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In this way matters went on for some time. On a fine autumnal afternoon,
Ichabod, in pensive mood, sat enthroned on the lofty stool whence he usually
watched all the concerns of his little schoolroom. His scholars were all busily
intent upon their books, or slyly whispering behind them with one eye kept upon
the master; and a kind of buzzing stillness reigned. It was suddenly interrupted
by the appearance of a Negro, mounted on the back of a ragged colt. He came
clattering up to the school door with an invitation to Ichabod to attend a
merrymaking to be held that evening at Mynheer Van Tassel's.
All was now bustle and hubbub in the lately quiet schoolroom. The scholars
were hurried through their lessons, without stopping at trifles; those who were
tardy had a smart application now and then in the rear to quicken their speed,
and the whole school was turned loose an hour before the usual time.
The gallant Ichabod now spent at least an extra half hour at his toilet,
brushing and furbishing up his only suit, of rusty black. That he might make his
appearance in the true style ofa cavalier, he borrowed a horse from the farmer
with whom he was staying. The animal was a broken-down plow horse that had
outlived almost everything but his viciousness. He was gaunt and shaggy, with a
ewe neck and a head like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and
knotted with burrs; one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and spectral,
but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil. In his day he must have had fire
and mettle, if we may judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder.
Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short
stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his
sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers'; he carried his whip perpendicularly
in his hand, like a scepter, and, as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arms
was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A small wool hat rested nearly
on the top of his nose, and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to
the horse's tail.
Around him nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always
associate with the idea of abundance. As he jogged slowly on his way, his eye
ranged with delight over the treasures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld
vast stores of apples gathered into baskets and barrels for the market, others
heaped up in rich piles for the cider press. Farther on he beheld great fields
of Indian corn, and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their
fair round bellies to the sun. He passed the fragrant buckwheat fields, and as
he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty slapjacks, well
buttered and garnished with honey by the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina
Van Tassel. It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the
Eleer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the
adjacent country. Old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats
and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their
brisk withered little dames, in close crimped caps, longwaisted short gowns,
homespun petticoats, and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom
lasses, almost as antiquated in dress as their mothers, excepting where a straw
hat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white frock gave symptoms of city innovation.
The sons, in short square-skirted coats with rows of stupendous brass buttons,
and their hair generally queued with an eelskin in the fashion of the times,
eelskins being esteemed as a potent nourisher and strengthener of the hair. Brom
Bones, however, was the hero of the scene, having come to the gathering on his
favorite steed, Daredevil, a creature, like himself, full of mettle and
mischief, and which no one but himself could manage.
Ichabod was a kind and thankful creature, whose spirits rose with eating as
some men's do with drink. He could not help rolling his large eyes round him on
the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea table in the sumptuous time of
autumn. Such heaped-up platters of cakes and crullers of various kinds, known
only to experienced Dutch housewives! And then there were apple pies and peach
pies and pumpkin pies, besides slices of ham and smoked beef; and, moreover,
delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces, not
to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens; together with bowls of milk and
cream, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst.
Ichabod chuckled with the possibility that he might one day be lord of all this
scene of almost unimaginable luxury and splendor. Then, he thought, how soon
he'd turn his back upon the old schoolhouse and snap his fingers in the face of
every niggardly patron!
And now the sound of the music from the hall summoned to the dance. The
musician was an old gray-headed Negro, who had been the itinerant orchestra of
the neighborhood for more than half a century. His instrument was as old and
battered as himself. He accompanied every movement of the bow with a motion of
the head, bowing almost to the ground and stamping with his foot whenever a
fresh couple were to start.
Ichabod prided himself upon his dancing as much as upon his vocal powers.
Not a limb, not a fiber about him was idle as his loosely hung frame in full
motion went clattering about the room. How could the flogger of urchins be
otherwise than animated and joyous! The lady of his heart was his partner in the
dance, and smiling graciously in reply to all his amorous oglings; while Brom
Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy, sat brooding by himself in one
corner.
When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was attracted to a knot of the sager
folks, who, with old Van Tassel, sat smoking at one end of the piazza, gossiping
over former times, and drawing out long stories about ghosts and apparitions,
mourning cries and wailings, seen and heard in the neighborhood. Some mention
was made of the woman in white, who haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was
often heard to shriek on winter nights before a storm, having perished there in
the snow. The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favorite
specter of Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman, who had been heard several
times of late near the bridge that crossed the brook in the woody dell next to
the church; and, it was said, tethered his horse nightly among the graves in the
churchyard.
The tale was told of old Brouwer, a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts,
how he met the horseman returning from his foray into Sleepy Hollow, and was
obliged to get up behind him; how they galloped over hill and swamp until they
reached the church bridge. There the horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton,
threw old Brouwer into the brook, and sprang away over the treetops with a clap
of thunder.
This story was matched by Brom Bones, who made light of the Galloping
Hessian as an arrant jockey. He affirmed that, on returning one night from a
neighboring village, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper; that he had
offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should have won it, too; but
just as they came to the church bridge, the Hessian bolted, and vanished in a
flash of fire.
The revel now gradually broke up. The old farmers gathered together their
families in their wagons, and were heard for some time rattling along over the
distant hills. Some of the damsels mounted behind their favorite swains, and
their lighthearted laughter, mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed along
the silent woodlands. Ichabod only lingered behind, according to the custom of
country lovers, to have a tete-a-tete with the heiress, fully convinced that he
was now on the highroad to success. Something, however, I fear me, must have
gone wrong, for he sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air
quite desolate and chopfallen. Oh, these women! these women! Was Katrina's
encouragement of the poor pedagogue all a mere trick to secure her conquest of
his rival! Let it suffice to say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of one who
had been sacking a henroost, rather than a fair lady's heart. Without looking to
the right or left, he went straight to the stable, and with several hearty cuffs
and kicks, roused his steed most uncourteously.
