FAYETTE’S RIDE.
BY CLARA F. GUERNSEY.
“HELLO, girls! I say, hello!”
This polite salutation was addressed to two young girls who were standing at the parsonage gate in the little village of Valery’s Corners. The taller of the two colored with vexation, and looked back to the house as though she hoped no one had seen or heard.
The second answered in a clear, rather peculiar voice, “How do you do, Carlos?”
“I say,” returned Carlos, “I was up to your place, and seen your folks to-day.”
“I hope they were all well,” said the girl who had spoken before, while the other took no notice of Carlos whatever.
“Well, no, they wasn’t, jest. I thought I’d tell you—”
“O, what is it?” cried Fayette Locey, running out to the wagon, while her companion followed more slowly, looking rather annoyed than anxious.
“O, it ain’t nothing to be scared at, only Mr. Ford and Dick ain’t to home. They’ve gone over to the cattle sale at Elmira, and young Mis’ Ford she’s there alone, with only your aunt, and the hired man, and the baby.”
“Is the baby sick?” asked Fayette, troubled.
“No, not the baby.”
“Will you be good enough to tell us at once what is the matter?” said Helen Ford, speaking for the first time with a sort of cold irritation and a certain dignity which Carlos, though it rather awed him, resented as “stuck up.”
“Ye see,” said Carlos, letting the reins hang loose over the backs of the two old farm horses, “I was a-going past your house this morning, and I knew you was down here, and I thought your folks might have something to send.”
“You were very kind,” said Fayette; but Helen made no sign.
“I see young Mis’ Ford, and she said the old lady was kind of ailin’, and the men folks being away, and no one but Hiram, she felt kind of lonesome.”
“Did she send you for us?” asked Helen.
“No, not jest. She said the old lady might be going to have one of her bad spells, and as I was coming down to the corners I might tell you, and you could act your judgment, though she didn’t want to disappoint you of your visit. I could see she was consid’rable anxious.”
“Are you going back soon?” asked Fayette.
“’Bout half an hour or so. Tell ye what. I’ll call when I’ve done my arrands, and then you’ll have your minds made up.”
“O, thank you, Carlos,” said Fayette, gratefully. “I wish you would.”
Helen said nothing; but as they walked back to the house, she looked perplexed and annoyed. “So provoking of Sue,” she broke out at last. “If there was anything really the matter, why couldn’t she send a note? But she is so nervous and fanciful.”
“Sue’s not very strong, and you know Hiram is no one to depend upon. I hope Mrs. Allison and Eleanor will be back before we go.”
“So you are going?” said Helen, as if the idea vexed her.
“Why, Helen, I think one of us should go. If aunt had such an attack as she had in the winter, what could Sue do?”
“I dare say it is only her fancy,” said Helen. “But you are as ready to fancy things as she is, Fayette. If there were any reason for anxiety,” she continued in the even tones which had contributed to establish Helen Ford’s character as a “superior girl,”—“If there were any reason for anxiety, don’t you suppose I should be as anxious about my mother as you can be, who never saw her till you came to live with us three months ago?”
There was a covert sting in these words which Fayette felt and resented, but she held her tongue.
“Then I don’t want to miss this lecture,” Helen resumed. “It is the last of the set, and I feel it my duty to improve every opportunity that is offered me.”
Fayette slightly raised her black eyebrows. She knew her cousin’s way of squaring her duty with her inclination.
“I presume, too, that the boy has quite exaggerated the case. Persons of that class always like to make a sensation, and I dare say Sue only meant that mother had a little cold. She has such a habit of talking to all sorts of people as if they were her equals.”
“Yes, I think Sue does rather look upon human beings as if they were her fellow-creatures,” said Fayette.
“I don’t profess to understand sarcasm,” said Helen, setting her rather thin lips very straight. “Papa and Dick will be at home to-morrow, and one night can make no very great difference to Sue. It would be a serious disadvantage to me to lose this lecture. I have the notes of the whole set, and this is the last, and I should never be satisfied to leave them in that unfinished state.”
