Imagine the scene at that moment, Tom. The driver was undressing himself
coolly on the roadside, to examine a kick he had just received from one
of the horses; James was holding the beasts by the head, lashing, as
they were, all the time; I was running frantically to and fro, to seek
for a stone to drive in the linch-pin, which was all but out; while
Mrs. D. and the girls, half suffocated between smoke and passion,
were screaming and coughing in chorus. By dint of violent bounding and
jerking, the wheel was wrenched clean off the axle at last, and down
went the whole conveniency on one side, our Polish friend assisting
himself out of the window by stepping over Mrs. D.'s head, as she lay
fainting within. I had, however, enough to do without thinking of him,
for the door being jammed tight would not open, and I was obliged to
pull Mrs. D. and the girls out by the window. The beasts, by the same
time, had kicked themselves free of everything but the pole, with which
appendage they scampered gayly away towards Brussels; James shouting
with laughter, as if it was the best joke he had ever known. When we
began to look about us and think what was best to be done, we discovered
that the Count had taken a French leave of us, or rather a Polish one;
for he had carried off James's cloak and umbrella along with him.
We were now all wet through, our shoes soaked, not a dry stitch on
us,--all except the coachee, who, having taken off a considerable
portion of his wearables, deposited them in the coach, while he ran up
and down the road, wringing his hands, and crying over his misfortune in
a condition that I am bound to say was far more pictorial than decent.
It was in vain that Mrs. D. opened her parasol as the last refuge of
offended modesty. The wind soon converted it into something like a
convolvulus, so that she was fain once more to seek shelter inside the
conveyance, which now lay pensively over on one side, against a muddy
bank.
Such little accidents as these are not uncommon in our own country; but
when they do occur, you are usually within reach of either succor
or shelter. There is at least a house or a cabin within hail of you.
Nothing of the kind was there here. This "Bois de Cambre," as they call
it, is a dense wood of beech or pine trees, intersected here and there
by certain straight roads, without a single inhabitant along the line.
A solitary diligence may pass once in the twenty-four hours, to or
from Wâvre. A Waterloo tourist party is occasionally seen in spring or
summer, but, except these, scarcely a traveller is ever to be met with
along this dreary tract These reassuring facts were communicated to us
by the coachee, while he made his toilet beside the window.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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