International Short Stories: American Part 44

"We had to tap him, Miss, a leetle upon the head, to bring him quiet.

He's tame and innocent now, but you should see him when he's going to break out. Only just hear him when he laughs."

I could not resist the temptation. The last remark of my keeper fell on my ears like a suggestion, and suddenly shooting up my head, and glaring fiercely at the spectators, I gave them a yell of laughter as terrible as I could possibly make it.

"Ah!" was the shriek of Susannah, as she dashed back from the logs.

Before the sounds had well ceased, they were echoed from without and in more fearful and natural style from the practised lungs of Col. Nelson.

His yells following mine, were enough to startle even me.

"What!" he cried, thrusting his fingers through the crevice, "you would come out, would you,--you would try your strength with mine. Let him out,--let him out! I am ready for him, breast to breast, man against man, tooth and nail, forever and forever. You can laugh too, but-- Ha! Ha! Ha!--what do you say to that? Shut up, shut up, and be ashamed of yourself. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

There was a sensation without. I could see that Emmeline recoiled from the side of her companion. He had thrown himself into an att.i.tude, had grappled the logs of my dungeon, and exhibited a degree of strange emotion, which, to say the least, took everybody by surprise. My chief custodian was the first to speak.

"Don't be scared, Mr.--there's no danger--he can't get out."

"But I say let him out--let him out. Look at him, ladies--look at him.

You shall see what a madman is--you shall see how I can manage him.

Hark ye, fellow,--out with him at once. Give me your whip--I know all about his treatment. You shall see me work him. I'll manage him,--I'll fight with him, and laugh with him too--how we shall laugh--Ha! Ha! Ha!"

His horrible laughter--for it was horrible--was cut short by an unexpected incident. He was knocked down as suddenly as I had been, with a blow from behind, to the astonishment of all around. The a.s.sailant was the sheriff of Hamilton jail, who had just arrived and detected the fugitive, Archy Dargan--the most cunning of all bedlamites, as he afterwards a.s.sured me--in the person of the handsome Col. Nelson.

"I knew the scamp by his laugh--I heard it half a mile," said the sheriff, as he planted himself upon the bosom of the prostrate man, and proceeded to leash him in proper order. Here was a concatenation accordingly.

"Who hev' I got in the pen?" was the sapient inquiry of my captor--the fellow whose whip had been so potent over my imagination.

"Who? Have you any body there?" demanded the sheriff.

"I reckon!--We cocht a chap that Jake made affidavy was the madman."

"Let him out then, and beg the man's pardon. I'll answer for Archy Dargan."

My appearance before the astonished damsels was gratifying to neither of us. I was covered with mud and blood,--and they with confusion.

"Oh! Mr. ----, how could we think it was you, such a fright as they've made you."

Such was Miss Emmeline's speech after her recovery. Susannah's was quite as characteristic.

"I am so very sorry, Mr. ----."

"Spare your regrets, ladies," I muttered ungraciously, as I leapt on my horse. "I wish you a very pleasant morning."

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" yelled the bedlamite, writhing and bounding in his leash--"a very pleasant morning."

The damsels took to their heels, and went off in one direction quite as fast as I did in the other. Since that day, dear reader, I have never suffered myself to scare a fool, or to fall in love with a pair of twins; and if ever I marry, take my word for it, the happy woman shall neither be a Susannah, nor an Emmeline.

THE CHIROPODIST

By BAYARD TAYLOR

R. Henry Bartlett was one of three gentlemen who rode from the railroad station to Moore's Hotel, at Trenton Falls, on the top of an omnibus; and who, having clambered down from that lofty perch, under the inspection of forty pairs of eyes leveled at them from the balcony, hastened to inscribe their names in the book, and secure the keys of their several chambers. To no one of the three, however, was this privacy so welcome as to Mr. Bartlett, who, entering his room with flushed face, nervously dismissed the servant, locked the door, and dropped into a chair with a pant of relief. Our business being entirely with him, we shall at once dismiss his two companions--whom, indeed, we have only introduced as accessories to the princ.i.p.al figure--and, taking our invisible seats in the opposite chair, proceed to a contemplation of his person.

Age--four, perhaps five, and twenty--certainly not more; height, five feet nine inches, with well-developed breast and shoulders; limbs, whose firm, ample muscle betrays itself through the straight lines of his light summer costume, and hands and feet of agreeable shape; complexion fair, with a skin of feminine fineness and transparency, whereon the uncontrollable blood writes his emotions so palpably that he who runs may read; eyes of a clear, honest blue, but so shy of meeting a steady gaze that few know how beautiful they really are; mouth full and sensitive, and of so rich and dewy a red that we can not help wishing he were a woman that we might be pardoned for kissing it; forehead broad, and rather low; hair--but here we hesitate, for his enemies would certainly call it red. Indeed, in some lights it is red, but its prevailing tint is brown, with a bronze l.u.s.tre on the curls.

