4146 lines
191 KiB
Plaintext
4146 lines
191 KiB
Plaintext
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PARNASSUS ON WHEELS, by CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
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Digitized by Cardinalis Press, C.E.K.
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Posted to Wiretap in July 1993, as parnass.txt.
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Italics are represented as _italics_.
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This text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN.
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PARNASSUS ON WHEELS
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BY
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CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
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GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers
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By arrangement with
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Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
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Copyright 1917
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To
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H.B.F. and H.F.M.
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"Trusty, dusky, vivid,true"
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A LETTER TO
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David Grayson, Esq.
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OF HEMPFIELD, U. S. A.
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MY DEAR SIR,
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Although my name appears on the title page, the real author of
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this book is Miss Helen McGill (now Mrs. Roger Mifflin), who
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told me the story with her own inimitable vivacity. And on her
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behalf I want to send to you these few words of acknowledgment.
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Mrs. Mifflin, I need hardly say, is unskilled in the arts of
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authorship: this is her first book, and I doubt whether she
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will ever write another. She hardly realized, I think, how
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much her story owes to your own delightful writings. There
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used to be a well-thumbed copy of "Adventures in Contentment"
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on her table at the Sabine Farm, and I have seen her pick it
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up, after a long day in the kitchen, read it with chuckles,
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and say that the story of you and Harriet reminded her of
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herself and Andrew. She used to mutter something about
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"Adventures in Discontentment" and ask why Harriet's side of
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the matter was never told? And so when her own adventure came
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to pass, and she was urged to put it on paper, I think she
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unconsciously adopted something of the manner and matter that
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you have made properly yours.
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Surely, sir, you will not disown so innocent a tribute! At any
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rate, Miss Harriet Grayson, whose excellent qualities we have
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all so long admired, will find in Mrs. Mifflin a kindred spirit.
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Mrs. Mifflin would have said this for herself, with her
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characteristic definiteness of speech, had she not been out of
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touch with her publishers and foolscap paper. She and the
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Professor are on their Parnassus, somewhere on the high roads,
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happily engrossed in the most godly diversion known to
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man--selling books. And I venture to think that there are no
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volumes they take more pleasure in recommending than the
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wholesome and invigorating books which bear your name.
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Believe me, dear Mr. Grayson, with warm regards,
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Faithfully yours,
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CHRISTOPHER MORLEY.
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CHAPTER ONE
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I wonder if there isn't a lot of bunkum in higher education?
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I never found that people who were learned in logarithms and
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other kinds of poetry were any quicker in washing dishes or
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darning socks. I've done a good deal of reading when I could,
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and I don't want to "admit impediments" to the love of books,
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but I've also seen lots of good, practical folk spoiled by too
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much fine print. Reading sonnets always gives me hiccups, too.
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I never expected to be an author! But I do think there are
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some amusing things about the story of Andrew and myself and
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how books broke up our placid life. When John Gutenberg,
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whose real name (so the Professor says) was John Gooseflesh,
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borrowed that money to set up his printing press he launched
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a lot of troubles on the world.
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Andrew and I were wonderfully happy on the farm until he
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became an author. If I could have foreseen all the bother his
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writings were to cause us, I would certainly have burnt the
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first manuscript in the kitchen stove.
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Andrew McGill, the author of those books every one reads, is
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my brother. In other words, I am his sister, ten years
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younger. Years ago Andrew was a business man, but his health
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failed and, like so many people in the story books, he fled to
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the country, or, as he called it, to the bosom of Nature. He
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and I were the only ones left in an unsuccessful family. I
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was slowly perishing as a conscientious governess in the
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brownstone region of New York. He rescued me from that and we
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bought a farm with our combined savings. We became real
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farmers, up with the sun and to bed with the same. Andrew
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wore overalls and a soft shirt and grew brown and tough. My
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hands got red and blue with soapsuds and frost; I never saw a
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Redfern advertisement from one year's end to another, and my
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kitchen was a battlefield where I set my teeth and learned to
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love hard work. Our literature was government agriculture
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reports, patent medicine almanacs, seedsmen's booklets, and
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Sears Roebuck catalogues. We subscribed to _Farm and Fireside_
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and read the serials aloud. Every now and then, for real
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excitement, we read something stirring in the Old
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Testament--that cheery book Jeremiah, for instance, of which
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Andrew was very fond. The farm did actually prosper, after a
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while; and Andrew used to hang over the pasture bars at
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sunset, and tell, from the way his pipe burned, just what the
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weather would be the next day.
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As I have said, we were tremendously happy until Andrew got
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the fatal idea of telling the world how happy we were. I am
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sorry to have to admit he had always been rather a bookish
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man. In his college days he had edited the students'
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magazine, and sometimes he would get discontented with the
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_Farm and Fireside_ serials and pull down his bound volumes of
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the college paper. He would read me some of his youthful
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poems and stories and mutter vaguely about writing something
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himself some day. I was more concerned with sitting hens than
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with sonnets and I'm bound to say I never took these threats
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very seriously. I should have been more severe.
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Then great-uncle Philip died, and his carload of books came to
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us. He had been a college professor, and years ago when
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Andrew was a boy Uncle Philip had been very fond of him--had,
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in fact, put him through college. We were the only near
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relatives, and all those books turned up one fine day. That
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was the beginning of the end, if I had only known it. Andrew
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had the time of his life building shelves all round our
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living-room; not content with that he turned the old hen house
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into a study for himself, put in a stove, and used to sit up
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there evenings after I had gone to bed. The first thing I
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knew he called the place Sabine Farm (although it had been
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known for years as Bog Hollow) because he thought it a
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literary thing to do. He used to take a book along with him
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when he drove over to Redfield for supplies; sometimes the
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wagon would be two hours late coming home, with old Ben
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loafing along between the shafts and Andrew lost in his book.
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I didn't think much of all this, but I'm an easy-going woman
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and as long as Andrew kept the farm going I had plenty to do
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on my own hook. Hot bread and coffee, eggs and preserves for
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breakfast; soup and hot meat, vegetables, dumplings, gravy,
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brown bread and white, huckleberry pudding, chocolate cake and
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buttermilk for dinner; muffins, tea, sausage rolls,
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blackberries and cream, and doughnuts for supper--that's the
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kind of menu I had been preparing three times a day for years.
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I hadn't any time to worry about what wasn't my business.
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And then one morning I caught Andrew doing up a big, flat
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parcel for the postman. He looked so sheepish I just had to
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ask what it was.
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"I've written a book," said Andrew, and he showed me the title page--
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PARADISE REGAINED
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BY
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ANDREW McGILL
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Even then I wasn't much worried, because of course I knew no
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one would print it. But Lord! a month or so later came a
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letter from a publisher--accepting it! That's the letter
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Andrew keeps framed above his desk. Just to show how such
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things sound I'll copy it here:
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DECAMERON, JONES AND COMPANY
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PUBLISHERS
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UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK
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January 13, 1907.
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DEAR MR. McGILL:
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We have read with singular pleasure your manuscript "Paradise
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Regained." There is no doubt in our minds that so spirited an
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account of the joys of sane country living should meet with
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popular approval, and, with the exception of a few revisions
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and abbreviations, we would be glad to publish the book
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practically as it stands. We would like to have it
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illustrated by Mr. Tortoni, some of whose work you may have
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seen, and would be glad to know whether he may call upon you
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in order to acquaint himself with the local colour of your
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neighbourhood.
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We would be glad to pay you a royaLty of 10 per cent. upon the
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retail price of the book, and we enclose duplicate contracts
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for your signature in case this proves satisfactory to you.
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Believe us, etc., etc.,
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DECAMERON, JONES & CO.
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I have since thought that "Paradise Lost" would have been a
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better title for that book. It was published in the autumn of
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1907, and since that time our life has never been the same.
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By some mischance the book became the success of the season;
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it was widely commended as "a gospel of health and sanity" and
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Andrew received, in almost every mail, offers from publishers
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and magazine editors who wanted to get hold of his next book.
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It is almost incredible to what stratagems publishers will
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descend to influence an author. Andrew had written in
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"Paradise Regained" of the tramps who visit us, how quaint and
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appealing some of them are (let me add, how dirty), and how we
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never turn away any one who seems worthy. Would you believe
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that, in the spring after the book was published, a
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disreputable-looking vagabond with a knapsack, who turned up
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one day, blarneyed Andrew about his book and stayed overnight,
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announced himself at breakfast as a leading New York publisher?
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He had chosen this ruse in order to make Andrew's acquaintance.
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You can imagine that it didn't take long for Andrew to become
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spoiled at this rate! The next year he suddenly disappeared,
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leaving only a note on the kitchen table, and tramped all over
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the state for six weeks collecting material for a new book.
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I had all I could do to keep him from going to New York to
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talk to editors and people of that sort. Envelopes of
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newspaper cuttings used to come to him, and he would pore over
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them when he ought to have been ploughing corn. Luckily the
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mail man comes along about the middle of the morning when
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Andrew is out in the fields, so I used to look over the
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letters before he saw them. After the second book ("Happiness
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and Hayseed" it was called) was printed, letters from
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publishers got so thick that I used to put them all in the
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stove before Andrew saw them--except those from the Decameron
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Jones people, which sometimes held checks. Literary folk used
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to turn up now and then to interview Andrew, but generally I
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managed to head them off.
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But Andrew got to be less and less of a farmer and more and
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more of a literary man. He bought a typewriter. He would
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hang over the pigpen noting down adjectives for the sunset
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instead of mending the weather vane on the barn which took a
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slew so that the north wind came from the southwest. He hardly
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ever looked at the Sears Roebuck catalogues any more, and after
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Mr. Decameron came to visit us and suggested that Andrew write
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a book of country poems, the man became simply unbearable.
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And all the time I was counting eggs and turning out three
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meals a day, and running the farm when Andrew got a literary
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fit and would go off on some vagabond jaunt to collect
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adventures for a new book. (I wish you could have seen the
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state he was in when he came back from these trips, hoboing it
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along the roads without any money or a clean sock to his back.
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One time he returned with a cough you could hear the other
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side of the barn, and I had to nurse him for three weeks.)
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When somebody wrote a little booklet about "The Sage of
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Redfield" and described me as a "rural Xantippe" and "the
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domestic balance-wheel that kept the great writer close to the
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homely realities of life" I made up my mind to give Andrew
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some of his own medicine. And that's my story.
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CHAPTER TWO
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It was a fine, crisp morning in fall--October I dare say--and
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I was in the kitchen coring apples for apple sauce. We were
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going to have roast pork for dinner with boiled potatoes and what
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Andrew calls Vandyke brown gravy. Andrew had driven over to town
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to get some flour and feed and wouldn't be back till noontime.
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Being a Monday, Mrs. McNally, the washerwoman, had come over
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to take care of the washing. I remember I was just on my way
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out to the wood pile for a few sticks of birch when I heard
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wheels turn in at the gate. There was one of the fattest
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white horses I ever saw, and a queer wagon, shaped like a van.
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A funny-looking little man with a red beard leaned forward
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from the seat and said something. I didn't hear what it was,
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I was looking at that preposterous wagon of his.
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It was coloured a pale, robin's-egg blue, and on the side, in
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big scarlet letters, was painted:
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R. MIFFLIN'S
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TRAVELLING PARNASSUS
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GOOD BOOKS FOR SALE
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SHAKESPEARE, CHARLES LAMB, R. L. S.
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HAZLITT, AND ALL OTHERS
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Underneath the wagon, in slings, hung what looked like a tent,
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together with a lantern, a bucket, and other small things.
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The van had a raised skylight on the roof, something like an
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old-fashioned trolley car; and from one corner went up a stove
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pipe. At the back was a door with little windows on each side
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and a flight of steps leading up to it.
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As I stood looking at this queer turnout, the little reddish
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man climbed down from in front and stood watching me. His
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face was a comic mixture of pleasant drollery and a sort of
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weather-beaten cynicism. He had a neat little russet beard
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and a shabby Norfolk jacket. His head was very bald.
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"Is this where Andrew McGill lives?" he said.
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I admitted it.
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"But he's away until noon," I added. "He'll be back then.
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There's roast pork for dinner."
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"And apple sauce?" said the little man.
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"Apple sauce and brown gravy," I said. "That's why I'm sure
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he'll be home on time. Sometimes he's late when there's
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boiled dinner, but never on roast pork days. Andrew would
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never do for a rabbi."
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A sudden suspicion struck me.
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"You're not another publisher, are you?" I cried. "What do
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you want with Andrew?"
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"I was wondering whether he wouldn't buy this outfit," said
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the little man, including, with a wave of the hand, both van
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and white horse. As he spoke he released a hook somewhere,
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and raised the whole side of his wagon like a flap. Some kind
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of catch clicked, the flap remained up like a roof, displaying
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nothing but books--rows and rows of them. The flank of his
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van was nothing but a big bookcase. Shelves stood above
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shelves, all of them full of books--both old and new. As I
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stood gazing, he pulled out a printed card from somewhere and
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gave it to me:
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ROGER MIFFLIN'S
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TRAVELLING PARNASSUS
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Worthy friends, my wain doth hold
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Many a book, both new and old;
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Books, the truest friends of man,
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Fill this rolling caravan.
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Books to satisfy all uses,
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Golden lyrics of the Muses,
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Books on cookery and farming,
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Novels passionate and charming,
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Every kind for every need
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So that he who buys may read.
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What librarian can surpass us?
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MIFFLIN'S TRAVELLING
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PARNASSUS
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By R. Mifflin, Prop'r.
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Star Job Print, Celeryville, Va.
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While I was chuckling over this, he had raised a similar flap
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on the other side of the Parnassus which revealed still more
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shelves loaded with books.
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I'm afraid I am severely practical by nature.
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"Well!" I said, "I should think you _would_ need a pretty stout
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steed to lug that load along. It must weigh more than a coal wagon."
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"Oh, Peg can manage it all right," he said. "We don't travel
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very fast. But look here, I want to sell out. Do you suppose
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your husband would buy the outfit--Parnassus, Pegasus, and
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all? He's fond of books, isn't he?
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"Hold on a minute!" I said. "Andrew's my brother, not my
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husband, and he's altogether _too_ fond of books. Books'll be
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the ruin of this farm pretty soon. He's mooning about over
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his books like a sitting hen about half the time, when he
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ought to be mending harness. Lord, if he saw this wagonload
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of yours he'd be unsettled for a week. I have to stop the
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postman down the road and take all the publishers' catalogues
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out of the mail so that Andrew don't see 'em. I'm mighty glad
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he's not here just now, I can tell you!"
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I'm not literary, as I said before, but I'm human enough to like
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a good book, and my eye was running along those shelves of his as
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I spoke. He certainly had a pretty miscellaneous collection.
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I noticed poetry, essays, novels, cook books, juveniles, school
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books, Bibles, and what not--all jumbled together.
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"Well, see here," said the little man--and about this time I
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noticed that he had the bright eyes of a fanatic--"I've been
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cruising with this Parnassus going on seven years. I've
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covered the territory from Florida to Maine and I reckon I've
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injected about as much good literature into the countryside as
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ever old Doc Eliot did with his five-foot shelf. I want to
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sell out now. I'm going to write a book about `Literature
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Among the Farmers,' and want to settle down with my brother in
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Brooklyn and write it. I've got a sackful of notes for it.
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I guess I'll just stick around until Mr. McGill gets home and
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see if he won't buy me out. I'll sell the whole concern,
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horse, wagon, and books, for $400. I've read Andrew McGill's
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stuff and I reckon the proposition'll interest him. I've had
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more fun with this Parnassus than a barrel of monkeys. I used to
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be a school teacher till my health broke down. Then I took this
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up and I've made more than expenses and had the time of my life."
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"Well, Mr. Mifflin," I said, "if you want to stay around I
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guess I can't stop you. But I'm sorry you and your old
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Parnassus ever came this way."
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I turned on my heel and went back to the kitchen. I knew
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pretty well that Andrew would go up in the air when he saw
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that wagonload of books and one of those crazy cards with Mr.
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Mifflin's poetry on it.
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I must confess that I was considerably upset. Andrew is just
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as unpractical and fanciful as a young girl, and always
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dreaming of new adventures and rambles around the country. If
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he ever saw that travelling Parnassus he'd fall for it like
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snap. And I knew Mr. Decameron was after him for a new book
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anyway. (I'd intercepted one of his letters suggesting
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another "Happiness and Hayseed" trip just a few weeks before.
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Andrew was away when the letter came. I had a suspicion what
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was in it; so I opened it, read it, and--well, burnt it.
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Heavens! as though Andrew didn't have enough to do without
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mooning down the road like a tinker, just to write a book
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about it.)
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As I worked around the kitchen I could see Mr. Mifflin making
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himself at home. He unhitched his horse, tied her up to the
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fence, sat down by the wood pile, and lit a pipe. I could see
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I was in for it. By and by I couldn't stand it any longer.
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I went out to talk to that bald-headed pedlar.
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"See here," I said. "You're a pretty cool fish to make
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yourself so easy in my yard. I tell you I don't want you
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around here, you and your travelling parcheesi. Suppose you
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clear out of here before my brother gets back and don't be
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breaking up our happy family."
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"Miss McGill," he said (the man had a pleasant way with him,
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too--darn him--with his bright, twinkling eye and his silly
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little beard), "I'm sure I don't want to be discourteous. If
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you move me on from here, of course I'll go; but I warn you I
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shall lie in wait for Mr. McGill just down this road. I'm
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here to sell this caravan of culture, and by the bones of
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Swinburne I think your brother's the man to buy it."
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My blood was up now, and I'll admit that I said my next
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without proper calculation.
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"Rather than have Andrew buy your old parcheesi," I said,
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"I'll buy it myself. I'll give you $300 for it."
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The little man's face brightened. He didn't either accept or
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decline my offer. (I was frightened to death that he'd take
|
|
me right on the nail and bang would go my three years' savings
|
|
for a Ford.)
|
|
|
|
"Come and have another look at her," he said.
|
|
|
|
I must admit that Mr. Roger Mifflin had fixed up his van
|
|
mighty comfortably inside. The body of the wagon was built
|
|
out on each side over the wheels, which gave it an unwieldy
|
|
appearance but made extra room for the bookshelves. This left
|
|
an inside space about five feet wide and nine long. On one
|
|
side he had a little oil stove, a flap table, and a
|
|
cozy-looking bunk above which was built a kind of chest of
|
|
drawers--to hold clothes and such things, I suppose; on the
|
|
other side more bookshelves, a small table, and a little
|
|
wicker easy chair. Every possible inch of space seemed to be
|
|
made useful in some way, for a shelf or a hook or a hanging
|
|
cupboard or something. Above the stove was a neat little row
|
|
of pots and dishes and cooking usefuls. The raised skylight
|
|
made it just possible to stand upright in the centre aisle of
|
|
the van; and a little sliding window opened onto the driver's
|
|
seat in front. Altogether it was a very neat affair. The
|
|
windows in front and back were curtained and a pot of geraniums
|
|
stood on a diminutive shelf. I was amused to see a sandy Irish
|
|
terrier curled up on a bright Mexican blanket in the bunk.
|
|
|
|
"Miss McGill," he said, "I couldn't sell Parnassus for less
|
|
than four hundred. I've put twice that much into her, one
|
|
time and another. She's built clean and solid all through,
|
|
and there's everything a man would need from blankets to
|
|
bouillon cubes. The whole thing's yours for $400--including
|
|
dog, cook stove, and everything--jib, boom, and spanker.
|
|
There's a tent in a sling underneath, and an ice box (he
|
|
pulled up a little trap door under the bunk) and a tank of
|
|
coal oil and Lord knows what all. She's as good as a yacht;
|
|
but I'm tired of her. If you're so afraid of your brother
|
|
taking a fancy to her, why don't you buy her yourself and go
|
|
off on a lark? Make _him_ stay home and mind the farm!...
|
|
Tell you what I'll do. I'll start you on the road myself,
|
|
come with you the first day and show you how it's worked. You
|
|
could have the time of your life in this thing, and give
|
|
yourself a fine vacation. It would give your brother a good
|
|
surprise, too. Why not?"
|
|
|
|
I don't know whether it was the neatness of his absurd little
|
|
van, or the madness of the whole proposition, or just the
|
|
desire to have an adventure of my own and play a trick on
|
|
Andrew, but anyway, some extraordinary impulse seized me and
|
|
I roared with laughter.
|
|
|
|
"Right!" I said. "I'll do it."
|
|
|
|
I, Helen McGill, in the thirty-ninth year of my age!
