Samantha at Saratoga, Marietta Holley [most romantic novels TXT] 📗

questioned her concernin’ my pardner, as she strode by, but before I could call out, or begon to her she wuz far in the rearwerd, and goin’ in a full pressure and in a knot of several miles an hour.

Wall, from that minute I felt strange and curious. And though Druzilla and Ezra was agreeable and the Deacon edifyin’, I didn’t seem to feel edified, and the most warm-hearted looks didn’t seem to warm my heart none, it wuz oppressed with gloomy forebodings of, Where wuz my pardner? They had laid out to set out together. Had they sot? This question was a goverin’ me, and the follerin’ one: If they had sot out together, where wuz my pardner, Josiah Allen, now? As I thought these feerful thoughts, instinctively I turned around to see if I could see a trace of his companion in the distance. Yes, I could ketch a faint glimpse of her as she wuz mountin’ a diclivity, and stood for an instant in sight, but long before even, she disopeered agin, for her gait wuz tremendous, and at a rate of a good many knots she wuz a goin’, that I knew. And the fearful thought would rise, Josiah Allen could not go more than half a knot, if he could that. He wuz a slow predestinatur any way, and then his corns was feerful, and never could be told—and his boots had in ’em the elements of feerful sufferin’. It wuz all he could do when he had ’em on to hobble down to the spring, and post-office. Where? where wuz he? And she a goin’ at the rate of so many knots.

Oh! the agony of them several minutes, while these thoughts wuz rampagin through my destracted brain.

Oh! if pardners only knew the agony they bring onto their devoted companions, by their onguarded and thoughtless acts, and attentions to other females, gin without proper reseerch and precautions, it would draw their liniments down into expressions of shame and remorse. Josiah wouldn’t have gone with her if he had known the number of knots she wuz a goin’, no, not one step—then why couldn’t he have found out the number of them knots—why couldn’t he? Why can’t pardners look ahead and see to where their gay attentions, their flirtations that they call mild and innercent, will lead ’em to? Why can’t they realize that it haint only themselves they are injurin’, but them that are bound to ’em by the most sacred ties that folks can be twisted up in? Why can’t they realize that a end must come to it, and it may be a fearful and a shameful one, and if it is a happiness that stops, it will leave in the heart when happiness gets out, a emptiness, a holler place, where like as not onhappiness will get in, and mebby stay there for some time, gaulin’ and heart-breakin’ to the opposite pardner to see it go on?

If it is indifference, or fashion, or anything of that sort, why it don’t pay none of the time, it don’t seem to me it duz, and the end will be emptier and hollerer then the beginnin’.

In the case of my pardner it wuz fashion, nothing but the butterfly of fashion he wuz after, to act in a high-toned, fashionable manner, like other fashionable men. And jest see the end on’t why he had brought sufferin’ of the deepest dye onto his companion, and what, what hed he brought onto himself—onto his feet?

Oh! the agony of them several moments while them thoughts was a rackin’ at me. The moments swelled out into a half hour, it must have been a long half hour, before I see far ahead, for the eyes of love is keen - a form a settin’ on the grass by the wayside, that I recognized as the form of my pardner. As we drew nearer we all recognized the figure—but Josiah Allen didn’t seem to notice us. His boots was off, and his stockin’s, and even in that first look I could see the agony that was a rendin’ them toes almost to burstin’. Oh, how sorry I felt for them toes! He was a restin’ in a most dejected and melancholy manner on his hand, as if it wuz more than sufferin’ that ailed him—he looked a sufferer from remorse, and regret, and also had the air of one whom mortification has stricken.

He never seemed to sense a thing that wuz passin’ by him, till the driver pulled up his horses clost by him, and then he looked up and see us. And far be it from me to describe the way he looked in his lowly place on the grass. There wuz a good stun by him on which he might have sot, but no, he seemed to feel too mean to get up onto that stun; grass, lowly, unassumin’ grass, wuz what seemed to suit him best, and on it he sot with one of his feet stretched out in front of him.

Oh! the pitifulness of that look he gin us, oh! the meakinness of it. And even, when his eye fell on the Deacon a settin’ by my side, oh! the wild gleam of hatred, and sullen anger that glowed within his orb, and revenge! He looked at the Deacon, and then at his boots, and I see the wild thought wuz a enterin’ his sole, to throw that boot at him. But I says out of that buggy the very first thing the words I have so oft spoke to him in hours of danger:

“Joisiah, be calm!”

His eye fell onto the peaceful grass agin, and he says: “Who hain’t a bein’ calm? I should say I wuz calm enough, if that is what you want.”

But, oh, the sullenness of that love.

Says Ezra, good man—he see right through it all in a minute, and so did Druzilla and the Deacon—says Ezra, “Get up on the seat with the driver, Josiah Allen, and drive back with us.”

“No,” says Josiah, “I have no occasion, I am a settin’ here,” (looking round in perfect agony) “I am a settin’ here to admire the scenery.”