As he sits thus, unconscious of our observation, he is certainly handsome, in spite of a haunting air of timidity which weakens the expression of features not weak in themselves. On further observation, we are inclined to believe that he has not achieved that easy poise of self-possession which, in men of becoming modesty, is the result of more or less social experience. He belongs, evidently, to that cla.s.s of awkward, honest, warm-hearted, and sensitive natures whom all men like, and some women.

Mr. Bartlett's reflections, after his arrival, were--we have good reason to know--after this fashion: "When will I cease to be a fool?

Why couldn't I stare back at all those people on the balcony as coolly as the two fellows who sat beside me? Why couldn't I get down without missing the step and grazing my shin on the wheel? Why should I walk into the house with my head down, and a million of cold little needles p.r.i.c.king my back, because men and women, and not sheep, were looking at me? I have at least an average body, as men go--an average intellect, too, I think; yet every day I see spindly, brainless squirts [Mr.

Bartlett would not have used this epithet in conversation, but it certainly pa.s.sed through his mind] put me to shame by their self-possession. The women think me a fool because I have not the courage to be natural and unembarra.s.sed, and I carry the consciousness of the fact about me whenever I meet them. Come, come: this will never do. I am a man, and I ought to possess the ordinary resolution of a man. Now, here's a chance to turn over a new leaf. n.o.body knows me; no one will notice me particularly; and whether I fail or succeed, the experiment will never be brought forward to my confusion hereafter."

Full of a sudden courage he sprang to his feet, and carefully adjusted his toilet for the tea-table, whistling cheerfully all the while. At the sound of the gong he descended the staircase, and approached the dining-room with head erect, meeting the gaze of the other guests with a steadiness which resembled defiance. He was surprised to find how mechanical and transitory were the glances he encountered. As Mr.

Bartlett's friend, I should not like to a.s.sert that in his efforts to appear self-possessed he approached the bounds of effrontery; but I have my own private suspicions about the matter. At the table a lively conversation was carried on, and he was able to take many stealthy observations of the ladies without being noticed. To his shame I must confess that he had never been seriously in love, though it was a condition he most earnestly desired. Attracted toward women by the instinct of his nature, and repelled by his awkward embarra.s.sment, there seemed little chance that he would ever attain it. On this particular occasion, however, he cast his eyes around with the air of a sultan scanning his slaves before throwing the handkerchief to the chosen one. The female guests--old, young, married, single, ill-favored or beautiful--were subjected to the review. It is impossible to describe Mr. Bartlett's satisfaction with himself.

He had pa.s.sed over twenty-nine of the thirty-five ladies present without experiencing any special emotion; but at the thirtieth he was suddenly attacked by a recurrence of his habitual timidity. He fixed his eyes upon his toast, painfully conscious by the warmth of his ears that he was blushing violently, and actually drank a third cup of tea (one more than his usual allowance) before he became sufficiently composed to look up again. Really there was no cause for confusion.

Her face was turned away, so that even the profile was not wholly visible; but the exquisite line of the forehead and cheek, bent inward at the angle of the unseen eye, and melting into the sweep of the neck and shoulder, were the surest possible prophecies of beauty. Her chestnut hair, rippled at the temples, was gathered into a heavy, shining knot at the back of her head, and inwoven with the varnished, heart-shaped leaves of the smilax. More than this Mr. Bartlett did not dare to notice.

During the evening he flitted restlessly about the rooms, intent on an object which he thus explained to himself: "I should like to see whether her front face corresponds to the outline of her cheek. I am alone; it is too late to visit the Falls, and a whim of this sort will help me to pa.s.s the time." But the lady belonged, apparently, to a numerous party, who took possession of one end of the balcony and sat in the moonlight, in such a position that he could not see her features with distinctness. The face was a pure oval, in a frame-work of superb hair, and the glossy leaves of smilax glittered like silver in the moonlight whenever she chanced to turn her head. There were songs, and she sang--"Scenes that are brightest," or something of the kind, suggested by the influences of the night. Her voice was clear and sweet, without much strength--one of those voices which seem to be made for singing to one ear alone. "Here, by G.o.d's grace, is the one voice for me," thought Mr. Bartlett. [He had just been reading the "Idyls of the King."] He slipped off to bed, saying to himself: "A little more courage, and I may be able to make her acquaintance."

