Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  Nay, my meditations took a more sombre turn. What assurance had I that the little man was what he represented himself to be? Was there not, indeed, at least a possibility his business might be of so dark a nature that I shuddered to put a name to it? Why had he accompanied the Grays from New York? Why had he not remained at the King George with them? Why had he pushed on down the road ahead of them? Was it, as he had represented, simply to be nearer his destination that he had braved the perils of the storm?

  These vague questionings and suspicions (surely not quite unjustified in relation to one who rode alone at night in such weather) were far from being soothed by the nature of the song the little man shouted amid great applause from Fentriss and Hoag, who joined in the chorus.

  “I’ll now give ye,” I heard O’Donnell say— “I’ll now give ye a favorite song of the road, and the name of it’s called ‘The Old Bold Boy.’”

  Forthwith he began:

  “When the moon swings green

  On the hills, I ween,

  There’s a rider that’s shy from view:

  He rides in the shade At the edge o’ the glade,

  When the lumberin’ coach is due.

  Bold Boy loves a cloud

  On the night, like a shroud,

  When the blunderin’ coach is due!”

  “Chorus: (Νοw all of ye join in!)

  “Lord save the King and the King’s highway!

  Bold Boy he’s out till the break o’ day.

  Good-luck to him and his Fancy, too!

  From yokel to bishop

  The passengers dish up

  The jewels he hangs on his Nancy true.

  Me song celebrates him;

  The judge elevates him;

  Good-luck to him with the grand Hooroo!

  “For the dark it’s joy

  To the Old Bold Boy,

  As a-gallopin’ out he rides;

  And a song he trolls —

  (Lord save our souls!

  Better larrup the leaders’ sides!)

  When ye hear that song,

  As ye lope along,

  Lay the lash to the leaders’ sides!”

  “Chorus: — (Can’t ye make it just a bit louder?)

  “Good cheer to him who loves a maid,” and so on.

  “How his mare caracoles

  At thought of the tolls

  He gathers so debonair!

  And the mist hangs gray

  On the dancing bay,

  Like the beards of old men hung there.

  On them both hangs the mist,

  From fetlock to fist,

  Like the beards of old men hung there!”

  Chorus: {Faith, ye did! Here ye come again. )

  “Lord save the King,” and the rest of the rakehelly nonsense.

  The chorus was variable, alternating that just quoted with the one sung by Mr. O’Donnell upon the entrance of the punchbowl. He bellowed eleven or twelve stanzas of this ominous ditty, and the others joined the chorus each time, with a palpable intention to raise the roof, the punch having gone to their lungs.

  Song succeeded song, ballad followed ballad, chorus begat chorus. It was marvellous how three men could make so much noise and so persistently. They kept it up till I thought the pangs of exhaustion must have caused them to cease, but the passage of hours only appeared to increase their vigor. Meanwhile, the depth of my indignation (supplanting all alarms) maybe imagined. For a long time I tossed from side to side, until, quite worn out with the effort to obtain relief in slumber, I lay on my couch in distress too great to move another inch.

  The only respite I obtained was for half an hour or so, during which the three held an earnest conversation in very low tones. The tenor of it I could not determine, though ever and anon they gave vent to delirious chuck-lings and exclamations. Once I heard the landlord mention my own name, and Fentriss assuring him that I was long since sound asleep, and tired enough to snore until late in the morning. Hoag left the party after this, and I heard him hallooing in the hall, as if to awaken sleepers:

  “Bates! Bates! Hi, Nick and Tom and the rest of you! You’re wanted. Hi, Bates!”

  Soon I made out that he returned with four or five men who walked with heavy steps, servants about the inn, I supposed, hostlers or what not. They were invited to fill their glasses, complying with great laughter and a hoarse song to Christmas, following which Mr. O’Donnell sang his song of the road again — twice!