“And suppose you were not satisfied? What then?” said Fayette.
For a moment Helen had an odd sensation, as though some one had suddenly lifted a curtain and given her a glimpse of an unsuspected near and unpleasing region; but the feeling passed, and left behind it a sense of vexation with her cousin.
“Persons who do not care for intellectual pleasures can never understand what they are to others,” said Helen, with a superior and pitying smile, which provoked Fayette. “As the professor said last night, it is the first duty of every one to develop his or her nature to its highest capacities, and to seize every opportunity for mental enlargement.”
“Fiddlesticks!” thought the irreverent Fayette; but she did not say it, and that at least was something.
“Then it would not be polite to the Allisons to go off in this way, and when company is coming to tea, too. Mr. Allison is gone, and the ladies won’t be home till nearly tea time. How it would look to go off!”
“We could leave a message; and, Helen, if Sue were nervous and fanciful,—and I don’t think she is,—it would only be one more reason for not leaving her alone. I shall go,” concluded Fayette, with sudden decision.
“You will do as you please, of course,” said Helen, coldly, but secretly not ill pleased. “But it will look very strange.”
“I can’t help it. You can tell them all how it was;” and Fayette ran up stairs to pack up her things.
She had hardly done so when Carlos came back. “I wish you joy of your companion,” said Helen to her cousin, with something very like a sneer.
“I might easily have a worse one,” said Fayette, who liked the big, simple young fellow. “One of us is enough to go, and it may as well be I as you. I hope you’ll enjoy the evening. Remember me to Miss Fenton and the others.”
It was with a little pang that Fayette spoke. She had been quite as much interested in the lectures as her cousin, and she had found herself very much at home with the Misses Fenton, the granddaughters of Mrs. Lyndon, at the Hickories.
“Well, of course one is enough, and more than enough,” said Helen; “but I suppose now you have alarmed yourself so, you will not be satisfied to stay here. I shall come home with Mr. Allison Sunday. Good-bye.”
Helen went back to the house, and laid out her dress for the evening.
The party from the Hickories, and the stray professor, who had given four lectures on geology in Valery’s Corners, were coming to tea at the Parsonage.
Helen had met the professor before, and had been complimented on the interest she displayed in science, and she felt, as she said, that she could not be satisfied without putting down the notes of the last lecture.
Helen was an intellectual girl—so said her teachers, and so she believed. She liked to acquire facts, and rules, and classifications, and dates, and range them all nicely away in her mind, as she put her cuffs, and collars, and laces, and ribbons in her boxes; as she saved odds and ends of silk and linen, and put them into labeled bags.
As it pleased her to look over her drawers, and count up her possessions, so she liked to review her stock of knowledge gained from text-books, and say, “All this is mine.”
She told Mrs. Allison that her sister-in-law had sent a message by Carlos, and that Fayette had gone home.
“Sue is a little nervous sometimes,” said Helen, in her most superior manner.
Helen’s evening was very successful. She was invited to the Hickories by Mrs. Lyndon. She talked to the professor. She took her notes, but some way, even when she had neatly copied out the names of all the saurians, she did not feel as well “satisfied” as she had expected.
It was not till between seven and eight that evening that Carlos set Fayette down at her uncle’s gate.
The roads were rough, and they had been a long time coming the nine miles. Carlos lived at Scrub Hollow, a very forlorn hamlet, three miles further away.
It was a wild March night, with a loud-sounding wind rushing through the upper air. Fayette, as she stood at the gate a moment, and looked out over the confused mass of rounded, rolling hills that formed the dim landscape, felt lonely and half frightened.
Everything was so dim and gray, and seemed so full of mysterious sound! The low roar of increasing streams, the multiplied whisper and rustle of the woods, made the world seem something different from the ordinary daylight earth.
