Pierre; or The Ambiguities Part 29

"Will you stop the coach, or not?" cried Pierre, now incensed at his surliness in continuing to drive on.

"I obeys orders: the first house with a light; and 'cording to my reck'ning--though to be sure, I don't know nothing of the city where I was born and bred all my life--no, I knows nothing at all about it--'cording to my reck'ning, the first light in this here street will be the watch-house of the ward--yes, there it is--all right! cheap lodgings ye've engaged--nothing to pay, and wictuals in."

To certain temperaments, especially when previously agitated by any deep feeling, there is perhaps nothing more exasperating, and which sooner explodes all self-command, than the coa.r.s.e, jeering insolence of a porter, cabman, or hack-driver. Fetchers and carriers of the worst city infamy as many of them are; professionally familiar with the most abandoned haunts; in the heart of misery, they drive one of the most mercenary of all the trades of guilt. Day-dozers and sluggards on their lazy boxes in the sunlight, and felinely wakeful and cat-eyed in the dark; most habituated to midnight streets, only trod by sneaking burglars, wantons, and debauchees; often in actual pandering league with the most abhorrent sinks; so that they are equally solicitous and suspectful that every customer they encounter in the dark, will prove a profligate or a knave; this hideous tribe of ogres, and Charon ferry-men to corruption and death, naturally slide into the most practically Calvinistical view of humanity, and hold every man at bottom a fit subject for the coa.r.s.est ribaldry and jest; only fine coats and full pockets can whip such mangy hounds into decency. The least impatience, any quickness of temper, a sharp remonstrating word from a customer in a seedy coat, or betraying any other evidence of poverty, however minute and indirect (for in that pecuniary respect they are the most piercing and infallible of all the judgers of men), will be almost sure to provoke, in such cases, their least endurable disdain.

Perhaps it was the unconscious transfer to the stage-driver of some such ideas as these, which now prompted the highly irritated Pierre to an act, which, in a more benignant hour, his better reason would have restrained him from.

He did not see the light to which the driver had referred; and was heedless, in his sudden wrath, that the coach was now going slower in approaching it. Ere Isabel could prevent him, he burst open the door, and leaping to the pavement, sprang ahead of the horses, and violently reined back the leaders by their heads. The driver seized his four-in-hand whip, and with a volley of oaths was about striking out its long, coiling lash at Pierre, when his arm was arrested by a policeman, who suddenly leaping on the stayed coach, commanded him to keep the peace.

"Speak! what is the difficulty here? Be quiet, ladies, nothing serious has happened. Speak you!"

"Pierre! Pierre!" cried the alarmed Isabel. In an instant Pierre was at her side by the window; and now turning to the officer, explained to him that the driver had persisted in pa.s.sing the house at which he was ordered to stop.

"Then he shall turn to the right about with you, sir;--in double quick time too; do ye hear? I know you rascals well enough. Turn about, you sir, and take the gentleman where he directed."

The cowed driver was beginning a long string of criminating explanations, when turning to Pierre, the policeman calmly desired him to re-enter the coach; he would see him safely at his destination; and then seating himself beside the driver on the box, commanded him to tell the number given him by the gentleman.

"He don't know no numbers--didn't I say he didn't--that's what I got mad about."

"Be still"--said the officer. "Sir"--turning round and addressing Pierre within; "where do you wish to go?"

"I do not know the number, but it is a house in this street; we have pa.s.sed it; it is, I think, the fourth or fifth house this side of the last corner we turned. It must be lighted up too. It is the small old-fas.h.i.+oned dwelling with stone lion-heads above the windows. But make him turn round, and drive slowly, and I will soon point it out."

"Can't see lions in the dark"--growled the driver--"lions; ha! ha!

jacka.s.ses more likely!"

"Look you," said the officer, "I shall see you tightly housed this night, my fine fellow, if you don't cease your jabber. Sir," he added, resuming with Pierre, "I am sure there is some mistake here. I perfectly well know now the house you mean. I pa.s.sed it within the last half-hour; all as quiet there as ever. No one lives there, I think; I never saw a light in it. Are you not mistaken in something, then?"

