The Strollers. Frederic Stewart Isham
of Contents
Calm and still was the morning; the wandering air just stirred the pendulous branches of the elms and maples, and, in the clear atmosphere, the russet hills were sharply outlined. As they swung out into the road, with Hans, the musician, at the reins, the young girl removed her bonnet and leaned back in the chair of state, where kings had fretted and queens had lolled.
The throne, imposing on the stage, now appeared but a flimsy article of furniture, with frayed and torn upholstering, and carving which had long since lost its gilded magnificence. Seated amid the jumble of theatrical appliances and accoutrements––scenery, rolled up rug-fashion, property trunks, stage clock, lamps and draperies––she accepted the situation gracefully, even finding nothing strange in the presence of the soldier. New faces had come and gone in the company before, and, when Barnes had complacently informed her Saint-Prosper would journey with the players to New Orleans in a semi-business capacity, 88 the arrangement appeared conformable to precedent. The manager’s satisfaction augured well for the importance of the semi-business rôle assumed by the stranger, and Barnes’ friendliness was perhaps in some degree unconsciously reflected in her manner; an attitude the soldier’s own reserve, or taciturnity, had not tended to dispel. So, his being in the property wagon seemed no more singular than Hans’ occupancy of the front seat, or if Adonis, Hawkes, or Susan had been there with her. She was accustomed to free and easy comradeship; indeed, knew no other life, and it was only assiduous attentions, like those of the land baron’s, that startled and disquieted her.
As comfortably as might be, she settled back in the capacious, threadbare throne, a slender figure in its depths––more adapted to accommodate a corpulent Henry VIII!––and smiled gaily, as the wagon, in avoiding one rut, ran into another and lurched somewhat violently. Saint-Prosper, lodged on a neighboring trunk, quickly extended a steadying hand.
“You see how precarious thrones are!” he said.
“There isn’t room for it to more than totter,” she replied lightly, removing her bonnet and lazily swinging it from the arm of the chair.
“Then it’s safer than real thrones,” he answered, watching 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; 89 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 90 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 91 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 92 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