She shook off the fancies that crowded upon her, and walked quickly up to the house, which stood at some distance from the road—a pile of gray buildings, with sharp, many-angled roofs rising against the sky.
A light shone from the “living-room” window.
Fayette opened the door, and was greeted by a cry of joy from young Mrs. Ford.
“O, Fayette! I’m so glad it’s you!” and there was an emphasis as, if the speaker were rather glad it was not some one else.
“I thought I’d come,” said Fayette, kissing her. “How’s aunt?”
“I think she is pretty sick,” said Sue, lowering her voice. “She’s gone to bed.”
“Have you sent Hiram for the doctor?”
“Hiram has gone. I’m all alone. Word came over from Springville, just after Carlos was here, that his father had broken his leg, and he had to go, of course.”
“But why didn’t you tell him to send Dr. Ward over?”
“Mother wouldn’t let me. You know how she hates to send for a doctor, and she thought she’d be better.”
A voice from the next room called to know who was there, and Fayette went in.
Mrs. Ford was in bed, her face drawn and pinched. A look of pain crossed her features as her niece entered. There was disappointment in her voice as she said,—
“Is that you, Fayette?”
“Yes, aunt. I thought I’d come.”
There are women who, in Mrs. Ford’s place, would have been angry with the girl for doing what one dearer had left undone; but Mrs. Ford, if she had such a feeling, was too just to visit it upon Fayette.
“You are a good child,” she said, with uncommon softness, but with a sigh. “Don’t be troubled. I shall get over it by and by.”
But Mrs. Ford did not get over it. The trouble was furious and intense neuralgia; not such as young ladies have when they suffer “awfully” in the morning, and go to a party at night, but blinding, burning pain, reducing the life power every minute, and threatening the heart.
Sue and Fayette tried in vain every remedy in their power. Even Mrs. Ford’s favorite panacea of seven different herbs, steeped in spirits with pepper and spice, utterly failed.
The patient grew worse and worse, and at midnight it was evident that, unless help came speedily, her hours were numbered.
The farm was not on the high road, and their nearest neighbors were two old maiden ladies, a mile away, neither of whom could have been of the least use.
Scrub Hollow lay three miles to the south. A nurse might have been found there, but no physician. Springville, where Dr. Ward lived, was a little further off in the opposite direction.
The road to Springville was rough and lonely, and lay over wind-swept hill and through dark valley, by woods and swamps; for this portion of the southern frontier is even now but thinly settled.
“What shall we do?” said poor Sue, wringing her hands. “What shall we do?”
“There’s only one thing to do,” said Fayette, desperately. “I shall go for the doctor.”
“O, Fayette! Walk all that way alone!”
“I shall ride Phœbe. I can saddle her myself. Father taught me how. I must go, Sue. I can’t let aunt lie here and die, and never try to save her. It’s hard to leave you alone, but it won’t take long. Baby hasn’t waked up once. What a mercy! Don’t say a word, Sue: I must go.”
“O, Fayette!” cried Sue, helplessly; but she made no further objection, and Mrs. Ford had not heard the hurried consultation.
Fayette would give herself no time to think. She was a nervous little thing, and she dreaded the long ride through the windy night more than she had ever feared anything in her life.
She was not a very daring rider, though at the little frontier post where she had passed two years with her parents, her father had taught her to manage a horse with reasonable skill, and she had ridden many a mile with him over the prairie.
“O, if father were here now!” she said, a sob suddenly rising.
Then she was doubtful about her own power to manage Phœbe, the great chestnut mare, the pride of her uncle’s heart, strong, swift, spirited creature that she was.
For two years Phœbe had borne away the prize at state and county fairs, and the horse-racing world had tempted her owner in vain. Fayette had mounted her more than once, and ridden around the yard, and up and down the road, but always with some secret fears. She had never dared even to try a canter; and now to mount at “mirk midnight,” and go, as fast as might be, off into the darkness alone on Phœbe’s back, seemed an awful thing to poor Fayette.
