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Page 62
I was stepping upon the gate-head to walk across it. It took but an
instant, not nearly all the ten seconds, to swing down by my arms into
the lock, keeping myself hanging by my hands, to catch with my right
foot the bight of the rope and lift it off the treacherous iron, to kick
the whole into the water, and then to scramble up the wet lock-side
again. I got a little wet, but that was nothing. I ran down the
tow-path, beckoned to the skipper, who sheered his boat up to the shore,
and I jumped on board.
At that moment, reader, Fausta was sitting in a yellow chair on the
deck of that musty old boat, crocheting from a pattern in _Grodey's
Lady's Book_. I remember it as I remember my breakfast of this morning.
Not that I fell in love with her, nor did I fall in love with my
breakfast; but I knew she was there. And that was the first time I ever
saw her. It is many years since, and I have seen her every day from that
evening to this evening. But I had then no business with her. My affair
was with him whom I have called the skipper, by way of adapting this
fresh-water narrative to ears accustomed to Marryat and Tom Cringle. I
told him that I had to go to New York; that I had not time to walk, and
had not money to pay; that I should like to work my passage to Troy, if
there were any way in which I could; and to ask him this I had come on
board.
"Waal," said the skipper, "'taint much that is to be done, and Zekiel
and I calc'late to do most of that and there's that blamed boy beside--"
This adjective "blamed" is the virtuous oath by which simple people, who
are improving their habits, cure themselves of a stronger epithet, as
men take to flagroot who are abandoning tobacco.
"He ain't good for nothin', as you see," continued the skipper
meditatively, "and you air, anybody can see that," he added. "Ef you've
mind to come to Albany, you can have your vittles, poor enough they are
too; and ef you are willing to ride sometimes, you can ride. I guess
where there's room for three in the bunks there's room for four. 'Taint
everybody would have cast off that blamed hawser-rope as neat as you
did."
From which last remark I inferred, what I learned as a certainty as we
travelled farther, that but for the timely assistance I had rendered him
I should have plead for my passage in vain.
This was my introduction to Fausta. That is to say, she heard the whole
of the conversation. The formal introduction, which is omitted in no
circle of American life to which I have ever been admitted, took place
at tea half an hour after, when Mrs. Grills, who always voyaged with her
husband, brought in the flapjacks from the kitchen. "Miss Jones," said
Grills, as I came into the meal, leaving Zekiel at the tiller,--"Miss
Jones, this is a young man who is going to Albany. I don't rightly know
how to call your name, sir." I said my name was Carter. Then he said,
"Mr. Carter, this is Miss Jones. Mrs. Grills, Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter,
Mrs. Grills. She is my wife." And so our _partie carr�e_ was established
for the voyage.
In these days there are few people who know that a journey on a canal is
the pleasantest journey in the world. A canal has to go through fine
scenery. It cannot exist unless it follow through the valley of a
stream. The movement is so easy that, with your eyes shut, you do not
know you move. The route is so direct, that when you are once shielded
from the sun, you are safe for hours. You draw, you read, you write, or
you sew, crochet, or knit. You play on your flute or your guitar,
without one hint of inconvenience. At a "low bridge" you duck your head
lest you lose your hat,--and that reminder teaches you that you are
human. You are glad to know this, and you laugh at the memento. For the
rest of the time you journey, if you are "all right" within, in elysium.
I rode one of those horses perhaps two or three hours a day. At locks I
made myself generally useful. At night I walked the deck till one
o'clock, with my pipe or without it, to keep guard against the
lock-thieves. The skipper asked me sometimes, after he found I could
"cipher," to disentangle some of the knots in his bills of lading for
him. But all this made but a little inroad in those lovely autumn days,
and for the eight days that we glided along,--there is one blessed level
which is seventy miles long,--I spent most of my time with Fausta. We
walked together on the tow-path to get our appetites for dinner and for
supper. At sunrise I always made a cruise inland, and collected the
gentians and black alder-berries and colored leaves, with which she
dressed Mrs. Grill's table. She took an interest in my wretched
sketch-book, and though she did not and does not draw well, she did show
me how to spread an even tint, which I never knew before. I was working
up my French. She knew about as much and as little as I did, and we
read Mad. Reybaud's Clementine together, guessing at the hard words,
because we had no dictionary.
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