CHAPTER X.
The most dangerous gift that a man can possess is superior skill in perilous employments. Sooner or later the most illustrious lion-tamer furnisheth forth funeral unbaked meats to the lordly beast he has so long bullied. Sooner or later, dies miserably the snake-charmer, charm he never so wisely. The noble art of self-defence has been brought to high perfection; but you shall no more find a prize-fighter with a straight nose than a rope-dancer with sound ribs. Every now and then (for the danger is not confined to the experts themselves) a bullet, advertised to perforate an orange, ploughs the scalp (though rarely reaching the brain) of its human support; and I make no doubt that the eminent pippin upon which Swiss liberty is based might have been placed once too often on his son’s head, had not William Tell abandoned, when he did, archery for politics.
I have been led into this train of thought by an accident which befell a number of the actors in our drama, through intrusting their limbs, their lives, and their sacred necks to the keeping of a young man who was reputed to be the best driver of Richmond in his day.
Now, no true artist is content unless he may exhibit his virtuosity; and this young man, like all crack whips, had conceived the notion that the art of driving consisted, not in bringing back his passengers to their point of departure, safe and sound, but rather in showing how near he could take them to the gates of Paradise without actually ushering them therein. To him the sweetest incense was the long-drawn sigh of relief breathed out by his friends when deposited, once again and alive, at their front door. Who but he could have controlled such untrained horses,—spirited is what he calls them? Who passed that wagon at that precise spot,—made that rapid turn without upsetting?
Think not, my boy, that it escapes me that in your bright day of things perfected there will be no more drivers of horses,—nor horses either, for that matter, save in zoological gardens. Not forgetting this, but remembering that human nature remains the same, have I written these words. Beware, then, oh, last lingering male, perhaps, of the line of the Whackers, beware of the crack balloonist of your favored time!
There were four of us. Lucy and Alice sat on the rear seat, Sthenelus and I in front, on a rather more elevated position. Returning from our drive, we are rapidly moving down Franklin Street. A heavy country wagon is just in front of us, and not far behind it, though rather on the other side of the street, another creeps along, both meeting us. The problem was to pass between them. One of those fellows who knows nothing about driving would have brought his horses down to a walk, and crept through in inglorious safety. Not so Sthenelus. With him glory was above safety; and so, leaning forward, he lightly agitated the reins along the backs of his rapid bays, and we whizzed past the first wagon. The next instant our charioteer went sprawling over the dashboard, carrying the reins with him; though I, foreseeing the collision with the second wagon, had braced myself for the shock, and so managed to retain my seat.
The horses bounded instantly forward, and rushed down the street with an ever-increasing speed. The usual scene occurred. Ladies who chanced to be crossing the street, shrank back in terror to the sidewalk.
Nurses scurried hither and thither, gathering up their charges. Men stood in the middle of the street, shouting and sawing their arms, waving hats, umbrellas, handkerchiefs, but getting out of the way just in time to let the more and more frantic horses pass; while troops of boys came rushing down every cross-street, their eyes a-glitter with barbaric joy, and shouting back the glad tidings to their toiling but shorter-legged comrades in the rear.
Where do all the boys come from?
But wild with terror as they were, the horses turned up the cross-street along which they had been driven earlier in the afternoon,—the one, that is, intersecting Leigh one block above the Carters’,—and up this they rushed with a terrific clatter.
Meanwhile, I had not been idle. Immediately upon the fall of our charioteer and the bounding forward of the horses, both girls had sprung to their feet with a cry of horror; but I shouted to them to sit down, and they obeyed. Alice, however, with every jolt of unusual severity would rise and attempt to leap from the vehicle, and again and again I had to seize her and thrust her back into her seat. Lucy, on the contrary, gave me no further trouble. Ashy pale, with her hands clasped, she sat trembling and silent, her appealing eyes fixed upon me. At last I insisted upon their sitting upon the floor of the carriage, assuring them, in as confident a tone as I could muster, that there was no earthly danger if they would but resolutely hold that position; and in this, too, they obeyed me, though in Alice’s case I had to supplement my commands by a firm grip upon her shoulder.