  The addition of the low party to the company, and their all joining in toasts and singing, produced a hubbub which was like utterly to confound my feverish brain. At last exhausted nature claimed her own, and, in spite of the goings-on beneath me, I dropped into a painful stupor, not to be called sleep, but a state nearer a swooning perturbation of the whole being than slumber, and troubled by malignant visions. More as it were in dreams than in reality, it seemed a semi-quiet fell in the room below; after that a sound of feet stumbling over the whole house, in every part and division of it, and of doors flung open and slammed to. One called loudly for his boots, and Fentriss’s voice said, “Hush!” Another fell over a chair and cried out with vehemence.

  Then all was still, and I had a long dream of a battle wherein I suffered greatly.

  CHAPTER XI. MR. SUDGEBERRY’S RECKLESS HUMOR

  METHOUGHT I WAS unable to stir from the point of contact between two great regiments of horse, charging down on each other, while they thundered this chorus:

  “For her dear sake, The laws to break! We’ll sing to him, and yet we say:

  Lord save the King and the King’s highway!” but at the crucial moment I saved myself by waking with a jump so sudden that it seemed to stop my heart. Fear was still upon me; I found my back a-creep with cold and all my being alert to unknown horrors closing in on me through the darkness.

  Everything was silent — silent! I sat up in bed and listened.

  “Bold Boy he’s out till the break o’ day.”

  There came faintly to my hearkening ear the murmur, like a failing echo, of that satanic chorus, as if it came from far down the road:

  “Good-luck to him with the grand Hooroo!”

  The suspicions I had entertained of O’Donnell sprang up full-armed in my mind, bearing with them thoughts so wild that a fit of sinking, deep in my inwards, was their accompaniment. When I had mastered my emotions somewhat, I had a vivid, painful apprehension that there was a strange presence in the room, the which conception finally growing so intolerable that I crept out of the covers strategically, went to the door, and felt to see if it could be still bolted. All was secure.

  Returning cautiously toward the bed, I overturned a chair. It fell like a church.

  The noise of it in the hush ran through the house in a ghastly resonance, seeming to rattle the doors of a hundred empty rooms for admission. I stood stock-still, and the renewed silence was as startling as the noise had been.

  Then again, as I stood there, I heard the murmur of the highwayman’s chorus, farther away, fainter:

  “Me song celebrates him?

  The judge elevates him!”

  I tiptoed to the window and looked out. The tempest had long since passed; the night was clear and brilliant with stars over great wastes of snow. In the distance I made out a dark patch against the vasty white, a blur of shifting shape.

  This blur was moving slowly, steadily northward. I peered long into the distance; my sight grew clearer, and I saw what it was: a group of men and horses. They were going up the road — the significant and sinister thought flashed into my mind — toward the King George Inn!

  Not daring to risk a candle, I began to grope for my garments, and to get them upon me as rapidly as was consistent with complete noiselessness, shivering with unspeakable misgiving at the least rustling caused by my haste and the darkness. It was impossible to find all my apparel under such conditions; indeed, I put forth no efforts toward a toilet, being occupied more acutely with considerations of an apprehensive character.

 
What was Hoag’s Tavern? Could it be one of those ominous hostelries where men entered but departed never?

  I had not stopped at the place before, nor, on my passing by, had I done better than merely to note its existence. I remembered no word of its repute. Who and what was the landlord? What connection had he with O’Donnell? And into what plot had they persuaded the weak, the reckless Fentriss?

  Was it possible that they had decoyed him to his destruction? or had he, giving way to the desperation of a despised suitor, and welcoming any mad deed as a relief from his own thoughts, bribed and persuaded them to some contemplated violence?

  Above all these grewsome interrogations there rose one of anguished self-reproach: Why had I — O ill - considering youth! — rushed so blindly into the unknown, entering this strange inn, which might be a lawbreakers” rendezvous for aught I knew, without question or cavil, incautiously walking to my not impossible doom, alone and defenceless?

  They had gone up the road toward the King George Inn — what had they left in the house for me?

