Читать книгу The Hand-Made Gentleman: A Tale of the Battles of Peace - Irving Bacheller - Страница 15

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E came to broad fields, where the brook we had followed wound through many acres of wheat. It stood thick and high as my shoulders, for I was rather small of my age, and rustled in the wind.

“Here's our hotel,” said Bony, as he began to wade in the brook again. “We'll find our rooms and put up for the day.”

Far out in this yellowing field we climbed the bank of the stream, and on our hands and knees crawled in among the wheat-stalks.

“Ah!” said Bony Squares as he lay back in the wheat; “no ice-water, thank you. Call me at seven.”

I lay down near, and soon heard him breathing heavily as he fell asleep. I looked up through the grain at a little patch of the blue sky, and thought and listened.

The great field rang with the chirp of crickets, that somehow set me thinking of my folly. It was a curious, beautiful country there, beneath the grain. Leaning on my elbow, I could look off under its green empyrean, supported by innumerable columns. There were little roads and trails, and a mouse came galloping up one of them. It suggested a forest of the fairies. A small bird went by me wandering in a little highway with the leisurely pace of a hen.

I could hear a bobolink singing just above my head, and then the whir of his wings. Soon he seized a swaying stalk—one foot above another—on the very edge of my bed, and as he rocked back and forth filled the breeze with song. A bumblebee, which had fallen through the wheat-blades, rose here and there and tried to ram his way upward into the sunlight. The roar of his wings reminded me of the big side-wheeler which had passed us the night before on the river. It suggested thunder in the low, green heavens above that little world. Innumerable bearded tops, now bleaching yellow, made a sort of æolian music in the breeze. It has often seemed to me that the birds have better ears for it than we; that, indeed, the fields are full of bells and harps and fragrance and color far beyond the reach of men.

Soon I began to think of my mother. She was away on a visit, and would not hear of my absence for a day or two. I had nineteen cents in my pocket, and took it in my hands and counted it carefully. But I had my horruck in a hidden pocket of my waistcoat.

Just as soon as possible I would stop somewhere and write my mother a letter, and let her know what had befallen me. I felt sure that by returning I should make her more trouble than by keeping away. She had often described to me the perils of bad company, and I had promised to be careful, but here I was up to my ears in it.

It was a mercy that sleep came to shorten that cloudless summer day. The hot sun mounted high, and for a time must have glared down straight upon us, and then descended below far wooded hills in the west; but still we slept. It was growing dusk when I was awakened by the roar of a bird's wings. Bony was on his knees within reach of my hand, looking down at me. A bird kept dipping close to the ears of my companion and snapping his wings.

Bony took a bun from his pocket, and crowded half of it into his mouth. It stuck out like a wen, and slowly diminished as he ate. He renewed his wen, saying as he did so:

“Come to supper, old man. The buns are all gone. Have some bread?”

I was hungry, and promptly answered, “Yes.”

“Plug or fine cut?” he demanded, taking crumbs of varying sizes out of his hip-pocket. “Here's bread and two pieces of turnpike cheese, and one egg on the half-shell, and three spikes.” The three spikes were dried herring, which he had taken out of his trousers-pocket.

“Aunt Maria!” he exclaimed, as he took a bite of herring; “it's like eating a jack-knife.”

He spoke glibly, and spread each article on a piece of newspaper in front of us. My tongue was parched, and I went to the brook on my hands and knees, and sank my mouth in the ripples and drank greedily, as if I had been a creature of four feet. I never knew there could be so much delight in the simple act of drinking water.

I ate two herrings and half of the cheese, and all the crumbs that fell, as it were, from the rich man's table.

Suddenly we heard the whistle of a locomotive. “There's a railroad nigh,” said Bony. “Ever ride on the cars?”

“No,” I answered. “Did you?”

“Pooh, hundreds o' miles!” he exclaimed, with disgust at the question. “Come on; maybe we can get that train. It was four or five miles away when it whistled.”

We hurried off in the dusk, and after walking a mile or so came to a railroad, and could see the lights of a depot near us. We mounted the wooden beams which, with straps of iron on their tops for a bearing, were the tracks of those days, and hurried to a point near the depot. There we sat down and waited in the darkness till the arrival of our train—a fearsome thing, that roared and creaked along with spark-showers and rags of flame in the air above it. The trainmen rudely shouted their commands, as if the waiting crowd were so many cattle. I trembled as I hurried with Bony to the side of the train.

“I've only nineteen cents,” I whispered.

“Never mind, sonny—I'll pay yer fare,” said he, jauntily, as if such excitement and generosity were quite familiar to him.

We climbed the platform when all were aboard, and Bony said to me:

“We'll stand here, if they don't kick us off, until we get to the next stop.”

