Fayette’s Ride
By Clara F. Guernsey
“Hello, girls! I say, hello!”
This polite salutation was addressed to two young girls who were standing at the parsonage gate in the little village of Valery’s Corners. The taller of the two colored with vexation, and looked back to the house as though she hoped no one had seen or heard.
The second answered in a clear, rather peculiar voice, “How do you do, Carlos?”
“I say,” returned Carlos, “I was up to your place, and seen your folks to-day.”
“I hope they were all well,” said the girl who had spoken before, while the other took no notice of Carlos whatever.
“Well, no, they wasn’t, jest. I thought I’d tell you—”
“O, what is it?” cried Fayette Locey, running out to the wagon, while her companion followed more slowly, looking rather annoyed than anxious.
“O, it ain’t nothing to be scared at, only Mr. Ford and Dick ain’t to home. They’ve gone over to the cattle sale at Elmira, and young Mis’ Ford she’s there alone, with only your aunt, and the hired man, and the baby.”
“Is the baby sick?” asked Fayette, troubled.
“No, not the baby.”
“Will you be good enough to tell us at once what is the matter?” said Helen Ford, speaking for the first time with a sort of cold irritation and a certain dignity which Carlos, though it rather awed him, resented as “stuck up.”
“Ye see,” said Carlos, letting the reins hang loose over the backs of the two old farm horses, “I was a-going past your house this morning, and I knew you was down here, and I thought your folks might have something to send.”
“You were very kind,” said Fayette; but Helen made no sign.
“I see young Mis’ Ford, and she said the old lady was kind of ailin’, and the men folks being away, and no one but Hiram, she felt kind of lonesome.”
“Did she send you for us?” asked Helen.
“No, not jest. She said the old lady might be going to have one of her bad spells, and as I was coming down to the corners I might tell you, and you could act your judgment, though she didn’t want to disappoint you of your visit. I could see she was consid’rable anxious.”
“Are you going back soon?” asked Fayette.
“’Bout half an hour or so. Tell ye what. I’ll call when I’ve done my arrands, and then you’ll have your minds made up.”
“O, thank you, Carlos,” said Fayette, gratefully. “I wish you would.”
Helen said nothing; but as they walked back to the house, she looked perplexed and annoyed. “So provoking of Sue,” she broke out at last. “If there was anything really the matter, why couldn’t she send a note? But she is so nervous and fanciful.”
“Sue’s not very strong, and you know Hiram is no one to depend upon. I hope Mrs. Allison and Eleanor will be back before we go.”
“So you are going?” said Helen, as if the idea vexed her.
“Why, Helen, I think one of us should go. If aunt had such an attack as she had in the winter, what could Sue do?”
“I dare say it is only her fancy,” said Helen. “But you are as ready to fancy things as she is, Fayette. If there were any reason for anxiety,” she continued in the even tones which had contributed to establish Helen Ford’s character as a “superior girl,”—“If there were any reason for anxiety, don’t you suppose I should be as anxious about my mother as you can be, who never saw her till you came to live with us three months ago?”
There was a covert sting in these words which Fayette felt and resented, but she held her tongue.
“Then I don’t want to miss this lecture,” Helen resumed. “It is the last of the set, and I feel it my duty to improve every opportunity that is offered me.”
Fayette slightly raised her black eyebrows. She knew her cousin’s way of squaring her duty with her inclination.
“I presume, too, that the boy has quite exaggerated the case. Persons of that class always like to make a sensation, and I dare say Sue only meant that mother had a little cold. She has such a habit of talking to all sorts of people as if they were her equals.”
“Yes, I think Sue does rather look upon human beings as if they were her fellow-creatures,” said Fayette.
“I don’t profess to understand sarcasm,” said Helen, setting her rather thin lips very straight. “Papa and Dick will be at home to-morrow, and one night can make no very great difference to Sue. It would be a serious disadvantage to me to lose this lecture. I have the notes of the whole set, and this is the last, and I should never be satisfied to leave them in that unfinished state.”
“And suppose you were not satisfied? What then?” said Fayette.
For a moment Helen had an odd sensation, as though some one had suddenly lifted a curtain and given her a glimpse of an unsuspected near and unpleasing region; but the feeling passed, and left behind it a sense of vexation with her cousin.
“Persons who do not care for intellectual pleasures can never understand what they are to others,” said Helen, with a superior and pitying smile, which provoked Fayette. “As the professor said last night, it is the first duty of every one to develop his or her nature to its highest capacities, and to seize every opportunity for mental enlargement.”