She knew that the mare was gentle, and she had often petted her, and fed her, and led her to water. She did not much doubt but that Phœbe would submit to be saddled and bridled by her hand, but still it was with many a misgiving that she put on her hat and jacket. She did not take time to find her habit, and, lighting the lantern, went out to the barn.
Phœbe was not lying down. Disturbed, perhaps, by the loud-blowing wind, she was wide awake; and as Fayette entered with the light, she turned her head with a low whinny, as though glad to see a friend.
Fayette went into the stall in fear and trembling; but she loosened the halter, and led Phœbe out unresisting.
The mare was so tall, and Fayette was so short, that she was obliged to stand up on a box to slip on the bridle; to which Phœbe submitted, turning her soft, intelligent eyes on the girl with mild, wondering inquiry. The saddle was harder to manage, but Fayette strained at the girth till her wrists ached, and hoped all was right.
Some faint encouragement came to her, as she saw how gently the mare behaved. “O, Phœbe, darling,” said Fayette, “you will be good—I know you will. You are the only one that can help us now.”
Petted Phœbe, used to caresses as a house cat, rubbed her dainty head on Fayette’s shoulder, as if to reassure her.
Poor Fayette put up one brief wordless prayer for help and courage, and then she led Phœbe out of the stable, mounted her by the aid of the horse-block, and rode away into the night.
Sue, watching forlorn, heard the mare’s hoofs beating fainter down the road; and relieved that at least Fayette had got off without accident, listened till the last sound died away on the wind.
CHAPTER II.
IT was a wild March night. The wind blew loud and cold, though there was in the air a faint breath of spring, and the brooks were coming down with fuller currents every hour to swell the Susquehanna. There had been heavy rains for the last few days, and the roads were deeply gullied, and somewhat dangerous by night.
The wild, white moon, nearly at the full, was plunging swiftly through heavy masses of gray cloud, that at times quite obscured her light, and the solid shapes of hill and wood, and the sweeping, changing shadows were so mingled that it was hard to distinguish what was real earth and what was but the effect of cloud and wind-blown moonshine. All the twilight world seemed sound and motion.
Phœbe, as well as her rider, perhaps, felt some of the influences of the time; for she snorted and turned her head homeward, as if minded to return to her warm stable; but she gave way to Fayette’s voice and hand, and, striking into a steady pace, picked her way down the steep and deeply-furrowed road as soberly as an old cart-horse.
The Ford farm-house lay half way up the side of a high hill, and the farm extended into the valley below in pasture and meadow land. Here, for a space, was a hard gravel road; and Fayette, yielding to the spur of the moment, let Phœbe canter, which she was only too willing to do, and was relieved to find how easily she kept her seat, and how gentle was the motion.
In a few minutes the bounds of the farm were passed, and Fayette’s heart sank low as they drew near the roaring, sounding woods through which the road lay. The trees stood up like a black wall, with one blacker archway, into which the path ran, and was lost in the darkness beyond.
People who have never been allowed to hear the word “ghost,” who know nothing of popular superstitions, who are strangers to ballad lore and to Walter Scott, will, nevertheless, be often awed and sometimes panic-struck by night, and darkness, and wind, and that power of the unseen which laughs Mr. Gradgrind himself to scorn.
Fayette, however, had not been properly brought up, according to Mr. Gradgrind’s system. She had read all sorts of wild tales, and listened to them from the lips of a Scotch nurse. She knew many a ballad, and many a bit of folk lore, and old paganism,—pleasant enough puppets for imagination to play with under the sunshine, but which now rose up in a grim life-likeness quite too real.
The owls began to call from the shadows, and once and again came a long, wild scream, which, in the darkness and wind, had an awful sound.
