The Strollers. Isham Frederic Stewart
upon the bosom of the wearer. A white choker rivaled in hue the tooth-pick collar of the melancholy individual.
The tavern’s stable boy immediately began to remove the trunks into the main hallway. This overgrown, husky lad evidently did not share his employer’s disapproval of the guests, for he gazed in open-eyed wonder at the sisters, and then, with increasing awe, his glance strayed to the young girl. To his juvenile imagination an actress appeared in the glamour of a veritable goddess. But she had obviously that tender consideration for others which belongs to humanity, for she turned to the old man with an affectionate smile, removing from his shoulders the wet Petersham overcoat, and, placing it on a chair, regarded him with a look of filial anxiety. Yet their appearance belied the assumption of such relationship; he was hearty, florid and sturdy, of English type, while she seemed a daughter of the South, a figure more fitting for groves of orange and cypress, than for this rugged northern wilderness.
The emotion of the stable boy as he gazed at her, and the forbidding mood of the landlord were broken in upon by the tiny old lady, who, in a large voice, remarked:
“A haven at last! Are you the landlord?”
“Yes, ma’am,” testily replied that person.
“I am pleased to meet you, sir,” exclaimed the melancholy individual, as he extended a hand so cold and clammy that shivers ran up and down the back of the host when he took it gingerly. “We are having fine tragedy weather, sir!”
“A fire at once, landlord!” commanded the would-be beau.
“Refreshments will be in order!” exclaimed she of the trim ankles.
“And show me the best room in the house,” remarked her sister.
Mine host, bewildered by this shower of requests, stared from one to the other in helpless confusion, but finally collected his wits sufficiently to usher the company into the tap-room with:
“Here you’ll find a fire, but as for the best room, this gentleman”–indicating the reticent guest–“already occupies it.”
The young man at the fire, thus forced prominently into notice, arose slowly.
“You are mistaken, landlord,” he said curtly, hardly glancing at the players. “I no longer occupy it since these ladies have come.”
“Your complaisance does credit to your good nature, sir,” exclaimed the old man. “But we can not take advantage of it.”
“It is too good of you,” remarked the elder sister with a glance replete with more gratitude than the occasion demanded. “Really, though, we could not think of it.”
“Thank you; thank you,” joined in the wiry old lady, bobbing up and down like a miniature figure moved by the unseen hand of the showman. “Allow me, sir!” And she gravely tendered him a huge snuff-box of tortoise shell, which he declined; whereupon she continued:
“You do not use it? New fashions; new habits! Though whether for the better is not for me to say.”
She helped herself to a liberal portion and passed the box to the portly old gentleman. Here the landlord, in a surly tone, told the stable boy to remove the gentleman’s things and show the ladies to their rooms. Before going, the girl in the provoking hood–now unfastened, and freeing sundry rebellious brown curls where the moisture yet sparkled like dew–turned to the old man:
“You are coming up directly? Your stock wants changing, while your ruffles”–laughing–“are disgraceful!”
“Presently, my dear; presently!” he returned.
The members of the company mounted the broad stairway, save the driver of the coach–he of the disordered ruffles–who wiped his heavy boots on a door mat and made his way to the fire, where he stood in English fashion with his coat-tails under his arms, rubbing his hands and drying himself before the flames.
“A disagreeable time of year, sir,” he observed to the soldier, who had returned to his seat before the table. “Twice on the road we nearly broke down, and once the wagon dumped our properties in the ditch. Meanwhile, to make matters worse, the ladies heaped reproaches upon these gray hairs. This, sir, to the man who was considered one of the best whips in old Devonshire county.”
The other did not answer immediately, but regarded the speaker with the look of one not readily disposed to make acquaintances. His conclusions were apparently satisfactory, however, for he presently vouchsafed the remark:
“You are the manager, I presume?”
“I enjoy that honor,” returned the loquacious stranger. “But my duties are manifold. As driver of the chariot, I endure the constant apprehension of wrecking my company by the wayside. As assistant carpenter, when we can not find a stage it is my task to erect one. As bill-poster and license-procurer, treasurer and stage manager, my time is not so taken up, sir, as to preclude my going on and assuming a character.”
“A life of variety,” observed the young man, politely if indifferently.
“Yes; full of ups and downs, as the driver of the property wagon said when we entered this hilly district,” replied the manager, with the contentment of a man who has found a snug haven after a hard ride in a comparatively unbroken country. “Affluence we may know, but poverty is apt to be our companion.”
To this the other deemed no response necessary and a silence fell between them, broken only by the simmering water in the iron kettle, the sputtering of the sap in the burning logs and the creaking without of the long balancing pole that suspended the moss-covered bucket. The wind sighed in the chimney and the wooing flames sprang to meet it, while the heart of the fire glowed in a mass of coals between the andirons.
The old gentleman before the blaze began to outrival the kettle in steaming; from his coat-tails a thin veil of mist ascended, his face beaming through the vapor with benign felicity. Then he turned and toasted the other side and the kettle reigned supreme until he thawed once more and the clouds ascended, surrounding him like Jupiter on the celestial mount. At that the kettle hummed more angrily and the old gentleman’s face beamed with satisfaction.
“A snug company, sir,” he said, finally, glowing upon the impassive face before him, “like a tight ship, can weather a little bad weather. Perhaps you noticed our troupe? The old lady is Mrs. Adams. She is nearly seventy, but can dance a horn-pipe or a reel with the best of them. The two sisters are Kate and Susan Duran, both coquettes of the first water. Our juvenile man is a young Irishman who thinks much of his dress and little of the cultivation of mind and manners. Then,” added the old man tenderly, “there is my Constance.”
He paused abruptly. “Landlord, a pot of ale. My throat is hoarse from the mist. Fancy being for hours on a road not knowing where you are! Your good-fortune, sir!” Lifting the mug. “More than once we lurched like a cockle-shell.”
The conversation at this point was interrupted by the appearance of the juvenile man.
“Mr. Barnes, the ladies desire your company immediately.”
The manager hurriedly left the room and the newcomer regarded his retiring figure with a twinkle in his eye. Then he took a turn around the room in stilted fashion–like one who “carried about with him his pits, boxes and galleries”–and observed:
“Faith, Mr. Barnes’ couch is not a bed of roses. It is better to have the fair ones dangling after you, than to be running at their every beck and call.”
Here he twisted his mustache upward.
“A woman is a strange creature,” he resumed. “If she calls and you come once, your legs will be busy for the rest of your natural days.”
He seemed about to continue his observations along this philosophical line, when the manager appeared in much perturbation, approaching the landlord, who, at the same time, had entered the room from the kitchen.
“The ladies insist that their sheets are damp,” began the manager in his most plausible manner.
A dangerous light appeared in the other’s eyes.
“It’s the weather, you