The Robber Bridegroom (5 page)

"Consider it done/' said Goat, and at once he jumped in a bush to hide.

Early the next morning, before the sun was up, the stepmother waked Rosamond and shook her till her bones rattled.

"Out of your bed, lazy girl/' she said. 'Tour father has left already to ride to Rodney's Landing. He's buying the whisky, from Father O'Connell, for Jamie Lockhart to drink tonight when he brings him home for supper, and he's left you in my charge. So get up and milk the cows."

"Why should the slaves not milk the cows, for they do it every day and I have never done it before," said Rosamond, for it seemed to her that she had not got her dream dreamed out.

"Silence!" cried the stepmother. "I am punishing you, you stupid thing, for what happened yesterday. Have you forgotten already?"

So Rosamond got out of her bed, and while she was brushing her hair and tying it up, the stepmother made off with the little locket on the

silver chain which had belonged to the girl's own mother, and Rosamond never missed it. Then Salome hurried away to her room hunched like an old rabbit over her prize.

Rosamond dressed and said her prayers and then she was out of the house and in the paddock milking the cows. But she found she did not mind it at all; for the creatures allowed her to lean her head against their soft foreheads, where their horns stood shining like the crescent moon, and they put our their warm tongues on her cheek, and not a one of them kicked her over for not knowing how a cow is milked, but let her go on with it in her own way.

When the rooster was crowing from the rooftop, Rosamond came round the house carrying the pail with the sound of the foam in it. The smell of night had not yet returned to the woods; and there was a star shining in the daylight. The gate was there at Rosamond's hand, and she touched it and it opened, and she went through; and up at the window was something dark looking down, her stepmother or the cat.

Rosamond found herself before she knew it at the edge of the forest, and with the next step the house was out of sight. And she was still carrying the pail of milk in her hand.

It was so early that the green was first there, then not there in the tree tops, but green seemed to beat on the air like a pulse. Once a redbird gave a call, for he too had been waked up in the dark, and had been purely compelled to sing this one note before the prism light of day would divert it into the old song. But Rosamond was not led by him to sing for herself, and only walked on and on into the woods.

The next sounds she heard were distant hoof-beats, lapping like the river waves against the sunrise. It was Jamie Lockhart coming on red Orion, the same as he had been before, in his robber's rags. He rode right up to her, and reached down his arms and lifted her up, pail of milk and all, into the saddle with scarcely a pause in his speed.

Up the ridge they went, and a stream of mist made a circle around them. Then it unwound

and floated below in the hollows. The dark cedars sprang from the black ravine, the hanging fruit trees shone ahead on their crests and were hidden again by the cedars. The morning sky rolled slowly like a dark wave they were overtaking, but it had the sound of thunder. Over and over, the same hill seemed to rise beneath the galloping horse. Over and under was another sound, like horses following—was it her father, or an echo?—faster and faster, as they rode the faster.

Rosamond's hair lay out behind her, and Jamie's hair was flying too. The horse was the master of everything. He went like an arrow with the distance behind him and the dark wood closing together. On Rosamond's arm was the pail of milk, and yet so smoothly did they travel that not a single drop was spilled. Rosamond's cloak filled with wind, and then in the one still moment in the middle of a leap, it broke from her shoulder like a big bird, and dropped away below. Red as blood the horse rode the ridge, his mane and tail straight out in the wind, and it

was the fastest kidnaping that had ever been in that part of the country.

Birds flew up like sparks from a flint. Nearer and nearer they came to the river, to the highest point on the bluff. A foam of gold leaves filled the willow trees. Taut as a string stretched over the ridge, the path ran higher and higher. Rosamond's head fell back, till only the treetops glittered in her eyes, which held them like two mirrors. So the sun mounted the morning cloud, and lighted the bluff and then the valley, which opened and showed the river, shining beneath another river of mist, winding and all the colors of flowers.