Fayette knew perfectly well that it was only a coon calling, but for all that it frightened her. There came over her that horrible feeling which most people have experienced once in their lives at least—the sense that some unseen pursuer is coming up behind. In a sudden spasm of terror, she very nearly gave way to the impulse that urged her to rush blindly on anywhere to escape the dread follower. Nerves and imagination were running wild; but Fayette, from her earliest years, had been trained to self-control and duty. She checked the panic that urged her to cry and scream for help. She used her reason, and forced herself to look back and assure her senses that, so far as she could see the dim track, she and Phœbe were the only living creatures there.
“I am doing what is right,” she said to herself. “God is here as much as in my room at home. It is folly to fear things that are not real, and as for living beings, not even a wolf could catch me on Phœbe.”
Resolutely rousing her will, she grew more used to her situation, and, more able to control her terrors, she sternly refused to give rein to her frightened fancy. She drew a long breath, however, when once the wood was passed and the road began to climb the opposing hill, behind which, and across the creek, lay Springville. She thought of William of Deloraine and his ride to Melrose, and smiled at the remembrance of that matter-of-fact hero.
“It’s a good thing, Phœbe, dear, that you and I have no deadly feud with any one,” she said; and then she patted the mare and praised her, and Phœbe, quickening her pace, broke into a gallop, and took the hill road with long, sweeping strides that soon brought them to the summit.
Fayette began to enjoy the swift motion and a sense of independence and safety in Phœbe’s gentle compliance with her will; but at the hill-top she checked the pace, fearing a stumble down the deeply gullied hill, which was still sending rivulets to the creek. The amiable Phœbe chose to obey, and picked her way, careful both for herself and her rider.
Now rose a new voice on the wind. It was the sound of angry waters, a long roar rising louder from time to time.
“How high the creek must be!” thought Fayette; and as the roar increased, she began to have a sort of fear of the bridge, which she knew must be crossed; but she classed the feeling with her ghostly terrors, and soon found herself drawing near the bridge, the noise of the water almost drowning that of the wind.
As she came to the bank, a heavy cloud came over the moon, involving the whole landscape in sudden and dense blackness; and at that instant Phœbe planted her feet like a rock, and refused to stir an inch.
In vain Fayette coaxed and urged, for she dared not strike, even if she had had a whip. Phœbe was immovable as a horse of bronze; but at last she began to pull at the bridle, as though she meant to turn homeward.
Just then the moon came out, and Fayette, looking eagerly forward, saw, to her horror, that the bridge was gone. A post and rail only remained, and beyond was a chasm where the furious waters had not even left a wreck behind.
Had Phœbe’s senses not been more acute than her own, two steps more would have plunged horse and rider into the flood.
Fayette turned sick, and felt as if she should fall from the saddle. She rallied, however, for she knew she must. Her senses came back in thankfulness to God, and she confessed humbly enough to Phœbe that she had known best; and Phœbe, looking over her shoulder, said, “I told you so,” as plainly as a horse could.
Fayette was at a loss. A mile further up the stream was another and much better bridge than the rickety old plank structure that was missing; but to reach it she must turn back and make a long detour, that would nearly double her journey, while every minute lessened the chances of the sufferer at home.
She knew that just below the bridge was a ford easily passable in summer, and she remembered hearing her uncle say that once, when the bridge was down, he had crossed this ford on horseback. It might be that even now she and Phœbe could make their way across.
A wagon track led down to the water’s edge, and Phœbe did not refuse to follow this path to the stream’s edge, where Fayette checked her, afraid to face the passage.
The creek was coming down ruffled before the wind into waves “crested with tawny foam,” and the “wan water” looked eerie and threatening.
Fayette refused to think of the water kelpie, who just then obtruded himself on her mind. She bent from the saddle and scanned the road.
Judging from the traces on the gravel, she thought that a wagon must have passed not many hours before. Her courage rose, and she set her will to the task before her.
“If Phœbe thinks it safe, I’ll try it,” she said; and as the rein hung loose, Phœbe stepped cautiously in. She seemed doubtful at first, but she went on, and the water rose and rose.
