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"It's that blanked goat, outer Rocky Canyon beyond, and Polly Harkness! How did she ever come to take up with HIM?" Nevertheless, as soon as the coach reached Rocky Canyon, the story was quickly told by the passengers, corroborated by Yuba Bill, and highly colored by the observer on the box-seat.
It is SO like these people never to have seen it. It seems to be chiefly composed of costermongers and Americans. I got a box-seat on a public coach and went out at ten. We rode for three hours in a procession of donkey shays, omnibuses, coaches, carriages, vans, advertising wagons; every sort of conveyance stretching for sixteen miles, and with people lining the sides to look on.
"Vassili," was my next remark, on observing that he was beginning to nod on the box-seat, "suppose we change seats? Will you?" Vassili agreed, and had no sooner stretched himself out in the body of the vehicle than he began to snore. To me on my new perch, however, a most interesting spectacle now became visible namely, our horses, all of which were familiar to me down to the smallest detail.
She had just arrived from Gumbolt by another vehicle and was now going straight back. As Keith came around, the young woman was evidently preparing to take the box-seat. He was conscious of a feeling of embarrassment, which was not diminished by the fact that Jake Dennison, his old pupil, was also going over. Jake as well as Dave was now living at Gumbolt.
So saying, he held the carriage-door open for Lord Ravenel, who took his place with a subdued and thoughtful air: then mounting the box-seat, John drove, in somewhat melancholy silence, across the snowy, starlit moors to Beechwood. In the home-light. It was a scene glowing almost as those evening pictures at Longfield.
But in trying to penetrate those of the enemy, some melodramatic adventures occurred. It became necessary, indeed, to dodge both the bullets of the Germans and those of the French Francs-tireurs, who paid not the slightest respect either to the Union Jack or to the large white flag which were displayed on either side of Tommy Webb's box-seat.
Evidently the woman was amenable to politeness, for she bustled around and insisted upon making the coffee, which Caesar produced in due time from his hamper under the box-seat, and she laid a cloth on the pine-wood table, and at last, after disappearing for a few minutes into the darkness of a small inner room, reappeared with three silver spoons and two forks in her hand, which she laid carefully down beside the pewter plates on the table with an air of pride as she remarked, addressing no one in particular:
"It was then summer, and the weather very fine; so pleased was I with the country, in which I had never travelled before, that my delight proved equal to my wonder." There are few pleasures in life equal to that of riding on the box-seat of a stagecoach, through a country unknown to you and hearing the driver talk about his horses.
Rovinskaya negligently, yet at the same time intently as well, was looking down upon the stand and the spectators, and her face expressed fatigue, ennui, and perhaps also that satiation with all spectacles, which are such matters of course to celebrities. The splendid, long, slender fingers of her left hand were lying upon the crimson velvet of the box-seat.
"Now help me up with this gentleman," he said to the cabman; "we must put him on the box-seat between us. Take him under the arms, and we'll carry him naturally. He must be awfully drunk!" So they lifted him up the steps, and, after much trouble, got him on the box-seat. Fortunately they were both big men. Then they drove away to police headquarters.