The Strollers

In a word, so indefatigably did he ply arguments, appealing alike to clemency and cupidity–the custom following such a course–that the landlord at length reluctantly consented, and soon after the dining-room was transformed into a temple of art; stinted, it is true, for flats, drops, flies and screens, but at least more tenable than the roofless theaters of other days, when a downpour drenched the players and washed out the public, causing rainy tears to drip from Ophelia’s nose and rivulets of rouge to trickle down my Lady Slipaway’s marble neck and shoulders. In this labor of converting the dining-room into an auditory, they found an attentive observer in the landlord’s daughter who left her pans, plates and platters to watch these preparations with round-eyed admiration. To her that temporary stage was surrounded by glamour and romance; a world remote from cook, scullion and maid of all work, and peopled with well-born dames, courtly ladies and exalted princesses.

Possibly interested in what seemed an incomprehensible venture–for how could the manager’s coffers be replenished by free performances?–Saint-Prosper that afternoon reminded Barnes he had returned from the village without fulfilling his errand.

“Dear me!” exclaimed Barnes, his face wrinkling in perplexity. “What have I been thinking about? I don’t see how I can go now. Hawkes or O’Flariaty can’t be spared, what with lamps to polish and costumes to get in order! Hum!” he mused dubiously.

“If I can be of any use, command me,” said the soldier, unexpectedly.

“You!”–exclaimed the manager. “I could not think–”

“Oh, it’s a notable occupation,” said the other with a satirical smile. “Was it not the bill-posters who caused the downfall of the French dynasty?” he added.

“In that case,” laughed Barnes, with a sigh of relief, “go ahead and spread the inflammable dodgers! Paste them everywhere, except on the tombstones in the graveyard.”

Conspicuously before the postoffice, grocery store, on the town pump and the fence of the village church, some time later, the soldier accordingly nailed the posters, followed by an inquisitive group, who read the following announcement: “Tuesday, ‘The Honeymoon’; Wednesday, ‘The School for Scandal’; Thursday, ‘The Stranger,’ with diverting specialties; Friday, ‘Romeo and Juliet’; Saturday, ‘Hamlet,’ with a Jig by Kate Duran. At the Travelers’ Friend. Entrance Free.”

“They’re going to play after all,” commented the blacksmith’s wife.

“I don’t see much harm in ‘Hamlet,’” said the supervisor’s yokemate. “It certainly ain’t frivolous.”

“Let’s go to ‘The Honeymoon’?” suggested an amorous carl to his slip-slop Sal.

“Go ’long!” she retorted with barn-yard bashfulness.

“Did you ever see ‘The School for Scandal’?” asked the smithy’s good wife.

“Once,” confessed the town official’s faded consort, her worn face lighting dreamily. “It was on our wedding trip to New York. Silas warn’t so strict then.”

Amid chit-chat, so diverting, Saint-Prosper finished “posting” the town. It had been late in the afternoon before he had altered the posters and set out on his paradoxical mission; the sun was declining when he returned homeward. Pausing at a cross-road, he selected a tree for one of his remaining announcements. It was already adorned with a dodger, citing the escape of a negro slave and offering a reward for his apprehension; not an uncommon document in the North in those days.

As the traveler read the bill his expression became clouded, cheerless. Around him the fallen leaves gave forth a pleasant fragrance; caught in the currents of the air, they danced in a circle and then broke away, hurrying helter-skelter in all directions.

“Poor devil!” he muttered. “A fugitive–in hiding–”

And he nailed one of his own bills over the dodger. As he stood there reflectively the lights began to twinkle in the village below like stars winking upwards; the ascending smoke from a chimney seemed a film of lace drawn slowly through the air; from the village forge came a brighter glow as the sparks danced from the hammers on the anvils.

Shaking the reins on his horse’s neck, the soldier continued his way, while the sun, out of its city of clouds, sent beams like a searchlight to the church spire; the fields, marked by the plow; the gaunt stumps in a clearing, displaying their giant sinews. Then the resplendent rays vanished, the battlements crumbled away and night, with its army of shadows, invaded the earth. As Saint-Prosper approached the tavern, set prominently on the brow of the hill, all was solemnly restful save the sign which now creaked in doleful doldrums and again complained wildly as the wind struck it a vigorous blow. The windows were bright from the fireplace and lamp; above the door the light streamed through the open transom upon the swaying sign and the fluttering leaves of the vine that clambered around the entrance.