“Fiddlesticks!” thought the irreverent Fayette; but she did not say it, and that at least was something.
“Then it would not be polite to the Allisons to go off in this way, and when company is coming to tea, too. Mr. Allison is gone, and the ladies won’t be home till nearly tea time. How it would look to go off!”
“We could leave a message; and, Helen, if Sue were nervous and fanciful,—and I don’t think she is,—it would only be one more reason for not leaving her alone. I shall go,” concluded Fayette, with sudden decision.
“You will do as you please, of course,” said Helen, coldly, but secretly not ill pleased. “But it will look very strange.”
“I can’t help it. You can tell them all how it was;” and Fayette ran up stairs to pack up her things.
She had hardly done so when Carlos came back. “I wish you joy of your companion,” said Helen to her cousin, with something very like a sneer.
“I might easily have a worse one,” said Fayette, who liked the big, simple young fellow. “One of us is enough to go, and it may as well be I as you. I hope you’ll enjoy the evening. Remember me to Miss Fenton and the others.”
It was with a little pang that Fayette spoke. She had been quite as much interested in the lectures as her cousin, and she had found herself very much at home with the Misses Fenton, the granddaughters of Mrs. Lyndon, at the Hickories.
“Well, of course one is enough, and more than enough,” said Helen; “but I suppose now you have alarmed yourself so, you will not be satisfied to stay here. I shall come home with Mr. Allison Sunday. Good-bye.”
Helen went back to the house, and laid out her dress for the evening.
The party from the Hickories, and the stray professor, who had given four lectures on geology in Valery’s Corners, were coming to tea at the Parsonage.
Helen had met the professor before, and had been complimented on the interest she displayed in science, and she felt, as she said, that she could not be satisfied without putting down the notes of the last lecture.
Helen was an intellectual girl—so said her teachers, and so she believed. She liked to acquire facts, and rules, and classifications, and dates, and range them all nicely away in her mind, as she put her cuffs, and collars, and laces, and ribbons in her boxes; as she saved odds and ends of silk and linen, and put them into labeled bags.
As it pleased her to look over her drawers, and count up her possessions, so she liked to review her stock of knowledge gained from text-books, and say, “All this is mine.”
She told Mrs. Allison that her sister-in-law had sent a message by Carlos, and that Fayette had gone home.
“Sue is a little nervous sometimes,” said Helen, in her most superior manner.
Helen’s evening was very successful. She was invited to the Hickories by Mrs. Lyndon. She talked to the professor. She took her notes, but some way, even when she had neatly copied out the names of all the saurians, she did not feel as well “satisfied” as she had expected.
It was not till between seven and eight that evening that Carlos set Fayette down at her uncle’s gate.
The roads were rough, and they had been a long time coming the nine miles. Carlos lived at Scrub Hollow, a very forlorn hamlet, three miles further away.
It was a wild March night, with a loud-sounding wind rushing through the upper air. Fayette, as she stood at the gate a moment, and looked out over the confused mass of rounded, rolling hills that formed the dim landscape, felt lonely and half frightened.
Everything was so dim and gray, and seemed so full of mysterious sound! The low roar of increasing streams, the multiplied whisper and rustle of the woods, made the world seem something different from the ordinary daylight earth.
She shook off the fancies that crowded upon her, and walked quickly up to the house, which stood at some distance from the road—a pile of gray buildings, with sharp, many-angled roofs rising against the sky.
A light shone from the “living-room” window.
Fayette opened the door, and was greeted by a cry of joy from young Mrs. Ford.
“O, Fayette! I’m so glad it’s you!” and there was an emphasis as, if the speaker were rather glad it was not some one else.
“I thought I’d come,” said Fayette, kissing her. “How’s aunt?”
“I think she is pretty sick,” said Sue, lowering her voice. “She’s gone to bed.”
“Have you sent Hiram for the doctor?”
“Hiram has gone. I’m all alone. Word came over from Springville, just after Carlos was here, that his father had broken his leg, and he had to go, of course.”
“But why didn’t you tell him to send Dr. Ward over?”
“Mother wouldn’t let me. You know how she hates to send for a doctor, and she thought she’d be better.”
A voice from the next room called to know who was there, and Fayette went in.
