Vassall Morton Part 18

CHAPTER XIX.

For, in the days of yore, the birds of parts Were bred to speak, and sing, and learn the liberal arts.

_The c.o.c.k and the Fox_.

Thine is the adventure, thine the victory; Well has thy fortune turned the dice for thee.

_Palamon and Arcite_.

During the rest of the journey, Morton, on Mrs. Holyoke's invitation, was one of the party. Again and again he was impelled to learn his fate; but recoiled from casting the die, dreading that his hour was not come. Still, though every day more helplessly spell-bound, his mood was not despondent.

They came to the town of ----, a half day from home.

"My household G.o.ds are not far off," said Morton. "My father was born at Steuben, a few miles below, where my grandfather used to preach against King George, and stir up his parish to rebellion. I have relations there still, and have a mind to spend to-morrow with them."

This announcement proceeded much less from family affection than from another motive. Mrs. Holyoke saw it in an instant.

"Excellent! Then Miss Leslie can accept her friend's invitation to make a day's visit at this place; and you will meet her and escort her to Boston."

And Morton, much rejoiced at this successful issue of his diplomacy, repaired to his relatives at Steuben; Holyoke and his wife proceeded homeward; while Miss Leslie remained to accomplish the visit with her country friend.

Morton spent a quiet day in the primitive New England village, a place of which boyish a.s.sociation made him fond. On the next morning, Miss Leslie was to come to Steuben, with her hostess; but as there was an abundance of time before the train would appear, he strolled along a quiet road leading back into the country. He soon came to an old inn, over whose tottering porch King George's head might once have swung.

Nothing human was astir. The ancient lilacs flaunted before the door; the tall sunflowers peered over the garden fence; the primeval well-sweep slanted aloft, far above the mossy shingles of the roof.

The rural quiet of the place tempted him. He sat under the porch, and watched the swallows sailing in and out of the great barn whose doors stood wide open, on the opposite side of the road.

A voice broke the silence--a voice from the barn yard. It was the voice of a hen mother, the announcement that an egg was born into the world. Not the proud, exulting cackle which ordinarily proclaims that auspicious event, but a repining, discontented cry, now rising in vehement remonstrance with destiny, now sinking into a low cluck of disgust. Morton, skilled in the language of birds, construed these melancholy cacklings as follows:--

"Whither does all this tend? Why is my happiness blighted, my aspirations repressed? Why am I forever penned up within these narrow precincts, amid low domestic cares, and sordid, uncongenial, unsympathizing a.s.sociates? And thou, my white and spotless offspring, what shall be thy fate? To be steeped in hot water, and eaten with a spoon? Or art thou to be the germ of an existence wretched as my own, doomed to a ceaseless round of daily parturition? O, weariness! O, misery! O, despair!"

And throwing her ruffled feelings into one indignant cackle, the hen was silent.

The advent of a human biped here enlivened the scene. This was a young gentleman on horseback, a collegian to all appearance, admirably mounted, but bestriding his horse with the look of one who has just pa.s.sed his first course under the riding master, and rides by the book, as Touchstone quarrelled. This important personage, with an air oddly compounded of a.s.sumption and timidity, proceeded to call the hostler, and order oats for his horse, after which he strutted into the house, switching his leg with his whip.

As ample time remained, Morton continued his walk along the road, his mood in harmony with the brightness of the morning. He was in a humor to please himself with trifles. A ground squirrel chirruped at him from a crevice of the wall. He stood watching the small, shy visage, as it looked out at him. Then a red squirrel, a much livelier companion, uttered its trilling cry from a clump of hazel bushes.

Morton seated himself on a stone very near it. The squirrel resented the intrusion, ran out on a fence rail towards the offender, chattered, scolded, swelled himself like a miniature m.u.f.f, made his tail and his whole body vibrate with his wrath; then suddenly dodged down behind the rail and peered over it at the trespa.s.ser, his nose and one eye alone being visible; then bolted into full sight again, and scolded as before, jerking himself from side to side in the extremity of his petulance; till at last, without the smallest apparent cause, he suddenly wheeled about and fled, bounding like the wind along the top of the stone wall.