Then the red horse stood stock-still, and Jamie Lockhart lifted Rosamond down. The wild plum trees were like rolling smoke between him and the river, but he broke the branches and the plums rained down as he carried her under. He stopped and laid her on the ground, where, straight below, the river flowed as slow as sand, and robbed her of that which he had left her the day before.

Now when Rosamond got home from that expedition, the first thing Salome said to her was, "Well, where is the milk?"

Rosamond, whose head was spinning like a spindle, and who had not had her breakfast yet, said, "I dare say the red horse drank it up/'

Then the stepmother knew everything. "You needn't tell me the story now/' she said, "for I could tell it to you/' and she licked her lip like a bear after a tasty dish of honey. Then she slapped the girl and dragged her into the house by her heels and propped her by the brooms and buckets and looked her up and down, and thought what she could do to her. And it was too bad the way she treated her the whole day.

"The house must be spotless for the arrival of the stranger/' said Salome, "and it's tonight Jamie Lockhart is coming to deliver you from this fiend, though it's late in the day for that. And so it is up to you to wash the floor and polish the row of dishes and candlesticks and put fresh candles in, and sweep the hearth and lay the table and bring the water and clean the fowls

and catch the pig and roast him, and get the loaves to baking in the ashes/'

But if she thought Rosamond would open her mouth, she was sadly mistaken. The girl never complained a time, but took the beatings and the abusings with the tranquillity of an Indian savage, and cared nothing for how she might look.

"Yes, stepmother/' she would say every time, and set to with no more care than if she were only threading a needle.

At dark, Clement rode home from Rodney, and Jamie Lockhart was riding beside him.

Salome was there at the door, in a great fancy gown and heels on her shoes to tilt her up, and with jewelry all over her so that she gave out spangles the way a porcupine gives out quills. So Jamie straightaway got out his presents, and for Salome he had brought a little gold snuffbox, which was just right.

Then at the top of her lungs Salome called Rosamond in from the kitchen, and if she had thought the girl had been making herself bea* 3 -

tiful for Jamie Lockhart, she was badly mistaken. For Rosamond was in a sad state to be seen, with ashes all in her hair and soot on either cheek and her poor tongue all but hanging out, and her dress burned to a fringe all around from the coals, and altogether looking like a poor bewitched creature that could only go in circles.

So then Jamie saw Rosamond and they never recognized each other in the world, for the tables were turned; this time he was too clean and she was too dirty. You would think there had never been two lovers on earth with less memory of meeting in the past than Jamie and Rosamond. So he gave her a glance as if she were the peg on the wall where he would hang his hat if he had one, with never a moment's notice of that true worth which he had sampled, and handed her over his gift, which was nothing less than a paper of the pins taken from her own fine dress he had stolen.

Rosamond was so ragged and dirty that she could do no more than stand there in her tracks, and Clement had to speak up for her and say,

"Thank you kindly, and the sweet little thing stands in need of pins to be sure, for she has lost them all as I will tell you with the whisky/'

But Rosamond only batted her eyes and dropped her mouth open. As for Jamie, he shone like the sun from cleanliness, youth, wisdom, and satisfaction, and with the dirt and stain gone from his cheeks he was the perfect stranger to the bandit. So if Jamie did not see his kidnaped beauty standing before him, neither did Rosamond see the first sign of her dark lover, and that was that.

Jamie, whose motto was "Take first and ask afterward," had not learned Rosamond's name or where she lived, with her father and seven vengeful brothers, thinking to find out that information on his next ride through the vicinity of the indigo field, doing one thing at a time according to his practice. And besides, it was either love or business that traveled on his mind, never both at once, and this night it was business. For he had not let Clement go that first time without a memorandum of catching him

again and finding more. He took a little walk around the room and began counting up to himself what the man's fortune might be, in case he could get hold of it all.

Then Salome told Rosamond to make haste in serving up the dinner, and she did, just as she was, in her rags. With her own hands she spread the abundance on the table and stood by and waited while the others ate and ate, and kept Jamie's glass filled to the top and even spilling over. And in between times she ran around the table and fanned with the peafowl feather fan to keep the flies away—but in a witless manner, so that once or twice she gave Jamie Lockhart a knock on the head. Clement was almost made to think at one time, when she turned a dipper of gravy into Jamie's lap, that this poor daughter of his did not wish to be rescued. And never once did she even say "I beg your pardon" to him.