Pierre paused in perplexity and foreboding. Was it possible that Glen had willfully and utterly neglected his letter? Not possible. But it might not have come to his hand; the mails sometimes delayed. Then again, it was not wholly out of the question, that the house was prepared for them after all, even though it showed no outward sign. But that was not probable. At any rate, as the driver protested, that his four horses and lumbering vehicle could not turn short round in that street; and that if he must go back, it could only be done by driving on, and going round the block, and so retracing his road; and as after such a procedure, on his part, then in case of a confirmed disappointment respecting the house, the driver would seem warranted, at least in some of his unmannerliness; and as Pierre loathed the villain altogether, therefore, in order to run no such risks, he came to a sudden determination on the spot.

"I owe you very much, my good friend," said he to the officer, "for your timely a.s.sistance. To be frank, what you have just told me has indeed perplexed me not a little concerning the place where I proposed to stop.

Is there no hotel in this neighborhood, where I could leave these ladies while I seek my friend?"

Wonted to all manner of deceitfulness, and engaged in a calling which unavoidably makes one distrustful of mere appearances, however specious, however honest; the really good-hearted officer, now eyed Pierre in the dubious light with a most unpleasant scrutiny; and he abandoned the "Sir," and the tone of his voice sensibly changed, as he replied:--"There is no hotel in this neighborhood; it is too off the thoroughfares."

"Come! come!"--cried the driver, now growing bold again--"though you're an officer, I'm a citizen for all that. You haven't any further right to keep me out of my bed now. He don't know where he wants to go to, cause he haint got no place at all to go to; so I'll just dump him here, and you dar'n't stay me."

"Don't be impertinent now," said the officer, but not so sternly as before.

"I'll have my rights though, I tell you that! Leave go of my arm; d.a.m.n ye, get off the box; I've the law now. I say mister, come tramp, here goes your luggage," and so saying he dragged toward him a light trunk on the top of the stage.

"Keep a clean tongue in ye now"--said the officer--"and don't be in quite so great a hurry," then addressing Pierre, who had now re-alighted from the coach--"Well, this can't continue; what do you intend to do?"

"Not to ride further with that man, at any rate," said Pierre; "I will stop right here for the present."

"He! he!" laughed the driver; "he! he! 'mazing 'commodating now--we hitches now, we do--stops right afore the watch-house--he! he!--that's funny!"

"Off with the luggage then, driver," said the policeman--"here hand the small trunk, and now away and unlash there behind."

During all this scene, Delly had remained perfectly silent in her trembling and rustic alarm; while Isabel, by occasional cries to Pierre, had vainly besought some explanation. But though their complete ignorance of city life had caused Pierre's two companions to regard the scene thus far with too much trepidation; yet now, when in the obscurity of night, and in the heart of a strange town, Pierre handed them out of the coach into the naked street, and they saw their luggage piled so near the white light of a watch-house, the same ignorance, in some sort, reversed its effects on them; for they little fancied in what really untoward and wretched circ.u.mstances they first touched the flagging of the city.

As the coach lumbered off, and went rolling into the wide murkiness beyond, Pierre spoke to the officer.

"It is a rather strange accident, I confess, my friend, but strange accidents will sometimes happen."

"In the best of families," rejoined the other, a little ironically.

Now, I must not quarrel with this man, thought Pierre to himself, stung at the officer's tone. Then said:--"Is there any one in your--office?"

"No one as yet--not late enough."

"Will you have the kindness then to house these ladies there for the present, while I make haste to provide them with better lodgment? Lead on, if you please."

The man seemed to hesitate a moment, but finally acquiesced; and soon they pa.s.sed under the white light, and entered a large, plain, and most forbidding-looking room, with hacked wooden benches and bunks ranged along the sides, and a railing before a desk in one corner. The permanent keeper of the place was quietly reading a paper by the long central double bat's-wing gas-light; and three officers off duty were nodding on a bench.

