“Guess we might as well,” said Hatch, gathering up Egeria’s things and her father’s, beside his own compact luggage, and following Boynton, as he went out free-handed. Hatch had taken his berth in the sleeping-car, and he got them seats in this luxurious vehicle as far as the Junction. Boynton stared anxiously about the car, and walked up and down the aisle. “Remain here with Mr. Hatch a moment, Egeria,” he said. “I will be back, presently.”
Egeria made a little start of protest, but Hatch repressed her with a touch. “Let him go,” he whispered, as the doctor pushed off. “He’s after those Corsican Brothers. They can’t do him any harm, and they’ll occupy his mind. Who did you think they were?”
“I couldn’t tell,” said Egeria. “I was sure they were Quakers; but they didn’t use the plain language. I think father thought they were talking about the spirits,” she added, dejectedly.
“Well, I’m sorry for that,” replied Hatch. “I think he’s got enough of the spirits for one while. But probably they weren’t, if they ‘re any of those new kind of brothers. If they are, I hope he’ll find ‘em. They can give him some talk on the other side.”
The doctor came back, and sat down with an air of satisfaction. “I’ve found them, Egeria,” he said. “But the seats all about them were occupied, so that I couldn’t get a place near them. I overheard them say that they were going to Ayer, where friends are to meet them.”
“Well, that’s lucky,” Hatch interposed. “You may get a glimpse of them there. You’ll have to wait twenty minutes for connections. It’s surprising how much you can do in twenty minutes when you ‘re on the road. Why, twenty minutes on the road are as long as the good old twenty minutes a fellow used to have when he was a boy. But they won’t go any further in the way of time, generally, than twenty dollars will in the way of money, nowadays; we seem to have got an irredeemable paper currency in both things, since I grew up. I wish we could get back to a gold basis. I should like to see half a day or half a dollar of the old size. Why, doctor, you must remember when they were both as big as the full moon!”
The weather had been growing colder since morning, and though they had run out under clearer skies than those of the sea-board, the sun set at last in a series of cloudy bars, through which his red face looked as through the bars of a visor, before it dipped out of sight, and left the west pale and ashen. The lengthening twilight of the season prevailed over the landscape, sodden from long snow, and showing as yet no consciousness of the spring. It was sad and bare, and the girl shrank from its cold melancholy after a shivering glance. Presently her father rose and went into the next car.
“Going to make sure of his Brothers,” said the young man. He looked at his watch. “We ‘re a little late; but I shall have time to see you on board the Portland train when we get to the Junction. We ought to have had the twenty minutes there together; but we sha’n’t; my train leaves before yours does. I wish I was going on the whole way with you!”
“I wish you were,” responded Egeria. “But you mustn’t lose any time when we get to the Junction; you might miss your own train.”
“I couldn’t afford to do that. But there’ll be time. Now, I’ll tell you what, Miss Egeria: I want you to write to me when you get home. You know I shall want to know you’ve got there.”
“Yes, I will,” answered Egeria.
“There!” said Hatch, tearing a leaf from his pocket-book, in which he had written, “that’ll fetch me. I shall be a fortnight in Omaha before I push on to California. When I get back, in June, I’m coming to see you!”
“You may be sure we shall be glad to have you,” answered Egeria, putting the address in her bag. “I’m so eager to get home, it seems as if I could fly. I’d rather be in the grave-yard there than lead the life we have the last three months, I hope I shall never come away again!” she added, while the tears started to her eyes.
“Well, I hope you won’t if you don’t want to,” said Hatch. “But I guess we won’t talk about grave-yards in that connection. I’m coming back to find you strong and well, and your father in the good old track again.”
“Yes,” murmured the girl.
The doctor came in and resumed his seat.
“Corsican Brothers all right?” asked Hatch.
“They are still there,” replied the doctor, gravely accepting the designation.