So we stood in the spark-shower as our train roared and creaked along, and the platform began to sway and jump and shove and jerk and waver. A young man in a gay uniform of blue and brass came out with a lantern and bawled this in my ear:

“Look a-here, bub!—see that picture?” He held his lantern so that I could see the picture of a grave on the car door. Its headstone contained these words:

Sacred to the memory of a man who once stood on a car platform

We passed into the car, and sat on a straight-backed seat by a rattling window. It was much shorter than the cars of to-day, and permeated with the odor of whale-oil that came from its lamps, and had a stove at each end. The conductor told us, when we had paid four cents a mile for our fare to the next stop, that we had just left De Kalb Junction and were on the night express for the South. A man was asleep near us with a curious framework of iron behind him. It extended from the middle of his spine to the back of his head, and had a sort of spring in it which permitted him to sit in a leaning posture.

I asked the conductor what it was.

“That,” said he, “is one o' them new contrivances. Some call it a jolt-taker. It smoothes the way a little and is an aid to sleep.”

In a moment Bony whispered to me: “The coast is clear, and I guess we'll go on a little farther, and I'll pay your fare if you'll give me your jack-knife.”

I had one which had cost me ten shillings, and I gave it over. So we rode on for some two hours or more, and left the train about ten o'clock, and inquired our way of the agent, and then went on afoot. It was very dark, and Bony said that the moon would be up by-and-by, then we could find a barn or some place where we could turn in for the night. We had smooth footing, and hurried on, but no moon came to guide us. It was far past midnight when Bony halted, near some black object beside the road, and struck a match and lighted a wad of paper.

We saw, then, a ruined gate and weeds growing beyond it. I followed as my leader went in among the weeds. He lighted more paper, and we saw in the flare an old mansion with broken windows and a sagging porch. It had been long deserted, one could tell at a glance. We soon found the open doorway and entered, and Bony's matches showed us a ruined hall as large as my mother's door-yard. A broken fireplace and cracked chimney of red brick faced the door. A plough and harrow, some fallen plaster, and old iron littered the floor. A pair of sleighs, with a box on them, had been stored in a corner. Some straw in the bottom of the sleigh-box seemed to invite us to lie upon it, and we did so. Bony took off his coat and spread it over him—a good thing to remember if one has no better blanket—and I followed his example.

“What's that?” I whispered, having heard a sound like that of some one stealthily crossing the floor above-stairs.

“Don't know—I guess Adam must 'a' built this house.”

“Haunted, maybe,” I suggested. “Probably some one has been murdered here.”

“Shut up!” said Bony, with a shiver. “You'll give me the megrums.”

I lay awhile listening, and went to sleep cold and hungry. I do not know how long I had slept—it was, probably, not more than half an hour—when a shrill and awful cry awoke us.

Believe me, I have heard some yelling in my day, but that cry cut like a knife. As I think of it now, it reminds me of Salvini's wail when I saw him play the Ghost in Hamlet. Honestly, it made my heart tremble. That sleigh-box seemed to palpitate with terror. I rose on my elbow and looked off in the darkness. Bony covered his face and trembled. For a moment I could hear only the slow, steady beat of raindrops; then stealthy footsteps and the sound of trailing garments on the floor. Again that weird, ghostly cry set my ears aching. I could feel each hair in my scalp stir and quiver. I heard again the sound of stealthy feet and of trailing garments. Then we heard the shaking of a sheet in the darkness—or that, at least, was the only sound to which one could liken it. Bony lay groaning and shivering beside me. I found a match and struck it on a side of the sleigh-box. First, I stared off in the darkness and saw nothing; then I looked down at my companion. His face appalled me; it was the mask of horror. But the glimpse he got of my own visage in the dim match-light had a worse effect upon him. He really saw a spirit then, and I saw one also, and what I saw was a fearful thing to behold—the guilty, evil spirit of Bony Squares. I could hardly resist the impulse to fly from him. With a wild cry he leaped out of the sleigh-box and stumbled toward the doorway and fled.

I lay back and covered my face with my coat. For hours I lay listening and shivering, and fearing I knew not what.

In the faint, first light of the morning I rose and peered about me. Soon I saw the silhouette of a big bird in an open window across the ruined hall. The light grew clearer and my vision more acute. The bird that stood on the window-sill was a peacock, with a purple body and a tail some seven feet long. As I rose it flew to the ground, with that weird shriek which had filled the darkness with terror. The mystery was explained. There were the trailing garments, the wings that rustled like a sheet when he rose to the window-sill.

This adventure served, as it were, to separate me from the goats. There was yet another thing which it accomplished: it cleared the earth of ghosts for me, so that I no longer feared them, having always a just suspicion of such fancies.