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER THREE
|
|
|
|
Well," I thought, "if I'm in for an adventure I may as well be
|
|
spry about it. Andrew'll be home by half-past twelve and if
|
|
I'm going to give him the slip I'd better get a start. I
|
|
suppose he'll think I'm crazy! He'll follow me, I guess.
|
|
Well, he just shan't catch me, that's all!" A kind of anger
|
|
came over me to think that I'd been living on that farm for
|
|
nearly fifteen years--yes, sir, ever since I was
|
|
twenty-five--and hardly ever been away except for that trip to
|
|
Boston once a year to go shopping with cousin Edie. I'm a
|
|
home-keeping soul, I guess, and I love my kitchen and my
|
|
preserve cupboard and my linen closet as well as grandmother
|
|
ever did, but something in that blue October air and that
|
|
crazy little red-bearded man just tickled me.
|
|
|
|
"Look here, Mr. Parnassus," I said, "I guess I'm a fat old
|
|
fool but I just believe I'll do that. You hitch up your horse
|
|
and van and I'll go pack some clothes and write you a check.
|
|
It'll do Andrew all the good in the world to have me skip.
|
|
I'll get a chance to read a few books, too. It'll be as good
|
|
as going to college!" And I untied my apron and ran for the
|
|
house. The little man stood leaning against a corner of the
|
|
van as if he were stupefied. I dare say he was.
|
|
|
|
I ran into the house through the front door, and it struck me
|
|
as comical to see a copy of one of Andrew's magazines lying on
|
|
the living-room table with "The Revolt of Womanhood" printed
|
|
across it in red letters. "Here goes for the revolt of Helen
|
|
McGill," I thought. I sat down at Andrew's desk, pushed aside
|
|
a pad of notes he had been jotting down about "the magic of
|
|
autumn," and scrawled a few lines:
|
|
|
|
DEAR ANDREW,
|
|
|
|
Don't be thinking I'm crazy. I've gone off for an adventure.
|
|
It just came over me that you've had all the adventures while
|
|
I've been at home baking bread. Mrs. McNally will look after
|
|
your meals and one of her girls can come over to do the
|
|
housework. So don't worry. I'm going off for a little
|
|
while--a month, maybe--to see some of this happiness and
|
|
hayseed of yours. It's what the magazines call the revolt of
|
|
womanhood. Warm underwear in the cedar chest in the spare
|
|
room when you need it.
|
|
With love,
|
|
HELEN.
|
|
|
|
I left the note on his desk.
|
|
|
|
Mrs. McNally was bending over the tubs in the laundry. I
|
|
could see only the broad arch of her back and hear the vigorous
|
|
zzzzzzz of her rubbing. She straightened up at my call.
|
|
|
|
"Mrs. McNally," I said, "I'm going away for a little trip.
|
|
You'd better let the washing go until this afternoon and get
|
|
Andrew's dinner for him. He'll be back about twelve-thirty.
|
|
It's half-past ten now. You tell him I've gone over to see
|
|
Mrs. Collins at Locust Farm."
|
|
|
|
Mrs. McNally is a brawny, slow-witted Swede. "All right Mis'
|
|
McGill," she said. "You be back to denner?"
|
|
|
|
"No, I'm not coming back for a month," I said. "I'm going
|
|
away for a trip. I want you to send Rosie over here every day
|
|
to do the housework while I'm away. You can arrange with Mr.
|
|
McGill about that. I've got to hurry now."
|
|
|
|
Mrs. McNally's honest eyes, as blue as Copenhagen china,
|
|
gazing through the window in perplexity, fell upon the
|
|
travelling Parnassus and Mr. Mifflin backing Pegasus into the
|
|
shafts. I saw her make a valiant effort to comprehend the
|
|
sign painted on the side of the van--and give it up.
|
|
|
|
"You going driving?" she said blankly.
|
|
|
|
"Yes," I said, and fled upstairs.
|
|
|
|
I always keep my bank book in an old Huyler box in the top
|
|
drawer of my bureau. I don't save very quickly, I'm afraid.
|
|
I have a little income from some money father left me, but
|
|
Andrew takes care of that. Andrew pays all the farm expenses,
|
|
but the housekeeping accounts fall to me. I make a fairish
|
|
amount of pin money on my poultry and some of my preserves
|
|
that I send to Boston, and on some recipes of mine that I send
|
|
to a woman's magazine now and then; but generally my savings
|
|
don't amount to much over $10 a month. In the last five
|
|
years I had put by something more than $600. I had been
|
|
saving up for a Ford. But just now it looked to me as if that
|
|
Parnassus would be more fun than a Ford ever could be. Four
|
|
hundred dollars was a lot of money, but I thought of what it
|
|
would mean to have Andrew come home and buy it. Why, he'd be
|
|
away until Thanksgiving! Whereas if I bought it I could take
|
|
it away, have my adventure, and sell it somewhere so that
|
|
Andrew never need see it. I hardened my heart and determined
|
|
to give the Sage of Redfield some of his own medicine.
|
|
|
|
My balance at the Redfield National Bank was $615.20. I sat
|
|
down at the table in my bedroom where I keep my accounts and
|
|
wrote out a check to Roger Mifflin for $400. I put in plenty
|
|
of curlicues after the figures so that no one could raise the
|
|
check into $400,000; then I got out my old rattan suit case
|
|
and put in some clothes. The whole business didn't take me
|
|
ten minutes. I came downstairs to find Mrs. McNally looking
|
|
sourly at the Parnassus from the kitchen door.
|
|
|
|
"You going away in that--that 'bus, Mis' McGill?" she asked.
|
|
|
|
"Yes, Mrs. McNally," I said cheerfully. Her use of the word
|
|
gave me an inspiration. "That's one of the new jitney 'buses
|
|
we hear about. He's going to take me to the station. Don't
|
|
you worry about me. I'm going for a holiday. You get Mr.
|
|
McGill's dinner ready for him. After dinner tell him there's
|
|
a note for him in the living-room."
|
|
|
|
"I tank that bane a queer 'bus," said Mrs. McNally, puzzled.
|
|
I think the excellent woman suspected an elopement.
|
|
|
|
I carried my suit case out to the Parnassus. Pegasus stood
|
|
placidly between the shafts. From within came sounds of
|
|
vigorous movement. In a moment the little man burst out with
|
|
a bulging portmanteau in his hand. He had a tweed cap slanted
|
|
on the back of his head.
|
|
|
|
"There!" he cried triumphantly. "I've packed all my personal
|
|
effects clothes and so on--and everything else goes with the
|
|
transaction. When I get on the train with this bag I'm a free
|
|
man, and hurrah for Brooklyn! Lord, won't I be glad to get
|
|
back to the city! I lived in Brooklyn once, and I haven't
|
|
been back there for ten years," he added plaintively.
|
|
|
|
"Here's the check," I said, handing it to him. He flushed a
|
|
little, and looked at me rather shamefacedly. "See here," he
|
|
said, "I hope you're not making a bad bargain? I don't want
|
|
to take advantage of a lady. If you think your brother...."
|
|
|
|
"I was going to buy a Ford, anyway," I said, "and it looks to
|
|
me as though this parcheesi of yours would be cheaper to run
|
|
than any flivver that ever came out of Detroit. I want to
|
|
keep it away from Andrew and that's the main thing. You give
|
|
me a receipt and we'll get away from here before he comes back."
|
|
|
|
He took the check without a word, hoisted his fat portmanteau
|
|
on the driver's seat, and then disappeared in the van. In a
|
|
minute he reappeared. On the back of one of his poetical
|
|
cards he had written:
|
|
|
|
Received from Miss McGill the sum of four hundred dollars in
|
|
exchange for one Travelling Parnassus in first class
|
|
condition, delivered to her this day, October 3rd, 19----.
|
|
Signed
|
|
ROGER MIFFLIN.
|
|
|
|
"Tell me," I said, "does your Parnassus--_my_ Parnassus,
|
|
rather--contain everything I'm likely to need? Is it stocked
|
|
up with food and so on?"
|
|
|
|
"I was coming to that," he said. "You'll find a fair supply
|
|
of stuff in the cupboard over the stove, though I used to get
|
|
most of my meals at farmhouses along the road. I generally
|
|
read aloud to people as I go along, and they're often good for
|
|
a free meal. It's amazing how little most of the country folk
|
|
know about books, and how pleased they are to hear good stuff.
|
|
Down in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania...."
|
|
|
|
"Well, how about the horse?" I said hastily, seeing him about
|
|
to embark on an anecdote. It wasn't far short of eleven
|
|
o'clock, and I was anxious to get started.
|
|
|
|
"It might be well to take along some oats. My supply's
|
|
about exhausted."
|
|
|
|
I filled a sack with oats in the stable and Mr. Mifflin showed
|
|
me where to hang it under the van. Then in the kitchen I
|
|
loaded a big basket with provisions for an emergency: a dozen
|
|
eggs, a jar of sliced bacon, butter, cheese, condensed milk,
|
|
tea, biscuits, jam, and two loaves of bread. These Mr. Mifflin
|
|
stowed inside the van, Mrs. McNally watching in amazement.
|
|
|
|
"I tank this bane a queer picnic!" she said. "Which way are
|
|
you going? Mr. McGill, is he coming after you?"
|
|
|
|
"No," I insisted, "he's not coming. I'm going off on a
|
|
holiday. You get dinner for him and he won't worry about
|
|
anything until after that. Tell him I've gone over to see
|
|
Mrs. Collins."
|
|
|
|
I climbed the little steps and entered my Parnassus with a
|
|
pleasant thrill of ownership. The terrier on the bunk jumped
|
|
to the floor with a friendly wag of the tail. I piled the
|
|
bunk with bedding and blankets of my own, shook out the
|
|
drawers which fitted above the bunk, and put into them what
|
|
few belongings I was taking with me. And we were ready to start.
|
|
|
|
Redbeard was already sitting in front with the reins in hand.
|
|
I climbed up beside him. The front seat was broad but
|
|
uncushioned, well sheltered by the peak of the van. I gave a
|
|
quick glance around at the comfortable house under its elms
|
|
and maples--saw the big, red barn shining in the sun and the
|
|
pump under the grape arbour. I waved good-bye to Mrs. McNally
|
|
who was watching us in silent amazement. Pegasus threw her
|
|
solid weight against the traces and Parnassus swung round and
|
|
rolled past the gate. We turned into the Redfield road.
|
|
|
|
"Here," said Mifflin, handing me the reins, "you're skipper,
|
|
you'd better drive. Which way do you want to go?"
|
|
|
|
My breath came a little fast when I realized that my adventure
|
|
had begun!
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER FOUR
|
|
|
|
Just out of sight of the farm the road forks, one way running
|
|
on to Walton where you cross the river by a covered bridge,
|
|
the other swinging down toward Greenbriar and Port Vigor.
|
|
Mrs. Collins lives a mile or so up the Walton road, and as I
|
|
very often run over to see her I thought Andrew would be most
|
|
likely to look for me there. So, after we had passed through
|
|
the grove, I took the right-hand turn to Greenbriar. We began
|
|
the long ascent over Huckleberry Hill and as I smelt the fresh
|
|
autumn odour of the leaves I chuckled a little.
|
|
|
|
Mr. Mifflin seemed in a perfect ecstasy of high spirits.
|
|
"This is certainly grand," he said. "Lord, I applaud your
|
|
spunk. Do you think Mr. McGill will give chase?"
|
|
|
|
"I haven't an idea," I said. "Not right away, anyhow. He's
|
|
so used to my settled ways that I don't think he'll suspect
|
|
anything till he finds my note. I wonder what kind of story
|
|
Mrs. McNally will tell!"
|
|
|
|
"How about putting him off the scent?" he said. "Give me your
|
|
handkerchief."
|
|
|
|
I did so. He hopped nimbly out, ran back down the hill (he
|
|
was a spry little person in spite of his bald crown), and
|
|
dropped the handkerchief on the Walton Road about a hundred
|
|
feet beyond the fork. Then he followed me up the slope.
|
|
|
|
"There," he said, grinning like a kid, "that'll fool him. The
|
|
Sage of Redfield will undoubtedly follow a false spoor and the
|
|
criminals will win a good start. But I'm afraid it's rather
|
|
easy to follow a craft as unusual as Parnassus."
|
|
|
|
"Tell me how you manage the thing," I said. "Do you really
|
|
make it pay?" We halted at the top of the hill to give
|
|
Pegasus a breathing space. The terrier lay down in the dust
|
|
and watched us gravely. Mr. Mifflin pulled out a pipe and
|
|
begged my permission to smoke.
|
|
|
|
"It's rather comical how I first got into it," he said. "I
|
|
was a school teacher down in Maryland. I'd been plugging away
|
|
in a country school for years, on a starvation salary. I was
|
|
trying to support an invalid mother, and put by something in
|
|
case of storms. I remember how I used to wonder whether I'd
|
|
ever be able to wear a suit that wasn't shabby and have my
|
|
shoes polished every day. Then my health went back on me.
|
|
The doctor told me to get into the open air. By and by I got
|
|
this idea of a travelling bookstore. I had always been a
|
|
lover of books, and in the days when I boarded out among the
|
|
farmers I used to read aloud to them. After my mother died I
|
|
built the wagon to suit my own ideas, bought a stock of books
|
|
from a big second-hand store in Baltimore, and set out.
|
|
Parnassus just about saved my life I guess."
|
|
|
|
He pushed his faded old cap back on his head and relit his
|
|
pipe. I clicked to Pegasus and we rumbled gently off over the
|
|
upland, looking down across the pastures. Distant cow bells
|
|
sounded tankle-tonk among the bushes. Across the slope of the
|
|
hill I could see the road winding away to Redfield. Somewhere
|
|
along that road Andrew would be rolling back toward home and
|
|
roast pork with apple sauce; and here was I, setting out on
|
|
the first madness of my life without even a qualm.
|
|
|
|
"Miss McGill," said the little man, "this rolling pavilion has
|
|
been wife, doctor, and religion to me for seven years. A
|
|
month ago I would have scoffed at the thought of leaving her;
|
|
but somehow it's come over me I need a change. There's a book
|
|
I've been yearning to write for a long time, and I need a desk
|
|
steady under my elbows and a roof over my head. And silly as
|
|
it seems, I'm crazy to get back to Brooklyn. My brother and
|
|
I used to live there as kids. Think of walking over the old
|
|
Bridge at sunset and seeing the towers of Manhattan against a
|
|
red sky! And those old gray cruisers down in the Navy Yard!
|
|
You don't know how tickled I am to sell out. I've sold a lot
|
|
of copies of your brother's books and I've often thought he'd
|
|
be the man to buy Parnassus if I got tired of her."
|
|
|
|
"So he would," I said. "Just the man. He'd be only too
|
|
likely to--and go maundering about in this jaunting car and
|
|
neglect the farm. But tell me about selling books. How much
|
|
profit do you make out of it? We'll be passing Mrs. Mason's
|
|
farm, by and by, and we might as well sell her something just
|
|
to make a start."
|
|
|
|
"It's very simple," he said. "I replenish my stock whenever
|
|
I go through a big town. There's always a second-hand
|
|
bookstore somewhere about, where you can pick up odds and
|
|
ends. And every now and then I write to a wholesaler in New
|
|
York for some stuff. When I buy a book I mark in the back
|
|
just what I paid for it, then I know what I can afford to sell
|
|
it for. See here."
|
|
|
|
He pulled up a book from behind the seat--a copy of "Lorna
|
|
Doone" it was--and showed me the letters _a m_ scrawled in
|
|
pencil in the back.
|
|
|
|
"That means that I paid ten cents for this. Now, if you sell
|
|
it for a quarter you've got a safe profit. It costs me about
|
|
four dollars a week to run Parnassus--generally less. If you
|
|
clear that much in six days you can afford to lay off on Sundays!"
|
|
|
|
"How do you know that _a m_ stands for ten cents?" I asked.
|
|
|
|
"The code word's _manuscript_. Each letter stands for a figure,
|
|
from 0 up to 9, see?" He scrawled it down on a scrap of paper:
|
|
|
|
m a n u s c r i p t
|
|
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
|
|
|
|
"Now, you see _a m_ stands for 10, _a n_ would be 12, _n s_ is
|
|
24, _a c_ is 15, _a m m_ is $1.00, and so on. I don't pay much
|
|
over fifty cents for books as a rule, because country folks
|
|
are shy of paying much for them. They'll pay a lot for a
|
|
separator or a buggy top, but they've never been taught to
|
|
worry about literature! But it's surprising how excited they
|
|
get about books if you sell 'em the right kind. Over beyond
|
|
Port Vigor there's a farmer who's waiting for me to go
|
|
back--I've been there three or four times--and he'll buy about
|
|
five dollars' worth if I know him. First time I went there I
|
|
sold him `Treasure Island,' and he's talking about it yet. I
|
|
sold him `Robinson Crusoe,' and `Little Women' for his
|
|
daughter, and `Huck Finn,' and Grubb's book about `The
|
|
Potato.' Last time I was there he wanted some Shakespeare, but
|
|
I wouldn't give it to him. I didn't think he was up to it yet."
|
|
|
|
I began to see something of the little man's idealism in his
|
|
work. He was a kind of traveling missionary in his way. A
|
|
hefty talker, too. His eyes were twinkling now and I could
|
|
see him warming up.
|
|
|
|
"Lord!" he said, "when you sell a man a book you don't sell
|
|
him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue--you sell him
|
|
a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at
|
|
sea by night--there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real
|
|
book I mean. Jiminy! If I were the baker or the butcher or
|
|
the broom huckster, people would run to the gate when I came
|
|
by--just waiting for my stuff. And here I go loaded with
|
|
everlasting salvation--yes, ma'am, salvation for their little,
|
|
stunted minds--and it's hard to make 'em see it. That's what
|
|
makes it worth while--I'm doing something that nobody else
|
|
from Nazareth, Maine, to Walla Walla, Washington, has ever
|
|
thought of. It's a new field, but by the bones of Whitman
|
|
it's worth while. That's what this country needs--more books!"}
|
|
|
|
He laughed at his own vehemence. "Do you know, it's comical,"
|
|
he said. "Even the publishers, the fellows that print the
|
|
books, can't see what I'm doing for them. Some of 'em refuse
|
|
me credit because I sell their books for what they're worth
|
|
instead of for the prices they mark on them. They write me
|
|
letters about price-maintenance--and I write back about
|
|
merit-maintenance. Publish a good book and I'll get a good
|
|
price for it, Say I! Sometimes I think the publishers know
|
|
less about books than any one else! I guess that's natural,
|
|
though. Most school teachers don't know much about children."
|
|
|
|
"The best of it is," he went on, "I have such a darn good
|
|
time. Peg and Bock (that's the dog) and I go loafing along
|
|
the road on a warm summer day, and by and by we'll fetch up
|
|
alongside some boarding-house and there are the boarders all
|
|
rocking off their lunch on the veranda. Most of 'em bored to
|
|
death--nothing good to read, nothing to do but sit and watch
|
|
the flies buzzing in the sun and the chickens rubbing up and
|
|
down in the dust. First thing you know I'll sell half a dozen
|
|
books that put the love of life into them, and they don't
|
|
forget Parnassus in a hurry. Take O. Henry, for
|
|
instance--there isn't anybody so dog-gone sleepy that he won't
|
|
enjoy that man's stories. He understood life, you bet, and he
|
|
could write it down with all its little twists. I've spent an
|
|
evening reading O. Henry and Wilkie Collins to people and had
|
|
them buy out all their books I had and clamour for more."
|
|
|
|
"What do you do in winter?" I asked--a practical question, as
|
|
most of mine are.
|
|
|
|
"That depends on where I am when bad weather sets in," said
|
|
Mr. Mifflin. "Two winters I was down south and managed to
|
|
keep Parnassus going all through the season. Otherwise, I
|
|
just lay up wherever I am. I've never found it hard to get
|
|
lodging for Peg and a job for myself, if I had to have them.
|
|
Last winter I worked in a bookstore in Boston. Winter before,
|
|
I was in a country drugstore down in Pennsylvania. Winter
|
|
before that, I tutored a couple of small boys in English
|
|
literature. Winter before that, I was a steward on a steamer;
|
|
you see how it goes. I've had a fairly miscellaneous
|
|
experience. As far as I can see, a man who's fond of books
|
|
never need starve! But this winter I'm planing to live with
|
|
my brother in Brooklyn and slog away at my book. Lord, how
|
|
I've pondered over that thing! Long summer afternoons I've
|
|
sat here, jogging along in the dust, thinking it out until it
|
|
seemed as if my forehead would burst. You see, my idea is
|
|
that the common people--in the country, that is--never have
|
|
had any chance to get hold of books, and never have had any
|
|
one to explain what books can mean. It's all right for
|
|
college presidents to draw up their five-foot shelves of great
|
|
literature, and for the publishers to advertise sets of their
|
|
Linoleum Classics, but what the people need is the good,
|
|
homely, honest stuff--something that'll stick to their
|
|
ribs--make them laugh and tremble and feel sick to think of
|
|
the littleness of this popcorn ball spinning in space without
|
|
ever even getting a hot-box! And something that'll spur 'em
|
|
on to keep the hearth well swept and the wood pile split into
|
|
kindling and the dishes washed and dried and put away. Any
|
|
one who can get the country people to read something worth
|
|
while is doing his nation a real service. And that's what}
|
|
this caravan of culture aspires to.... You must be weary of
|
|
this harangue! Does the Sage of Redfield ever run on like that?"
|
|
|
|
"Not to me," I said. "He's known me so long that he thinks of
|
|
me as a kind of animated bread-baking and cake-mixing machine.
|
|
I guess he doesn't put much stock in my judgment in literary
|
|
matters. But he puts his digestion in my hands without
|
|
reserve. There's Mason's farm over there. I guess we'd
|
|
better sell them some books--hadn't we? Just for a starter."
|
|
|
|
We turned into the lane that runs up to the Mason farmhouse.
|
|
Bock trotted on ahead--very stiff on his legs and his tail
|
|
gently wagging--to interview the mastiff, and Mrs. Mason who
|
|
was sitting on the porch, peeling potatoes, laid down the pan.
|
|
She's a big, buxom woman with jolly, brown eyes like a cow's.
|
|
|
|
"For heaven's sake, Miss McGill," she called out in a cheerful
|
|
voice--"I'm glad to see you. Got a lift, did you?"
|
|
|
|
She hadn't really noticed the inscription on Parnassus, and
|
|
thought it was a regular huckster's wagon.
|
|
|
|
"Well, Mrs. Mason," I said, "I've gone into the book business.
|
|
This is Mr. Mifflin. I've bought out his stock. We've come
|
|
to sell you some books."
|
|
|
|
She laughed. "Go on, Helen," she said, "you can't kid me! I
|
|
bought a whole set of books last year from an agent--`The
|
|
World's Great Funeral Orations'--twenty volumes. Sam and I ain't
|
|
read more'n the first volume yet. It's awful uneasy reading!"
|
|
|
|
Mifflin jumped down, and raised the side flap of the wagon.
|
|
Mrs. Mason came closer. I was tickled to see how the little
|
|
man perked up at the sight of a customer. Evidently selling
|
|
books was meat and drink to him.