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It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavyhearted and
crestfallen, pursued his travel homeward. Far below, the Tappan Zee spread its
dusky waters. In the dead hush of midnight he could hear the faint barking of a
watchdog from the opposite shore. The night grew darker and darker; the stars
seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from
his sight. He had never felt so lonely and dismal.
All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard earlier now came
crowding upon his recollection. He would, moreover, soon be approaching the very
place where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid.
Just ahead, where a small brook crossed the road, a few rough logs lying
side by side served for a bridge. A group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick
with wild grapevines, threw a cavernous gloom over it. Ichabod gave Gunpowder
half a score of kicks in his starveling ribs, and attempted to dash briskly
across the bridge; but instead of starting forward, the perverse old animal only
plunged to the opposite side of the road into a thicket of brambles. He came to
a stand just by the bridge, with a suddenness that nearly sent his rider
sprawling over his head. Just at this moment, in the dark shadow on the margin
of the brook, Ichabod beheld something huge, misshapen, black, and towering. It
stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic monster
ready to spring upon the traveler.
The hair of the affrighted schoolteacher rose upon his head, but, summoning
up a show of courage, he demanded in stammering accents, "Who are you!" He
received no reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still
there was no answer. Once more he cudgeled the sides of the inflexible Gunpowder
and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with involuntary fervor into a psalm tune.
Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion and, with a scramble
and a bound, stood at once in the middle of the road. He appeared to be a
horseman of large dimensions, and mounted on a black horse of powerful frame. He
kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old
Gunpowder, who had now got over his waywardness.
Ichabod quickened his steed, in hopes of leaving this midnight companion
behind. The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod
pulled up, and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind - the other did the
same. His heart began to sink within him. There was something in the stranger's
moody silence that was appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On
mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow traveler in
relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was
horrorstruck on perceiving that he was headless! But his horror was still more
increased on observing that the stranger's head was carried before him on the
pommel of the saddle.
Ichabod's terror rose to desperation; he rained a shower of kicks and blows
upon Gunpowder, hoping to give his companion the slip, but the specter started
full jump with him. Away then they dashed, stones flying and sparks flashing at
every bound. Ichabod's flimsy garments fluttered in the air, as he stretched his
long lank body away over his horse's head in the eagerness of his flight.
They had now reached that stretch of the road which descends to Sleepy
Hollow, shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the
famous church bridge just before the green knoll on which stands the church.
Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon, plunged headlong downhill. As
yet his panic had given his unskillful rider an apparent advantage in the chase;
but just as he had got halfway through the hollow, the girths of the saddle gave
way, and Ichabod felt it slipping from under him. He had just time to save
himself by clasping old Gunpowder round the neck when the saddle fell to the
earth. He had much ado to maintain his seat, sometimes slipping on one side,
sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse's
backbone, with a violence that he feared would cleave him asunder.
An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hopes that the church
bridge was at hand. He saw the whitewashed walls of the church dimly glaring
under the trees beyond. He recollected the place where Brom Bones's ghostly
competitor had disappeared. "If I can but reach that bridge," thought Ichabod,
"I am safe." Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind
him; he even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convuisive kick in the
ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding
planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see
if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and
brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, in the very act
of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile,
but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash - he was
tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin
rider passed by like a whirlwind.
The next morning old Gunpowder was found without his saddle, and with the
bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the grass at his master's gate. Ichabod
did not make his appearance at breakfast; dinner hour came, but no Ichabod. The
boys assembled at the schoolhouse, and strolled idly about the banks of the
brook; but no schoolmaster. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent
investigation they came upon the saddle trampled in the dirt. The tracks of
horses' hoofs deeply dented in the road were traced to the bridge, beyond which,
on the bank of a broad part of the brook, was found the hat of the unfortunate
Ichabod, and close beside it a shattered pumpkin. The brook was searched, but
the body of the schoolmaster was not to be discovered.
The mysterious event caused much speculation at the church on the following
Sunday. Knots of gazers were collected in the churchyard, at the bridge, and at
the spot where the hat and pumpkin had been found. They shook their heads, and
came to the conclusion that Ichabod had been carried off by the Galloping
Hessian. As he was a bachelor, and in nobody's debt, nobody troubled his head
anymore about him. It is true, an old farmer who had been down to New York on a
visit several years after brought home the intelligence that Ichabod Crane was
still alive; that he had only changed his quarters to a distant part of the
country, had kept school and studied law at the same time, had turned
politician, and finally had been made a justice of the Ten Pound Court. Brom
Bones too, who shortly after his rival's disappearance conducted the blooming
Katrina to the altar, was observed to look exceedingly knowing whenever the
story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the
mention of the pumpkin, which led some to suspect that he knew more about the
matter than he chose to tell.
The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters,
maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means. The
bridge became more than ever an object of superstitious awe, and that may be the
reason why the road has been altered of late years, so as to approach the church
by the border of the millpond. The schoolhouse, being deserted, soon fell to
decay, and was reported to be haunted by the the ghost of the unfortunate
teacher; and the plowboy, loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has
often fancied Ichabod's voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune
among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow. |
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发表于 2016-7-10 11:23:07