This interview over, Morton looked at his watch, saw that it was time to go back towards the village, and began to retrace his steps accordingly. He had gone but a few paces, when he saw a countryman, a simple-looking fellow, running at top speed, and in great excitement, up a byway, which led to the railroad, the latter crossing it by a high bridge, at some distance from the station.

"What's the matter?" demanded Morton.

"The railroad cars!" gasped the countryman.

"What of them?"

"They'll all go to smash, and no mistake."

"What!" cried Morton, aghast.

"Fact, mister. Some born devil has been and sawed the bridge timbers most through in the middle."

"What!" cried Morton again.

"Sure as I stand here! I seen the heaps of sawdust on the road. That's the way I come to take notice. The minute the locomotive gets on the bridge, down she'll go, and no two ways about it."

Morton had no doubt that the man was right. The newspapers, within the last few weeks, had contained various accounts of impediments, great and small, maliciously placed on railroads. It was a species of villany which was just then having its run, as incendiarism will sometimes have; and a like case of a bridge partly sawed through had lately occurred in a neighboring state.

"You fool!" exclaimed Morton, in anguish and despair; "why didn't you get on the track, and stop the train?"

"I'd like to see you stop the train!" retorted the man.

Morton turned to run for the road, bent on stopping the engine, or letting it pa.s.s over him. But as he turned, a new arrival caught his eye. This was the cavalier who had baited his horse at the inn, and who, seeing the excited looks of the two men, had checked his pace, and was looking at them with much curiosity.

Crazed with agitation, and hardly knowing what he did, Morton leaped towards him, seized his horse, a powerful and high-mettled animal, by the head, and, with a few broken words of explanation, called on him to dismount. The astonished collegian did not comply. Morton bore back fiercely on the bit; the horse plunged and snorted; the rider clutched the pommel; Morton took him by the arm, drew him to the ground, mounted at a bound after him, and, as he touched the saddle, struck his whalebone walking stick with all his force over the horse's flank.

The horse leaped forward frantically, and rushed headlong down the road. His discarded rider saw his hoofs twinkling for an instant out of the cloud of dust, and thought he had had a Heaven-directed escape from a madman.

The small village above Steuben, at which Miss Leslie and her friend were to take the train, was three miles off. The road ran almost directly towards it for more than three fourths of the way, when it made a bend to the right. Morton, with his furious riding, very soon reached this point. He could see the station house before him, on the left, and not more than a third of a mile distant. The s.p.a.ce between, though uneven, had no visible impediments but a few low fences and scattered clumps of bushes. Morton pushed through the barberry growth that fringed the road, galloped over the hard pasture, leaped one fence, pa.s.sed a gap in another, and half way to his goal, found himself and his horse in a quagmire. At this moment, straining his eyes towards the cl.u.s.ter of houses, he saw, with agony at his heart, a white puff of vapor rising above the trees beyond. Then the dark outline of the train came into view, checking its way, and stopping, half hidden behind the buildings.

Morton knew that it would stop only for a moment, and plied his horse with merciless blows. The horse plunged through the mire,--the mud and water spouting high above his rider's head,--gained the firm ground, and bounded forward wild with fright and fury. It was too late. The bell rang, and with quicker and quicker pants, the engine began to move. Morton shouted,--gesticulated,--still it did not stop, though the pa.s.sengers seemed to take alarm, for a head was thrust from every window, while the occupants of an open carriage drawn up on the road were bending eagerly towards him.

Morton wheeled to the left, and urged his horse up the embankment in front of the train. With a violent effort, he reached the top. The engineer was running against time, and cared for nothing but winning his match. He blew the steam whistle; and as Morton dragged on the curb with desperate strength, the horse reared upright, pawing the air. But, as he rose, Morton disengaged his feet, slid over the crupper to the ground, and let go the rein. The horse leaped down the bank, and scoured over the meadow, mad with terror. Morton took his stand in the middle of the track, and facing the advancing train, stood immovable as a post. The engineer reversed the engine, brought it to a stand within a few yards of him, and, with a profusion of oaths, demanded what he wanted.