|
|
|
|
"Madam," he said, "`Funeral Orations' (bound in sackcloth, I
|
|
suppose?) have their place, but Miss McGill and I have got
|
|
some real books here to which I invite your attention. Winter
|
|
will be here soon, and you will need something more cheerful
|
|
to beguile your evenings. Very possibly you have growing
|
|
children who would profit by a good book or two. A book of
|
|
fairy tales for the little girl I see on the porch? Or
|
|
stories of inventors for that boy who is about to break his
|
|
neck jumping from the barn loft? Or a book about road making
|
|
for your husband? Surely there is something here you need?
|
|
Miss McGill probably knows your tastes."
|
|
|
|
That little red-bearded man was surely a born salesman. How
|
|
he guessed that Mr. Mason was the road commissioner in our
|
|
township, goodness only knows. Perhaps it was just a lucky
|
|
shot. By this time most of the family had gathered around the
|
|
van, and I saw Mr. Mason coming from the barn with his
|
|
twelve-year-old Billy.
|
|
|
|
"Sam," shouted Mrs. Mason, "here's Miss McGill turned book
|
|
pedlar and got a preacher with her!"
|
|
|
|
"Hello, Miss McGill," said Mr. Mason. He is a big, slow-
|
|
moving man of great gravity and solidity. "Where's Andrew?"
|
|
|
|
"Andrew's coming home for roast pork and apple sauce," I said,
|
|
"and I'm going off to sell books for a living. Mr. Mifflin
|
|
here is teaching me how. We've got a book on road mending
|
|
that's just what you need."
|
|
|
|
I saw Mr. and Mrs. Mason exchange glances. Evidently they
|
|
thought me crazy. I began to wonder whether we had made a
|
|
mistake in calling on people I knew so well. The situation
|
|
was a trifle embarrassing.
|
|
|
|
Mr. Mifflin came to the rescue.
|
|
|
|
"Don't be alarmed, sir," he said to Mr. Mason. "I haven't
|
|
kidnapped Miss McGill." (As he is about half my size this was
|
|
amusing.) "We are trying to increase her brother's income by
|
|
selling his books for him. As a matter of fact, we have a
|
|
wager with him that we can sell fifty copies of `Happiness and
|
|
Hayseed' before Hallowe'en. Now I'm sure your sporting
|
|
instinct will assist us by taking at least one copy. Andrew
|
|
McGill is probably the greatest author in this State, and every
|
|
taxpayer ought to possess his books. May I show you a copy?"
|
|
|
|
"That sounds reasonable," said Mr. Mason, and he almost
|
|
smiled. "What do you say, Emma, think we better buy a book or
|
|
two? You know those `Funeral Orations.'..."
|
|
"Well," said Emma, "you know we've always said we ought to
|
|
read one of Andrew McGill's books but we didn't rightly know
|
|
how to get hold of one. That fellow that sold us the funeral
|
|
speeches didn't seem to know about 'em. I tell you what, you
|
|
folks better stop and have dinner with us and you can tell us
|
|
what we'd ought to buy. I'm just ready to put the potatoes on
|
|
the stove now."
|
|
|
|
I must confess that the prospect of sitting down to a meal I
|
|
hadn't cooked myself appealed to me strongly; and I was keen
|
|
to see what kind of grub Mrs. Mason provided for her
|
|
house-hold; but I was afraid that if we dallied there too long
|
|
Andrew would be after us. I was about to say that we would
|
|
have to be getting on, and couldn't stay; but apparently the
|
|
zest of expounding his philosophy to new listeners was too
|
|
much for Mifflin. I heard him saying:
|
|
|
|
"That's mighty kind of you, Mrs. Mason, and we'd like very
|
|
much to stay. Perhaps I can put Peg up in your barn for a
|
|
while. Then we can tell you all about our books." And to my
|
|
amazement I found myself chiming in with assent.
|
|
|
|
Mifflin certainly surpassed himself at dinner. The fact that
|
|
Mrs. Mason's hot biscuits tasted of saleratus gave me far less
|
|
satisfaction than it otherwise would, because I was absorbed
|
|
in listening to the little vagabond's talk. Mr. Mason came to
|
|
the table grumbling something about his telephone being out of
|
|
order--(I wondered whether he had been trying to get Andrew
|
|
on the wire; he was a little afraid that I was being run away
|
|
with, I think)--but he was soon won over by the current of the
|
|
little man's cheery wit. Nothing daunted Mifflin. He talked
|
|
to the old grandmother about quilts; offered to cut off a
|
|
strip of his necktie for her new patchwork; and told all about
|
|
the illustrated book on quilts that he had in the van. He
|
|
discussed cookery and the Bible with Mrs. Mason; and she being
|
|
a leading light in the Greenbriar Sunday School, was
|
|
pleasantly scandalized by his account of the best detective
|
|
stories in the Old Testament. With Mr. Mason he was all
|
|
scientific farming, chemical manures, macadam roads, and crop
|
|
rotation; and to little Billy (who sat next him) he told
|
|
extraordinary yarns about Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Kit
|
|
Carson, Buffalo Bill, and what not. Honestly I was amazed at
|
|
the little man. He was as genial as a cricket on the hearth,
|
|
and yet every now and then his earnestness would break
|
|
through. I don't wonder he was a success at selling books.
|
|
That man could sell clothes pins or Paris garters, I guess,
|
|
and make them seem romantic.
|
|
|
|
"You know, Mr. Mason," he said, "you certainly owe it to these
|
|
youngsters of yours to put a few really good books into their
|
|
hands. City kids have the libraries to go to, but in the}
|
|
country there's only old Doc Hostetter's Almanac and the
|
|
letters written by ladies with backache telling how Peruna did
|
|
for them. Give this boy and girl of yours a few good books
|
|
and you're starting them on the double-track, block-signal
|
|
line to happiness. Now there's `Little Women'--that girl of
|
|
yours can learn more about real girlhood and fine womanhood
|
|
out of that book than from a year's paper dolls in the attic."
|
|
|
|
"That's right, Pa," assented Mrs. Mason. ("Go on with your
|
|
meal, Professor, the meat'll be cold.") She was completely won
|
|
by the travelling bookseller, and had given him the highest
|
|
title of honour in her ken. "Why, I read that story when I
|
|
was a girl, and I still remember it. That's better readin'
|
|
for Dorothy than those funeral speeches, I reckon. I believe
|
|
the Professor's right: we'd ought to have more books laying
|
|
around. Seems kind of a shame, with a famous author at the
|
|
next farm, not to read more, don't it, now?"
|
|
|
|
So by the time we got down to Mrs. Mason's squash pie (good
|
|
pie, too, I admit, but her hand is a little heavy for pastry),
|
|
the whole household was enthusiastic about books, and the
|
|
atmosphere was literary enough for even Dr. Eliot to live in
|
|
without panting. Mrs. Mason opened up her parlour and we sat
|
|
there while Mifflin recited "The Revenge" and "Maud Muller."
|
|
|
|
"Well, now, ain't that real sweet!" said Emma Mason. "It's
|
|
surprising how those words rhyme so nicely.
|
|
|
|
Seems almost as though it was done a-purpose! Reminds me of
|
|
piece day at school. There was a mighty pretty piece I
|
|
learned called the `Wreck of the Asperus.'" And she subsided
|
|
into a genteel melancholy.
|
|
|
|
I saw that Mr. Mifflin was well astride his hobby: he had
|
|
started to tell the children about Robin Hood, but I had the
|
|
sense to give him a wink. We had to be getting along or
|
|
surely Andrew might be on us. So while Mifflin was putting
|
|
Pegasus into the shafts again I picked out seven or eight
|
|
books that I thought would fit the needs of the Masons. Mr.
|
|
Mason insisted that "Happiness and Hayseed" be included among
|
|
them, and gave me a crisp five-dollar bill, refusing any
|
|
change. "No, no," he said, "I've had more fun than I get at
|
|
a grange meeting. Come round again, Miss McGill; I'm going to
|
|
tell Andrew what a good show this travelling theayter of yours
|
|
gives! And you, Professor, any time you're here about
|
|
road-mending season, stop in an' tell me some more good
|
|
advice. Well, I must get back to the field."
|
|
|
|
Bock fell in under the van, and we creaked off down the lane.
|
|
Mifflin filled his pipe and was chuckling to himself. I was
|
|
a little worried now for fear Andrew might overtake us.
|
|
|
|
"It's a wonder Sam Mason didn't call up Andrew," I said. "It
|
|
must have looked mighty queer to him for an old farm hand like
|
|
me to be around, peddling books."
|
|
|
|
"He would have done it straight off," said Mifflin, "but you
|
|
see, I cut his telephone wire!"
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER FIVE
|
|
|
|
I gazed in astonishment at the wizened little rogue. Here was
|
|
a new side to the amiable idealist! Apparently there was a
|
|
streak of fearless deviltry in him besides his gentle love of
|
|
books. I'm bound to say that now, for the first time, I
|
|
really admired him. I had burnt my own very respectable boats
|
|
behind me, and I rather enjoyed knowing that he, too, could
|
|
act briskly in a pinch.
|
|
|
|
"Well!" I said. "You are a cool hand! It's a good job for
|
|
you that you didn't stay a schoolmaster. You might have taught
|
|
your pupils some fine deviltries! And at your age, too!"
|
|
|
|
I'm afraid my raillery goes a little too far sometimes. He
|
|
flushed a bit at my reference to his age, and puffed sharply
|
|
at his pipe.
|
|
|
|
"I say," he rejoined, "how old do you think I am, anyway?
|
|
Only forty-one, by the bones of Byron! Henry VIII was only
|
|
forty-one when he married Anne Boleyn. There are many
|
|
consolations in history for people over forty! Remember that
|
|
when you get there.
|
|
|
|
"Shakespeare wrote `King Lear' at forty-one," he added, more
|
|
humorously; and then burst out laughing. "I'd like to edit
|
|
a series of `Chloroform Classics,' to include only books
|
|
written after forty. Who was that doctor man who recommended
|
|
anaesthetics for us at that age? Now isn't that just like a
|
|
medico? Nurse us through the diseases of childhood, and as
|
|
soon as we settle down into permanent good health and worldly
|
|
wisdom, and freedom from doctors' fees, why he loses interest
|
|
in us! Jove! I must note that down and bring it into my book."
|
|
|
|
He pulled out a memorandum book and jotted down "Chloroform
|
|
Classics" in a small, neat hand.
|
|
|
|
"Well," I said (I felt a little contrite, as I was sincerely
|
|
sorry to have offended him), "I've passed forty myself in some
|
|
measurements, so youth no longer has any terrors for me."
|
|
|
|
He looked at me rather comically.
|
|
|
|
"My dear madam," he said, "your age is precisely eighteen. I
|
|
think that if we escape the clutches of the Sage of Redfield
|
|
you may really begin to live."
|
|
|
|
"Oh, Andrew's not a bad sort," I said. "He's absentminded,
|
|
and hot tempered, and a little selfish. The publishers have
|
|
done their best to spoil him, but for a literary man I guess
|
|
he's quite human. He rescued me from being a governess, and
|
|
that's to his credit. If only he didn't take his meals quite
|
|
so much as a matter of course...."
|
|
|
|
"The preposterous thing about him is that he really can
|
|
_write_," said Mifflin. "I envy him that. Don't let him know
|
|
I said so, but as a matter of fact his prose is almost as good
|
|
as Thoreau. He approaches facts as daintily as a cat crossing
|
|
a wet road."
|
|
|
|
"You should see him at dinner," I thought; or rather I meant
|
|
to think it, but the words slipped out. I found myself
|
|
thinking aloud in a rather disconcerting way while sitting
|
|
with this strange little person.
|
|
|
|
He looked at me. I noticed for the first time that his eyes
|
|
were slate blue, with funny birds' foot wrinkles at the corners.
|
|
|
|
"That's so," he said. "I never thought of that. A fine prose
|
|
style certainly presupposes sound nourishment. Excellent
|
|
point that... And yet Thoreau did his own cooking. A sort of
|
|
Boy Scout I guess, with a badge as kitchen master. Perhaps he
|
|
took Beechnut bacon with him into the woods. I wonder who
|
|
cooked for Stevenson--Cummy? The `Child's Garden of Verses'
|
|
was really a kind of kitchen garden, wasn't it? I'm afraid
|
|
the commissariat problem has weighed rather heavily on you.
|
|
I'm glad you've got away from it."
|
|
|
|
All this was getting rather intricate for me. I set it down
|
|
as I remember it, inaccurately perhaps. My governess days are
|
|
pretty far astern now, and my line is common sense rather than
|
|
literary allusions. I said something of the sort.
|
|
|
|
"Common sense?" he repeated. "Good Lord, ma'am, sense is the
|
|
most uncommon thing in the world. I haven't got it. I don't
|
|
believe your brother has, from what you say. Bock here has
|
|
it. See how he trots along the road, keeps an eye on the
|
|
scenery, and minds his own business. I never saw him get into
|
|
a fight yet. Wish I could say the same of myself. I named him
|
|
after Boccaccio, to remind me to read the `Decameron' some day."
|
|
|
|
"Judging by the way you talk," I said, "you ought to be quite
|
|
a writer yourself."
|
|
|
|
"Talkers never write. They go on talking."
|
|
|
|
There was a considerable silence. Mifflin relit his pipe and
|
|
watched the landscape with a shrewd eye. I held the reins
|
|
loosely, and Peg ambled along with a steady clop-clop.
|
|
Parnassus creaked musically, and the mid-afternoon sun lay
|
|
rich across the road. We passed another farm, but I did not
|
|
suggest stopping as I felt we ought to push on. Mifflin
|
|
seemed lost in meditation, and I began to wonder, a little
|
|
uneasily, how the adventure would turn out. This quaintly
|
|
masterful little man was a trifle disconcerting. Across the
|
|
next ridge I could see the Greenbriar church spire shining white.
|
|
|
|
"Do you know this part of the country?" I asked finally.
|
|
|
|
"Not this exact section. I've been in Port Vigor often, but
|
|
then I was on the road that runs along the Sound. I suppose
|
|
this village ahead is Greenbriar?"
|
|
|
|
"Yes," I said. "It's about thirteen miles from there to Port
|
|
Vigor. How do you expect to get back to Brooklyn?"
|
|
|
|
"Oh, Brooklyn?" he said vaguely. "Yes, I'd forgotten about
|
|
Brooklyn for the minute. I was thinking of my book. Why, I
|
|
guess I'll take the train from Port Vigor. The trouble is,
|
|
you can never get to Brooklyn without going through New York.
|
|
It's symbolic, I suppose."
|
|
|
|
Again there was a silence. Finally he said, "Is there another
|
|
town between Greenbriar and Port Vigor?"
|
|
|
|
"Yes, Shelby," I said. "About five miles from Greenbriar."
|
|
|
|
"That'll be as far as you'll get to-night," he said. "I'll see
|
|
you safe to Shelby, and then make tracks for Port Vigor. I hope
|
|
there's a decent inn at Shelby where you can stop overnight."
|
|
|
|
I hoped so, too, but I wasn't going to let him see that with
|
|
the waning afternoon my enthusiasm was a little less robust.
|
|
I was wondering what Andrew was thinking, and whether Mrs.
|
|
McNally had left things in good order. Like most Swedes she
|
|
had to be watched or she left her work only three quarters
|
|
done. And I didn't depend any too much on her daughter Rosie
|
|
to do the housework efficiently. I wondered what kind of
|
|
meals Andrew would get. And probably he would go right on
|
|
wearing his summer underclothes, although I had already
|
|
reminded him about changing. Then there were the chickens...
|
|
|
|
Well, the Rubicon was crossed now, and there was nothing to be done.
|
|
|
|
To my surprise, little Redbeard had divined my anxiety. "Now
|
|
don't you worry about the Sage," he said kindly. "A man that
|
|
draws his royalties isn't going to starve. By the bones of
|
|
John Murray, his publishers can send him a cook if necessary!
|
|
This is a holiday for you, and don't you forget it."
|
|
|
|
And with this cheering sentiment in my mind, we rolled
|
|
sedately down the hill toward Greenbriar.
|
|
|
|
I am about as hardy as most folks, I think, but I confess I
|
|
balked a little at the idea of facing the various people I
|
|
know in Greenbriar as the owner of a bookvan and the companion
|
|
of a literary huckster. Also I recollected that if Andrew
|
|
should try to trace us it would be as well for me to keep out
|
|
of sight. So after telling Mr. Mifflin how I felt about
|
|
matters I dived into the Parnassus and lay down most
|
|
comfortably on the bunk. Bock the terrier joined me, and I
|
|
rested there in great comfort of mind and body as we ambled
|
|
down the grade. The sun shone through the little skylight
|
|
gilding a tin pan that hung over the cook stove. Tacked here
|
|
and there were portraits of authors, and I noticed a faded
|
|
newspaper cutting pinned up. The headlines ran: "Literary
|
|
Pedlar Lectures on Poetry." I read it through. Apparently
|
|
the Professor (so I had begun to call him, as the aptness of
|
|
the nickname stuck in my mind) had given a lecture in Camden,
|
|
N. J., where he had asserted that Tennyson was a greater poet
|
|
than Walt Whitman; and the boosters of the Camden poet had
|
|
enlivened the evening with missiles. It seems that the chief
|
|
Whitman disciple in Camden is Mr. Traubel; and Mr. Mifflin had
|
|
started the rumpus by asserting that Tennyson, too, had
|
|
"Traubels of his own." What an absurd creature the Professor
|
|
was, I thought, as I lay comfortably lulled by the rolling wheels.
|
|
|
|
Greenbriar is a straggling little town, built around a large
|
|
common meadow. Mifflin's general plan in towns, he had told
|
|
me, was to halt Parnassus in front of the principal store or
|
|
hotel, and when a little throng had gathered he would put up
|
|
the flaps of the van, distribute his cards, and deliver a
|
|
harangue on the value of good books. I lay concealed inside,
|
|
but I gathered from the sounds that this was what was
|
|
happening. We came to a stop; I heard a growing murmur of
|
|
voices and laughter outside, and then the click of the raised
|
|
sides of the wagon. I heard Mifflin's shrill, slightly nasal
|
|
voice making facetious remarks as he passed out the cards.
|
|
Evidently Bock was quite accustomed to the routine, for though
|
|
his tail wagged gently when the Professor began to talk, he
|
|
lay quite peaceably dozing at my feet.
|
|
|
|
"My friends," said Mr. Mifflin. "You remember Abe Lincoln's
|
|
joke about the dog? If you call a tail a leg, said Abe, how
|
|
many legs has a dog? Five, you answer. No, says Abe; because
|
|
calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. Well, there are
|
|
lots of us in the same case as that dog's tail. Calling us
|
|
men doesn't _make_ us men. No creature on earth has a right to
|
|
think himself a human being if he doesn't know at least one
|
|
good book. The man that spends every evening chewing Piper
|
|
Heidsieck at the store is unworthy to catch the intimations of
|
|
a benevolent Creator. The man that's got a few good books on
|
|
his shelf is making his wife happy, giving his children a
|
|
square deal, and he's likely to be a better citizen himself.
|
|
How about that, parson?"
|
|
|
|
I heard the deep voice of Reverend Kane, the Methodist
|
|
minister: "You're dead right, Professor!" he shouted. "Tell
|
|
us some more about books. I'm right with you!" Evidently Mr.
|
|
Kane had been attracted by the sight of Parnassus, and I could
|
|
hear him muttering to himself as he pulled one or two books
|
|
from the shelves. How surprised he would have been if he had
|
|
known I was inside the van! I took the precaution of slipping
|
|
the bolt of the door at the back, and drew the curtains. Then
|
|
I crept back into the bunk. I began to imagine what an absurd
|
|
situation there would be if Andrew should arrive on the scene.
|
|
|
|
"You are all used to hucksters and pedlars and fellows selling
|
|
every kind of junk from brooms to bananas," said the
|
|
Professor's voice. "But how often does any one come round
|
|
here to sell you books? You've got your town library, I dare
|
|
say; but there are some books that folks ought to own. I've
|
|
got 'em all here from Bibles to cook books. They'll speak for
|
|
themselves. Step up to the shelves, friends, and pick and choose."
|
|
|
|
I heard the parson asking the price of something he had found
|
|
on the shelves, and I believe he bought it; but the hum of
|
|
voices around the flanks of Parnassus was very soothing, and
|
|
in spite of my interest in what was going on I'm afraid I fell
|
|
asleep. I must have been pretty tired; anyway I never felt
|
|
the van start again. The Professor says he looked in through
|
|
the little window from the driver's seat, and saw me sound
|
|
asleep. And the next thing I knew I woke up with a start to
|
|
find myself rolling leisurely in the dark. Bock was still
|
|
lying over my feet, and there was a faint, musical clang from
|
|
the bucket under the van which struck against something now
|
|
and then. The Professor was sitting in front, with a lighted
|
|
lantern hanging from the peak of the van roof. He was humming
|
|
some outlandish song to himself, with a queer, monotonous refrain:
|
|
|
|
Shipwrecked was I off Soft Perowsa
|
|
And right along the shore,
|
|
And so I did resolve to roam
|
|
The country to explore.
|
|
Tommy rip fal lal and a balum tip
|
|
Tommy rip fal lal I dee;
|
|
And so I did resolve to roam
|
|
The country for to see!
|
|
|
|
I jumped out of the bunk, cracked my shins against something,
|
|
and uttered a rousing halloo. Parnassus stopped, and the
|
|
Professor pushed back the sliding window behind the driver's seat.
|
|
|
|
"Heavens!" I said. "Father Time, what o'clock is it?"
|
|
|
|
"Pretty near supper time, I reckon. You must have fallen
|
|
asleep while I was taking money from the Philistines. I made
|
|
nearly three dollars for you. Let's pull up along the road
|
|
and have a bite to eat."
|
|
|
|
He guided Pegasus to one side of the road, and then showed me
|
|
how to light the swinging lamp that hung under the skylight.
|
|
"No use to light the stove on a lovely evening like this," he
|
|
said. "I'll collect some sticks and we can cook outside. You
|
|
get out your basket of grub and I'll make a fire." He
|
|
unhitched Pegasus, tied her to a tree, and gave her a nose bag
|
|
of oats. Then he rooted around for some twigs and had a fire
|
|
going in a jiffy. In five minutes I had bacon and scrambled
|
|
eggs sizzling in a frying pan, and he had brought out a pail
|
|
of water from the cooler under the bunk, and was making tea.