In the parlor, near a deteriorated piano whose yellow keys were cracked and broken–in almost the seventh stage of pianodum, sans teeth, sans wire, sans everything–he saw the dark-eyed girl and reined his horse. As he did so, she seated herself upon the hair-cloth stool, pressed a white finger to a discolored key and smiled at the not unexpected result–the squeak of decrepitude. While her hand still rested on the board and her features shone strongly in relief against the fire like a cameo profile set in bloodstone, a figure approached, and, leaning gracefully upon the palsied instrument, bent over her with smiling lips. It was the grand seignior, he of the equipage with silver trimmings. If the horseman’s gaze rested, not without interest, on the pleasing picture of the young actress, it was now turned with sudden and greater intentness to that of the dashing stranger, a swift interrogation glancing from that look.

How had he made his peace with her? Certainly her manner now betrayed no resentment. While motionless the rider yet sat in his saddle, an invisible hand grasped the reins.

“Shall I put up your horse?” said a small voice, and the soldier quickly dismounted, the animal vanishing with the speaker, as Saint-Prosper entered the inn. Gay, animated, conscious of his attractions, the fop hovered over the young girl, an all-pervading Hyperion, with faultless ruffles, white hands, and voice softly modulated. That evening the soldier played piquet with the wiry old lady, losing four shillings to that antiquated gamester, and, when he had paid the stakes, the young girl was gone and the buoyant beau had sought diversion in his cups.

“Strike me,” muttered the last named personage, “the little stroller has spirit. How her eyes flashed when I first approached her! It required some tact and acting to make her believe I took her for some one else on the road. Not such an easy conquest as I thought, although I imagine I have put that adventurer’s nose out of joint. But why should I waste time here? Curse it, just to cut that fellow out! Landlord!”

“Yes, sir,” answered the host behind the bar, where he had been quietly dozing on a stool with his back against the wall.

“Do you think my horse will be fit for use to-morrow morning?”

“The swelling has gone down, sir, and perhaps, with care–”

“Perhaps! I’ll take no chances. Hang the nag, but I must make the best of it! See that my bed is well warmed, and”–rising–“don’t call me in the morning. I’ll get up when I please. Tell my man to come up at once–I suppose he’s out with the kitchen wenches. I have some orders to give him for the morning. Stay–send up a lamp, and–well, I believe that’s all for now!”

CHAPTER IV

“GREEN GROW THE RUSHES, O!”

So well advertised in the village had been the theatrical company and so greatly had the crusade against the play and players whetted public curiosity that on the evening of the first performance every bench in the dining-room–auditorium–of the tavern had an occupant, while in the rear the standing room was filled by the overflow. Upon the counter of the bar were seated a dozen or more men, including the schoolmaster, an itinerant pedagogue who “boarded around” and received his pay in farm products, and the village lawyer, attired in a claret-colored frock coat, who often was given a pig for a retainer, or knotty wood, unfit for rails.

From his place, well to the front, the owner of the private equipage surveyed the audience with considerable amusement and complacency. He was fastidiously dressed in double-breasted waistcoat of figured silk, loosely fitting trousers, fawn-colored kid gloves, light pumps and silk hose. Narrow ruffles edged his wristbands which were fastened with link buttons, while the lining of his evening coat was of immaculate white satin. As he gazed around upon a scene at once novel and incongruous, he took from his pocket a little gold case, bearing an ivory miniature, and, with the eyes of his neighbors bent expectantly upon him, extracted therefrom a small, white cylinder.

“What may that be, mister?” inquired an inquisitive rustic, placing his hand on the other’s shoulder.

The latter drew back as if resenting that familiar touch, and, by way of answer, poised the cylinder in a tiny holder and deliberately lighted it, to the amazement of his questioner. Cigarettes were then unknown in that part of the state and the owner of the coach enjoyed the dubious distinction of being the first to introduce them there. “Since which time,” says Chronicler Barnes in his memoirs, “their use and abuse has, I believe, extended.”

The lighting of the aboriginal American cigarette drew general attention to the smoker and the doctor, not a man of modern small pills, but a liberal dispenser of calomel, jalap, castor-oil and quinine, whispered to the landlord:

“Azeriah, who might he be?”

“The heir of the patroon estate, Ezekiel. I found the name on his trunks: ‘Edward Mauville.’”

“Sho! Going to take possession at the manor?”