Before the breathless Morton could well explain himself, the pa.s.sengers began to leap out of the cars, and running forward, gathered about him. He soon found words to make the case known. But one object alone engrossed him. He pushed on among the throng of questioning, eager men, mounted the foremost car, and made his way through it, the crowd pushing behind and around him, and plying him with questions, to which, in the confusion and abstraction of his faculties, he gave wild and random answers. He looked at every face.

Edith Leslie was not there. He crossed the platform into the next car, pa.s.sed through it, and still could not find her. It was the last in the train. And now a strange feeling came over him, a bitterness, a sense of disappointment, as if his efforts and his pangs had been uncalled for and profitless; for so intensely had his thoughts been concentred on one object, that he forgot for the moment the hundred men and women whom he had saved from deadly jeopardy.

The train rolled back to the station, the distance being only a few rods. Morton got out and leaned against the wall of the house. Men thronged about him with questions, exclamations, thanks, praises. The reaction of his violent emotion produced in him a frame of mind almost childish. He was restless to free himself from the crowd.

"It's nothing; it's nothing," he answered, as fresh praises were showered on him. "I saw the train going to the devil, and did what I could to save it. Any of you, I dare say, would have done as much. Be good enough to let me have a little air."

The crowd gave way, and he walked forward past the corner of the building. Here, standing on the road, close at hand, he suddenly saw an open carriage, and in it, pale as death, sat Miss Leslie, with her friend, and a boy of twelve, her friend's brother. He sprang towards it with an irrepressible impulse.

"My G.o.d! Miss Leslie, I thought you were in the train."

"And so we should have been," said the boy, "but the cars came in three minutes before their time."

Edith Leslie did not utter a word.

Some of the pa.s.sengers were soon about him again. He repeated to them what he knew of the danger, and told them how he had learned it. In a few minutes, several men were seen at a distance on the railroad, running forward with a handkerchief tied to a stick to warn off the train. A few minutes later, a Connecticut pedler, one of the pa.s.sengers, came up to Morton.

"Mister, they're going to do the handsome thing by you. They're getting up a subscription to give you a piece of silver plate."

"The deuse they are!" was Morton's ungrateful response.

Going into the room where the pa.s.sengers were met, he found that the pedler had told the truth; on which, for the first and last time in his life, he addressed an a.s.semblage of his fellow-citizens. He told them that he thanked them for their kind intention; but that if he had done them a service, he wished for no other recompense than the knowledge of it, and urged them, if they did any thing in the matter, to devote their efforts to gaining the arrest and punishment of the scoundrel who had attempted the mischief. His oratory was much applauded; many, who had thought themselves in for the subscription, joyfully b.u.t.toned their pockets, and, instead of the plate, he received a series of complimentary resolutions, to be published in the newspapers.

Meanwhile, having made his speech, he had lost no time in making his escape also. Going back to the carriage, Miss Leslie's friend asked him to accompany them home, whence they could return to take the afternoon train, when the bridge would, no doubt, be repaired. Morton, however, declined the invitation, and, having sent two men to catch the horse, with instructions to refer the distressed owner to him, he drove in a farmer's wagon to Steuben. In a few hours, he rejoined Miss Leslie and her friend; and having escorted both safely to town, took leave of the former, that evening, at the door of her father's house.

Several of the newspapers next morning contained the resolutions pa.s.sed by the pa.s.sengers, trumpeting Morton's humanity, presence of mind, &c. He himself very well knew that the praise was undeserved, since he had neither thought nor cared for the objects of his supposed humanity, and, far from acting with presence of mind, had scarcely known what he was about.

The bridge had been cut by an Irish mechanic in the employ of the road, who, for some misdemeanor, had been reprimanded and turned out, and who had pa.s.sed half the night in preparing his demoniac revenge.

It afterwards appeared that he had been a state's prison convict in a neighboring state, and that he would have been still in confinement, had not the officious zeal of certain benevolent persons availed to set him loose before his time.