|
|
|
|
I never enjoyed a picnic so much! It was a perfect autumn
|
|
evening, windless and frosty, with a dead black sky and a tiny
|
|
rim of new moon like a thumb-nail paring. We had our eggs and
|
|
bacon, washed down with tea and condensed milk, and followed
|
|
by bread and jam. The little fire burned blue and cozy, and
|
|
we sat on each side of it while Bock scoured the pan and ate
|
|
the crusts.
|
|
|
|
"This your own bread, Miss McGill?" he asked.
|
|
|
|
"Yes," I said. "I was calculating the other day that I've
|
|
baked more than 400 loaves a year for the last fifteen years.
|
|
That's more than 6,000 loaves of bread. They can put that on
|
|
my tombstone."
|
|
|
|
"The art of baking bread is as transcendent a mystery as the
|
|
art of making sonnets," said Redbeard. "And then your hot
|
|
biscuits--they might be counted as shorter lyrics, I
|
|
suppose--triolets perhaps. That makes quite an anthology, or
|
|
a doxology, if you prefer it."
|
|
|
|
"Yeast is yeast, and West is West," I said, and was quite
|
|
surprised at my own cleverness. I hadn't made a remark like
|
|
that to Andrew in five years.
|
|
|
|
"I see you are acquainted with Kipling," he said.
|
|
|
|
"Oh, yes, every governess is."
|
|
|
|
"Where and whom did you govern?"
|
|
|
|
"I was in New York, with the family of a wealthy stockbroker.
|
|
There were three children. I used to take them walking in
|
|
Central Park."
|
|
|
|
"Did you ever go to Brooklyn?" he asked abruptly.
|
|
|
|
"Never," I replied.
|
|
|
|
"Ah!" he said. "That's just the trouble. New York is
|
|
Babylon; Brooklyn is the true Holy City. New York is the city
|
|
of envy, office work, and hustle; Brooklyn is the region of
|
|
homes and happiness. It is extraordinary: poor, harassed New
|
|
Yorkers presume to look down on low-lying, home-loving
|
|
Brooklyn, when as a matter of fact it is the precious jewel
|
|
their souls are thirsting for and they never know it.
|
|
Broadway: think how symbolic the name is. Broad is the way
|
|
that leadeth to destruction! But in Brooklyn the ways are
|
|
narrow, and they lead to the Heavenly City of content.
|
|
Central Park: there you are--the centre of things, hemmed in
|
|
by walls of pride. Now how much better is Prospect Park,
|
|
giving a fair view over the hills of humility! There is no
|
|
hope for New Yorkers, for they glory in their skyscraping
|
|
sins; but in Brooklyn there is the wisdom of the lowly."
|
|
|
|
"So you think that if I had been a governess in Brooklyn I
|
|
should have been so contented that I would never have come
|
|
with Andrew and compiled my anthology of 6,000 loaves of bread
|
|
and the lesser lyrics?"
|
|
|
|
But the volatile Professor had already soared to other points
|
|
of view, and was not to be thwarted by argument.
|
|
|
|
"Of course Brooklyn is a dingy place, really," he admitted.
|
|
"But to me it symbolizes a state of mind, whereas New York is
|
|
only a state of pocket. You see I was a boy in Brooklyn: it
|
|
still trails clouds of glory for me. When I get back there
|
|
and start work on my book I shall be as happy as
|
|
Nebuchadnezzar when he left off grass and returned to tea and
|
|
crumpets. `Literature Among the Farmers' I'm going to call
|
|
it, but that's a poor title. I'd like to read you some of my
|
|
notes for it."
|
|
|
|
I'm afraid I poorly concealed a yawn. As a matter of fact I
|
|
was sleepy, and it was growing chilly.
|
|
|
|
"Tell me first," I said, "where in the world are we, and what
|
|
time is it?"
|
|
|
|
He pulled out a turnip watch. "It's nine o'clock," he said,
|
|
"and we're about two miles from Shelby, I should reckon.
|
|
Perhaps we'd better get along. They told me in Greenbriar
|
|
that the Grand Central Hotel in Shelby is a good place to stop
|
|
at. That's why I wasn't anxious to get there. It sounds so
|
|
darned like New York."
|
|
|
|
He bundled the cooking utensils back into Parnassus, hitched
|
|
Peg up again, and tied Bock to the stern of the van. Then he
|
|
insisted on giving me the two dollars and eighty cents he had
|
|
collected in Greenbriar. I was really too sleepy to protest,
|
|
and of course it was mine anyway. We creaked off along the
|
|
dark and silent road between the pine woods. I think he
|
|
talked fluently about his pilgrim's progress among the farmers
|
|
of a dozen states, but (to be honest) I fell asleep in my
|
|
corner of the seat. I woke up when we halted before the one
|
|
hotel in Shelby--a plain, unimposing country inn, despite its
|
|
absurd name. I left him to put Parnassus and the animals away
|
|
for the night, while I engaged a room. Just as I got my key
|
|
from the clerk he came into the dingy lobby.
|
|
|
|
"Well, Mr. Mifflin," I said. "Shall I see you in the morning?"
|
|
|
|
"I had intended to push on to Port Vigor to-night," he said,
|
|
"but as it's fully eight miles (they tell me), I guess I'll
|
|
bivouac here. I think I'll go into the smoking-room and put them
|
|
wise to some good books. We won't say good-bye till to-morrow."
|
|
|
|
My room was pleasant and clean (fairly so). I took my suit
|
|
case up with me and had a hot bath. As I fell asleep I heard
|
|
a shrill voice ascending from below, punctuated with masculine
|
|
laughter. The Pilgrim was making more converts!
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER SIX
|
|
|
|
I had a curious feeling of bewilderment when I woke the next
|
|
morning. The bare room with the red-and-blue rag carpet and
|
|
green china toilet set was utterly strange. In the hall
|
|
outside I heard a clock strike. "Heavens!" I thought, "I've
|
|
overslept myself nearly two hours. What on earth will Andrew
|
|
do for breakfast?" And then as I ran to close the window I
|
|
saw the blue Parnassus with its startling red letters standing
|
|
in the yard. Instantly I remembered. And discreetly peeping
|
|
from behind the window shade I saw that the Professor, armed
|
|
with a tin of paint, was blotting out his own name on the side
|
|
of the van, evidently intending to substitute mine. That was
|
|
something I had not thought of. However, I might as well make
|
|
the best of it.
|
|
|
|
I dressed promptly, repacked my bag, and hurried downstairs
|
|
for breakfast. The long table was nearly empty, but one or
|
|
two men sitting at the other end eyed me curiously. Through
|
|
the window I could see my name in large, red letters, growing
|
|
on the side of the van, as the Professor diligently wielded
|
|
his brush. And when I had finished my coffee and beans and
|
|
bacon I noticed with some amusement that the Professor had
|
|
painted out the line about Shakespeare, Charles Lamb, and so
|
|
on, and had substituted new lettering. The sign now read:
|
|
|
|
H. MCGILL'S
|
|
TRAVELLING PARNASSUS
|
|
GOOD BOOKS FOR SALE
|
|
COOK BOOKS A SPECIALTY
|
|
INQUIRE WITHIN
|
|
|
|
Evidently he distrusted my familiarity with the classics.
|
|
|
|
I paid my bill at the desk, and was careful also to pay the
|
|
charge for putting up the horse and van overnight. Then I
|
|
strolled into the stable yard, where I found Mr. Mifflin
|
|
regarding his handiwork with satisfaction. He had freshened
|
|
up all the red lettering, which shone brilliantly in the
|
|
morning sunlight.
|
|
|
|
"Good-morning," I said.
|
|
|
|
He returned it.
|
|
|
|
"There!" he cried--"Parnassus is really yours! All the world
|
|
lies before you! And I've got some more money for you. I
|
|
sold some books last night. I persuaded the hotel keeper to
|
|
buy several volumes of O. Henry for his smoking-room shelf,
|
|
and I sold the `Waldorf Cook Book' to the cook. My! wasn't
|
|
her coffee awful? I hope the cook book will better it."
|
|
|
|
He handed me two limp bills and a handful of small change. I
|
|
took it gravely and put it in my purse. This was really not
|
|
bad--more than ten dollars in less than twenty-four hours.
|
|
|
|
"Parnassus seems to be a gold mine," I said.
|
|
|
|
"Which way do you think you'll go?" he asked.
|
|
|
|
"Well, as I know you want to get to Port Vigor I might just as
|
|
well give you a lift that way," I answered.
|
|
|
|
"Good! I was hoping you'd say that. They tell me the stage
|
|
for Port Vigor doesn't leave till noon, and I think it would
|
|
kill me to hang around here all morning with no books to sell.
|
|
Once I get on the train I'll be all right."
|
|
|
|
Bock was tied up in a corner of the yard, under the side door
|
|
of the hotel. I went over to release him while the Professor
|
|
was putting Peg into harness. As I stooped to unfasten the
|
|
chain from his collar I heard some one talking through the
|
|
telephone. The hotel lobby was just over my head, and the
|
|
window was open.
|
|
|
|
"What did you say?"
|
|
|
|
"---- ---- ---- ----"
|
|
|
|
"McGill? Yes, sir, registered here last night. She's here now."
|
|
|
|
I didn't wait to hear more. Unfastening Bock, I hurried to
|
|
tell Mifflin. His eyes sparkled.
|
|
|
|
"The Sage is evidently on our spoor," he chuckled. "Well, let's
|
|
be off. I don't see what he can do even if he overhauls us."
|
|
|
|
The clerk was calling me from the window: "Miss McGill, your
|
|
brother's on the wire and asks to speak to you."
|
|
|
|
"Tell him I'm busy," I retorted, and climbed onto the seat.
|
|
It was not a diplomatic reply, I'm afraid, but I was too
|
|
exhilarated by the keen morning and the spirit of adventure to
|
|
stop to think of a better answer. Mifflin clucked to Peg, and
|
|
off we went.
|
|
|
|
The road from Shelby to Port Vigor runs across the broad hill
|
|
slopes that trend toward the Sound; and below, on our left,
|
|
the river lay glittering in the valley. It was a perfect
|
|
landscape: the woods were all bronze and gold; the clouds
|
|
were snowy white and seemed like heavenly washing hung out to
|
|
air; the sun was warm and swam gloriously in an arch of superb
|
|
blue. My heart was uplifted indeed. For the first time, I
|
|
think, I knew how Andrew feels on those vagabond trips of his.
|
|
Why had all this been hidden from me before? Why had the
|
|
transcendent mystery of baking bread blinded me so long to the
|
|
mysteries of sun and sky and wind in the trees? We passed
|
|
a white farmhouse close to the road. By the gate sat the
|
|
farmer on a log, whittling a stick and smoking his pipe.
|
|
Through the kitchen window I could see a woman blacking the
|
|
stove. I wanted to cry out: "Oh, silly woman! Leave your
|
|
stove, your pots and pans and chores, even if only for one
|
|
day! Come out and see the sun in the sky and the river in the
|
|
distance!" The farmer looked blankly at Parnassus as we
|
|
passed, and then I remembered my mission as a distributor of
|
|
literature. Mifflin was sitting with one foot on his bulging
|
|
portmanteau, watching the tree tops rocking in the cool wind.
|
|
He seemed to be far away in a morning muse. I threw down the
|
|
reins and accosted the farmer.
|
|
|
|
"Good-morning, friend."
|
|
|
|
"Morning to you, ma'am," he said firmly.
|
|
|
|
"I'm selling books," I said. "I wonder if there isn't
|
|
something you need?"
|
|
|
|
"Thanks, lady," he said, "but I bought a mort o' books last
|
|
year an' I don't believe I'll ever read 'em this side Jordan.
|
|
A whole set o' `Funereal Orations' what an agent left on me at
|
|
a dollar a month. I could qualify as earnest mourner at any
|
|
death-bed merrymakin' now, I reckon."
|
|
|
|
"You need some books to teach you how to live, not how to
|
|
die," I said. "How about your wife--wouldn't she enjoy a good
|
|
book? How about some fairy tales for the children?"
|
|
|
|
"Bless me," he said, "I ain't got a wife. I never was a
|
|
daring man, and I guess I'll confine my melancholy pleasures
|
|
to them funereal orators for some time yet."
|
|
|
|
"Well, now, hold on a minute!" I exclaimed. "I've got just
|
|
the thing for you." I had been looking over the shelves with
|
|
some care, and remembered seeing a copy of "Reveries of a
|
|
Bachelor." I clambered down, raised the flap of the van (it
|
|
gave me quite a thrill to do it myself for the first time),
|
|
and hunted out the book. I looked inside the cover and saw
|
|
the letters _n m_ in Mifflin's neat hand.
|
|
|
|
"Here you are," I said. "I'll sell you that for thirty cents."
|
|
|
|
"Thank you kindly, ma'am," he said courteously. "But honestly
|
|
I wouldn't know what to do with it. I am working through a
|
|
government report on scabworm and fungus, and I sandwich in a
|
|
little of them funereal speeches with it, and honestly that's
|
|
about all the readin' I figure on. That an' the Port Vigor _Clarion_."
|
|
|
|
I saw that he really meant it, so I climbed back on the seat.
|
|
I would have liked to talk to the woman in the kitchen who was
|
|
peering out of the window in amazement, but I decided it would
|
|
be better to jog on and not waste time. The farmer and I
|
|
exchanged friendly salutes, and Parnassus rumbled on.
|
|
|
|
The morning was so lovely that I did not feel talkative, and
|
|
as the Professor seemed pensive I said nothing. But as Peg
|
|
plodded slowly up a gentle slope he suddenly pulled a book out
|
|
of his pocket and began to read aloud. I was watching the
|
|
river, and did not turn round, but listened carefully:
|
|
|
|
"_Rolling cloud, volleying wind, and wheeling sun--the blue
|
|
tabernacle of sky, the circle of the seasons, the sparkling
|
|
multitude of the stars--all these are surely part of one
|
|
rhythmic, mystic whole. Everywhere, as we go about our small
|
|
business, we must discern the fingerprints of the gigantic
|
|
plan, the orderly and inexorable routine with neither
|
|
beginning nor end, in which death is but a preface to another
|
|
birth, and birth the certain forerunner of another death. We
|
|
human beings are as powerless to conceive the motive or the
|
|
moral of it all as the dog is powerless to understand the
|
|
reasoning in his master's mind. He sees the master's acts,
|
|
benevolent or malevolent, and wags his tail. But the master's
|
|
acts are always inscrutable to him. And so with us._
|
|
|
|
"_And therefore, brethren, let us take the road with a light
|
|
heart. Let us praise the bronze of the leaves and the crash
|
|
of the surf while we have eyes to see and ears to hear. An
|
|
honest amazement at the unspeakable beauties of the world is
|
|
a comely posture for the scholar. Let us all be scholars
|
|
under Mother Nature's eye._
|
|
|
|
"How do you like that?" he asked.
|
|
|
|
"A little heavy, but very good," I said. "There's nothing in
|
|
it about the transcendent mystery of baking bread!"
|
|
|
|
He looked rather blank.
|
|
|
|
"Do you know who wrote it?" he asked.
|
|
|
|
I made a valiant effort to summon some of my governessly
|
|
recollections of literature.
|
|
|
|
"I give it up," I said feebly. "Is it Carlyle?"
|
|
|
|
"That is by Andrew McGill," he said. "One of his cosmic
|
|
passages which are now beginning to be reprinted in
|
|
schoolbooks. The blighter writes well."
|
|
|
|
I began to be uneasy lest I should be put through a literary
|
|
catechism, so I said nothing, but roused Peg into an amble.
|
|
To tell the truth I was more curious to hear the Professor
|
|
talk about his own book than about Andrew's. I had always
|
|
carefully refrained from reading Andrew's stuff, as I thought
|
|
it rather dull.
|
|
|
|
"As for me," said the Professor, "I have no facility at the
|
|
grand style. I have always suffered from the feeling that
|
|
it's better to read a good book than to write a poor one; and
|
|
I've done so much mixed reading in my time that my mind is
|
|
full of echoes and voices of better men. But this book I'm
|
|
worrying about now really deserves to be written, I think, for
|
|
it has a message of its own."
|
|
|
|
He gazed almost wistfully across the sunny valley. In the
|
|
distance I caught a glint of the Sound. The Professor's faded
|
|
tweed cap was slanted over one ear, and his stubby little
|
|
beard shone bright red in the sun. I kept a sympathetic
|
|
silence. He seemed pleased to have some one to talk to about
|
|
his precious book.
|
|
|
|
"The world is full of great writers about literature," he
|
|
said, "but they're all selfish and aristocratic. Addison,
|
|
Lamb, Hazlitt, Emerson, Lowell--take any one you choose--they
|
|
all conceive the love of books as a rare and perfect mystery
|
|
for the few--a thing of the secluded study where they can sit
|
|
alone at night with a candle, and a cigar, and a glass of port
|
|
on the table and a spaniel on the hearthrug. What I say is,
|
|
who has ever gone out into high roads and hedges to bring
|
|
literature home to the plain man? To bring it home to his
|
|
business and bosom, as somebody says? The farther into the
|
|
country you go, the fewer and worse books you find. I've
|
|
spent several years joggling around with this citadel of
|
|
crime, and by the bones of Ben Ezra I don't think I ever found
|
|
a really good book (except the Bible) at a farmhouse yet,
|
|
unless I put it there myself. The mandarins of culture--what
|
|
do they do to teach the common folk to read? It's no good
|
|
writing down lists of books for farmers and compiling
|
|
five-foot shelves; you've got to go out and visit the people
|
|
yourself--take the books to them, talk to the teachers and
|
|
bully the editors of country newspapers and farm magazines and
|
|
tell the children stories--and then little by little you begin
|
|
to get good books circulating in the veins of the nation.}
|
|
It's a great work, mind you! It's like carrying the Holy
|
|
Grail to some of these way-back farmhouses. And I wish there
|
|
were a thousand Parnassuses instead of this one. I'd never
|
|
give it up if it weren't for my book: but I want to write
|
|
about my ideas in the hope of stirring other folk up, too. I
|
|
don't suppose there's a publisher in the country will take it!"
|
|
|
|
"Try Mr. Decameron," I said. "He's always been very nice to Andrew."
|
|
|
|
"Think what it would mean," he cried, waving an eloquent hand,
|
|
"if some rich man would start a fund to equip a hundred or so
|
|
wagons like this to go huckstering literature around through
|
|
the rural districts. It would pay, too, once you got started.
|
|
Yes, by the bones of Webster! I went to a meeting of
|
|
booksellers once, at some hotel in New York, and told 'em
|
|
about my scheme. They laughed at me. But I've had more fun
|
|
toting books around in this Parnassus than I could have had in
|
|
fifty years sitting in a bookstore, or teaching school, or
|
|
preaching. Life's full of savour when you go creaking along
|
|
the road like this. Look at today, with the sun and the air
|
|
and the silver clouds. Best of all, though, I love the rainy
|
|
days. I used to pull up alongside the road, throw a rubber
|
|
blanket over Peg, and Bock and I would curl up in the bunk and
|
|
smoke and read. I used to read aloud to Bock: we went
|
|
through `Midshipman Easy' together, and a good deal of
|
|
Shakespeare. He's a very bookish dog. We've seen some queer
|
|
experiences in this Parnassus."
|
|
|
|
The hill road from Shelby to Port Vigor is a lonely one, as
|
|
most of the farmhouses lie down in the valley. If I had known
|
|
better we might have taken the longer and more populous way,
|
|
but as a matter of fact I was enjoying the wide view and the
|
|
solitary road lying white in the sunshine. We jogged along
|
|
very pleasantly. Once more we stopped at a house where
|
|
Mifflin pleaded for a chance to exercise his art. I was much
|
|
amused when he succeeded in selling a copy of "Grimm's Fairy
|
|
Tales" to a shrewish spinster on the plea that she would enjoy
|
|
reading the stories to her nephews and nieces who were coming
|
|
to visit her.
|
|
|
|
"My!" he chuckled, as he gave me the dingy quarter he had
|
|
extracted. "There's nothing in that book as grim as she is!"
|
|
|
|
A little farther on we halted by a roadside spring to give Peg
|
|
a drink, and I suggested lunch. I had laid in some bread and
|
|
cheese in Shelby, and with this and some jam we made excellent
|
|
sandwiches. As we were sitting by the fence the motor stage
|
|
trundled past on its way to Port Vigor. A little distance
|
|
down the road it halted, and then went on again. I saw a
|
|
familiar figure walking back toward us.
|
|
|
|
"Now I'm in for it," I said to the Professor. "Here's Andrew!"