The moon cast an uncertain, wavering light on the dancing stream; the roar filled Fayette’s ears like a threatening voice; the waves, as they plunged toward her, seemed hands raised to pull her down; and still Phœbe stepped steadily on, and the stream came higher and higher. Fayette drew up her feet as far as she could, and glanced back to the shore, half minded to turn; but it was now as far to one bank as to the other. The water touched her feet; it flowed over them.
The next instant she scarcely checked the shriek that rose to her lips, for she felt that the mare no longer touched bottom, but was swimming for her life and her rider’s.
At the real danger her ghostly terrors fled. With a sense of wonder she felt her mind grow calm, her courage rise, her senses wake to their work.
To her relief she saw that Phœbe had not lost her wits, but was keeping straight across the creek. She let the mare take her own way, only helping her as far as she could by keeping her head in the way she wished to go. She thought of nothing but the minute’s need; and of all the possibilities before her, the only fear that shaped itself in her mind was one for her horse.
The current was strong, but so was Phœbe, and her blood was up. She snorted fiercely, as if angry with the force that crossed her will, and putting out her strength, she breasted the storm gallantly.
It was but a minute, though it seemed an hour to Fayette, before she touched bottom.
The water sank rapidly, and she reached the shore but a little below the usual landing. The bank came down to the stream with a somewhat steep incline; but mountain-bred Phœbe planted her fore feet firmly, scrambled cat-like up the incline, shook the clinging water from hide and mane, and with a joyous whinny, rushed like an arrow on the track.
The way was plain before her, and in a minute or two more Fayette, with some trouble, checked Phœbe’s gallop at Dr. Ward’s gate. A light was burning over the office door.
Fayette slipped from the saddle, but before she turned to the house, she put her arms round Phœbe’s neck, and kissed the white star on her forehead. As she ran up the walk, she felt, for the first time, that she was wet nearly to her knees, and the wind made her shiver.
She rang the bell sharply, and to her relief the door was opened directly by Dr. Ward himself, who had just come in.
Hurriedly, but clearly, Fayette told her story.
“Yes, I understand,” said Dr. Ward. “But, dear me,” he added, as the light fell on her more clearly, “where have you been to get so wet?”
“In the water,” said Fayette. “The creek is so high, and the bridge is down.”
“Child! You did not ride that ford to-night?”
“Not all the way, sir. Phœbe swam.”
“Phœbe, indeed! A pretty pair are you and Phœbe to race round the country at midnight. Go to Mrs. Ward and get some dry clothes, while my man gets out the gig.”
“O, sir, please be quick.”
“Yes, yes; only get off those wet things. Let Phœbe stay here till to-morrow, for my old gig can’t swim the creek, whatever you and the mare can do. We must go by the upper bridge.”
Mrs. Ward, called out of bed, supplied Fayette with dry things, and Phœbe was consigned to the doctor’s admiring colored man, to be well cared for before she took possession of her bed in the warm stable.
The doctor kept a trotter for emergencies, and in an hour and a half from the time she had left home Fayette came back.
Sue came to meet them, white and scared; and, as she came, Fayette heard a cry of anguish, which she knew that nothing but the direst extremity could have wrung from her strong, self-controlled aunt.
The doctor took out his ether flask and sponge, and hurried to the bedside.
Before long the ministering spirit did its good office. The tortured nerves relaxed, and the patient slept.
Fayette put on her wrapper, and curled herself up on the sofa, leaving Sue and the doctor watching by the fire.
When she woke it was broad daylight. All seemed quiet about the house. She stole across the floor, and looked into her aunt’s room. Mrs. Ford was awake, and held out her hand.
“Is the pain gone, aunt?” asked Fayette, kissing her, and feeling a new love rising in her heart.
“Yes, child; but I am very weak.”
“It was the ether saved your life, I really think,” said Fayette, to whom the past night seemed like a dream.
“No, my dear,” said Mrs. Ford. “It was you.”
“Bow-wow.”