Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/279

 266 to clothe the generation. What was to the remainder of the exiled sons of Adam simply the brand of expulsion from Paradise, was to him hell. In his agony, anything less than an angel, soft-voiced in his path, would not have satisfied the poor boy, and here was this wretched outcast, and instead of being relieved, he was to act the reliever!

Striving to rouse the desolate creature, he shook her slightly. She now raised her head with a slow, gradual motion, like that of a waxwork, showing a white young face, tearless,—dreadfully drawn at the lips. After gazing at him, she turned her head mechanically towards her shoulder, as to ask him why he touched her. He withdrew his hand, saying:

“Why are you here? Pardon me; I want, if possible, to help you.”

A light sprang in her eyes. She jumped from the stone, and ran forward a step or two, with a gasp:

“Oh, my God! I want to go and drown myself.”

Evan lingered behind her till he saw her body sway, and in a fit of trembling she half fell on his outstretched arm. He led her to the stone, not knowing what on earth to do with her. There was no sign of a house near; they were quite solitary; to all his questions she gave an unintelligible moan. He had not heart to leave her, so, taking a sharp seat on a heap of flints, thus possibly furnishing future occupation for one of his craftsmen, he waited, and amused himself by marking out diagrams with his stick in the thick dust.

His thoughts were far away, when he heard, faintly uttered:

“Why do you stop here?”

“To help you.”

“Please, don’t. Let me be. I can’t be helped.”

“My good creature,” said Evan, “it’s quite impossible that I should leave you in this state. Tell me where you were going when your illness seized you?”

“I was going,” she commenced vacantly, “to the sea—the water,” she added, with a shivering lip.

The foolish youth asked her if she could be cold on such a night.

“No, I’m not cold,” she replied, drawing closer over her lap the ends of a shawl which would in that period have been thought rather gaudy for her station.

“You were going to Lymport?”

“Yes,—Lymport’s nearest, I think.”

“And why were you out travelling at this hour?”

She dropped her head, and began rocking to right and left.

While they talked the noise of waggon-wheels was heard approaching. Evan went into the middle of the road and beheld a covered waggon, and a fellow whom he advanced to meet, plodding a little to the rear of the horses. He proved kindly. He was a farmer’s man, he said, and was at that moment employed in removing the furniture of the farmer’s son, who had failed as a corn-chandler in Lymport, to Hillford, which he expected to reach about morn. He answered Evan’s request that he would afford the young woman conveyance as far as Fallowfield:

“Tak’ her in? That I will.”

“She won’t hurt the harses,” he pursued, pointing his whip at the vehicle: “there’s my mat’, Garge Stoakes, he’s in ther’, snorin’ his turn. Can’t you hear’n a-snorin’ thraugh the wheels? I can; I’ve been laughin’! He do snore that loud—Garge do!”

Proceeding to inform Evan how George Stokes had snored in that characteristic manner from boyhood, ever since he and George had slept in a hayloft together; and how he, kept wakeful and driven to distraction by George Stokes’ nose, had been occasionally compelled, in sheer self-defence, madly to start up and hold that pertinacious alarum in tight compression between thumb and forefinger; and how George Stokes, thus severely handled, had burst his hold with a tremendous snort, as big as a bull, and had invariably uttered the exclamation, “Hulloa!—same to you, my lad!” and rolled over to snore as fresh as ever;—all this with singular rustic comparisons, racy of the soil, and in raw Hampshire dialect; the waggoner came to a halt opposite the stone, and, while Evan strode to assist the girl, addressed himself to the great task of arousing the sturdy sleeper and quieting his trumpet, heard by all ears now that the accompaniment of the wheels was at an end.

George, violently awakened, complained that it was before his time, to which he was true; and was for going off again with exalted contentment, though his heels had been tugged, and were dangling some length out of the machine; but his comrade, with a determined blow of the lungs, gave another valiant pull, and George Stokes was on his legs, marvelling at the world and man. Evan had less difficulty with the girl. She rose to meet him, put up her arms for him to clasp her waist, whispering sharply on an inward breath: “What are you going to do with me?” and indifferent to his verbal response, trustingly yielded her limbs to his guidance. He could see blood on her bitten underlip, as, with the help of the waggoner, he lifted her on the mattrass, backed by a portly bundle, which the sagacity of Mr. Stokes had selected for his couch.

The waggoner cracked his whip, laughing at George Stokes, who yawned, and settled into a composed plough-swing, without asking questions; apparently resolved to finish his nap on his legs.

“Warn’t he like that Myzepper chap, I see at the succus, bound athert gray mare!” chuckled the waggoner. “So he’d ’a gone on, had ye ’a let’n. No wulves waddn’t wake Garge till he’d slept it out. Then he’d say, ‘marnin’!’ to ’m. Are ye ’wake now, Garge?”

The admirable sleeper preferred to be a quiet butt, and the waggoner leisurely exhausted the fun that was to be had out of him; returning to it with a persistency that evinced more concentration than variety in his mind. At last Evan said: “Your pace is rather slow. They’ll be shut up in Fallowfield. I’ll go on ahead. You’ll find me at one of the inns—the Green Dragon.Dragon.” [sic]