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER SEVEN
|
|
|
|
Andrew is just as thin as I am fat, and his clothes hang on
|
|
him in the most comical way. He is very tall and shambling,
|
|
wears a ragged beard and a broad Stetson hat, and suffers
|
|
amazingly from hay fever in the autumn. (In fact, his essay
|
|
on "Hay Fever" is the best thing he ever wrote, I think.) As
|
|
he came striding up the road I noticed how his trousers
|
|
fluttered at the ankles as the wind plucked at them. The
|
|
breeze curled his beard back under his chin and his face was
|
|
quite dark with anger. I couldn't help being amused; he
|
|
looked so funny.
|
|
|
|
"The Sage looks like Bernard Shaw," whispered Mifflin.
|
|
|
|
I always believe in drawing first blood.
|
|
|
|
"Good-morning, Andrew," I called cheerfully. "Want to buy any
|
|
books?" I halted Pegasus, and Andrew stood a little in front
|
|
of the wheel--partly out of breath and mostly out of temper.
|
|
|
|
"What on earth is this nonsense, Helen?" he said angrily.
|
|
"You've led me the deuce of a chase since yesterday. And who
|
|
is this--this person you're driving with?"
|
|
|
|
"Andrew," I said, "you forget your manners. Let me introduce
|
|
Mr. Mifflin. I have bought his caravan and am taking a
|
|
holiday, selling books. Mr. Mifflin is on his way to Port
|
|
Vigor where he takes the train to Brooklyn."
|
|
|
|
Andrew stared at the Professor without speaking. I could tell
|
|
by the blaze in his light-blue eyes that he was thoroughly
|
|
angry, and I feared things would be worse before they were
|
|
better. Andrew is slow to wrath, but a very hard person to
|
|
deal with when roused. And I had some inkling by this time of
|
|
the Professor's temperament. Moreover, I am afraid that some
|
|
of my remarks had rather prejudiced him against Andrew, as a
|
|
brother at any rate and apart from his excellent prose.
|
|
|
|
Mifflin had the next word. He had taken off his funny little
|
|
cap, and his bare skull shone like an egg. I noticed a little
|
|
sort of fairy ring of tiny drops around his crown.
|
|
|
|
"My dear sir," said Mifflin, "the proceedings look somewhat
|
|
unusual, but the facts are simple to narrate. Your sister has
|
|
bought this van and its contents, and I have been instructing
|
|
her in my theories of the dissemination of good books. You as
|
|
a literary man..."
|
|
|
|
Andrew paid absolutely no attention to the Professor, and I
|
|
saw a slow flush tinge Mifflin's sallow cheek.
|
|
|
|
"Look here, Helen," said Andrew, "do you think I propose to
|
|
have my sister careering around the State with a strolling
|
|
vagabond? Upon my soul you ought to have better sense--and at
|
|
your age and weight! I got home yesterday and found your
|
|
ridiculous note. I went to Mrs. Collins, and she knew
|
|
nothing. I went to Mason's, and found him wondering who had
|
|
bilked his telephone. I suppose you did that. He had seen
|
|
this freight car of yours and put me on the track. But my God!
|
|
I never thought to see a woman of forty abducted by gypsies!"
|
|
|
|
Mifflin was about to speak but I waved him back.
|
|
|
|
"Now see here Andrew," I said, "you talk too, quickly. A
|
|
woman of forty (you exaggerate, by the way) who has compiled
|
|
an anthology of 6,000 loaves of bread and dedicated it to you
|
|
deserves some courtesy. When _you_ want to run off on some
|
|
vagabond tour or other you don't hesitate to do it. You
|
|
expect me to stay home and do the Lady Eglantine in the
|
|
poultry yard. By the ghost of Susan B. Anthony, I won't do
|
|
it! This is the first real holiday I've had in fifteen years,
|
|
and I'm going to suit myself."
|
|
|
|
Andrew's mouth opened, but I shook my fist so convincingly
|
|
that he halted.
|
|
|
|
"I bought this Parnassus from Mr. Mifflin fair and square for
|
|
four hundred dollars. That's the price of about thirteen
|
|
hundred dozen eggs," I said. (I had worked this out in my
|
|
head while Mifflin was talking about his book.)
|
|
|
|
"The money's mine, and I'm going to use it my own way. Now,
|
|
Andrew McGill, if you want to buy any books, you can parley
|
|
with me. Otherwise, I'm on my way. You can expect me back
|
|
when you see me." I handed him one of Mifflin's little cards,
|
|
which were in a pocket at the side of the van, and gathered up
|
|
the reins. I was really angry, for Andrew had been both
|
|
unreasonable and insulting.
|
|
|
|
Andrew looked at the card, and tore it in halves. He looked
|
|
at the side of Parnassus where the fresh red lettering was
|
|
still damp.
|
|
|
|
"Well, upon my word," he said, "you must be crazy." He burst
|
|
into a violent fit of sneezing--a last touch of hay fever, I
|
|
suspect, as there was still goldenrod in the meadows. He
|
|
coughed and sneezed furiously, which made him madder than
|
|
ever. At last he turned to Mifflin who was sitting
|
|
bald-headed with a flushed face and very bright eyes. Andrew
|
|
took him all in, the shabby Norfolk jacket, the bulging
|
|
memorandum book in his pocket, the stuffed portmanteau under
|
|
his foot, even the copy of "Happiness and Hayseed" which had
|
|
dropped to the floor and lay back up.
|
|
|
|
"Look here, you," said Andrew, "I don't know by what infernal
|
|
arts you cajoled my sister away to go vagabonding in a
|
|
huckster's wagon, but I know this, that if you've cheated her
|
|
out of her money I'll have the law on you."
|
|
|
|
I tried to insert a word of protest, but matters had gone too
|
|
far. The Professor was as mad as Andrew now.
|
|
|
|
"By the bones of Piers Plowman," he said, "I had expected to
|
|
meet a man of letters and the author of this book"--he held up
|
|
"Happiness and Hayseed"--"but I see I was mistaken. I tell
|
|
you, sir, a man who would insult his sister before a stranger,
|
|
as you have done, is an oaf and a cad." He threw the book
|
|
over the hedge, and before I could say a word he had vaulted
|
|
over the off wheel and ran round behind the van.
|
|
|
|
"Look here sir," he said, with his little red beard bristling,
|
|
"your sister is over age and acting of her own free will. By
|
|
the bones of the Baptist, I don't blame her for wanting a
|
|
vacation if this is the way you treat her. She is nothing to
|
|
me, sir, and I am nothing to her, but I propose to be a
|
|
teacher to you. Put up your hands and I'll give you a lesson!"
|
|
|
|
This was too much for me. I believe I screamed aloud, and
|
|
started to clamber from the van. But before I could do
|
|
anything the two fanatics had begun to pummel each other. I
|
|
saw Andrew swing savagely at Mifflin, and Mifflin hit him
|
|
square on the chin. Andrew's hat fell on the road. Peg stood
|
|
placidly, and Bock made as if to grab Andrew's leg, but I
|
|
hopped out and seized him.
|
|
|
|
It was certainly a weird sight. I suppose I should have wrung
|
|
my hands and had hysterics, but as a matter of fact I was almost
|
|
amused, it was so silly. Thank goodness the road was deserted.
|
|
|
|
Andrew was a foot taller than the Professor, but awkward,
|
|
loosely knit, and unmuscular, while the little Redbeard was
|
|
wiry as a cat. Also Andrew was so furious that he was quite
|
|
beside himself, and Mifflin was in the cold anger that always
|
|
wins. Andrew landed a couple of flailing blows on the other
|
|
man's chest and shoulders, but in thirty seconds he got
|
|
another punch on the chin followed by one on the nose that
|
|
tumbled him over backward.
|
|
|
|
Andrew sat in the road fishing for a handkerchief, and Mifflin
|
|
stood glaring at him, but looking very ill at ease. Neither
|
|
of them said a word. Bock broke away from me and capered and
|
|
danced about Mifflin's feet as if it were all a game. It was
|
|
an extraordinary scene.
|
|
|
|
Andrew got up, mopping his bleeding nose.
|
|
|
|
"Upon my soul," he said, "I almost respect you for that punch.
|
|
But by Jove I'll have the law on you for kidnapping my sister.
|
|
You're a fine kind of a pirate."
|
|
|
|
Mifflin said nothing.
|
|
|
|
"Don't be a fool, Andrew" I said. "Can't you see that I want
|
|
a little adventure of my own? Go home and bake six thousand
|
|
loaves of bread, and by the time they're done I'll be back
|
|
again. I think two men of your age ought to be ashamed of
|
|
yourselves. I'm going off to sell books." And with that I
|
|
climbed up to the seat and clucked to Pegasus. Andrew and
|
|
Mifflin and Bock remained standing in the road.
|
|
|
|
I was mad all the way through. I was mad at both men for
|
|
behaving like schoolboys. I was mad at Andrew for being so
|
|
unreasonable, yet in a way I admired him for it; I was mad at
|
|
Mifflin for giving Andrew a bloody nose, and yet I appreciated
|
|
the spirit in which it was done. I was mad at myself for
|
|
causing all the trouble, and I was mad at Parnassus. If there
|
|
had been a convenient cliff handy I would have pushed the old
|
|
thing over it. But now I was in for it, and just had to go
|
|
on. Slowly I rolled up a long grade, and then saw Port Vigor
|
|
lying ahead and the broad blue stretches of the Sound.
|
|
|
|
Parnassus rumbled on with its pleasant creak, and the mellow
|
|
sun and sweep of the air soon soothed me. I began to taste
|
|
salt in the wind, and above the meadows two or three seagulls
|
|
were circling. Like all women, my angry mood melted into a
|
|
reaction of exaggerated tenderness and I began to praise both
|
|
Andrew and Mifflin in my heart. How fine to have a brother so
|
|
solicitous of his sister's welfare and reputation! And yet,
|
|
how splendid the little, scrawny Professor had been! How
|
|
quick to resent an insult and how bold to avenge it! His
|
|
absurd little tweed cap was lying on the seat, and I picked it
|
|
up almost sentimentally. The lining was frayed and torn.
|
|
From my suit case in the van I got out a small sewing kit, and
|
|
hanging the reins on a hook I began to stitch up the rents as
|
|
Peg jogged along. I thought with amusement of the quaint life
|
|
Mr. Mifflin had led in his "caravan of culture." I imagined
|
|
him addressing the audience of Whitman disciples in Camden,
|
|
and wondered how the fuss ended. I imagined him in his
|
|
beloved Brooklyn, strolling in Prospect Park and preaching to
|
|
chance comers his gospel of good books. How different was his
|
|
militant love of literature from Andrew's quiet satisfaction.
|
|
And yet how much they really had in common! It tickled me to
|
|
think of Mifflin reading aloud from "Happiness and Hayseed,"
|
|
and praising it so highly, just before fighting with the
|
|
author and giving him a bloody nose. I remembered that I
|
|
should have spoken to Andrew about feeding the hens, and
|
|
reminded him of his winter undergarments. What helpless
|
|
creatures men are, after all!
|
|
|
|
I finished mending the cap in high good humour.
|
|
|
|
I had hardly laid it down when I heard a quick step in the
|
|
road behind me, and looking back, there was Mifflin, striding
|
|
along with his bald pate covered with little beads of
|
|
moisture. Bock trotted sedately at his heels. I halted Peg.
|
|
|
|
"Well," I said, "what's happened to Andrew?"
|
|
|
|
The Professor still looked a bit shamefaced. "The Sage is a
|
|
tenacious person," he said. "We argued for a bit without much
|
|
satisfaction. As a matter of fact we nearly came to blows
|
|
again, only he got another waft of goldenrod, which started
|
|
him sneezing, and then his nose began bleeding once more. He
|
|
is convinced that I'm a ruffian, and said so in excellent
|
|
prose. Honestly, I admire him a great deal. I believe he
|
|
intends to have the law on me. I gave him my Brooklyn address
|
|
in case he wants to follow the matter up. I think I rather
|
|
pleased him by asking him to autograph `Happiness and Hayseed'
|
|
for me. I found it lying in the ditch."
|
|
|
|
"Well," I said, "you two are certainly a great pair of
|
|
lunatics. You both ought to go on the stage. You'd be as
|
|
good as Weber and Fields. Did he give you the autograph?"
|
|
|
|
He pulled the book out of his pocket. Scrawled in it in
|
|
pencil were the words _I have shed blood for Mr. Mifflin.
|
|
Andrew McGill_.
|
|
|
|
"I shall read the book again with renewed interest," said
|
|
Mifflin. "May I get in?"
|
|
|
|
"By all means," I said. "There's Port Vigor in front of us."
|
|
|
|
He put on his cap, noticed that it seemed to feel different,
|
|
pulled it off again, and then looked at me in a quaint
|
|
embarrassment.
|
|
|
|
"You are very good, Miss McGill," he said.
|
|
|
|
"Where did Andrew go?" I asked.
|
|
|
|
"He set off for Shelby on foot," Mifflin answered. "He has a
|
|
grand stride for walking. He suddenly remembered that he had
|
|
left some potatoes boiling on the fire yesterday afternoon,
|
|
and said he must get back to attend to them. He said he hoped
|
|
you would send him a postal card now and then. Do you know,
|
|
he reminds me of Thoreau more than ever."
|
|
|
|
"He reminds me of a burnt cooking pot," I said. "I suppose
|
|
all my kitchenware will be in a horrible state when I get home."
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER EIGHT
|
|
|
|
Port Vigor is a fascinating old town. It is built on a point
|
|
jutting out into the Sound. Dimly in the distance one can see
|
|
the end of Long Island, which Mifflin viewed with sparkling
|
|
eyes. It seemed to bring him closer to Brooklyn. Several
|
|
schooners were beating along the estuary in the fresh wind,
|
|
and there was a delicious tang of brine in the air. We drove
|
|
direct to the station where the Professor alighted. We took
|
|
his portmanteau, and shut Bock inside the van to prevent the
|
|
dog from following him. Then there was an awkward pause as he
|
|
stood by the wheel with his cap off.
|
|
|
|
"Well, Miss McGill," he said, "there's an express train at
|
|
five o'clock, so with luck I shall be in Brooklyn to-night.
|
|
My brother's address is 600 Abingdon Avenue, and I hope when
|
|
you're sending a card to the Sage you'll let me have one, too.
|
|
I shall be very homesick for Parnassus, but I'd rather leave
|
|
her with you than with any one I know."
|
|
|
|
He bowed very low, and before I could say a word he blew his
|
|
nose violently and hurried away. I saw him carrying his
|
|
valise into the station, and then he disappeared. I suppose
|
|
that living alone with Andrew for all these years has unused
|
|
me to the eccentricities of other people, but surely this
|
|
little Redbeard was one of the strangest beings one would be
|
|
likely to meet.
|
|
|
|
Bock yowled dismally inside, and I did not feel in any mood to
|
|
sell books in Port Vigor. I drove back into the town and
|
|
stopped at a tea shop for a pot of tea and some toast. When
|
|
I came out I found that quite a little crowd had collected,
|
|
partly owing to the strange appearance of Parnassus and partly
|
|
because of Bock's plaintive cries from within. Most of the
|
|
onlookers seemed to suspect the outfit of being part of a
|
|
travelling menagerie, so almost against my will I put up the
|
|
flaps, tied Bock to the tail of the wagon, and began to answer
|
|
the humourous questions of the crowd. Two or three bought
|
|
books without any urging, and it was some time before I could
|
|
get away. Finally I shut up the van and pulled off, as I was
|
|
afraid of seeing some one I knew. As I turned into the
|
|
Woodbridge Road I heard the whistle of the five o'clock train
|
|
to New York.
|
|
|
|
The twenty miles of road between Sabine Farm and Port Vigor
|
|
was all familiar to me, but now to my relief I struck into a
|
|
region that I had never visited. On my occasional trips to
|
|
Boston I had always taken the train at Port Vigor, so the
|
|
country roads were unknown. But I had set out on the
|
|
Woodbridge way because Mifflin had spoken of a farmer, Mr.
|
|
Pratt, who lived about four miles out of Port Vigor, on the
|
|
Woodbridge Road. Apparently Mr. Pratt had several times bought
|
|
books from the Professor and the latter had promised to visit
|
|
him again. So I felt in duty bound to oblige a good customer.
|
|
|
|
After the varied adventures of the last two days it was almost
|
|
a relief to be alone to think things over. Here was I, Helen
|
|
McGill, in a queer case indeed. Instead of being home at
|
|
Sabine Farm getting supper, I was trundling along a strange
|
|
road, the sole owner of a Parnassus (probably the only one in
|
|
existence), a horse, and a dog, and a cartload of books on my
|
|
hands. Since the morning of the day before my whole life had
|
|
twisted out of its accustomed orbit. I had spent four hundred
|
|
dollars of my savings; I had sold about thirteen dollars'
|
|
worth of books; I had precipitated a fight and met a
|
|
philosopher. Not only that, I was dimly beginning to evolve
|
|
a new philosophy of my own. And all this in order to prevent
|
|
Andrew from buying a lot more books! At any rate, I had been
|
|
successful in that. When he had seen Parnassus at last, he
|
|
had hardly looked at her--except in tones of scorn. I caught
|
|
myself wondering whether the Professor would allude to the
|
|
incident in his book, and hoping that he would send me a copy.
|
|
But after all, why should he mention it? To him it was only
|
|
one of a thousand adventures. As he had said angrily to
|
|
Andrew, he was nothing to me, nor I to him. How could he
|
|
realize that this was the first adventure I had had in the
|
|
fifteen years I had been--what was it he called
|
|
it?--compiling my anthology. Well, the funny little gingersnap!
|
|
|
|
I kept Bock tied to the back of the van, as I was afraid he
|
|
might take a notion to go in search of his master. As we
|
|
jogged on, and the falling sun cast a level light across the
|
|
way, I got a bit lonely. This solitary vagabonding business
|
|
was a bit sudden after fifteen years of home life. The road
|
|
lay close to the water and I watched the Sound grow a deeper
|
|
blue and then a dull purple. I could hear the surf pounding,
|
|
and on the end of Long Island a far-away lighthouse showed a
|
|
ruby spark. I thought of the little gingersnap roaring toward
|
|
New York on the express, and wondered whether he was
|
|
travelling in a Pullman or a day coach. A Pullman chair would
|
|
feel easy after that hard Parnassus seat.
|
|
|
|
By and by we neared a farmhouse which I took to be Mr.
|
|
Pratt's. It stood close to the road, with a big, red barn
|
|
behind and a gilt weathervane representing a galloping horse.
|
|
Curiously enough Peg seemed to recognize the place, for she
|
|
turned in at the gate and neighed vigorously. It must have
|
|
been a favourite stopping place for the Professor.
|
|
|
|
Through a lighted window I could see people sitting around a
|
|
table. Evidently the Pratts were at supper. I drew up in the
|
|
yard. Some one looked out of a window, and I heard a girl's voice:
|
|
|
|
"Why, Pa, here's Parnassus!"
|
|
|
|
Gingersnap must have been a welcome visitor at that farm, for
|
|
in an instant the whole family turned out with a great
|
|
scraping of chairs and clatter of dishes. A tall, sunburnt
|
|
man, in a clean shirt with no collar, led the group, and then
|
|
came a stout woman about my own build, and a hired man and
|
|
three children.
|
|
|
|
"Good evening!" I said. "Is this Mr. Pratt?"
|
|
|
|
"Sure thing!" said he. "Where's the Perfessor?"
|
|
|
|
"On his way to Brooklyn," said I. "And I've got Parnassus.
|
|
He told me to be sure to call on you. So here we are."
|
|
|
|
"Well, I want to know!" ejaculated Mrs. Pratt. "Think of
|
|
Parnassus turned suffrage! Ben, you put up the critters, and
|
|
I'll take Mrs. Mifflin in to supper."
|
|
|
|
"Hold on there," I said. "My name's McGill--Miss McGill.
|
|
See, it's painted on the wagon. I bought the outfit from Mr.
|
|
Mifflin. A business proposition entirely."
|
|
|
|
"Well, well," said Mr. Pratt. "We're glad to see any friend
|
|
of the Perfessor. Sorry he's not here, too. Come right in
|
|
and have a bite with us."
|
|
|
|
They were certainly good-hearted folk, Mr. and Mrs. Ben Pratt.
|
|
He put Peg and Bock away in the barn and gave them their
|
|
supper, while Mrs. Pratt took me up to her spare bedroom and
|
|
brought me a jug of hot water. Then they all trooped back
|
|
into the dining-room and the meal began again. I am a
|
|
connoisseur of farm cooking, I guess, and I've got to hand it
|
|
to Beulah Pratt that she was an A-1 housewife. Her hot
|
|
biscuit was perfect; the coffee was real Mocha, simmered, not
|
|
boiled; the cold sausage and potato salad was as good as any
|
|
Andrew ever got. And she had a smoking-hot omelet sent in for
|
|
me, and opened a pot of her own strawberry preserve. The
|
|
children (two boys and a girl) sat open-mouthed, nudging one
|
|
another, and Mr. Pratt got out his pipe while I finished up on
|
|
stewed pears and cream and chocolate cake. It was a regular
|
|
meal. I wondered what Andrew was eating and whether he had
|
|
found the nest behind the wood pile where the red hen always
|
|
drops her eggs.
|
|
|
|
"Well, well," said Mr. Pratt, "tell us about the Perfessor.
|
|
We was expectin' him here some time this fall. He generally
|
|
gets here around cider time."
|
|
|
|
"I guess there isn't so much to tell," I said. "He stopped up
|
|
at our place the other day, and said he wanted to sell his
|
|
outfit. So I bought him out. He was pining to get back to
|
|
Brooklyn and write a book."
|
|
|
|
"That book o' his!" said Mrs. Pratt. "He was always talkin'
|
|
on it, but I don't believe he ever started it yet."
|
|
|
|
"Whereabout do you come from, Miss McGill?" said Pratt. I
|
|
could see he was mighty puzzled at a woman driving a vanload
|
|
of books around the country, alone.
|
|
|
|
"Over toward Redfield," I said.
|
|
|
|
"You any kin to that writer that lives up that way?"
|
|
|
|
"You mean Andrew McGill?" I said. "He's my brother."
|
|
|
|
"Do tell!" exclaimed Mrs. Pratt. "Why the Perfessor thought
|
|
a terrible lot of him. He read us all to sleep with one of
|
|
his books one night. Said he was the best literature in this
|
|
State, I do believe."
|
|
|
|
I smiled to myself as I thought of the set-to on the road from Shelby.
|
|
|
|
"Well," said Pratt, "if the Perfessor's got any better friends
|
|
than us in these parts, I'm glad to meet 'em. He come here
|
|
first time 'bout four years ago. I was up working in the
|
|
hayfield that afternoon, and I heard a shout down by the mill
|
|
pond. I looked over that way and saw a couple o' kids waving
|
|
their arms and screamin'. I ran down the hill and there was
|
|
the Perfessor just a pullin' my boy Dick out o' the water.
|
|
Dick's this one over here."
|
|
|
|
Dick, a small boy of thirteen or so, grew red under his freckles.