At last, when we were approaching Leigh Street at a furious pace, and the horses were turning into it, a well-meaning man rushed, with a loud “whoa,” at the horse nearest him, at the same time belaboring him with his umbrella; and this producing an extra burst of speed, the carriage made the turn literally on two wheels; so that, in momentary expectation of an upset, I instinctively released my hold on Alice’s shoulder and seized the edge of my seat; while the girls were so frightened that Alice sprang up, and, with a wild cry, threw her arms around my neck, Lucy, at the same time, seizing my right arm.
The two girls pulling down upon me with all the strength of panic-terror, there was no help for it. My heels flew up in the air, my legs assuming the shape of a gigantic V.
Picture to yourself, gentle reader, Mr. Fat Whacker moving down Leigh Street in this alphabetical order!
Even had I not been throttled almost to suffocation, I believe my face would have been red with shame,—often a more powerful emotion than the fear of death. (I, for example, once saw an officer, while the battle of Spottsylvania Court-House was raging, blush, instead of turning pale, when a cannon-ball, rushing past him, annihilated the seat of his trousers.)
And this is what I saw, looking through that V as a sharpshooter through the hind-sight of his rifle.
I saw the Don and Laura cosily sitting on the carriage-block, with their backs towards us, the nurse standing near by. Molly saw us as soon as we turned into Leigh Street, and knowing the horses, I suppose (all recognition of me being, I must presume, out of the question), rushed up to the Don with a scream. He leaped to his feet, and, taking in the situation at a glance, sprang into the middle of the street.
Perhaps the effect was intensified to me by the concentration of light wrought by the involuntary hindsight arrangement of my legs; possibly my perceptive faculties, stimulated by the situation, were unusually keen; but the bearing and look of the Don remain to this day indelibly impressed upon my memory. Hatless, he stood in the middle of the street, one leg advanced, and with both arms, after the fashion of ball-players, extended to the front. But it was his countenance that struck me most. His grimly-set lips, his distended nostrils, his brows intensely knit over his darkly glancing eyes, but, above all, his head, thrown back, and rocking to and fro in sympathy with the oscillations of the approaching team, gave him a look of ferocious disdain.
It is with just such a look, I can imagine, that a lion, famished and desperate, after long and vain hunting of giraffe or gazelle, prepares to spring, from his tangled ambuscade of rushes, upon the horns of an approaching bull. What must be done, saith his mighty heart, must be done—and done bravely.
’Twas Milton’s Satan stood there!
But just as the grimness of the countenance of Clearchus appeared odious to his soldiers in camp, but lovely in the hour of battle, so the look I have been describing seemed to me, at this critical juncture, to rival the beautiful disdain of Byron’s Apollo Belvedere. It was the sternly confident look of a man who scorned to rank failure among possibilities.
What would have been the result, had the horses held their straight course down the middle of the street, we can only conjecture, but such was the force of habit that, frantic as they were, they bore so far to the left just before reaching the Don, that the left wheels rattled along the gutter, within a few inches of the carriage-block, up to which they had so frequently been driven by their owner. The Don rushed to the right to intercept them, and, just as they were about to pass him, sprang upon the head of the off horse with an inarticulate cry so fierce, and a vigor so tremendous, that the animal, partly thrown back upon his haunches swerved, in his terror, violently to the left, forcing his mate upon the sidewalk. But the Don had leaped too far. Struck in the right side by the pole, he was hurled to the ground, his head striking the pavement with great force. In a moment of time both hoofs and wheels had passed over his prostrate form.
“Oh!” shrieked the girls, releasing me, and clasping their hands with mingled compassion and terror.
The V collapsed, and in an instant I went spinning over the dash-board.
The near-horse, his neck broken against the lamp-post, lay stone dead; while the other, his traces burst stood trembling in every fibre, and, as he pulled back against the reins, which still held him, uneasily snorting at his lifeless yoke-fellow.