The Strollers

Still she lingered, however, vaguely mindful she was adding to her burden of ill-doing, but finally again started slowly toward the village, hurrying as she approached the hotel, where she encountered the soldier on the veranda. Her distressed countenance and haste proclaimed her a messenger of disaster.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” she exclaimed excitedly. “Where is Mr. Barnes?”

“What is the matter, Miss Duran?” Suspecting very little was the matter, for Susan was nothing, if not all of a twitter.

“Constance has been carried off!”

“Carried off!” He regarded her as if he thought she had lost her senses.

“Yes; abducted!”

“Abducted! By whom?”

“I–I did not see his face!” she gasped. “And it is all my fault! I asked her to take a walk! Oh, what shall I do?” Wringing her hands in anguish that was half real. “We kept on and on–it was so pleasant!–until we had passed far beyond the outskirts of the village. At a turn in the road stood a coach–a cloak was thrown over my head by some one behind–I must have fainted, and, when I recovered, she was gone. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”

“When did it happen?” As he spoke the young man left the veranda. Grazing contentedly near the porch was his horse and Saint-Prosper’s hand now rested on the bridle.

“I can’t tell how long I was unconscious,” said the seemingly hysterical young woman, “but I hurried here as soon as I recovered myself.”

“Where did it occur? Down the road you came?”

“Ye-es.”

Saint-Prosper vaulted into the saddle. “Tell the manager to see a magistrate,” he said.

“But you’re not going to follow them alone?” began Susan. “Oh dear, I feel quite faint again! If you would please help me into the–”

By way of answer, the other touched his horse deeply with the spur and the mettlesome animal reared and plunged, then, recalled by the sharp voice of the rider, galloped wildly down the road. Susan observed the sudden departure with mingled emotions.

“How quixotic!” she thought discontentedly. “But he won’t catch them,” came the consoling afterthought, as she turned to seek the manager.

Soon the soldier, whose spirited dash down the main thoroughfare had awakened some misgivings in the little town, was beyond the precincts of village scrutiny. The country road was hard, although marked by deep cuts from traffic during a rainy spell, and the horse’s hoofs rang out with exhilarating rhythm. Regardless of all save the distance traversed, the rider yet forbore to press the pace, relaxing only when, after a considerable interval, he came to another road and drew rein at the fork. One way to the right ran gently through the valley, apparently terminating in the luxuriant foliage, while the other, like a winding, murky stream, stretched out over a more level tract of land.

Which thoroughfare had the coach taken? Dismounting, the young man hastily examined the ground, but the earth was so dry and firm, and the tracks of wheels so many, it was impossible to distinguish the old marks from the new. Even sign-post there was none; the roads diverged, and the soldier could but blindly surmise their destination, selecting after some hesitation the thoroughfare running into the gorgeous, autumnal painted forest.

He had gone no inconsiderable distance when his doubts were abruptly confirmed. Reaching an opening, bright as the chapel of a darkened monastery, he discerned a farmer in a buckboard approaching from the opposite direction. The swift pace of the rider and the leisurely jog of the team soon brought them together.

“Did you pass a coach down the road?” asked the soldier.

“No-a,” said the farmer, deliberately, as his fat horses instinctively stood stock still; “didn’t pass nobody.”

“Have you come far?”

“A good ways.”

“You would have met a coach, if it had passed here an hour ago?”

“I guess I would,” said the man. “This road leads straight across the country.”

“Where does the other road at the fork go?”

“To the patroon village. There’s a reform orator there to-day and a barn-burners’ camp-fire.”

Without waiting to thank his informant, Saint-Prosper pulled his horse quickly around, while the man in the buckboard gradually got under way, until he had once more attained a comfortable, slow gait. Indeed, by the time his team had settled down to a sleepy jog, in keeping with the dreamy haze, hanging upon the upland, his questioner was far down the road.

When, however, the soldier once more reached the fork, and took the winding way across a more level country, he moderated his pace, realizing the need of husbanding his horse’s powers of endurance. The country seemed at peace, as though no dissension nor heated passions could exist within that pastoral province. And yet, not far distant, lay the domains of the patroons, the hot-bed of the two opposing branches of the Democratic party: The “hunkers,” or conservative-minded men, and the “barn-burners,” or progressive reformers, who sympathized with the anti-renters.

After impatiently riding an hour or more through this delectable region, the horseman drew near the patroon village, a cluster of houses amid the hills and meadows. Here the land barons had originally built for the tenants comfortable houses and ample barns, saw and grist mills. But the old homes had crumbled away, and that rugged ancestry of dwellings had been replaced by a new generation of houses, with clapboards, staring green blinds and flimsy verandas.

In the historic market place, as Saint-Prosper rode down the street, were assembled a number of lease-holders of both sexes and all ages, from the puny babe in arms to the decrepit crone and hoary grand-sire, listening to the flowing tongue of a rustic speech-maker. This forum of the people was shaded by a sextette of well-grown elms. The platform of the local Demosthenes stood in a corner near the street.

