The Strollers. Isham Frederic Stewart
the swaying bonnet, or perhaps, contrasting the muscular, bronzed hand he had placed on the chair with the smooth, white one which held the blue ribbons; a small, though firm, hand to grapple with the minotaur, Life!
She slowly wound the ribbons around her fingers.
“Oh, you mean France,” she said, and he looked away with sudden disquietude. “Poor monarchs! Their road is rougher than this one.”
“Rougher truly!”
“You love France?” she asked suddenly, after studying, with secret, sidelong glances his reserved, impenetrable face.
His gaze returned to her–to the bonnet now resting in her lap–to the hand beside it.
“It is my native land,” he replied.
“Then why did you leave it–in its trouble?” she asked impulsively.
“Why?” he repeated, regarding her keenly; but in a moment he added: “For several reasons. I returned from Africa, from serving under Bugeaud, to find the red flag waving in Paris; the king fled!”
“Oh,” she said, quickly, “a king should–”
“What?” he asked, as she paused.
“I was going to say it was better to die like a king than–”
“Than live an outcast!” he concluded for her, a shadow on his brow.
She nodded. “At any rate, that is the way they always do in the plays,” she added brightly. “But you were saying you found your real king fled?”
His heavy brows contracted, though he answered readily enough: “Yes, the king had fled. A kinsman in whose house I had been reared then bade me head a movement for the restoration of the royal fugitive. For what object? The regency was doomed. The king, a May-fly!”
“And so you refused?”
“We quarreled; he swore like a Gascon. His little puppet should yet sit in the chair where Louis XIV had lorded it! I, who owed my commission to his noble name, was a republican, a deserter! The best way out of the difficulty was out of the country. First it was England, then it was here. To-morrow–where?” he added, in a lower tone, half to himself.
“Where?” she repeated, lightly. “That is our case, too.”
He looked at her with sudden interest. “Yours is an eventful life, Miss Carew.”
“I have never known any other,” she said, simply, adding after a pause: “My earliest recollections are associated with my mother and the stage. As a child I watched her from the wings. I remember a grand voice and majestic presence. When the audience broke into applause, my heart throbbed with pride.”
But as her thoughts reverted to times past, the touch of melancholy, invoked by the memory of her mother, was gradually dispelled, as fancy conjured other scenes, and a flickering smile hovered over the lips whose parting displaced that graver mood.
“Once or twice I played with her, too,” she added. “I thought it nice to be one of the little princes in Richard III and wear white satin clothes. One night after the play an old gentleman took me on his knee and said: I had to come, my child, and see if the wicked old uncle hadn’t really smothered you!’ When he had gone, my mother told me he was Mr. Washington Irving. I thought him very kind, for he brought me a bag of bonbons from the coffee-room.”
“It’s the first time I ever heard of a great critic laden with sweetmeats!” said the soldier. “And were you not flattered by his honeyed regard?”
“Oh, yes; I devoured it and wanted more,” she laughed.
Hans’ flourishing whip put an end to further conversation. “Der stage goach!” he said, turning a lumpish countenance upon them and pointing down the road.
Approaching at a lively gait was one of the coaches of the regular line, a vehicle of ancient type, hung on bands of leather and curtained with painted canvas, not unlike the typical French diligence, except for its absence of springs. The stage was spattered with mud from roof to wheel-tire, but as the mire was not fresh and the road fair, the presumption followed that custom and practice precluded the cleaning of the coach. The passengers, among whom were several ladies, wearing coquettish bonnets with ribbons or beau-catchers attached, were too weary even to view with wonder the odd-looking theatrical caravan. Only the driver, a diminutive person with puckered face the color of dried apples, so venerable as to be known as Old Hundred, seemed as spry and cheery as when he started.
“Morning,” he said, briskly, drawing in his horses. “Come back, have ye, with yer troupe? What’s the neuws from Alban-y?”
“Nothing, except Texas has been admitted as a State,” answered Barnes.
“Sho! We air coming on!” commented the Methuselah of the road.
“Coming on!” groaned a voice in the vehicle, and the florid face of an English traveler appeared at the door. “I say, do you call this ‘coming on!’ I’m nearly gone, don’t you know!”
“Hi!–ge’ long!–steady there!” And Old Hundred again whipped up his team, precipitating a lady into the lap of the gentleman who was “nearly gone,” and well-nigh completing his annihilation.
In less time than when a friendly sail is lost in the mist, Old Hundred’s bulky land-wherry passed from view, and the soldier again turned to his companion. But she was now intent on some part in a play which she was quietly studying and he contented himself with lighting that staple luxury of the early commonwealth, a Virginia stogie, observing her from time to time over the glowing end. With the book upon her knee, her head downcast and partly turned from him, he could, nevertheless, through the mazy convolutions and dreamy spirals of the Indian weed, detect the changing emotions which swept over her, as in fancy she assumed a rôle in the drama. Now the faintest shadow of a smile, coming and going; again beneath the curve of her long lashes, a softer gleaming in the dark eyes, adding new charm to the pale, proud face. Around them nature seemed fraught with forgetfulness; the Libyan peace that knows not where or wherefore. Rocked in the cradle of ruts and furrows, Hans, portly as a carboy, half-dozed on the front seat.
Shortly before noon they approached an ancient hostelry, set well back from the road. To the manager’s dismay, however, the door was locked and boards were nailed across the windows. Even the water pail, hospitably placed for man or beast, had been removed from its customary proximity to the wooden pump. Abandoned to decay, the tenantless inn was but another evidence of traffic diverted from the old stage roads by the Erie Canal Company. Cold was the fireplace before which had once rested the sheep-skin slippers for the guests; empty was the larder where at this season was wont to be game in abundance, sweet corn, luscious melons–the trophies of the hunt, the fruits of the field; missing the neat, compact little keg whose spigot had run with consolation for the wanderer!
Confronted by the deserted house, where they had expected convivial cheer, there was no alternative but to proceed, and their journey was resumed with some discomfiture to the occupants of the coach which now labored like a portly Spanish galleon, struck by a squall. They had advanced in this manner for some distance through furrow and groove, when the vehicle gave a sharper lurch down a deeper rut; a crash was followed by cries of affright and the chariot abruptly settled on one side. Barnes held the plunging horses in control, while the gentlemen scrambled to the ground and assisted the ladies to dismount.
“Any one hurt?” asked the manager from his box.
“No damage done–except to the coach,” said Hawkes.
By this time the horses had become quiet and Barnes, now that the passengers were rescued, like a good skipper, left the quarter deck.
“We couldn’t have chosen a better place for our lunch,” he remarked philosophically. “How fortunate we should have broken down where we did!”
“Very fortunate!” echoed the old lady ironically.
The accident had happened upon a slight plateau, of which they accordingly took possession, tethering the horses to graze. From the branches overhead the squirrels surveyed them as if asking what