och, it wouldn't turn out if it was for an angel itself. Maybe yer honour wouldn't go ahead and stop it?"

"No chance, I'm afraid," said Winthrop, whose mouth was twitching at the trot of the Irishman's feet after the wheelbarrow.

"Och, but we'll never get down there!" he said as he paused at the top of a long slope. "Then I never knew before what a hard time the carriage has to go after the horses! We'll never get down there, yer honour?"