Every time Clement said, "Why not take your proper seat, daughter, and let the servant wait upon us?" Rosamond would simply back out of

sight, and finally the stepmother said, "She is doing this of her own choice, no doubt, to allow you a chance to talk, for it is a delicate matter with her to be rescued from a bandit, it never having happened to her before/' And Jamie did not turn a hair, which made the old woman bite her lip.

"Leave us then, wife, since it is time for earnest conversation/' said Clement.

Then Clement told Jamie Lockhart all—all, that is, that he knew himself, for the prize bird of the information was not yet in his net. And Jamie, gathering that some bandit had stolen some daughter's clothes on some spot in the forest wilds, thought that he must truly be a success in the world now, for the rest of them were copying him.

"Will you save the poor girl from this brigand, my friend?" asked Clement. "A reward of great price will be yours if you find the fellow and send such a menace to our womanhood out of the world/'

"I cannot remain indifferent to such a re-

quest/' said Jamie. 'What is the reward you mention?"

"Deliver my daughter/' said Clement, "and she is yours/'

Then Jamie gave a start, you may be sure, to think of the poor disgraced creature that had let a peafowl feather fan knock his head off, as being his own wife. His eyes looked to the side, like a horse's near the quicksands, and the next moment he jumped up and said, "I must think first, for I am a busy man." And he began walking up and down.

Salome, whose ear had been at the crack, came to take his arm a while, and gave him a raring wink, and spoke a word to him of Rosamond's dreadful pride and conceit and how she needed her lesson, and he did not like the sound of that.

Then Clement took him by the other arm and said that a young thing so sweet and pure as his daughter, who sang the whole day, long, and only looked this way for the one night because something had no doubt gone wrong in the kitchen, was more of a reward in herself than

his house and lands put together, and Jamie could not say he liked the sound of that either.

Then Rosamond herself came forward, and putting her finger in her mouth like a little long-drawered creature from a covered wagon, said:

"Here I stand all ragged and dirty! If you don't come kiss me I'll run like a turkey!"

And when he did, she had mustard on her mouth. And that was the last straw.

"Perhaps," said Jamie to himself as he walked up and down, "I should marry her, for she is rich and will be richer and then die, and all things come to him who waits, but that is not my motto. Why the devil could she not have been beautiful, like that little piece of sugar cane I found for myself in the woods? And it is not as if he had a choice of daughters, but the one only." He thought on, and said to himself, "The wife of a successful bandit should be a lady fit to wear fine dresses and jewels, and present an appearance to the world when we go to New Orleans, and make the rest rave with their jeal-

ousy. This young creature, however rich, is only a child with a dirty face, and I think the cat has her tongue as well, or the devil her brains."

And besides all that, it is a fact that in his heart Jamie carried nothing less than a dream of true love—something of gossamer and roses, though on this topic he never held conversation with himself, or let the information pass to a soul. And being a man of enterprise in everything, he had collected, whenever it happened to be convenient, numbers of clothes and jewels for this very unknown, that would deck a queen and be missed if a queen left them off. But as for finding this dream on earth, that Jamie was saving until the last, and he had done no work on it as yet except for that very morning; though he hated to waste that.

"What is your answer?" said Clement.

"Well, I will save her, then marry her/' said Jamie, ''but not now; for I must ride far tonight. I will do it tomorrow."

Clement took his hand and shook it, unable to thank him. Then the stepmother stuck out her

wrist to him as if she wanted her hand kissed in the city manner, and when Jamie obliged her, he bowed, and she saw a little bit of berry juice sticking behind his ear. So she guessed everything.

"I wonder what presents he will be bringing next/' said she in a loud whisper.

This angered Clement, who said to her, "You will find that men who are generous the way he is generous have needs to match."