“Well, you’ll have to cut it shorter than I thought for at Ayer,” said Hatch. “We ‘re a little behind time. But I guess you can transact all the business you have with them in fifteen minutes.”
“In fifteen minutes?” Boynton looked doubtful and unhappy.
“Why,” said Hatch, with a laugh, “I’ll see that you get the whole time. I’ll find your train with Miss Egeria, and put her into it. You ought to have some supper, though. I’ll ask the Brothers to hold on till you’ve had a cup of tea.”
“I shall want nothing to eat,” replied the doctor, excitedly. “If you will take charge of Egeria, I shall be obliged to you. I must speak to them.”
“All right,” said Hatch. “Don’t be anxious,” he whispered to Egeria, as they emerged into the crowd and clamor at the Junction. Locomotives were fuming and fretting under cover of the station; without, their bells were bleating everywhere; people ran to and fro, and were pushed about by men with long trucks; the baggage men hurled the trunks from one train to another, and called out the check numbers in metallic nasals. Hatch made his way with Egeria to the train standing across the Fitchburg track, and piled up her things in a seat. “Remember the train and car,” he said, making her look round, when they came out again. “Now come get something to eat.” He hurried her into the eating-room, and ordering supper he left her and went to find the doctor. It was some minutes before he returned with him, crest-fallen and disappointed.
“Did you see them?” asked Egeria, interpreting his gloom aright.
“No,” said her father, “I have missed them.”
“Good-by, doctor; good-by, Miss Egeria,” said Hatch, who had been paying for the supper. “That’s my train,” he added, at the sound of a bell. “Good luck to you!”
Egeria clung to his hand. “But your supper!”
“That’s the doctor’s supper. I shall snatch a bite at Fitchburg.”
“Oh!” moaned Egeria. But he was gone, and she turned to urge her father to eat.
“Oh, I want nothing, — I want nothing,” he said, impatiently; but the girl pressed him, and after she had made him drink a cup of tea, she followed him out of the eating-room. At the door, he gave a joyful start. There, not ten paces away, were the men whom he had seen at the depot in Boston, and whom he had been so anxiously seeking. A third, dressed like them, and of a like placidity of countenance, was talking with them. Nothing now could prevent Boynton from accosting them. He launched himself towards them with an excitement strangely contrasting with their own calm.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I must beg your pardon for addressing you. But I saw you in the depot at Boston” —
“Yee,” interrupted he called Elihu, tranquilly, “we saw you there.”
“And — and — I chanced to overhear something in your conversation” —
“Yee,” said the other, as before, “we saw you listening.”
“Well, well! I confess it, — I confess it!” cried Boynton, even more impatient than disconcerted. “I felt constrained to listen: your words seemed to me a message, a prophecy, a revelation. May I ask, gentlemen, if you were talking about spiritualism?”
“Yee, we were.” —
“Father, — father, we shall lose our train!” pleaded Egeria.
The three strange men, from studying Boynton intently, turned and looked kindly at her, while he continued, “And were you — you were — Gentlemen, this is a subject that interests me greatly, — vitally, I may say. Pardon me if I seem too bold. You were saying that this science, this dispensation, —— this — this — call it what you will, — originated with some society of which you are members?”
“Yee.”
The bell was ringing for their train to start; Egeria essayed another meek appeal of “Father, our train is going!” and was hushed with a harsh “Silence!” from Boynton, who eagerly pursued, “And this society — this — Gentlemen, what are you?”
“We are of the people called Shakers,” replied Joseph.
“Exactly! Exactly! I see it, — I understand it all! I understand now how you can make the only just claim to the development of these phenomena. In your community alone is the unselfish, the self devoted, basis to be found, without which we can rear no superstructure to the skies. I have wasted my life!” he cried,—” wasted my life! Does your community live near here?”
“Yee,” answered the eldest Shaker, cautiously, “some miles back. This brother has driven over from home.”
“I wish to be one of you!” said the doctor.