  As this disquieting suggestion assailed me, I looked down from the window; it was too long a drop for safety; the mere thought of attempting such a thing was loathsome to my soul; and I had no more confidence in a rope of bedclothes than in my ability to construct one, or to descend it, supposing it made. Hence I must make my way out through the house; for I had settled in my mind to get out-of-doors by some means — waiting there in the darkness for what might happen was too horrid to consider. Therefore, summoning the greatest degree of fortitude consistent with the occasion, I stealthily slid the bolt, and, opening the door, stole out upon the landing in my stockinged feet.

  Here I remained a considerable time, motionless, though the landing was very cold. Without warning, a hideous creak came from the stairs below, and I leaped back into my room, closed and bolted the door again. Then, after some minutes, concluding that the sound had been caused by the chill in the wood, I issued anew. Twice more did the creaking oblige me to seek refuge within, but at last very desperation called upon my will and I descended the stairs, stepping twice on each one, shivering from head to heel, the back of my neck seeming to twitch with apprehensions of danger in the rear.

  At the foot of the stairway a patch of faint light browned the black floor, falling through the open door of the chamber where the revels had been indulged. Now, employing infinite stealth, I pressed my body close against the wall in the shadow, and crooking my neck so that only the top of my head and my eyebrows might be visible to any occupant if he chanced to gaze at the spot where they appeared (which I had hopes he might not do), I spied within.

  No one was there. Only blank disorder met my gaze: the empty punch-bowl broken on the floor; the fire a heap of smouldering ashes; the cloth stained and awry; chairs were upset; the one remaining candle burned low in its socket; everywhere was the dreariest confusion, but all a-brooding with a quiet which awed my soul. Nevertheless, something in that fateful hush — I know not what — gave me assurance that the whole house was as empty as the room before my eyes. From the bar the ticking of the tall timepiece could be heard — the only sound except my breathing. The hour sounded. It was five o’ clock, and Christmas morning.

  Taking the candle, I peered into the rooms on each hand, into the hall and kitchen; not a mouse was stirring. Finding my boots in the kitchen, I drew them on, lit a lantern, and crept out of that deserted tavern by the back way, following the path to the stables.

  All about me the snow was trampled as by a regiment, and what was my horror to find the stables as barren of life as the house! Nay, for here not only man was missing, even the beasts were absent; not a horse was in the place; my own Jeremiah, my last hope of safety, gone with the rest!

  Upon this discovery an uncomfortable perspiration burst out of all my pores; the sinking spell in my inwards immediately followed, so that I was forced to sit upon a heap of straw to collect my faculties.

  Now, in ruminating upon the painfulness of my situation, as I spied about the house, I had reached a certain conclusion; also I had formed a determined resolution, the latter being hopelessly foiled by the absence of Jeremiah and all other horses. This was the conclusion, and I had no doubt of its correctness: an attack upon Mr. Gray’s carriage had been meditated, agreed to, and was now in process of execution, with the abduction and kidnapping of Miss Gray by William Fentriss as part of a design which might include the murder of her good old father.

  My resolution was: to saddle my horse, then, taking the opposite direction from the scene of conflict, to speed down the road until I reached the first house whence I could send back aid to the imperilled chaise, while I hastened on to inform the authorities.

  Now, here was I left by those horse-robbing villains not only without the means for such a course, but at the mercy of the first wretch to return. My blood paused in its circulation as I thought of the aged but reckless O’Donnell or the powerful Hoag.

  A daring idea entered my head as I sat there in the straw. ’Twas a conception so foolhardy as to cause my flesh to creep, one which my soberer judgment condemns as the rash project of a youth of nineteen. This was to reconnoitre — going toward the impending violence, mind you, instead of away from it! Yet, favored by fortune, I believed I might hope to come through with my life, the more as it was quite dark and I was under no necessity to approach the rascals within pistol-shot. Also, a four-foot hedge ran along the east side of the road, and it was my intention to creep forward in its shelter, though the hedge was a thorny one, to hearing distance of the conflict, if possible.

  Such was the wildness of the mood which now took possession of me.