In the morning he set out to make the tour of the Falls. Entering the glen from below, he slowly crept up the black shelves of rock, under and around the rush of the amber waters. The naiads of Trenton, waving their scarfs of rainbow brede, tossed their foam fringes in his face: above, the dryads of the pine and beech looked down from their seats on the brink of the overhanging walls. Mr. Bartlett was neither a poet nor a painter, nor was it necessary; but his temperament (as you may know from his skin and the color of his hair) was joyous and excitable, and he felt a degree of delight that made him forget his own self. I fancy there are no embarra.s.sing conventionalisms at the bottom of the earth--wherever that may be--and the glen at Trenton is two hundred feet on the way thither. Our friend enjoyed to the full this partial release, and was surprised to find that he could a.s.sist several married ladies to climb the slippery steps at the High Pall without consciously blushing.

How it came to pa.s.s he never could rightly tell, but certain it is that, on lifting his eyes after a long contemplation of the shifting slides of fretted amber, he found himself alone in the glen--with the exception of a young lady who sat on the rocks a few paces distant. At the first glance he thought it was a child, for the slight form was habited in a Bloomer dress, and a broad hat shaded the graceful head.

The wide trowsers were gathered around her ankles, and a pair of the prettiest feet he had ever seen dangled in the edge of the swift stream. She was idly plucking up tufts of gra.s.s from the crevices of the rock, and tossing them in the mouth of the cataract, and her face was partly turned toward him. It was the fair unknown of the evening before! There was no mistaking the lovely cheek and the rippled chestnut hair.

Mr. Bartlett felt--as he afterward expressed himself--a warm, sweet shudder run through all his veins. Alone with that lovely creature, below the outside surface of the earth! "Oh, if I could but speak to her! Her dress shows that she can lay aside the soulless forms of society in such a place as this: why not I? There's Larkin, and Kirkland, and lots of fellows I know, wouldn't hesitate a moment. But what shall I say? 'The scenery's very fine?' Pshaw! But the first sentence is the only difficulty---the rest will come of itself. What if I address her boldly as an old acquaintance, and then apologize for my mistake? Upon my word, a good idea! So natural and possible!"

Having determined upon this plan, he immediately put it into action before the resolve had time to cool. His step was firm and his bearing was sufficiently confident as he approached her; but when she lifted her long lashes, disclosing a pair of large, limpid, hazel eyes, which regarded him, unabashed, with the transient curiosity one bestows upon a stranger, his face, I am sure, betrayed the humbug of the thing. The lady, however, not antic.i.p.ating what followed, could scarcely have remarked it.

Raising his hat as he reached the corner of the rock upon which she sat, he said, in a voice so curiously balanced between his enforced boldness and his reflected surprise thereat, that he hardly recognized it as his own:

"How do you do, Miss Lawrence?"

The lady looked at him wonderingly--steady, child-like eyes, that frankly and innocently perused his face, as if seeking for some trace of a forgotten acquaintance. Mr. Bartlett could not withdraw his, although he knew that his face was getting redder and his respiration more unsteady every moment. He stammered forth:

"Miss Lawrence, of South Carolina, I believe."

"You are mistaken, Sir," said the lady, with the least shade of coldness in her voice, but it fell upon Mr. Bartlett like the wind from an iceberg--"I am not Miss Lawrence."

"I--I beg your pardon," he answered, somewhat confusedly. "You resemble her; I expected to meet her here. Will you please tell her I enquired for her? Here's my card!" Therewith he thrust both hands into his vest pockets, extracted a card from one of them, and laid it hastily upon the rock beside her.

"Bertha! Bertha!" rang through the glen, above the roar of the waterfall. The remainder of the party which the young lady had preceded now came into view descending toward her.

"Good-day, Miss Lawrence!" said Mr. Bartlett, again lifting his hat, and retracing his steps. For his life he could not have pa.s.sed her and run the gauntlet of the faces of her friends upon the narrow path.

Every soul of them would have instantly seen what a fool he was.

Moreover, he had achieved enough for one day. The soldier who storms a perilous breach and finds himself alive on the inside of it could not be more astonished than he. "I blundered awfully," he thought; "but, after all, it's the one way to learn."--"Who's your friend, Bertha?"

asked her brother, d.i.c.k Morris, the avant-guard of the party. "I never saw the fellow before."

"If you had not frightened him by your sudden appearance," said she, "you might have discovered. A Southerner, I suppose, though he don't look like one. He addressed me as Miss Lawrence, of South Carolina, and afterwards left me his card, to be given to her. What shall I do with it?"