|
|
|
|
"The kids had been foolin' around on a raft there, an' first
|
|
thing you know Dick fell in, right into deep water, over by
|
|
the dam. Couldn't swim a stroke, neither. And the Perfessor,
|
|
who jest happened to be comin' along in that 'bus of his,
|
|
heard the boys yell. Didn't he hop out o' the wagon as spry
|
|
as a chimpanzee, skin over the fence, an' jump into the pond,
|
|
swim out there an' tow the boy in! Yes, ma'am, he saved that
|
|
boy's life then an' no mistake. That man can read me to sleep
|
|
with poetry any night he has a mind to. He's a plumb fine
|
|
little firecracker, the Perfessor."
|
|
|
|
Farmer Pratt pulled hard on his pipe. Evidently his
|
|
friendship for the wandering bookseller was one of the
|
|
realities of his life.
|
|
|
|
"Yes, ma'am," he went on, "that Perfessor has been a good
|
|
friend to me, sure enough. We brought him an' the boy back to
|
|
the house. The boy had gone down three times an' the
|
|
Perfessor had to dive to find him. They were both purty well
|
|
all in, an' I tell you I was scared. But we got Dick around
|
|
somehow--rolled him on a sugar bar'l, an' poured whiskey in
|
|
him, an' worked his arms, an' put him in hot blankets. By and
|
|
by he come to. An' then I found that the Perfessor, gettin'
|
|
over the barb-wire fence so quick (when he lit for the pond)
|
|
had torn a hole in his leg you could put four fingers in.
|
|
There was his trouser all stiff with blood, an' he not sayin'
|
|
a thing. Pluckiest little runt in three States, by Judas!
|
|
Well, we put _him_ to bed, too, and then the Missus keeled
|
|
over, an' we put _her_ to bed. Three of them, by time the Doc
|
|
got here. Great old summer afternoon that was! But bless
|
|
your heart, we couldn't keep the Perfessor abed long. Next
|
|
day he was out lookin' fer his poetry books, an' first thing
|
|
you know he had us all rounded up an' was preachin' good
|
|
literature at us like any evangelist. I guess we all fell
|
|
asleep over his poetry, so then he started on readin' that
|
|
`Treasure Island' story to us, wasn't it, Mother? By hickory,
|
|
we none of us fell asleep over that. He started the kids
|
|
readin' so they been at it ever since, and Dick's top boy at
|
|
school now. Teacher says she never saw such a boy for
|
|
readin'. That's what Perfessor done for us! Well, tell us
|
|
'bout yerself, Miss McGill. Is there any good books we ought
|
|
to read? I used to pine for some o' that feller Shakespeare
|
|
my father used to talk about so much, but Perfessor always
|
|
'lowed it was over my head!"
|
|
|
|
It gave me quite a thrill to hear all this about Mifflin. I
|
|
could readily imagine the masterful little man captivating the
|
|
simple-hearted Pratts with his eloquence and earnestness. And
|
|
the story of the mill pond had its meaning, too. Little
|
|
Redbeard was no mere wandering crank--he was a real man, cool
|
|
and steady of brain, with the earmarks of a hero. I felt a
|
|
sudden gush of warmth as I recalled his comical ways.
|
|
|
|
Mrs. Pratt lit a fire in her Franklin stove and I racked my
|
|
head wondering how I could tread worthily in the Professor's
|
|
footsteps. Finally I fetched the "Jungle Book" from Parnassus
|
|
and read them the story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. There was a long
|
|
pause when I had finished.
|
|
|
|
"Say, Pa," said Dick shyly, "that mongoose was rather like
|
|
Professor, wasn't he!"
|
|
|
|
Plainly the Professor was the traditional hero of this family,
|
|
and I began to feel rather like an impostor!
|
|
|
|
I suppose it was foolish of me, but I had already made up my
|
|
mind to push on to Woodbridge that night. It could not be
|
|
more than four miles, and the time was not much after eight.
|
|
I felt a little twinge of quite unworthy annoyance because I
|
|
was still treading in the glamour of the Professor's
|
|
influence. The Pratts would talk of nothing else, and I wanted
|
|
to get somewhere where I would be estimated at my own value,
|
|
not merely as his disciple. "Darn the Redbeard," I said to
|
|
myself, "I think he has bewitched these people!" And in spite
|
|
of their protests and invitations to stay the night, I
|
|
insisted on having Peg hitched up. I gave them the copy of
|
|
the "Jungle Book" as a small return for their hospitality, and
|
|
finally sold Mr. Pratt a little copy of "Lamb's Tales from
|
|
Shakespeare" which I thought he could read without brain
|
|
fever. Then I lit my lantern and after a chorus of good-byes
|
|
Parnassus rolled away. "Well," I said to myself as I turned
|
|
into the high road once more, "drat the gingersnap, he seems
|
|
to hypnotize everybody... he must be nearly in Brooklyn by
|
|
this time!"
|
|
|
|
It was very quiet along the road, also very dark, for the sky
|
|
had clouded over and I could see neither moon nor stars. As
|
|
it was a direct road I should have had no difficulty, and I
|
|
suppose I must have fallen into a doze during which Peg took
|
|
a wrong turning. At any rate, I realized about half-past nine
|
|
that Parnassus was on a much rougher road than the highway had
|
|
any right to be, and there were no telephone poles to be seen.
|
|
I knew that they stretched all along the main road, so plainly
|
|
I had made a mistake. I was reluctant for a moment to admit
|
|
that I could be wrong, and just then Peg stumbled heavily and
|
|
stood still. She paid no heed to my exhortations, and when I
|
|
got out and carried my lantern to see whether anything was in
|
|
the way, I found that she had cast a shoe and her foot was
|
|
bleeding. The shoe must have dropped off some way back and
|
|
she had picked up a nail or something in the quick. I saw no
|
|
alternative but to stay where I was for the night.
|
|
|
|
This was not very pleasant, but the adventures of the day had
|
|
put me into a stoical frame of mind, and I saw no good in
|
|
repining. I unhitched Peg, sponged her foot, and tied her to
|
|
a tree. I would have made more careful explorations to
|
|
determine just where I was, but a sharp patter of rain began
|
|
to fall. So I climbed into my Parnassus, took Bock in with
|
|
me, and lit the swinging lamp. By this time it was nearly ten
|
|
o'clock. There was nothing to do but turn in, so I took off
|
|
my boots and lay down in the bunk. Bock lay quite comfortably
|
|
on the floor of the van. I meant to read for a while, and so
|
|
did not turn out the light, but I fell asleep almost immediately.
|
|
|
|
I woke up at half-past eleven and turned out the lamp, which
|
|
had made the van very warm. I opened the little windows front
|
|
and back, and would have opened the door, but I feared Bock
|
|
might slip away. It was still raining a little. To my
|
|
annoyance I felt very wakeful. I lay for some time listening
|
|
to the patter of raindrops on the roof and skylight--a very
|
|
snug sound when one is warm and safe. Every now and then I
|
|
could hear Peg stamping in the underbrush. I was almost
|
|
dozing off again when Bock gave a low growl.
|
|
|
|
No woman of my bulk has a right to be nervous, I guess, but
|
|
instantly my security vanished! The patter of the rain seemed
|
|
menacing, and I imagined a hundred horrors. I was totally
|
|
alone and unarmed, and Bock was not a large dog. He growled
|
|
again, and I felt worse than before. I imagined that I heard
|
|
stealthy sounds in the bushes, and once Peg snorted as though
|
|
frightened. I put my hand down to pat Bock, and found that
|
|
his neck was all bristly, like a fighting cock. He uttered a
|
|
queer half growl, half whine, which gave me a chill. Some one
|
|
must be prowling about the van, but in the falling rain I
|
|
could hear nothing.
|
|
|
|
I felt I must do something. I was afraid to call out lest I
|
|
betray the fact that there was only a woman in the van. My
|
|
expedient was absurd enough, but at any rate it satisfied my
|
|
desire to act. I seized one of my boots and banged vigorously
|
|
on the floor, at the same time growling in as deep and
|
|
masculine a voice as I could muster: "_What the hell's the
|
|
matter? What the hell's the matter?_" This sounds silly
|
|
enough, I dare say, but it afforded me some relief. And as
|
|
Bock shortly ceased growling, it apparently served some purpose.
|
|
|
|
I lay awake for a long time, tingling all over with
|
|
nervousness. Then I began to grow calmer, and was getting
|
|
drowsy almost in spite of myself when I was aroused by the
|
|
unmistakable sound of Bock's tail thumping on the floor--a
|
|
sure sign of pleasure. This puzzled me quite as much as his
|
|
growls. I did not dare strike a light, but could hear him
|
|
sniffing at the door of the van and whining with eagerness.
|
|
This seemed very uncanny, and again I crept stealthily out of
|
|
the bunk and pounded on the floor lustily, this time with the
|
|
frying pan, which made an unearthly din. Peg neighed and
|
|
snorted, and Bock began to bark. Even in my anxiety I almost
|
|
laughed. "It sounds like an insane asylum," I thought, and
|
|
reflected that probably the disturbance was only caused by
|
|
some small animal. Perhaps a rabbit or a skunk which Bock had
|
|
winded and wanted to chase. I patted him, and crawled into my
|
|
bunk once more.
|
|
|
|
But my real excitement was still to come. About half an hour
|
|
later I heard unmistakable footsteps alongside the van. Bock
|
|
growled furiously, and I lay in a panic. Something jarred one
|
|
of the wheels. Then broke out a most extraordinary racket.
|
|
I heard quick steps, Peg whinneyed, and something fell heavily
|
|
against the back of the wagon. There was a violent scuffle on
|
|
the ground, the sound of blows, and rapid breathing. With my
|
|
heart jumping I peered out of one of the back windows. There
|
|
was barely any light, but dimly I could see a tumbling mass
|
|
which squirmed and writhed on the ground. Something struck
|
|
one of the rear wheels so that Parnassus trembled. I heard
|
|
hoarse swearing, and then the whole body, whatever it was,
|
|
rolled off into the underbrush. There was a terrific crashing
|
|
and snapping of twigs. Bock whined, growled, and pawed madly
|
|
at the door. And then complete silence.
|
|
|
|
My nerves were quite shattered by this time. I don't think I
|
|
had been so frightened since childhood days when I awakened
|
|
from a nightmare. Little trickles of fear crept up and down
|
|
my spine and my scalp prickled. I pulled Bock on the bunk,
|
|
and lay with one hand on his collar. He, too, seemed agitated
|
|
and sniffed gingerly now and then. Finally, however, he gave
|
|
a sigh and fell asleep. I judged it might have been two
|
|
o'clock, but I did not like to strike a light. And at last I
|
|
fell into a doze.
|
|
|
|
When I woke the sun was shining brilliantly and the air was
|
|
full of the chirping of birds. I felt stiff and uneasy from
|
|
sleeping in my clothes, and my foot was numb from Bock's weight.
|
|
|
|
I got up and looked out of the window. Parnassus was standing
|
|
in a narrow lane by a grove of birch trees. The ground was
|
|
muddy, and smeared with footprints behind the van. I opened
|
|
the door and looked around. The first thing I saw, on the
|
|
ground by one of the wheels, was a battered tweed cap.
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER NINE
|
|
|
|
My feelings were as mixed as a crushed nut sundae. So the
|
|
Professor hadn't gone to Brooklyn after all! What did he mean
|
|
by prowling after me like a sleuth? Was it just homesickness
|
|
for Parnassus? Not likely! And then the horrible noises I
|
|
had heard in the night; had some tramp been hanging about the
|
|
van in the hope of robbing me? Had the tramp attacked
|
|
Mifflin? Or had Mifflin attacked the tramp? Who had got the
|
|
better of it?
|
|
|
|
I picked up the muddy cap and threw it into the van. Anyway,
|
|
I had problems of my own to tackle, and those of the Professor
|
|
could wait.
|
|
|
|
Peg whinneyed when she saw me. I examined her foot. Seeing
|
|
it by daylight the trouble was not hard to diagnose. A long,
|
|
jagged piece of slate was wedged in the frog of the foot. I
|
|
easily wrenched it out, heated some water, and gave the hoof
|
|
another sponging. It would be all right when shod once more.
|
|
But where was the shoe?
|
|
|
|
I gave the horse some oats, cooked an egg and a cup of coffee
|
|
for myself at the little kerosene stove, and broke up a dog
|
|
biscuit for Bock. I marvelled once more at the completeness
|
|
of Parnassus' furnishings. Bock helped me to scour the pan.
|
|
He sniffed eagerly at the cap when I showed it to him, and
|
|
wagged his tail.
|
|
|
|
It seemed to me that the only thing I could do was to leave
|
|
Parnassus and the animals where they were and retrace my steps
|
|
as far as the Pratt farm. Undoubtedly Mr. Pratt would be glad
|
|
to sell me a horse-shoe and send his hired man to do the job
|
|
for me. I could not drive Peg as she was, with a sore foot
|
|
and without a shoe. I judged Parnassus would be quite safe:
|
|
the lane seemed to be a lonely one leading to a deserted
|
|
quarry. I tied Bock to the steps to act as a guard, took my
|
|
purse and the Professor's cap with me, locked the door of the
|
|
van, and set off along the back track. Bock whined and tugged
|
|
violently when he saw me disappearing, but I could see no
|
|
other course.
|
|
|
|
The lane rejoined the main road about half a mile back. I
|
|
must have been asleep or I could never have made the mistake
|
|
of turning off. I don't see why Peg should have made the
|
|
turn, unless her foot hurt and she judged the side track would
|
|
be a good place to rest. She must have been well used to
|
|
stopping overnight in the open.
|
|
|
|
I strode along pondering over my adventures, and resolved to
|
|
buy a pistol when I got to Woodbridge. I remember thinking
|
|
that I could write quite a book now myself. Already I began
|
|
to feel quite a hardened pioneer. It doesn't take an
|
|
adaptable person long to accustom one's self to a new way of
|
|
life, and the humdrum routine of the farm certainly looked
|
|
prosy compared to voyaging with Parnassus. When I had got
|
|
beyond Woodbridge, and had crossed the river, I would begin to
|
|
sell books in earnest. Also I would buy a notebook and jot
|
|
down my experiences. I had heard of bookselling as a
|
|
profession for women, but I thought that my taste of it was
|
|
probably unique. I might even write a book that would rival
|
|
Andrew's--yes, and Mifflin's. And that brought my thoughts to
|
|
Barbarossa again.
|
|
|
|
Of all extraordinary people, I thought, he certainly takes the
|
|
cake--and then, rounding a bend, I saw him sitting on a rail
|
|
fence, with his head shining in the sunlight. My heart gave
|
|
a sort of jump. I do believe I was getting fond of the
|
|
Professor. He was examining something which he held in his hand.
|
|
|
|
"You'll get sunstroke," I said. "Here's your cap." And I
|
|
pulled it out of my pocket and tossed it to him.
|
|
|
|
"Thanks," he said, as cool as you please. "And here's your
|
|
horse-shoe. Fair exchange!"
|
|
|
|
I burst out laughing, and he looked disconcerted, as I hoped he would.
|
|
|
|
"I thought you'd be in Brooklyn by now," I said, "at 600
|
|
Abingdon Avenue, laying out Chapter One. What do you mean by
|
|
following me this way? You nearly frightened me to death
|
|
last night. I felt like one of Fenimore Cooper's heroines,
|
|
shut up in the blockhouse while the redskins prowled about."
|
|
|
|
He flushed and looked very uncomfortable.
|
|
|
|
"I owe you an apology," he said. "I certainly never intended
|
|
that you should see me. I bought a ticket for New York and
|
|
checked my bag through. And then while I was waiting for the
|
|
train it came over me that your brother was right, and that it
|
|
was a darned risky thing for you to go jaunting about alone in
|
|
Parnassus. I was afraid something might happen. I followed
|
|
along the road behind you, keeping well out of sight."
|
|
|
|
"Where were you while I was at Pratt's?"
|
|
|
|
"Sitting not far down the road eating bread and cheese," he
|
|
said. "Also I wrote a poem, a thing I very rarely do."
|
|
|
|
"Well, I hope your ears burned," I said, "for those Pratts
|
|
have certainly raised you to the peerage."
|
|
|
|
He got more uncomfortable than ever.
|
|
|
|
"Well," he said, "I dare say it was all an error, but anyway
|
|
I _did_ follow you. When you turned off into that lane, I kept
|
|
pretty close behind you. As it happens, I know this bit of
|
|
country, and there are very often some hoboes hanging around
|
|
the old quarry up that lane. They have a cave there where
|
|
they go into winter quarters. I was afraid some of them might
|
|
bother you. You could hardly have chosen a worse place to
|
|
camp out. By the bones of George Eliot, Pratt ought to have
|
|
warned you. I can't conceive why you didn't stop at his house
|
|
overnight anyway."
|
|
|
|
"If you must know, I got weary of hearing them sing your praises."
|
|
|
|
I could see that he was beginning to get nettled.
|
|
|
|
"I regret having alarmed you," he said. "I see that Peg has
|
|
dropped a shoe. If you'll let me fix it for you, after that
|
|
I won't bother you."
|
|
|
|
We turned back again along the road, and I noticed the right
|
|
side of his face for the first time. Under the ear was a
|
|
large livid bruise.
|
|
|
|
"That hobo, or whoever he was," I said, "must have been a
|
|
better fighter than Andrew. I see he landed on your cheek.
|
|
Are you always fighting?"
|
|
|
|
His annoyance disappeared. Apparently the Professor enjoyed
|
|
a fight almost as much as he did a good book.
|
|
|
|
"Please don't regard the last twenty-four hours as typical of
|
|
me," he said with a chuckle. "I am so unused to being a squire
|
|
of dames that perhaps I take the responsibilities too seriously."
|
|
|
|
"Did you sleep at all last night?" I asked. I think I began
|
|
to realize for the first time that the gallant little creature
|
|
had been out all night in a drizzling rain, simply to guard me
|
|
from possible annoyance; and I had been unforgivably churlish
|
|
about it.
|
|
|
|
"I found a very fine haystack in a field overlooking the
|
|
quarry. I crawled into the middle of it. A haystack is
|
|
sometimes more comfortable than a boarding-house."
|
|
|
|
"Well," I said penitently, "I can never forgive myself for the
|
|
trouble I've caused you. It was awfully good of you to do
|
|
what you did. Please put your cap on and don't catch cold."
|
|
|
|
We walked for several minutes in silence. I watched him out
|
|
of the corner of my eye. I was afraid he might have caught
|
|
his death of cold from being out all night in the wet, to say
|
|
nothing of the scuffle he had had with the tramp; but he
|
|
really looked as chipper as ever.
|
|
|
|
"How do you like the wild life of a bookseller?" he said.
|
|
"You must read George Borrow. He would have enjoyed Parnassus."
|
|
|
|
"I was just thinking, when I met you, that I could write a
|
|
book about my adventures."
|
|
|
|
"Good!" he said. "We might collaborate."
|
|
|
|
"There's another thing we might collaborate on," I said, "and
|
|
that's breakfast. I'm sure you haven't had any."
|
|
|
|
"No," he said, "I don't think I have. I never lie when I know
|
|
I shan't be believed."
|
|
|
|
"I haven't had any, either," I said. I thought that to tell
|
|
an untruth would be the least thing I could do to reward the
|
|
little man for his unselfishness.
|
|
|
|
"Well," he said, "I really thought that by this time----"
|
|
|
|
He broke off. "Was that Bock barking?" he asked sharply.
|
|
|
|
We had been walking slowly, and had not yet reached the spot
|
|
where the lane branched from the main road. We were still
|
|
about three quarters of a mile from the place where I had
|
|
camped overnight. We both listened carefully, but I could hear
|
|
nothing but the singing of the telephone wires along the road.
|
|
|
|
"No matter," he said. "I thought I heard a dog." But I
|
|
noticed that he quickened his pace.
|
|
|
|
"I was saying," he continued, "that I had really thought to
|
|
have lost Parnassus for good by this morning, but I'm tickled
|
|
to death to have a chance to see her again. I hope she'll be
|
|
as good a friend to you as she has been to me. I suppose
|
|
you'll sell her when you return to the Sage?"
|
|
|
|
"I don't know I'm sure," I said. "I must confess I'm still a
|
|
little at sea. My desire for an adventure seems to have let
|
|
me in deeper than I expected. I begin to see that there's
|
|
more in this bookselling game than I thought. Honestly, it's
|
|
getting into my blood."
|
|
|
|
"Well, that's fine," he said heartily. "I couldn't have left
|
|
Parnassus in better hands. You must let me know what you do
|
|
with her, and then perhaps, when I've finished my book, I can
|
|
buy her back."
|
|
|
|
We struck off into the lane. The ground was slippery under
|
|
the trees and we went single file, Mifflin in front. I looked
|
|
at my watch--it was nine o'clock, just an hour since I had
|
|
left the van. As we neared the spot Mifflin kept looking
|
|
ahead through the birch trees in a queer way.
|
|
|
|
"What's the matter?" I said. "We're almost there, aren't we?"
|
|
|
|
"We _are_ there," he said. "Here's the place."
|
|
|
|
Parnassus was gone!