  CHAPTER XII. THE DOGS OF WAR

  I BLEW OUT my lantern, stole forth to the road, and began to grope through the snow behind the hedge. My heart thumped with excitement, while ever and anon, the perilous case in which I stood coming with great vividness to my mental vision, I paused and reviewed the risk I ran.

  But my reckless humor returned each time, and with the low-muttered words, “It is all for Sylvia!” on I pressed.

  My progress was slow, the snow having piled high on the hither side of the hedge, and so unevenly that several times I stumbled and measured my length in its depths, when it filled the tops of my boots and penetrated every aperture in my hastily donned apparel. A great quantity appeared to have wormed its way inside my collar, where it lay without my having the power to dislodge it, and, melting, ran down my back; added to this, my head was very cold, my nightcap affording insufficient protection, for I had been unable to discover my hat.

  In such discomfort, my teeth chattering the while, I had accomplished some three-quarters of a mile or so, when I unfortunately fell into a wide ditch which ran through the field.

  I was proceeding somewhat cautiously on hands and knees at the time, and it was in that posture that I found myself plunging through a brittle lid of thin ice and floundering in the water. More dead than alive, I got to my feet and spluttered my way out on the other side, with the words, “For Sylvia’s and old Mr, Gray’s sakes!” on my lips. As I climbed up the farther bank there was a sudden loud shoot from the road, not ten feet away. Startled as I was, I recognized the voice as that of William Fentriss, There was an answering cry from above, and a man forced his horse close to the hedge and peered into the darkness.

  Apprehending, not without reason, a third spell of that dreadful sinking, I crept close under the bushes and lay still, while the streams of water running from every portion of my attire melted the snow in all directions.

  “Will, me boy,” called the second voice, which I was at no loss to attribute to the terrible O’Donnell, “have ye fell in the brook?”

  “No,” returned the other, “Some animal must have blundered in,”

  “Some animal!” cried O’Donnell, “Do ye have hippopotami wandering over the fields in this country?”

  “I haven’t heard of it, noble captain.”

  “I’m thinkin’ ’twas a pair o
f them,” went on O’Donnell— “or more like a drove, be the splashin’ of ’em. Keep yer eye open for a few elephants, then! Where’s me mask? I’m off to take command of me merry men. Ha, ha! Cap’n Blacknight and his bloodthirsty crew!”

  He set his horse in motion and cantered up the road, while my veins stagnated at his sinister words.

  “Be careful of your gallant roan, captain,” William called after him.

  “Aha! the steed of young Erasmus!” the villain yelled in return.

  It was too true: the Irish criminal had stolen my horse, lending his own to some other member of the band. I trembled for poor Jeremiah in such unhallowed hands, but all the resources of my intelligence were immediately required by the danger of my own situation; for Fentriss, leaning over the hedge, looking for the supposed animal, presently discharged a pistol at a small bush near me.

  My first impulse was to cry out and warn him that I was no lurking beast, but the words froze tight ere they left my throat, as the thought struck me with terrific force that William’s desperation must be a thousand fold increased by the knowledge that he had a human — instead of a brute — witness of his enterprise, and I saw no hope in appealing to his friendship. Nay, I feared that any declaration of my presence might render his aim only more accurate.

  My position was clearly untenable; every movement engendered a crisis. With Fen-triss and the ditch cutting off all escape to the rear, and the cut-throat band threatening my front, which way was I to turn? The pistol-shot decided the question for me.

  I began at once to creep forward, and, as soon as I deemed it comparatively safe, to run, still leaning close to the hedge — so close, indeed, as to leave particles of my wearing apparel upon its thorny projections, several times being separated from areas of such extent they might have been considered almost indispensable; my face and hands also suffered extraordinarily from scratches. Meanwhile, my brain was in a tumult of confusion, a thousand questions surging through it. Was the abduction of Miss Gray the only design of the scoundrels? Why was Fentriss left behind? Did their plan include robbery or murder, or both? Why had I been so venturesome? Why, oh, why?