“He cal’lates to, I guess, ef he can!”

“Yes; ef he can!” significantly repeated the doctor. “So this is the foreign heir? He’s got wristbands like a woman and hands just as small. Wears gloves like my darter when she goes to meeting-house! And silk socks! Why, the old patroon didn’t wear none at all, and corduroy was good enough for him, they say. Wonder how the barn-burners will take to the silk socks? Who’s the other stranger, Azeriah?” Indicating with his thumb the soldier, who, standing against a window casement in the rear of the room, was by his height a conspicuous figure in the gathering.

“I don’t exactly know, Ezekiel,” replied the landlord, regretfully. “Not that I didn’t try to find out,” he added honestly, “but he was so close, I couldn’t get nothing from him. He’s from Paris, France; may be Louis Philippe himself, for all I know.”

“No; he ain’t Louis Philippe,” returned the doctor with decision, “’cause I seen his likeness in the magazine.”

“Might be the dolphin then,” suggested the boniface. “He’s so mighty mysterious.”

“Dolphin!” retorted the other contemptuously. “There ain’t no dolphin. There hasn’t been no dolphin since the French Revolution.”

“Oh, I didn’t know but there might a been,” said the landlord vaguely.

From mouth to mouth the information, gleaned by the village doctor, was circulated; speculation had been rife ever since the demise of the last patroon regarding his successor, and, although the locality was beyond the furthermost reach of that land-holder, their interest was none the less keen. The old master of the manor had been like a myth, much spoken of, never seen without the boundaries of his acres; but the new lord was a reality, a creditable creation of tailor, hatter, hosier, cobbler–which trades had not flourished under the old master who bought his clothes, cap and boots at a country store, owned by himself. Anticipation of the theatrical performance was thus relieved in a measure by the presence of the heir, but the delay, incident to a first night on an improvised stage, was so unusual that the audience at length began to evince signs of restlessness.

Finally, however, when the landlord’s daughter had gazed what seemed to her an interminable period upon the lady and the swan, the lake and the greyhound, painted on the curtain, this picture vanished by degrees, with an exhilarating creaking of the rollers, and was succeeded by the representation of a room in a cottage. The scenery, painted in distemper and not susceptible to wind or weather, had manifold uses, reappearing later in the performance as a nobleman’s palace, supplemented, it is true, by a well-worn carpet to indicate ducal luxury.

Some trifling changes–concessions to public opinion–were made in the play, notably in the scene where the duke, with ready hospitality, offers wine to the rustic Lopez. In Barnes’ expurgated, “Washingtonian” version (be not shocked, O spirit of good Master Tobin!) the countryman responded reprovingly: “Fie, my noble Duke! Have you no water from the well?” An answer diametrically opposed to the tendencies of the sack-guzzling, roistering, madcap playwrights of that early period!

On the whole the representation was well-balanced, with few weak spots in the acting for fault finding, even from a more captious gathering. In the costumes, it is true, the carping observer might have detected some flaws; notably in Adonis, a composite fashion plate, who strutted about in the large boots of the Low Countries, topped with English trunk hose of 1550; his hand upon the long rapier of Charles II, while a periwig and hat of William III crowned his empty pate!

Kate was Volante; not Tobin’s Volante, but one fashioned out of her own characteristics; supine, but shapely; heavy, but handsome; slow, but specious. Susan, with hair escaping in roguish curls beneath her little cap; her taper waist encompassed by a page’s tunic; the trim contour of her figure frankly revealed by her vestment, was truly a lad “dressed up to cozen” any lover who preferred his friend and his bottle to his mistress. Merry as a sand-boy she danced about in russet boots that came to the knee; lithe and lissome in the full swing of immunity from skirts, mantle and petticoats!

Conscious that his identity had been divined, and relishing, perhaps, the effect of its discovery, the young patroon gazed languidly at the players, until the entrance of Constance as Juliana, when he forgot the pleasing sensations of self-thought, in contemplation of the actress. He remarked a girlish form of much grace, attired in an attractive gown of white satin and silver, as became a bride, with train and low shimmering bodice, revealing the round arms and shoulders which arose ivory-like in whiteness. Instead of the customary feathers and other ornaments of the period, specified in the text of the play, roses alone softened the effect of her dark hair. Very different she appeared in this picturesque Spanish attire from the lady of the lane, with the coquettish cap of muslin and its “brides,” or strings.