“Nay,” answered the Shaker, “that needs reflection.”
A train began to cross the front of the station. Egeria’s long-suffering broke in tears. At sight of her distress, the Shaker added, “Friend, there goes your train.”
“Well, well!” exclaimed Boynton, distractedly, “you shall hear from me!” He turned with Egeria, and ran towards the cars, the Shakers following, and making signals to the engineer. The train moved slowly, and Egeria and her father scrambled aboard. She led the way to the rear car, in which her things were left; but on going to the seat midway of it which Hatch had chosen for her, she could not find them. She sank down, stupefied. Her father noticed neither her loss nor her distress. She waited hopelessly for the conductor’s coming, and when he appeared she asked him timidly if he had seen her things. He said he would ask the brakeman about them, and added in the tone of formal demand, “Tickets!” The doctor surrendered them without looking at the conductor. “These tickets are for Portland,” said the conductor. “You ‘re on the wrong train, — this is the down train.”
“Oh, put us off, then, please,” implored Egeria, “and we’ll walk back.”
“Up train left before this did,” said the man, “and you couldn’t get it any way.”
“Oh, what shall we do!” lamented the girl. “How shall we ever get home?”
“I can take you on to Egerton; train doesn’t stop till we get there. You can go up on the morning express.”
“But we can’t pay!” gasped Egeria. “Our money was all in one of my bags!”
The conductor looked as if this might or might not be true. He glanced at Egeria’s shabby dress, and his face hardened as he said, “I can take you to Egerton,” and passed on.
Boynton had shown little concern in the matter, as if it were no affair of his. Egeria did not appeal to him for counsel or comfort, but sank back into her seat, and wept silently. In the twilight her tears could not be seen; when it grew darker, and the lamps were turned up, she averted her face, and stared out of the black window with streaming eyes.
When the train stopped, and the brakeman called “Egerton,” she led her father from the car, and began to walk with him from the station up into the village.
IX.
EGERTON is a village that presents a winning aspect to the summer visitor when he goes thither in June, and finds it at peace with all the world, in the shadow of immemorial, uncanker-wormed elms. Its chief street wanders quaintly, with a pleasant rise and fall, and on either hand are the large square mansions of a former day, and the trim, well-kept French-roof villas of ours. Hammocks, with girls reading novels in them, are swung between door-yard trees; swift buggies go by on the wide, dustless street; the children of summer visitors, a little too well dressed, play in the cool paths; all day long there is lounging and light literature and smoking and flirtation on the piazzas of the big summer hotel. But the place is far from being a mere summer resort; it is a village, with its own life, expressed in comfortable homes, in a post-office, an apothecary’s, a local bank, and various stores, all elm-embowered. A lovely country lies about it, dipping to a fertile valley on one side, and stretching on the other level and far, with an outlook to yet farther hills.
On the chilly April eve when Egeria and her father walked aimlessly away from the station up into the village, it did not wear the welcome it gives the summer visitor. Here and there a lamp pierced the gathering night, and about the stores and postoffice there was a languid stir; but the houses darkled away into the gloom of the country. A wind was rising; it took the elms over the street, and swung their long, pendulous boughs about under the sky, dully luminous with the coming storm.
The doctor had seemed carelessly indifferent about all that had happened; indeed, scarcely cognizant of it. He looked vaguely round as they passed through the space in front of the hotel. “Where are you going, Egeria?” he asked.
“I don’t know. We have no money.”
“No money?”
“You gave me the money, and I put it into my bag that was carried off on the train to Portland.”
“Ah, true, true,” responded her father, as if he granted the trivial point for argument’s sake. He added, with a sort of philosophical interest in the fact, “Well, we are beggars now, — houseless beggars, who don’t know how to beg! Yet I have no doubt there are doors enough on this street that would fly open at our touch, if it were known that we were without shelter and in need. Where shall we apply, my dear?”
“Oh, I don’t know, — I don’t know.”
“All the houses seem dark,” mused Boynton aloud. “If we rang, and made them the trouble of lighting hall and parlor lamps in the belief we were visitors, it would have a bad effect. We will stop at the first house where we see a light at the front windows.” But when they came to such a house, it seemed too brightly lighted, and they walked wearily by. At last, they paused before a door where the illumination was neither too brilliant nor too faint; and while they stood questioning themselves as to the form of their petition, the lamp at the window was suddenly blown out. They did not speak, but turned and kept on their way. They had passed through the denser part of the village, and the houses began to straggle at wider and wider intervals along the road. Presently they found themselves in the open country, between meadows and fields, with what seemed a long stretch of forest in front of them. But before they reached it they came to a wayside country store, in front of which they halted.
“I have an idea, Egeria,” said her father. “I will step into this store and pledge your ring for a night’s lodging.”
“Well,” said Egeria, yielding it with dull indifference. She went with him to the door, and lingered there while he addressed the man behind the counter with his airy flourish. It required time for the situation to make itself intelligible. Then the man took the ring extended to him, and looked coldly, not at it, but at Boynton. When the rustic leisure of the establishment had gathered itself about the transaction, he returned it. “I ain’t no goldsmith,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?” queried Boynton.
The man lifted his voice: “May be it’s gold, and may be it’s brass.”
“Brass?”
“Well, you’d ought to know. Anyhow, I guess we can’t trade.” The spectators admired a fellow citizen’s cool ability to deal with a confidence man.
Boynton turned away with dignity, and addressed a young fellow in the group. “Can you tell me,” he said politely, “my shortest way to Ayer Junction? I was brought here by mistaking the downward for the upward train, at that point.” The listeners grinned at the shallow imposture, but the young man answered civilly that if he was going to walk he had better take the road to Vardley, keeping due northward on that street. He came to the door to be more explicit, and, throwing it open, discovered Egeria to the others.
“Funny pair of tramps,” said one of them, loud enough for the wanderers to hear.
“I guess they ain’t any tramps,” said the storekeeper, darkly.
“Why?” asked the other.
“Well, I guess they ain’t tramps,” repeated the man in aut
hority. His success in coping with Boynton made the rest feel that he had a meaning withheld for the present from regard for the public good; they kept silent; his interlocutor spread out his hands as in an act of submission above the stove. He did not speak again, but after a while another took up the word.
“They say them Shakers at Vardley keeps a house a puppose for lodgin’ tramps,” he said, holding his knee between his clasped hands, as he sat, and striking the heel of his boot against the side of the stove.
Another silence followed, while a lounger on the other side of the stove worked his lips for expectoration against the iron; but it was too lukewarm to hiss.
“The old gentleman can put up with ‘em, and keep his ring, if he steps along pretty spry. ‘T ain’t more ‘n about five mile, is it, Parker?”
After a decent pause, “Well, I don’t know what the country’s comin’ to,” sighed a local pessimist.
“Oh, I guess it’ll all come out right in the end,” returned a local optimist. This put the pessimist down; the talk had wandered from horses, at Boynton’s appearance, and now it reverted to horses.
The young fellow who had gone to the door with Dr. Boynton did not return within; he walked a little way up the street with him and Egeria, and recollected to warn them about a turning to the right which they were not to take. When he parted with them at a comer, he stood and gazed after them, with perhaps a kindly impulse in his heart fainting through bashfulness and doubt, while they held their way till they drew near the edge of the forest. It looked black and dreadful under the darkened sky; they stopped before reaching it at a little house which stood upon its borders.
“We must ask here,” said Egeria desperately.
“Well, you ask, then, my dear,” said her father. “They won’t deny a woman.”
Egeria knocked, and after a long interval the light from the rear of the house disappeared, and, the door being opened, was held scarily aloft above the head of an elderly woman who surveyed them with an excited face.
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 91