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER TEN
|
|
|
|
We stood in complete dismay--I did, at any rate--for about as
|
|
long as it takes to peel a potato. There could be no doubt in
|
|
which direction the van had moved, for the track of the wheels
|
|
was plain. It had gone farther up the lane toward the quarry.
|
|
In the earth, which was still soggy, were a number of footprints.
|
|
|
|
"By the bones of Polycarp!" exclaimed the Professor, "those
|
|
hoboes have stolen the van. I guess they think it'll make a
|
|
fine Pullman sleeper for them. If I'd realized there was more
|
|
than one of them I'd have hung around closer. They need a lesson."
|
|
|
|
Good Lord! I thought, here's Don Quixote about to wade into
|
|
another fight.
|
|
|
|
"Hadn't we better go back and get Mr. Pratt?" I asked.
|
|
|
|
This was obviously the wrong thing to say. It put the fiery
|
|
little man all the more on his mettle. His beard bristled.
|
|
"Nothing of the sort!" he said. "Those fellows are cowards
|
|
and vagabonds anyway. They can't be far off; you haven't been
|
|
away more than an hour, have you? If they've done anything to
|
|
Bock, by the bones of Chaucer, I'll harry them. I _thought_ I
|
|
heard him bark."
|
|
|
|
He hurried up the lane, and I followed in a panicky frame of
|
|
mind. The track wound along a hillside, between a high bank
|
|
and a forest of birch trees. I think the distance can't have
|
|
been more than a quarter of a mile. Anyway, in a very few
|
|
minutes the road made a sharp twist to the right and we found
|
|
ourselves looking down into the quarry, over a sheer rocky
|
|
drop of a hundred feet at least. Below, drawn over to one
|
|
side of the wall of rock, stood Parnassus. Peg was between
|
|
the shafts. Bock was nowhere to be seen. Sitting by the van
|
|
were three disreputable looking men. The smoke of a cooking
|
|
fire rose into the air; evidently they were making free with
|
|
my little larder.
|
|
|
|
"Keep back," said the Professor softly. "Don't let them see
|
|
us." He flattened himself in the grass and crawled to the
|
|
edge of the cliff. I did the same, and we lay there, invisible
|
|
from below, but quite able to see everything in the quarry.
|
|
The three tramps were evidently enjoying an excellent breakfast.
|
|
|
|
"This place is a regular hang-out for these fellows," Mifflin
|
|
whispered. "I've seen hoboes about here every year. They go
|
|
into winter quarters about the end of October, usually.
|
|
There's an old blasted-out section of this quarry that makes
|
|
a sheltered dormitory for them, and as the place isn't worked
|
|
any more they're not disturbed here so long as they don't make
|
|
mischief in the neighbourhood. We'll give them...."
|
|
|
|
"Hands up!" said a rough voice behind us. I looked round.
|
|
There was a fat, red-faced villainous-looking creature
|
|
covering us with a shiny revolver. It was an awkward
|
|
situation. Both the Professor and I were lying full length
|
|
on the ground. We were quite helpless.
|
|
|
|
"Get up!" said the tramp in a husky, nasty voice. "I guess
|
|
youse thought we wasn't covering our trail? Well, we'll have
|
|
to tie you up, I reckon, while we get away with this Crystal
|
|
Pallis of yourn."
|
|
|
|
I scrambled to my feet, but to my surprise the Professor
|
|
continued to lie at full length.
|
|
|
|
"Get up, deacon!" said the tramp again. "Get up on them
|
|
graceful limbs, _if_ you please."
|
|
|
|
I guess he thought himself safe from attack by a woman. At
|
|
any rate, he bent over as if to grab Mifflin by the neck. I
|
|
saw my chance and jumped on him from behind. I am heavy, as
|
|
I have said, and he sprawled on the ground. My doubts as to
|
|
the pistol being loaded were promptly dissolved, for it went
|
|
off like a cannon. Nobody was in front of it, however, and
|
|
Mifflin was on his feet like a flash. He had the ruffian by
|
|
the throat and kicked the weapon out of his hand. I ran to
|
|
seize it.
|
|
|
|
"You son of Satan!" said the valiant Redbeard. "Thought you
|
|
could bully us, did you? Miss McGill, you were as quick as
|
|
Joan of Arc. Hand me the pistol, please."
|
|
|
|
I gave it to him, and he shoved it under the hobo's nose.
|
|
|
|
"Now" he said, "take off that rag around your neck."
|
|
|
|
The rag was an old red handkerchief, inconceivably soiled.
|
|
The tramp removed it, grumbling and whining. Mifflin gave me
|
|
the pistol to hold while he tied our prisoner's wrists
|
|
together. In the meantime we heard a shout from the quarry.
|
|
The three vagabonds were gazing up in great excitement.
|
|
|
|
"You tell those fashion plates down there," said Mifflin, as
|
|
he knotted the tramp's hands together, "that if they make any
|
|
fight I'll shoot them like crows." His voice was cold and
|
|
savage and he seemed quite master of the situation, but I must
|
|
confess I wondered how we could handle four of them.
|
|
|
|
The greasy ruffian shouted down to his pals in the quarry, but
|
|
I did not hear what he said, as just then the Professor asked
|
|
me to keep our captive covered while he got a stick. I stood
|
|
with the pistol pointed at his head while Mifflin ran back
|
|
into the birchwood to cut a cudgel.
|
|
|
|
The tramp's face became the colour of the under side of a
|
|
fried egg as he looked into the muzzle of his own gun.
|
|
|
|
"Say, lady," he pleaded, "that gun goes off awful easy, point
|
|
her somewhere else or you'll croak me by mistake."
|
|
|
|
I thought a good scare wouldn't do him any harm and kept the
|
|
barrel steadily on him.
|
|
|
|
The rascals down below seemed debating what to do. I don't
|
|
know whether they were armed or not; but probably they
|
|
imagined that there were more than two of us. At all events,
|
|
by the time Mifflin came back with a stout birch staff they
|
|
were hustling out of the quarry on the lower side. The
|
|
Professor swore, and looked as if he would gladly give chase,
|
|
but he refrained.
|
|
|
|
"Here, you," he said in crisp tones to the tramp, "march on
|
|
ahead of us, down to the quarry."
|
|
|
|
The fat ruffian shambled awkwardly down the trail. We had to
|
|
make quite a detour to get into the quarry, and by the time we
|
|
reached there the other three tramps had got clean away. I
|
|
was not sorry, to tell the truth. I thought the Professor had
|
|
had enough scrapping for one twenty-four hours.
|
|
|
|
Peg whinneyed loudly as she saw us coming, but Bock was not in sight.
|
|
|
|
"What have you done with the dog, you swine?" said Mifflin.
|
|
"If you've hurt him I'll make you pay with your own hide."
|
|
|
|
Our prisoner was completely cowed. "No, boss, we ain't hurt
|
|
the dog," he fawned. "We tied him up so he couldn't bark,
|
|
that's all. He's in the 'bus." And sure enough, by this time
|
|
we could hear smothered yelping and whining from Parnassus.
|
|
|
|
I hurried to open the door, and there was Bock, his jaws tied
|
|
together with a rope-end. He bounded out and made
|
|
super-canine efforts to express his joy at seeing the
|
|
Professor again. He paid very little attention to me.
|
|
|
|
"Well," said Mifflin, after freeing the dog's muzzle, and with
|
|
difficulty restraining him from burying his teeth in the
|
|
tramp's shin, "what shall we do with this heroic specimen of
|
|
manhood? Shall we cart him over to the jail in Port Vigor, or
|
|
shall we let him go?"
|
|
|
|
The tramp burst into a whining appeal that was almost funny,
|
|
it was so abject. The Professor cut it short.
|
|
|
|
"I ought to pack you into quod," he said. "Are you the
|
|
Phoebus Apollo I scuffled with down the lane last night? Was
|
|
it you skulking around this wagon then?"
|
|
|
|
"No, boss, that was Splitlip Sam, honest to Gawd it was. He
|
|
come back, boss; said he'd been fightin' with a
|
|
cat-o'-mountain! Say, boss, you sure hit him hard. One of
|
|
his lamps is a pudding! Boss, I'll swear I ain't had nothin'
|
|
to do with it."
|
|
|
|
"I don't like your society," said the Professor, "and I'm
|
|
going to turn you loose. I'm going to count ten, and if
|
|
you're not out of this quarry by then, I'll shoot. And if I
|
|
see you again I'll skin you alive. Now get out!"
|
|
|
|
He cut the knotted handkerchief in two. The hobo needed no
|
|
urging. He spun on his heel and fled like a rabbit. The
|
|
Professor watched him go, and as the fat, ungainly figure
|
|
burst through a hedge and disappeared he fired the revolver
|
|
into the air to frighten him still more. Then he tossed the
|
|
weapon into the pool near by.
|
|
|
|
"Well, Miss McGill," he said with a chuckle, "if you like to
|
|
undertake breakfast, I'll fix up Peg." And he drew the
|
|
horse-shoe from his pocket once more.
|
|
|
|
A brief inspection of Parnassus satisfied me that the thieves
|
|
had not had time to do any real damage. They had got out most
|
|
of the eatables and spread them on a flat rock in preparation
|
|
for a feast; and they had tracked a good deal of mud into the
|
|
van; but otherwise I could see nothing amiss. So while
|
|
Mifflin busied himself with Peg's foot it was easy for me to
|
|
get a meal under way. I found a gush of clean water trickling
|
|
down the face of the rock. There were still some eggs and
|
|
bread and cheese in the little cupboard, and an unopened tin
|
|
of condensed milk. I gave Peg her nose bag of oats, and fed
|
|
Bock, who was frisking about in high spirits. By that time
|
|
the shoeing was done, and the Professor and I sat down to an
|
|
improvised meal. I was beginning to feel as if this gipsy
|
|
existence were the normal course of my life.
|
|
|
|
"Well, Professor," I said, as I handed him a cup of coffee and
|
|
a plate of scrambled eggs and cheese, "for a man who slept in
|
|
a wet haystack, you acquit yourself with excellent valour."
|
|
|
|
"Old Parnassus is quite a stormy petrel," he said. "I used to
|
|
think the chief difficulty in writing a book would be to
|
|
invent things to happen, but if I were to sit down and write
|
|
the adventures I'd had with her it would be a regular Odyssey."
|
|
|
|
"How about Peg's foot?" I asked. "Can she travel on it?"
|
|
|
|
"It'll be all right if you go easy. I've scraped out the
|
|
injured part and put the shoe back. I keep a little kit of
|
|
tools under the van for emergencies of all sorts."
|
|
|
|
It was chilly, and we didn't dawdle over our meal. I only
|
|
made a feint of eating, as I had had a little breakfast
|
|
before, and also as the events of the last few hours had left
|
|
me rather restless. I wanted to get Parnassus out on the
|
|
highway again, to jog along in the sun and think things over.
|
|
The quarry was a desolate, forbidding place anyway. But
|
|
before we left we explored the cave where the tramps had been
|
|
preparing to make themselves comfortable for the winter. It
|
|
was not really a cave, but only a shaft into the granite
|
|
cliff. A screen of evergreen boughs protected the opening
|
|
against the weather, and inside were piles of sacking that had
|
|
evidently been used as beds, and many old grocery boxes for
|
|
tables and chairs. It amused me to notice a cracked fragment
|
|
of mirror balanced on a corner of rock. Even these
|
|
ragamuffins apparently were not totally unconscious of
|
|
personal appearance. I seized the opportunity, while the
|
|
Professor was giving Peg's foot a final look, to rearrange my
|
|
hair, which was emphatically a sight. I hardly think Andrew
|
|
would have recognized me that morning.
|
|
|
|
We led Peg up the steep incline, back into the lane where I
|
|
had strayed, and at length we reached the main road again.
|
|
Here I began to lay down the law to Redbeard.
|
|
|
|
"Now look here, Professor," I said, "I'm not going to have you
|
|
tramp all the way back to Port Vigor. After the night you've
|
|
had you need a rest. You just climb into that Parnassus and
|
|
lie down for a good snooze. I'll drive you into Woodbridge
|
|
and you can take your train there. Now you get right into
|
|
that bunk. I'll sit out here and drive."
|
|
|
|
He demurred, but without much emphasis. I think the little
|
|
fool was just about fagged out, and no wonder. I was a trifle
|
|
groggy myself. In the end he was quite docile. He climbed
|
|
into the van, took off his boots, and lay down under a
|
|
blanket. Bock followed him, and I think they both fell asleep
|
|
on the instant. I got on the front seat and took the reins.
|
|
I didn't let Peg go more quickly than a walk as I wanted to
|
|
spare her sore foot.
|
|
|
|
My, what a morning that was after the rain! The road ran
|
|
pretty close to the shore, and every now and then I could
|
|
catch a glimpse of the water. The air was keen--not just the
|
|
ordinary, unnoticed air that we breathe in and out and don't
|
|
think about, but a sharp and tingling essence, as strong in
|
|
the nostrils as camphor or ammonia. The sun seemed focussed
|
|
upon Parnassus, and we moved along the white road in a flush
|
|
of golden light. The flat fronds of the cedars swayed gently
|
|
in the salty air, and for the first time in ten years, I
|
|
should think, I began amusing myself by selecting words to
|
|
describe the goodness of the morning. I even imagined myself
|
|
writing a description of it, as if I were Andrew or Thoreau.
|
|
The crazy little Professor had inoculated me with his literary
|
|
bug, I guess.
|
|
|
|
And then I did a dishonourable thing. Just by chance I put my
|
|
hand into the little pocket beside the seat where Mifflin kept
|
|
a few odds and ends. I meant to have another look at that
|
|
card of his with the poem on it. And there I found a funny,
|
|
battered little notebook, evidently forgotten. On the cover
|
|
was written, in ink, "Thoughts on the Present Discontents."
|
|
That title seemed vaguely familiar. I seemed to recall
|
|
something of the kind from my school days--more than twenty
|
|
years ago, goodness me! Of course if I had been honourable I
|
|
wouldn't have looked into it. But in a kind of quibbling
|
|
self-justification I recalled that I had bought Parnassus and
|
|
all it contained, "lock, stock, barrel and bung" as Andrew
|
|
used to say. And so....
|
|
|
|
The notebook was full of little jottings, written in pencil in
|
|
the Professor's small, precise hand. The words were rubbed
|
|
and soiled, but plainly legible. I read this:
|
|
|
|
_I don't suppose Bock or Peg get lonely, but by the bones of
|
|
Ben Gunn, I do. Seems silly when Herrick and Hans Andersen
|
|
and Tennyson and Thoreau and a whole wagonload of other good
|
|
fellows are riding at my back. I can hear them all talking as
|
|
we trundle along. But books aren't a __substantial__ world after
|
|
all, and every now and then we get hungry for some closer,
|
|
more human relationships. I've been totally alone now for
|
|
eight years--except for Runt, and he might be dead and never
|
|
say so. This wandering about is fine in its way, but it must
|
|
come to an end some day. A man needs to put down a root
|
|
somewhere to be really happy._
|
|
|
|
_What absurd victims of contrary desires we are! If a man is
|
|
settled in one place he yearns to wander; when he wanders he
|
|
yearns to have a home. And yet how bestial is content--all
|
|
the great things in life are done by discontented people._
|
|
|
|
_There are three ingredients in the good life: learning,
|
|
earning, and yearning. A man should be learning as he goes;
|
|
and he should be earning bread for himself and others; and he
|
|
should be yearning, too: yearning to know the unknowable._
|
|
|
|
_What a fine old poem is "The Pulley" by George Herbert! Those
|
|
Elizabethan fellows knew how to write! They were marred
|
|
perhaps by their idea that poems must be "witty." (Remember
|
|
how Bacon said that reading poets makes one witty? There he
|
|
gave a clue to the literature of his time.) Their fantastic
|
|
puns and conceits are rather out of our fashion nowadays. But
|
|
Lord! the root of the matter was in them! How gallantly,
|
|
how reverently, they tackle the problems of life!_
|
|
|
|
_When God at first made man (says George Herbert) He had a
|
|
"glass of blessings standing by." So He pours on man all the
|
|
blessings in His reservoir: strength, beauty, wisdom,
|
|
honour, pleasure--and then He refrains from giving him the
|
|
last of them, which is rest, i.e., contentment. God sees
|
|
that if man is contented he will never win his way to Him.
|
|
Let man be restless, so that_
|
|
|
|
"_If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
|
|
May toss him to My breast._"
|
|
|
|
_Some day I shall write a novel on that theme, and call it "The
|
|
Pulley." In this tragic, restless world there must be some
|
|
place where at last we can lay our heads and be at rest. Some
|
|
people call it death. Some call it God._
|
|
|
|
_My ideal of a man is not the Omar who wants to shatter into
|
|
bits this sorry scheme of things, and then remould it nearer
|
|
to the heart's desire. Old Omar was a coward, with his silk
|
|
pajamas and his glass of wine. The real man is George
|
|
Herbert's "seasoned timber"--the fellow who does handily and
|
|
well whatever comes to him. Even if it's only shovelling coal
|
|
into a furnace he can balance the shovel neatly, swing the
|
|
coal square on the fire and not spill it on the floor. If
|
|
it's only splitting kindling or running a trolley car he can
|
|
make a good, artistic job of it. If it's only writing a book
|
|
or peeling potatoes he can put into it the best he has. Even
|
|
if he's only a bald-headed old fool over forty selling books
|
|
on a country road, he can make an ideal of it. Good old
|
|
Parnassus! It's a great game.... I think I'll have to give
|
|
her up soon, though: I must get that book of mine written.
|
|
But Parnassus has been a true glass of blessings to me._
|
|
|
|
There was much more in the notebook; indeed it was half full
|
|
of jotted paragraphs, memoranda, and scraps of writing--poems
|
|
I believe some of them were--but I had seen enough. It
|
|
seemed as if I had stumbled unawares on the pathetic, brave,
|
|
and lonely heart of the little man. I'm a commonplace
|
|
creature, I'm afraid, insensible to many of the deeper things
|
|
in life, but every now and then, like all of us, I come face
|
|
to face with something that thrills me. I saw how this
|
|
little, red-bearded pedlar was like a cake of yeast in the
|
|
big, heavy dough of humanity: how he travelled about trying
|
|
to fulfil in his own way his ideals of beauty. I felt almost
|
|
motherly toward him: I wanted to tell him that I understood
|
|
him. And in a way I felt ashamed of having run away from my
|
|
own homely tasks, my kitchen and my hen yard and dear old,
|
|
hot-tempered, absent-minded Andrew. I fell into a sober mood.
|
|
As soon as I was alone, I thought, I would sell Parnassus and
|
|
hurry back to the farm. That was my job, that was my glass of
|
|
blessings. What was I doing--a fat, middle-aged
|
|
woman--trapesing along the roads with a cartload of books I
|
|
didn't understand?
|
|
|
|
I slipped the little notebook back into its hidingplace. I
|
|
would have died rather than let the Professor know I had seen it.
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER ELEVEN
|
|
|
|
We were coming into Woodbridge; and I was just wondering
|
|
whether to wake the Professor when the little window behind me
|
|
slid back and he stuck his head out.
|
|
|
|
"Hello!" he said. "I think I must have been asleep!"
|
|
|
|
"Well, I should hope so," I said. "You needed it."
|
|
|
|
Indeed he looked much better, and I was relieved to see it.
|
|
I had been really afraid he would be ill after sleeping out
|
|
all night, but I guess he was tougher than I thought. He
|
|
joined me on the seat, and we drove into the town. While he
|
|
went to the station to ask about the trains I had a fine time
|
|
selling books. I was away from the locality where I was
|
|
known, and had no shyness in attempting to imitate Mifflin's
|
|
methods. I even went him one better by going into a hardware
|
|
store where I bought a large dinner bell. This I rang lustily
|
|
until a crowd gathered, then I put up the flaps and displayed
|
|
my books. As a matter of fact, I sold only one, but I enjoyed
|
|
myself none the less.
|
|
|
|
By and by Mifflin reappeared. I think he had been to a
|
|
barber: at any rate he looked very spry: he had bought a
|
|
clean collar and a flowing tie of a bright electric blue which
|
|
really suited him rather well.
|
|
|
|
"Well," he said, "the Sage is going to get back at me for that
|
|
punch on the nose! I've been to the bank to cash your check.
|
|
They telephoned over to Redfield, and apparently your brother
|
|
has stopped payment on it. It's rather awkward: they seem to
|
|
think I'm a crook."
|
|
|
|
I was furious. What right had Andrew to do that?
|
|
|
|
"The brute!" I said. "What on earth shall I do?"
|
|
|
|
"I suggest that you telephone to the Redfield Bank," he said,
|
|
"and countermand your brother's instructions--that is, unless
|
|
you think you've made a mistake? I don't want to take
|
|
advantage of you."
|
|
|
|
"Nonsense!" I said. "I'm not going to let Andrew spoil my
|
|
holiday. That's always his way: if he gets an idea into his
|
|
head he's like a mule. I'll telephone to Redfield, and then
|
|
we'll go to see the bank here."
|
|
|
|
We put Parnassus up at the hotel, and I went to the telephone.
|
|
I was thoroughly angry at Andrew, and tried to get him on the
|
|
wire first. But Sabine Farm didn't answer. Then I telephoned
|
|
to the bank in Redfield, and got Mr. Shirley. He's the
|
|
cashier, and I know him well. I guess he recognized my voice,
|
|
for he made no objection when I told him what I wanted.
|
|
|
|
"Now you telephone to the bank in Woodbridge," I said, "and
|
|
tell them to let Mr. Mifflin have the money. I'll go there
|
|
with him to identify him. Will that be all right?"
|
|
|
|
"Perfectly," he said. The deceitful little snail! If I had
|
|
only known what he was concocting!
|
|
|
|
Mifflin said there was a train at three o'clock which he could
|
|
take. We stopped at a little lunch room for a bite to eat,
|
|
then he went again to the bank, and I with him. We asked the
|
|
cashier whether they had had a message from Redfield.
|
|
|
|
"Yes," he said. "We've just heard." And he looked at me
|
|
rather queerly.
|
|
|
|
"Are you Miss McGill?" he said.
|
|
|
|
"I am," I said.
|
|
|
|
"Will you just step this way a moment?" he asked politely.
|
|
|
|
He led me into a little sitting-room and asked me to sit down.
|
|
I supposed that he was going to get some paper for me to sign,
|
|
so I waited quite patiently for several minutes. I had left
|
|
the Professor at the cashier's window, where they would give
|
|
him his money.
|
|
|
|
I waited some time, and finally I got tired of looking at the
|
|
Life Insurance calendars. Then I happened to glance out of
|
|
the window. Surely that was the Professor, just disappearing
|
|
round the corner with another man?
|
|
|
|
I returned to the cashier's desk.