“‘Woe to thee, O Moab! Thou art undone, O people of Chemosh,’ if you light not the torch of equal rights!” exclaimed the platform patterer as Saint-Prosper drew near. “Awake, sons of the free soil! Now is the time to make a stand! Forswear all allegiance to the new patroon; this Southern libertine and despot from the land of slavery!”

The grandam wagged her head approvingly; the patriarch stroked his beard with acquiescence and strong men clenched their fists as the spokesman mouthed their real or fancied wrongs. It was an earnest, implacable crowd; men with lowering brows merely glanced at the soldier as he rode forward; women gazed more intently, but were quickly lured back by the tripping phrases of the mellifluous speaker.

On the outskirts of the gathering, near the road, stood a tall, beetling individual whom Saint-Prosper addressed, reining in his horse near the wooden rail, which answered for a fence.

“Dinna ye ken I’m listening?” impatiently retorted the other, with a fierce frown. “Gang your way, mon,” he added, churlishly, as he turned his back.

Judging from the wrathful faces directed toward him, the lease-holders esteemed Saint-Prosper a political disturber, affiliating with the other faction of the Democratic party, and bent, perhaps, on creating dissension at the tenants’ camp-fire. The soldier’s impatience and anger were ready to leap forth at a word; he wheeled fiercely upon the weedy Scot, to demand peremptorily the information so uncivilly withheld, when a gust of wind blowing something light down the road caused his horse to shy suddenly and the rider to glance at what had frightened the animal. After a brief scrutiny, he dismounted quickly and examined more attentively the object,–a pamphlet with a red cover, upon which appeared the printed design of the conventional Greek masks of Tragedy and Comedy, and beneath, the title, “The Honeymoon.” The bright binding, albeit soiled by the dusty road, and the fluttering of the leaves in the breeze had startled the horse and incidentally attracted the attention of his master. Across the somber mask of melancholy was traced in buoyant hand the name of the young actress.

But the soldier needed not the confirmation, for had he not noticed this same prompt book in her lap on the journey of the chariot? It was a mute, but eloquent message. Could she have spoken more plainly if she had written with ink and posted the missive with one of those new bronze-hued portraits of Franklin, called stamps by the government and “sticking plaster” by the people? Undoubtedly she had hoped the manager was following her when she intrusted the message to that erratic postman, Chance, who plied his vocation long before the black Washington or the bronze Franklin was a talisman of more or less uncertain delivery.

The soldier, without a moment’s hesitation, thrust the pamphlet inside his coat, flung himself on his horse, and, turning from the market-place, dashed down the road.

CHAPTER XII

AN ECCENTRIC JAILER

“For a man who can’t abide the sex, this is a predicament,” muttered the patroon’s jackal, as the coach in which he found himself sped rapidly along the highway. “Here am I as much an abductor as my lord who whipped his lady from England to the colonies!” Gloomily regarding a motionless figure on the seat opposite, and a face like ivory against the dark cushions. “Curse the story; telling it led to this! How white she is; like driven snow; almost as if–”

And Scroggs, whose countenance lost a shade of its natural flush, going from flame-color to salmon hue, bent with sudden apprehension over a small hand which hung from the seat.

“No; it’s only a swoon,” he continued, relieved, feeling her wrist with his knobby fingers. “How she struggled! If it hadn’t been for smothering her with the cloak–but the job’s done and that’s the end of it.”

Settling back in his seat he watched her discontentedly, alternately protesting against the adventure, and consoling himself weakly with the remembrance of the retainer; weighing the risks, and the patroon’s ability to gloss over the matter; now finding the former unduly obtrusive, again comforted with the assurance of the power pre-empted by the land barons. Moreover, the task was half-accomplished, and it would be idle to recede now.

“Why couldn’t the patroon have remained content with his bottle?” he grumbled. “But his mind must needs run to this frivolous and irrational proceeding! There’s something reasonable in pilfering a purse, but carrying off a woman–Yet she’s a handsome baggage.”

Over the half-recumbent figure swept his glance, pausing as he surveyed her face, across which flowed a tress of hair loosened in the struggle. Save for the unusual pallor of her cheek, she might have been sleeping, but as he watched her the lashes slowly lifted, and he sullenly nerved himself for the encounter. At the aspect of those bead-like eyes, resolute although ill at ease, like a snake striving to charm an adversary, a tremor of half-recollection shone in her gaze and the color flooded her face. Mechanically, sweeping back the straggling lock of hair, she raised herself without removing her eyes. He who had expected a tempest of tears shifted uneasily, even irritably, from that steady stare, until, finding the silence intolerable, he burst out:

“Well, ma’am, am I a bugbear?”

In her dazed condition she probably did not hear his words; or, if she did, set no meaning to them, Her glance, however, strayed to the narrow window, and then wandered back to the well-worn interior of the coach. Suddenly, as the startling realization of her position came to her, she uttered a loud cry, sprang toward the door, and, with nervous fingers, strove to open it. The man’s face became more rubicund as he placed a detaining hand on her shoulder, and roughly thrust her toward the seat.

“Make the best of it!” he exclaimed peremptorily. “You’d better, for I’m not to be trifled with.”

Recoiling from his touch, she held herself aloof with such aversion, a sneer crossed his face, and he observed glumly: