Lygon

“ Lygon leave your home?”
“My God,” said Arthur, “is not that the mystery which you must help me to solve.”
“I repeat, be a man, Arthur. Come.”
“I swear,” said Lygon, “that your meaning is a mystery to me.”
“Arthur,” said Mr. Berry, “it is not kind of you to force me to use words that even hint at shame. But if you will have it so, tell me. Do you believe that Mrs. Lygon left your house with a lover, or to join one?”
The young husband turned a ghastly white, and he felt his limbs tremble under him at the presence of the foul phantom which these words had called up. ”

“ But, unless the bridge could have suddenly given way, speaking became a necessity, and Lygon struggled to answer Urquhart, and make inquiries as to the railway accident about which the latter was supposed to be away from Paris. ”

“ Berry, sorrowfully, “sterner lips than mine must tell you. I cannot undertake a task above my poor strength.”
“Do not fear to speak plainly to me,” said Arthur Lygon, suddenly forgetting his desire to postpone the conversation, and overmastered by his eagerness to snatch at the key of the mystery that was torturing him; “what I may have done, I can bear to hear.”
“You, my poor Arthur!” repeated Mrs. Berry, in a tone between surprise and compassion. “If there is anything to lay to your charge, I, at least, know nothing of it.” ”

“ Nevertheless, his strong consciousness that there was nothing which he could in reason charge against himself as a wrong to his wife, afforded to Lygon an honest consolation, though that conviction in no degree tended to diminish the mystery that lay before him. It was perhaps for the best that Mr. Berry had guided the husband’s thoughts in a given direction, and concentrated them, for the time at least, within a certain limit, for nothing perhaps is more prostrating to the courage of the mind than its being incessantly sent forth in pursuit of a phantom enemy. ”

“ At the end of a year Jourdain had proved Lygon and found him trustworthy, and he raised his position to an equal partnership with an equal share in the business.
“I have no relations,” said Jourdain, “no one but Kineia and you. Captain Morris of my schooner is a good man, but he is almost a stranger to me, though I have known him some years—some men are like that; one never gets to know them beyond a certain point. You have become to me almost as a relation. When I am dead, if we go on as we are going, perhaps you will have the whole business.” ”

“ Lygon was silent for a moment. Then he spoke.
“Kineia, I am ruined. All this around us is as a dream that must go. Kineia, I killed a man once, in anger. I escaped, but that man Packard was present, and now I have to give him everything or he will tell.”
“Everything?” said Kineia.
“I offered him half I possess—as well offer the gray shark half your body when he can get the whole—no not everything. He will leave me a thousand dollars to begin the world again with.”
Kineia was silent.
“He is going back to San Francisco on the schooner to tell—unless——”
“Unless?” ”

“ There was something pathetic in the appeal of the old man to be saved from the humiliation of accusing his wife of falsehood. But Arthur Lygon was by this time wrought to a pitch of excitement that deprived him of sensitiveness to the emotion of another.
“Berry,” he said, sternly, “I would not willingly wrong you by word or deed, but my own position is too terribly painful to allow me to waste time on a mere matter of delicacy. It is evident that you and Mrs. Berry, or one of you, know that which I ought to know, and that you disagree as to the fitness of letting me hear the truth. ”

“ I have said to myself; ‘Your end is approaching, and here is a man who will take care of Kineia if he only learns to love her and if he proves worthy of her.’ That is what I have said. And I have said to myself: ‘You will make a will and every sou you possess they shall possess—schooner and all.’ I made that will last night. It was attested by Ramura and Tonga. It is in my bureau. Had this interview not been satisfactory, I would have torn it up and I would have said to you: ‘Lygon, my friend, take half I possess, if you will, but leave this island.’ There remains only one thing. ”

“ Eef you say you not care a dam to go to jail, so you can put him there, too, becos’ you have not’ing, an’ so dam seeck of everyt’ing, he will t’ink ten t’ousan’ dollar same as one cent to Nic Dupont—ben sur!”
Lygon nodded his head, still holding his hands to the blaze. With ten thousand dollars he could get away into—into another world somewhere, some world where he could forget; as he forgot for a moment this afternoon when the girl said to him, “It is never too late to mend.” ”

“ Travellers in North America descant gloriously on the joys of their first sleigh-ride—the bright day, the brilliant sky, the sparkling snow, the excitement of the delighted rider, shared by the equally delighted horse, who finds he has exchanged the heavy draught of the wheel carriage for the scarce perceptible weight of the skate-borne berline or cutter. ”

“ The carriage, or rather the body of the carriage, stood in its old place, but the swine were gone: they were lords in the forests; rain and drizzle reigned there; the wind tore the leaves off all the trees, and allowed them neither rest nor quiet: the birds of passage were gone.
"The beautiful is past!" said the carriage, and the same sigh passed through the whole of nature, and from the human heart it sounded: "The beautiful is past! with the delightful green forest, with the warm sunshine, and the song of birds—past! ”

“ The air is full of the buoyant freshness of the hills, and one's thoughts turn to pine forests and rushing waters. Over the superb highway where in ancient days stately processions passed to and fro from Spain, our machine glides on with a sweeping, flying motion, until I find myself leaning over and looking for the wings which should project from the centre of each wheel,—winged wheels, surely. ”

“ The picturesque effect of all is as varied as the thoughts which must come in such a place. The rapid motion of the train, the ever-changing point of view, as the track winds its sinuous way by the tortuous river-bed—all gives a sort of motion to the vast, overhanging cliffs, which seem to dance past one, like giants on a frolic.
I remember once making the journey through these passes, going west from Denver. The view from the car windows was not enough for me. ”

“ The noise of wheels rattling swiftly over the gravel walks, horses galloping away to the mountains; then the loud clangor of the hotel bell, and the long-drawn whistle of the locomotive, awaken us betimes in the morning. ”

“ The great wagons struggling upward, tumbling downward from mountain precipice into mountain gorge, hold under their shaking covers every type of westward moving human life. Here is the mother sitting in the wagon-front, her blue eyes gazing outward, wistfully and far, the baby lying on her lap; one wants to touch the baby’s head, it looks so alive and tender and shelterless in all that dust and turmoil of travel. ”

“ One evening a rainbow spanned an entire range of hills with its mighty arch, and from a black hub resting upon the hill-top in the exact centre, black rays diverged upward in perfect regularity to the rainbow's arch and created a very strongly defined and altogether the most majestic, magnificent and startling half-sunk wagon wheel you can imagine. ”

“ The low, monotonous, hum of the flying wheels on the heavy steel rails; the steady, easy, motion of the express as it flew over the miles of well ballasted track; the dim light of the curtained berth, and the quiet of the Pullman, soon lulled the tired traveler to sleep. Mile after mile and mile after mile was marked off, with the steady regularity of time itself, by the splendidly equipped train as it rushed through the darkness with its sleeping passengers. ”

“ When our long train of wagons are stretched out upon the road, we make a formidable looking outfit for the Indians to attack. As far as the eye can reach, before us and behind us, there are wagons, wagons, wagons; some drawn by oxen, some by mules, and some by horses. All fall into the slow, sure gait of the oxen.77 There are whole freight trains drawn by oxen; there are more ox teams than all others. ”

“ A one-horse wagon—for nothing was buggy then, but neglected bedsteads—artistically bilious, and striped like a beetle, with a paneled box high before and behind, like an inverted chapeau, and a seat with a baluster back, softened and graced with a buffalo robe, warm in winter—and in summer also—was one of the wheeled wonders of my boyhood. No sitting in that wagon like a right-angled triangle—room in front for any possible length of leg, and a foot-stove withal—room behind for two or three handfuls of children, and a little hair-trunk with a bit of brass-nail alphabet on the cover. ”

