• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

"I hope so, ma’am."

I handed him the three dollars, and we went up the stairs. Three or four doors were open, and I peeked into the rooms. They were dirty, but they had beds and floors and solid walls. I chose the corner one, so that if we talked, it was less likely that anyone would hear us. We went in; I closed the door; Lorna set down our things. There was nothing for it now, and we both knew it. I felt so disheartened that I couldn’t even speak. We looked hard at each other, and I saw that I had done it again, that is, taken a stranger for a companion and set out on a journey whose destination I had no notion of. I hadn’t any idea what Lorna was thinking. I sat on the bed and Lorna sat on the chair, and we were quiet for a long time.

CHAPTER 26

I Sully My Character

Reverses of fortune, in this land, are so frequent and unexpected, and the habits of the people are so migratory, that there are very many in every part of the Country, who, having seen all their temporal plans and hopes crushed, are now pining among strangers, bereft of wonted comforts, without friends, and without the sympathy and society, so needful to wounded spirits. —p. 257

I COULD NOT OVERCOME the conviction that Lorna would be recognized in Independence by someone who had seen her at the plantation, and so I left her in the room, sitting in the chair, wedged against the door, while I went out to dispose of the pony and sell my belongings. The hotel was around the corner from a livery stable, so I put the pony and the cart there for a while—fifty cents. Not far from there was an outfitter’s store; they were everywhere about and selling every item, new and old, from wheels and wagons down to fine linen handkerchiefs and lengths of French lace. There were even picture frames that still contained painted miniatures and daguerreotypes of their owners, a gallery of portraits of those who themselves had gone on to unknown fates but here awaited some sort of final disposition of their images. There was far more than I had ever seen in Horace’s store in Quincy, and that was a measure, perhaps, of all the things that men and women thought they couldn’t do without when they left their homes in the east and then decided that they must do without before they headed onto the prairie, then the desert and the mountains beyond. I wondered if the backtrackers heading east against the flow ever came through again, looking for their old things, trying to remake, if only in part, the life they’d thought to leave behind but now hoped to take up afresh.

The proprietor stood behind his counter, smiling. When he saw I had goods rather than money, his face fell. Ah. My goods. There were few enough of them. I pulled out the dress. He looked at it impassively and set it aside. I laid the four books on the table, three of Thomas’s and my Miss Beecher. He opened them and saw that the pages were stiff and discolored. He noted that Miss Beecher herself had written me a note in the flyleaf of her treatise: "To my student, with all best wishes," and he was unimpressed. He set the book aside. From my pocket, I pulled Thomas’s watch. It was warm, as I had been holding it. I set it on the counter, and he picked it up, opened the case, looked at it, shook it, noted the time, and compared it with his own watch, which he took out of his watch pocket. All he said was, "Right time," then he set it aside, and I had the sense of it apart from me, cooling. All the same, I didn’t grieve for it then. It was heavy with too many memories and inner pangs. I felt almost relieved to give it up.

And I was relieved to give up the pistol, the cartridges I had made, and the percussion caps. I pulled them out of the bag and laid them gently on the counter, and for the first time the proprietor looked pleased. He was a western man, after all, and he ran his hand over the barrel and the stock, then he touched the hammer and the trigger with his forefinger. He said, "Don’t git too many of these in. Most folks are wanting to keep