Mrs. Ford was in bed, her face drawn and pinched. A look of pain crossed her features as her niece entered. There was disappointment in her voice as she said,—
“Is that you, Fayette?”
“Yes, aunt. I thought I’d come.”
There are women who, in Mrs. Ford’s place, would have been angry with the girl for doing what one dearer had left undone; but Mrs. Ford, if she had such a feeling, was too just to visit it upon Fayette.
“You are a good child,” she said, with uncommon softness, but with a sigh. “Don’t be troubled. I shall get over it by and by.”
But Mrs. Ford did not get over it. The trouble was furious and intense neuralgia; not such as young ladies have when they suffer “awfully” in the morning, and go to a party at night, but blinding, burning pain, reducing the life power every minute, and threatening the heart.
Sue and Fayette tried in vain every remedy in their power. Even Mrs. Ford’s favorite panacea of seven different herbs, steeped in spirits with pepper and spice, utterly failed.
The patient grew worse and worse, and at midnight it was evident that, unless help came speedily, her hours were numbered.
The farm was not on the high road, and their nearest neighbors were two old maiden ladies, a mile away, neither of whom could have been of the least use.
Scrub Hollow lay three miles to the south. A nurse might have been found there, but no physician. Springville, where Dr. Ward lived, was a little further off in the opposite direction.
The road to Springville was rough and lonely, and lay over wind-swept hill and through dark valley, by woods and swamps; for this portion of the southern frontier is even now but thinly settled.
“What shall we do?” said poor Sue, wringing her hands. “What shall we do?”
“There’s only one thing to do,” said Fayette, desperately. “I shall go for the doctor.”
“O, Fayette! Walk all that way alone!”
“I shall ride Phœbe. I can saddle her myself. Father taught me how. I must go, Sue. I can’t let aunt lie here and die, and never try to save her. It’s hard to leave you alone, but it won’t take long. Baby hasn’t waked up once. What a mercy! Don’t say a word, Sue: I must go.”
“O, Fayette!” cried Sue, helplessly; but she made no further objection, and Mrs. Ford had not heard the hurried consultation.
Fayette would give herself no time to think. She was a nervous little thing, and she dreaded the long ride through the windy night more than she had ever feared anything in her life.
She was not a very daring rider, though at the little frontier post where she had passed two years with her parents, her father had taught her to manage a horse with reasonable skill, and she had ridden many a mile with him over the prairie.
“O, if father were here now!” she said, a sob suddenly rising.
Then she was doubtful about her own power to manage Phœbe, the great chestnut mare, the pride of her uncle’s heart, strong, swift, spirited creature that she was.
For two years Phœbe had borne away the prize at state and county fairs, and the horse-racing world had tempted her owner in vain. Fayette had mounted her more than once, and ridden around the yard, and up and down the road, but always with some secret fears. She had never dared even to try a canter; and now to mount at “mirk midnight,” and go, as fast as might be, off into the darkness alone on Phœbe’s back, seemed an awful thing to poor Fayette.
She knew that the mare was gentle, and she had often petted her, and fed her, and led her to water. She did not much doubt but that Phœbe would submit to be saddled and bridled by her hand, but still it was with many a misgiving that she put on her hat and jacket. She did not take time to find her habit, and, lighting the lantern, went out to the barn.
Phœbe was not lying down. Disturbed, perhaps, by the loud-blowing wind, she was wide awake; and as Fayette entered with the light, she turned her head with a low whinny, as though glad to see a friend.
Fayette went into the stall in fear and trembling; but she loosened the halter, and led Phœbe out unresisting.
The mare was so tall, and Fayette was so short, that she was obliged to stand up on a box to slip on the bridle; to which Phœbe submitted, turning her soft, intelligent eyes on the girl with mild, wondering inquiry. The saddle was harder to manage, but Fayette strained at the girth till her wrists ached, and hoped all was right.
Some faint encouragement came to her, as she saw how gently the mare behaved. “O, Phœbe, darling,” said Fayette, “you will be good—I know you will. You are the only one that can help us now.”
Petted Phœbe, used to caresses as a house cat, rubbed her dainty head on Fayette’s shoulder, as if to reassure her.
Poor Fayette put up one brief wordless prayer for help and courage, and then she led Phœbe out of the stable, mounted her by the aid of the horse-block, and rode away into the night.
Sue, watching forlorn, heard the mare’s hoofs beating fainter down the road; and relieved that at least Fayette had got off without accident, listened till the last sound died away on the wind.