"Not very liberal accommodations"--said the officer, quietly; "nor always the best of company, but we try to be civil. Be seated, ladies,"

politely drawing a small bench toward them.

"Hallo, my friends," said Pierre, approaching the nodding three beyond, and tapping them on the shoulder--"Hallo, I say! Will you do me a little favor? Will you help bring some trunks in from the street? I will satisfy you for your trouble, and be much obliged into the bargain."

Instantly the three noddies, used to sudden awakenings, opened their eyes, and stared hard; and being further enlightened by the bat's-wings and first officer, promptly brought in the luggage as desired.

Pierre hurriedly sat down by Isabel, and in a few words gave her to understand, that she was now in a perfectly secure place, however unwelcoming; that the officers would take every care of her, while he made all possible speed in running to the house, and indubitably ascertaining how matters stood there. He hoped to be back in less than ten minutes with good tidings. Explaining his intention to the first officer, and begging him not to leave the girls till he should return, he forthwith sallied into the street. He quickly came to the house, and immediately identified it. But all was profoundly silent and dark. He rang the bell, but no answer; and waiting long enough to be certain, that either the house was indeed deserted, or else the old clerk was unawakeable or absent; and at all events, certain that no slightest preparation had been made for their arrival; Pierre, bitterly disappointed, returned to Isabel with this most unpleasant information.

Nevertheless something must be done, and quickly. Turning to one of the officers, he begged him to go and seek a hack, that the whole party might be taken to some respectable lodging. But the man, as well as his comrades, declined the errand on the score, that there was no stand on their beat, and they could not, on any account, leave their beat. So Pierre himself must go. He by no means liked to leave Isabel and Delly again, on an expedition which might occupy some time. But there seemed no resource, and time now imperiously pressed. Communicating his intention therefore to Isabel, and again entreating the officer's particular services as before, and promising not to leave him unrequited; Pierre again sallied out. He looked up and down the street, and listened; but no sound of any approaching vehicle was audible. He ran on, and turning the first corner, bent his rapid steps toward the greatest and most central avenue of the city, a.s.sured that there, if anywhere, he would find what he wanted. It was some distance off; and he was not without hope that an empty hack would meet him ere he arrived there. But the few stray ones he encountered had all m.u.f.fled fares. He continued on, and at last gained the great avenue. Not habitually used to such scenes, Pierre for a moment was surprised, that the instant he turned out of the narrow, and dark, and death-like bye-street, he should find himself suddenly precipitated into the not-yet-repressed noise and contention, and all the garish night-life of a vast thoroughfare, crowded and wedged by day, and even now, at this late hour, brilliant with occasional illuminations, and echoing to very many swift wheels and footfalls.

II.

"I say, my pretty one! Dear! Dear! young man! Oh, love, you are in a vast hurry, aint you? Can't you stop a bit, now, my dear: do--there's a sweet fellow."

Pierre turned; and in the flas.h.i.+ng, sinister, evil cross-lights of a druggist's window, his eye caught the person of a wonderfully beautifully-featured girl; scarlet-cheeked, glaringly-arrayed, and of a figure all natural grace but unnatural vivacity. Her whole form, however, was horribly lit by the green and yellow rays from the druggist's.

"My G.o.d!" shuddered Pierre, hurrying forward, "the town's first welcome to youth!"

He was just crossing over to where a line of hacks were drawn up against the opposite curb, when his eye was arrested by a short, gilded name, rather reservedly and aristocratically denominating a large and very handsome house, the second story of which was profusely lighted. He looked up, and was very certain that in this house were the apartments of Glen. Yielding to a sudden impulse, he mounted the single step toward the door, and rang the bell, which was quickly responded to by a very civil black.

As the door opened, he heard the distant interior sound of dancing-music and merriment.

"Is Mr. Stanly in?"

"Mr. Stanly? Yes, but he's engaged."

"How?"

"He is somewhere in the drawing rooms. My mistress is giving a party to the lodgers."

"Ay? Tell Mr. Stanly I wish to see him for one moment if you please; only one moment."