“ As if by magic, our travelers soon found themselves in a first-class carriage, with all their luggage piled on the roof, flying along with great rapidity, while hedges, fields and farm-houses, seen dimly in the half light, reeled past on either side. Though it was ten o’clock post meridian, yet in these northern latitudes, and at this season, it was still twilight. The carriage in which our travelers found themselves was in many respects like the inside of a large family coach, only it was much more capacious than any such vehicle. ”

“ The train lumbered on, stopping often and long, as the habit of goods-trains is, sweeping the snow away with its cow-switcher, and rumbling through the deep heart of the mountains, with its lamps aglow like the eyes of a dog in a night of frost. ”

“ How many a man’s life has centred about the waggon! As a child he rides in it as a treat to the hay-field with his father; as a lad he walks beside the leader, and gets his first ideas of the great world when they visit the market town. As a man he takes command and pilots the ship for many a long, long year. When he marries, the waggon, lent for his own use, brings home his furniture. ”

“ We found an old horse running about, which seemed to be ownerless, and an abandoned wagon, and proposed to take our journey with the aid of these, in faint remembrance of days of peace, when the wagon trundled over smooth roads, grass-lined, and wound in dusty quiet by the habitations of civilization. ”

“ When looking at these curious articles, one of which is exactly the shape of a carriage-wheel, [141] the thought involuntarily strikes me that they are symbols of the sun’s chariot, which, as is well known, is symbolized in the Rigvêda by a wheel, and that all and each of these articles met with in the upper strata (although their form deviates from that of a wheel on account of their greater thickness) cannot be anything but degenerated representations of the sun’s wheel. ”

“ I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular. Their train of clouds stretching far behind and rising higher and higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to Boston, conceals the sun for a minute and casts my distant field into the shade, a celestial train beside which the petty train of cars which hugs the earth is but the barb of the spear. ”

“ While threading the way through the intricate labyrinth of waggons, stages, falling horses, and locked wheels, it is highly unpleasant for the denizens of private carriages to find the end of a pole through the back of the equipage, or to be addressed by the coachman, "Massa, dat big waggon is pulling off my wheel." ”

“ Two acts remained for me to perform before I shook the dust of Reno from my feet. One was to catch the blind baggage on the westbound overland that night. The other was first to get something to eat. Even youth will hesitate at an all-night ride, on an empty stomach, outside a train that is tearing the atmosphere through the snow-sheds, tunnels, and eternal snows of heaven-aspiring mountains. ”

“ THE TUNNEL OF TRÜBAU.
Amblers have not more prejudices and superstitions than railroad travellers. All the preferences for the winning places, the lucky pack, the shuffling cut, &c., have their representatives among the prevailing notions of those who “fly by steam.”
“I always sit with my back to the engine,” cries one.
“I always travel as far from the engine as possible,” exclaims another.
“I never trust myself behind the luggage train,” adds a third. ”

“ The winds lose a little of their fierceness as they drop into the valley, and they seem to have left behind them all the sounds of the outer world which they usually bear. If now and then they waft hitherward the long call of a locomotive, they soften it till it is only a dreamy reminder. ”

“ Once more they are stretching their teams along a travelled road—where a half-score of wheeled vehicles must have passed before them. And not long before: the wheel-tracks are of recent impress—the hoof-prints of the animals fresh as if made within the hour. A train of waggons, not unlike their own, must have passed over the burnt prairie! ”

“ The Fast Mail Where the rails converge to the station yard She stands one moment, breathing hard, And then, with a snort and a clang of steel, She settles her strength to the stubborn wheel, And out, through the tracks that lead astray, Cautiously, slowly she picks her way, And gathers her muscle and guards her nerve, When she swings her nose to the westward curve, And takes the grade, which slopes to the sky, With a bound of speed and a conquering cry. ”

“ In the city among the walls the overland passenger train is choked and the pistons hiss and the wheels curse. On the prairie the overland flits on phantom wheels and the sky and the soil between them muffle the pistons and cheer the wheels. ”