Then I leaned over the side of the buggy, and says I, “Josiah Allen, do you get in and ride, it will kill you to walk back; put on your boots if you can, and ride, seein’ Ezra is so perlite as to ask you.”

“Yes, I see he is very perlite, I see you have set amongst very perlite folks, Samantha,” says he, a glarin’ at Deacon Balch as if he would rend him from lim to lim, “But as I said, I have no occasion to ride, I took off my boots and stockin’s merely—merely to pass away time. You know at fashionable resorts,” says he, “it is sometimes hard for men to pass away time.”

Says I in low, deep accents, “Do put on your stockin’s, and your boots, if you can get ’em on, which I doubt, but put your stockin’s on this minute, and get in, and ride.”

“Yes,” says Ezra, “hurry up and get in, Josiah Allen, it must be dretful oncomfortabe a settin’ down there in the grass.”

“Oh, no!” says Josiah, and he kinder whistled a few bars of no tune that wuz ever heard on, or ever will be heard on agin, so wild and meloncholy it wuz—“I sot down here kind o’ careless. I thought seein’ I hadn’t much on hand to do at this time o’ year, I thought I would like to look at my feet—we hain’t got a very big lookin’ glass in our room.”

Oh, how incoherent and over-crazed he was a becomin’! Who ever heard of seein’ anybody’s feet in a lookin’ glass—of dependin’ on a lookin’ glass for a sight on ’em? Oh, how I pitied that man! and I bent down and says to him in soothin’ axents: “Josiah Allen, to please your pardner you put on your stockin’s and get into this buggy. Take your boots in your hand, Josiah, I know you can’t get ’em on, you have walked too far for them corns. Corns that are trampled on, Josiah Allen, rise up and rends you, or me, or anybody else who owns ’em or tramples on ’em. It hain’t your fault, nobody blames you. Now get right in.”

“Yes, do,” says the Deacon.

Oh! the look that Josiah Allen gin him. I see the voyolence of that look, that rested first on the Deacon, and then on that, boot.

And agin I says, “Josiah Allen.” And agin the thought of his own feerful acts, and my warnin’s came over him, and again mortification seemed to envelop him like a mantilly, the tabs goin’ down and coverin’ his lims—and agin he didn’t throw that boot. Agin Deacon Balch escaped oninjured, saved by my voice, and Josiah’s inward conscience, inside of him.

Wall, suffice it to say, that after a long parley, Josiah Allen wuz a settin’ on the high seat with the driver, a holdin’ his boots in his hand, for truly no power on earth could have placed them boots on Josiah Allen’s feet in the condition they then wuz.

And so he rode on howewards, occasionally a lookin’ down on the Deacon with looks that I hope the recordin’ angel didn’t photograph, so dire, and so revengeful, and jealous, and—and everything, they wuz. And ever, after ketchin’ the look in my eye, the look in his’n would change to a heart-rendin’ one of remorse, and sorrow, and shame for what he had done. And the Deacon, wantin’ to be dretful perlite to him, would ask him questions, and I could see the side of Josiah’s face, all glarin’ like a hyena at the sound of his voice, and then he would turn round and ossume a perlite genteel look as he answered him, and then he glare at me in a mad way every time I spoke to the Deacon, and then his mad look would change, even to one of shame and meakinness. And he in his stockin’ feet, and a pertendin’ that he didn’t put his boots on, because it wuzn’t wuth while to put ’em on agin so near bed-time. And he that sot out that afternoon a feelin’ so haughty, and lookin’ down on Ezra and Druzilla, and bein’ brung back by ’em, in that condition—and bein’ goured all the time by thoughts of the ignominious way his flirtin’ had ended, by her droppin’ him by the side of the road, like a weed she had trampled on too hardly. And a bein’ gourded deeper than all the rest of his agonies, by a senseless jealousy of Deacon Balch—and a thinkin’ for the first time in his life, what it would be, if her affections, that had been like a divine beacon to him all his life, if that flame should ever go out, or ever flicker in its earthly socket—oh, those thoughts that he had seemed to consider in his own mad race for fashion—oh, how that sass that had seemed sweet to him as a gander, oh how bitter and poisonous it wuz to partake of as a goose.

Oh! the agony of that ride. We went middlin’ slow back—and before we got to Saratoga the English girl went past us, she had been to the Sulphur Springs and back agin. She didn’t pay no attention to us, for she wuz alayin’ on a plan in her own mind, for a moonlight pedestrian excursion on foot, that evenin’, out to the old battle ground of Saratoga.

Josiah never looked to the right hand or the left, as she passed him, at many, many a knot an hour. And I felt that my pardner’s sufferin from that cause was over, and mine too, but oh! by what agony wuz it gained. For 3 days and 3 nights he never stood on any of his feet for a consecutive minute and a half, and I bathed him with anarky, and bathed his very soul with many a sweet moral lesson at the same time. And when at last Josiah Allen emerged from that chamber, he wuz a changed man in his demeanor and liniment, such is the power of love and womanly devotion.