The general and the colonel started; and Tim Healy looked apprehensively at the door.
“Young man,” said the general, “I wouldn’t ask that question, if I wuz you.”
“The jedge ken still shoot,” added the colonel.
All was forgiven when I had explained that Mr. Coe was an Englishman; and we went to bed. About two in the morning the adjoining rooms became suddenly populous with soft voices. Coe started to his elbow in his cot and called to me. “It’s only the Amateur Shakespeare Comedy Club of Knoxville, returning from the play,” said I; and I dropped asleep and dreamed confusedly of Tuscumbia, the Indian chieftain, feminine voices, and the rippling waters of the Tennessee.
In the morning I got into the train for Chattanooga, leaving Coe behind. On the platform I noticed two graceful girls, dressed in white muslin, wide straw hats with white satin ribbon and sashes, white lace mitts, and thick white veils; not so thick that I could not see that they were brunettes, with hair as black as only grows under Southern nights. The train was composed of two cars—the ordinary Southern local—differing from a Jersey accommodation only in that it had still more peanut shells and an added touch of emigrant-train and circus. At one end sat a tall gentleman in a stovepipe hat, who had removed his boots, and was taking his ease in blue woollen stockings. At the other was a poor, pretty woman, with large, sad eyes, petting her emaciated husband, who was dying of consumption. Just as the train started, he had a terrible fit of coughing; now he leans his head upon her shoulder, and she rests her cheek upon his forehead. Behind me, but across the aisle, are the two young ladies in white muslin.
So we jangle on through the hot Southern June morning; and pretty soon one of the girls in white comes over and takes the seat behind me. She has thrown off her veil, and I assure you a more beautiful face I never saw; it’s all very well to talk of a neck like a lily and cheeks like a rose, and eyes
“Whose depths unravel the coiled night
And see the stars at noon——”
but when you really see them you fall down and worship the aggregation whose inventoried details, in any novel, would excite weariness. Meantime, her sister had stretched herself out upon the other seat, pointing one dainty russet leather foot beneath the muslin, and disposed her handkerchief across her eyes.
How to speak to this fair beauty so close behind me I know not; I can almost feel her eyes in the back of my head; so near that I dare not look round; I fear she may be another daughter of Judge Wilkinson’s. And the train jangles on, and we are winding through green dense forests, up to the mountains. I wait half an hour for propriety, and then look around; I catch her deep eyes full, “bows on,” as it were, her lips parted as if almost to speak, and I—shrink back in confusion. I hear her give a little sound, whether a sigh or a murmur I am not sure; but pretty soon I hear her struggling with her window. This is my chance; and I rise and with the politest bow I know and “permit me,” I seek to help her; but the sash is old and grimed and the angle inconvenient. Finally I have to go around into her seat; and leaning over her I get a purchase and the window goes up with a bang and a cloud of dust that sets us both sneezing. “It is very hot,” I say, standing with my hand upon her seat, irresolute.