|
|
|
|
"What's the matter?" I said. "Your mahogany furniture is
|
|
charming, but I'm tired of it. Do I have to sit here any
|
|
longer? And where's Mr. Mifflin? Did he get his money?"
|
|
|
|
The cashier was a horrid little creature with side whiskers.
|
|
|
|
"I'm sorry you had to wait, Madam," he said. "The transaction
|
|
is just concluded. We gave Mr. Mifflin what was due him.
|
|
There is no need for you to stay longer."
|
|
|
|
I thought this was very extraordinary. Surely the Professor
|
|
would not leave without saying good-bye? However, I noticed
|
|
that the clock said three minutes to three, so I thought that
|
|
perhaps he had had to run to catch his train. He was such a
|
|
strange little man, anyway....
|
|
|
|
Well, I went back to the hotel, quite a little upset by this
|
|
sudden parting. At least I was glad the little man had got
|
|
his money all right. Probably he would write from Brooklyn,
|
|
but of course I wouldn't get the letter till I returned to the
|
|
farm as that was the only address he would have. Perhaps that
|
|
wouldn't be so long after all: but I did not feel like going
|
|
back now, when Andrew had been so horrid.
|
|
|
|
I drove Parnassus on the ferry, and we crossed the river. I
|
|
felt lost and disagreeable. Even the fresh movement through the
|
|
air gave me no pleasure. Bock whined dismally inside the van.
|
|
|
|
It didn't take me long to discover that Parnassing all alone
|
|
had lost some of its charms. I missed the Professor: missed
|
|
his abrupt, direct way of saying things, and his whimsical
|
|
wit. And I was annoyed by his skipping off without a word of
|
|
good-bye. It didn't seem natural. I partially appeased my
|
|
irritation by stopping at a farmhouse on the other side of the
|
|
river and selling a cook book. Then I started along the road
|
|
for Bath--about five miles farther on. Peg's foot didn't seem
|
|
to bother her so I thought it would be safe to travel that far
|
|
before stopping for the night. Counting up the days (with
|
|
some difficulty: it seemed as though I had been away from
|
|
home a month), I remembered that this was Saturday night. I
|
|
thought I would stay in Bath over Sunday and get a good rest.
|
|
We jogged sedately along the road, and I got out a copy of
|
|
"_Vanity Fair_." I was so absorbed in Becky Sharp that I
|
|
wouldn't even interrupt myself to sell books at the houses we
|
|
passed. I think reading a good book makes one modest. When
|
|
you see the marvellous insight into human nature which a truly
|
|
great book shows, it is bound to make you feel small--like}
|
|
looking at the Dipper on a clear night, or seeing the winter
|
|
sunrise when you go out to collect the morning eggs. And
|
|
anything that makes you feel small is mighty good for you.
|
|
|
|
"What do you mean by a great book?" said the Professor--I
|
|
mean, I imagined him saying it. It seemed to me as if I could
|
|
see him sitting there, with his corncob pipe in his hand and
|
|
that quizzical little face of his looking sharply at me.
|
|
Somehow, talking with the Professor had made me think. He was
|
|
as good as one of those Scranton correspondence courses, I do
|
|
believe, and no money to pay for postage.
|
|
|
|
Well, I said to the Professor--to myself I mean--let's see:
|
|
what _is_ a good book? I don't mean books like Henry James's
|
|
(he's Andrew's great idol. It always seemed to me that he had
|
|
a kind of rush of words to the head and never stopped to sort
|
|
them out properly). A good book ought to have something
|
|
simple about it. And, like Eve, it ought to come from
|
|
somewhere near the third rib: there ought to be a heart
|
|
beating in it. A story that's all forehead doesn't amount to
|
|
much. Anyway, it'll never get over at a Dorcas meeting. That
|
|
was the trouble with Henry James. Andrew talked so much about
|
|
him that I took one of his books to read aloud at our sewing
|
|
circle over at Redfield. Well, after one try we had to fall
|
|
back on "Pollyanna."
|
|
|
|
I haven't been doing chores and running a farmhouse for
|
|
fifteen years without getting some ideas about life--and even
|
|
about books. I wouldn't set my lit'ry views up against yours,
|
|
Professor (I was still talking to Mifflin in my mind), no, nor
|
|
even against Andrew's--but as I say, I've got some ideas of
|
|
my own. I've learned that honest work counts in writing books
|
|
just as much as it does in washing dishes. I guess Andrew's
|
|
books must be some good after all because he surely does mull
|
|
over them without end. I can forgive his being a shiftless
|
|
farmer so long as he really does his literary chores up to the
|
|
hilt. A man can be slack in everything else, if he does one
|
|
thing as well as he possibly can. And I guess it won't matter
|
|
my being an ignoramus in literature so long as I'm rated A-1
|
|
in the kitchen. That's what I used to think as I polished and
|
|
scoured and scrubbed and dusted and swept and then set about
|
|
getting dinner. If I ever sat down to read for ten minutes
|
|
the cat would get into the custard. No woman in the country
|
|
sits down for fifteen consecutive minutes between sunrise and
|
|
sunset, anyway, unless she has half a dozen servants. And
|
|
nobody knows anything about literature unless he spends most
|
|
of his life sitting down. So there you are.
|
|
|
|
The cultivation of philosophic reflection was a new experience
|
|
for me. Peg ambled along contentedly and the dog trailed
|
|
under Parnassus where I had tied him. I read "_Vanity Fair_"
|
|
and thought about all sorts of things. Once I got out to pick
|
|
some scarlet maple leaves that attracted me. The motors
|
|
passing annoyed me with their dust and noise, but by and by
|
|
one of them stopped, looked at my outfit curiously, and then
|
|
asked to see some books. I put up the flaps for them and we
|
|
pulled off to one side of the road and had a good talk. They
|
|
bought two or three books, too.
|
|
|
|
By the time I neared Bath the hands of my watch pointed to
|
|
supper. I was still a bit shy of Mifflin's scheme of stopping
|
|
overnight at farmhouses, so I thought I'd go right into the
|
|
town and look for a hotel. The next day was Sunday, so it
|
|
seemed reasonable to give the horse a good rest and stay in
|
|
Bath two nights. The Hominy House looked clean and
|
|
old-fashioned, and the name amused me, so in I went. It was
|
|
a kind of high-class boarding-house, with mostly old women
|
|
around. It looked to me almost literary and Elbert Hubbardish
|
|
compared to the Grand Central in Shelby. The folks there
|
|
stared at me somewhat suspiciously and I half thought they
|
|
were going to say they didn't take pedlars; but when I flashed
|
|
a new five-dollar bill at the desk I got good service. A
|
|
five-dollar bill is a patent of nobility in New England.
|
|
|
|
My! how I enjoyed that creamed chicken on toast, and
|
|
buckwheat cakes with syrup! After you get used to cooking all
|
|
your own grub, a meal off some one else's stove is the finest
|
|
kind of treat. After supper I was all prepared to sit out on
|
|
the porch with my sweater on and give a rocking chair a hot
|
|
box, but then I remembered that it was up to me to carry on
|
|
the traditions of Parnassus. I was there to spread the gospel
|
|
of good books. I got to thinking how the Professor never
|
|
shirked carrying on his campaign, and I determined that I
|
|
would be worthy of the cause.
|
|
|
|
When I think back about the experience, it seems pretty crazy,
|
|
but at the time I was filled with a kind of evangelistic zeal.
|
|
I thought if I was going to try to sell books I might as well
|
|
have some fun out of it. Most of the old ladies were
|
|
squatting about in the parlour, knitting or reading or playing
|
|
cards. In the smoking-room I could see two dried-up men. Mrs.
|
|
Hominy, the manager of the place, was sitting at her desk
|
|
behind a brass railing, going over accounts with a quill pen.
|
|
I thought that the house probably hadn't had a shock since
|
|
Walt Whitman wrote "Leaves of Grass." In a kind of do-or-die
|
|
spirit I determined to give them a rouse.
|
|
|
|
In the dining-room I had noticed a huge dinner bell that stood
|
|
behind the door. I stepped in there, and got it. Standing in
|
|
the big hall I began ringing it as hard as I could shake my arm.
|
|
|
|
You might have thought it was a fire alarm. Mrs. Hominy
|
|
dropped her pen in horror. The colonial dames in the parlour
|
|
came to life and ran into the hall like cockroaches. In a
|
|
minute I had gathered quite a respectable audience. It was up
|
|
to me to do the spellbinding.
|
|
|
|
"Friends," I said (unconsciously imitating the Professor's
|
|
tricks of the trade, I guess), "this bell which generally
|
|
summons you to the groaning board now calls you to a literary
|
|
repast. With the permission of the management, and with
|
|
apologies for disturbing your tranquillity, I will deliver a
|
|
few remarks on the value of good books. I see that several of
|
|
you are fond of reading, so perhaps the topic will be congenial?"
|
|
|
|
They gazed at me about as warmly as a round of walnut sundaes.
|
|
|
|
"Ladies and Gentlemen," I continued, "of course you remember
|
|
the story of Abe Lincoln when he said, `if you call a leg a
|
|
tail, how many tails has a dog?' `Five,' you answer. Wrong;
|
|
because, as Mr. Lincoln said, calling a leg a tail...."
|
|
|
|
I still think it was a good beginning. But that was as far as
|
|
I got. Mrs. Hominy came out of her trance, hastened from the
|
|
cage, and grabbed my arm. She was quite red with anger.
|
|
|
|
"Really!" she said. "Well, really!... I must ask you to
|
|
continue this in some other place. We do not allow commercial
|
|
travellers in this house."
|
|
|
|
And within fifteen minutes they had hitched up Peg and asked
|
|
me to move on. Indeed I was so taken aback by my own zeal
|
|
that I could hardly protest. In a kind of daze I found
|
|
myself at the Moose Hotel, where they assured me that they
|
|
catered to mercantile people. I went straight to my room and
|
|
fell asleep as soon as I reached the straw mattress.
|
|
|
|
That was my first and only pubic speech.
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER TWELVE
|
|
|
|
The next day was Sunday, October sixth. I well remember the date.
|
|
|
|
I woke up as chipper as any Robert W. Chambers heroine. All
|
|
my doubts and depressions of the evening before had fled, and
|
|
I was single-heartedly delighted with the world and everything
|
|
in it. The hotel was a poor place, but it would have taken
|
|
more than that to mar my composure. I had a bitterly cold
|
|
bath in a real country tin tub, and then eggs and pancakes for
|
|
breakfast. At the table was a drummer who sold lightning
|
|
rods, and several other travelling salesmen. I'm afraid my
|
|
conversation was consciously modelled along the line of what
|
|
the Professor would have said if he had been there, but at any
|
|
rate I got along swimmingly. The travelling men, after a
|
|
moment or two of embarrassed diffidence, treated me quite as
|
|
one of themselves and asked me about my "line" with interest.
|
|
I described what I was doing and they all said they envied me
|
|
my freedom to come and go independently of trains. We talked
|
|
cheerfully for a long time, and almost without intending to,
|
|
I started preaching about books. In the end they insisted on
|
|
my showing them Parnassus. We all went out to the stable,
|
|
where the van was quartered, and they browsed over the
|
|
shelves. Before I knew it I had sold five dollars' worth,
|
|
although I had decided not to do any business at all on
|
|
Sunday. But I couldn't refuse to sell them the stuff as they
|
|
all seemed so keen on getting something really good to read.
|
|
One man kept on talking about Harold Bell Wright, but I had to
|
|
admit that I hadn't heard of him. Evidently the Professor
|
|
hadn't stocked any of his works. I was tickled to see that after
|
|
all little Redbeard didn't know _everything_ about literature.
|
|
|
|
After that I debated whether to go to church or to write
|
|
letters. Finally I decided in favour of the letters. First
|
|
I tackled Andrew. I wrote:
|
|
|
|
The Moose Hotel, Bath,
|
|
Sunday morning.
|
|
|
|
DEAR ANDREW:
|
|
|
|
It seems absurd to think that it's only three days since I
|
|
left Sabine Farm. Honestly, more has happened to me in these
|
|
three days than in three years at home.
|
|
|
|
I'm sorry that you and Mr. Mifflin disagreed but I quite
|
|
understood your feelings. But I'm very angry that you should
|
|
have tried to stop that check I gave him. It was none of your
|
|
business, Andrew. I telephoned Mr. Shirley and made him send
|
|
word to the bank in Woodbridge to give Mifflin the money. Mr.
|
|
Mifflin did not swindle me into buying Parnassus. I did it of
|
|
my own free will. If you want to know the truth, it was your
|
|
fault! I bought it because I was scared _you_ would if I
|
|
didn't. And I didn't want to be left all alone on the farm
|
|
from now till Thanksgiving while you went off on another trip.
|
|
So I decided to do the thing myself. I thought I'd see how
|
|
you would like being left all alone to run the house. I
|
|
thought it'd be pretty nice for me to get things off my mind
|
|
a while and have an adventure of my own.
|
|
|
|
Now, Andrew, here are some directions for you:
|
|
|
|
1. Don't forget to feed the chickens twice a day, and collect
|
|
_all_ the eggs. There's a nest behind the wood pile, and some
|
|
of the Wyandottes have been laying under the ice house.
|
|
|
|
2. Don't let Rosie touch grandmother's blue china, because
|
|
she'll break it as sure as fate if she lays her big, thick
|
|
Swedish fingers on it.
|
|
|
|
3. Don't forget your warmer underwear. The nights are
|
|
getting chilly.
|
|
|
|
4. I forgot to put the cover on the sewing machine. Please
|
|
do that for me or it'll get all dusty.
|
|
|
|
5. Don't let the cat run loose in the house at night: he
|
|
always breaks something.
|
|
|
|
6. Send your socks and anything else that needs darning over
|
|
to Mrs. McNally, she can do it for you.
|
|
|
|
7. Don't forget to feed the pigs.
|
|
|
|
8. Don't forget to mend the weathervane on the barn.
|
|
|
|
9. Don't forget to send that barrel of apples over to the
|
|
cider mill or you won't have any cider to drink when Mr.
|
|
Decameron comes up to see us later in the fall.
|
|
|
|
10. Just to make ten commandments, I'll add one more: You
|
|
might 'phone to Mrs. Collins that the Dorcas will have to meet
|
|
at some one else's house next week, because I don't know just
|
|
when I'll get back. I may be away a fortnight more. This is
|
|
my first holiday in a long time and I'm going to chew it
|
|
before I swallow it.
|
|
|
|
The Professor (Mr. Mifflin, I mean) has gone back to Brooklyn
|
|
to work on his book. I'm sorry you and he had to mix it up on
|
|
the high road like a couple of hooligans. He's a nice little
|
|
man and you'd like him if you got to know him.
|
|
|
|
I'm spending Sunday in Bath: to-morrow I'm going on toward
|
|
Hastings. I've sold five dollars' worth of books this morning
|
|
even if it is Sunday.
|
|
|
|
Your affte sister
|
|
HELEN McGiLL.
|
|
|
|
P.S. Don't forget to clean the separator after using it, or
|
|
it'll get in a fearful state.
|
|
|
|
After writing to Andrew I thought I would send a message to
|
|
the Professor. I had already written him a long letter in my
|
|
mind, but somehow when I began putting it on paper a sort of
|
|
awkwardness came over me. I didn't know just how to begin.
|
|
I thought how much more fun it would be if he were there
|
|
himself and I could listen to him talk. And then, while I was
|
|
writing the first few sentences, some of the drummers came
|
|
back into the room.
|
|
|
|
"Thought you'd like to see a Sunday paper," said one of them.
|
|
|
|
I picked up the newspaper with a word of thanks and ran an eye
|
|
over the headlines. The ugly black letters stood up before
|
|
me, and my heart gave a great contraction. I felt my
|
|
fingertips turn cold.
|
|
|
|
DISASTROUS WRECK
|
|
ON THE SHORE LINE
|
|
EXPRESS RUNS INTO OPEN SWITCH
|
|
--
|
|
TEN LIVES LOST, AND
|
|
MORE THAN A SCORE INJURED
|
|
--
|
|
FAILURE OF BLOCK SIGNALS
|
|
|
|
The letters seemed to stand up before me as large as a Malted
|
|
Milk signboard. With a shuddering apprehension I read the
|
|
details. Apparently the express that left Providence at four
|
|
o'clock on Saturday afternoon had crashed into an open siding
|
|
near Willdon about six o'clock, and collided with a string of
|
|
freight empties. The baggage car had been demolished and the
|
|
smoker had turned over and gone down an embankment. There
|
|
were ten men killed... my head swam. Was that the train the
|
|
Professor had taken? Let me see. He left Woodbridge on a
|
|
local train at three. He had said the day before that the
|
|
express left Port Vigor at five.... If he had changed to the
|
|
express.....
|
|
|
|
In a kind of fascinated horror my eye caught the list of the
|
|
dead. I ran down the names. Thank God, no, Mifflin was not
|
|
among them. Then I saw the last entry:
|
|
|
|
UNIDENTIFIED MAN, MIDDLE-AGED.
|
|
|
|
What if that should be the Professor?
|
|
|
|
And I suddenly felt dizzy, and for the first time in my life
|
|
I fainted.
|
|
|
|
Thank goodness, no one else was in the room. The drummers had
|
|
gone outside again, and no one heard me flop off the chair.
|
|
I came to in a moment, my heart whirling like a spinning top.
|
|
At first I did not realize what was wrong. Then my eye fell
|
|
on the newspaper again. Feverishly I re-read the account, and
|
|
the names of the injured, too, which I had missed before.
|
|
Nowhere was there a name I knew. But the tragic words
|
|
"unidentified man" danced before my eyes. Oh! if it
|
|
were the Professor....
|
|
|
|
In a wave the truth burst upon me. I loved that little man:
|
|
I loved him, I loved him. He had brought something new into
|
|
my life, and his brave, quaint ways had warmed my fat old
|
|
heart. For the first time, in an intolerable gush of pain, I
|
|
seemed to know that my life could never again be endurable
|
|
without him. And now--what was I to do?
|
|
|
|
How could I learn the truth? Certainly if he _had_ been on the
|
|
train, and had escaped from the wreck unhurt, he would have
|
|
sent a message to Sabine Farm to let me know. At any rate, that
|
|
was a possibility. I rushed to the telephone to call up Andrew.
|
|
|
|
Oh! the agonizing slowness of telephone connections when
|
|
urgent hurry is needed! My voice shook as I said "Redfield
|
|
158 J" to the operator. Throbbing with nervousness I waited
|
|
to hear the familiar click of the receiver at the other end.
|
|
I could hear the Redfield switchboard receive the call, and
|
|
put in the plug to connect with our wire. In imagination I
|
|
could see the telephone against the wall in the old hallway at
|
|
Sabine Farm. I could see the soiled patch of plaster where
|
|
Andrew rests his elbow when he talks into the 'phone, and the
|
|
place where he jots numbers down in pencil and I rub them off
|
|
with bread crumbs. I could see Andrew coming out of the
|
|
sitting-room to answer the bell. And then the operator said
|
|
carelessly, "Doesn't answer." My forehead was wet as I came
|
|
out of the booth.
|
|
|
|
I hope I may never have to re-live the horrors of the next
|
|
hour. In spite of my bluff and hearty ways, in times of
|
|
trouble I am as reticent as a clam. I was determined to hide
|
|
my agony and anxiety from the well-meaning people of the Moose
|
|
Hotel. I hurried to the railway station to send a telegram to
|
|
the Professor's address in Brooklyn, but found the place
|
|
closed. A boy told me it would not be open until the
|
|
afternoon. From a drugstore I called "information" in
|
|
Willdon, and finally got connected with some undertaker to
|
|
whom the Willdon operator referred me. A horrible, condoling
|
|
voice (have you ever talked to an undertaker over the
|
|
telephone?) answered me that no one by the name of Mifflin had
|
|
been among the dead, but admitted that there was one body
|
|
still unidentified. He used one ghastly word that made me
|
|
shudder--_unrecognizable_. I rang off.
|
|
|
|
I knew then for the first time the horror of loneliness. I
|
|
thought of the poor little man's notebook that I had seen. I
|
|
thought of his fearless and lovable ways--of his pathetic
|
|
little tweed cap, of the missing button of his jacket, of the
|
|
bungling darns on his frayed sleeve. It seemed to me that
|
|
heaven could mean nothing more than to roll creaking along
|
|
country roads, in Parnassus, with the Professor beside me on
|
|
the seat. What if I had known him only--how long was it? He
|
|
had brought the splendour of an ideal into my humdrum life.
|
|
And now--had I lost it forever? Andrew and the farm seemed
|
|
faint and far away. I was a homely old woman, mortally lonely
|
|
and helpless. In my perplexity I walked to the outskirts of
|
|
the village and burst into tears.
|
|
|
|
Finally I got a grip on myself again. I am not ashamed to say
|
|
that I now admitted frankly what I had been hiding from
|
|
myself. I was in love--in love with a little, red-bearded
|
|
bookseller who seemed to me more splendid than Sir Galahad.
|
|
And I vowed that if he would have me, I would follow him to
|
|
the other end of nowhere.
|
|
|
|
I walked back to the hotel. I thought I would make one more
|
|
try to get Andrew on the telephone. My whole soul quivered
|
|
when at last I heard the receiver click.
|
|
|
|
"Hello?" said Andrew's voice.
|
|
|
|
"Oh, Andrew," I said, "this is Helen."
|
|
|
|
"Where are you?" (His voice sounded cross.)
|
|
|
|
"Andrew, is there any--any message from Mr. Mifflin? That
|
|
wreck yesterday--he might have been on that train--I've been
|
|
so frightened; do you think he was--hurt?"
|
|
|
|
"Stuff and nonsense," said Andrew. "If you want to know about
|
|
Mifflin, he's in jail in Port Vigor."
|
|
|
|
And then I think Andrew must have been surprised. I began to
|
|
laugh and cry simultaneously, and in my agitation I set down
|
|
the receiver.
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
|
|
|
|
My first impulse was to hide myself in some obscure corner
|
|
where I could vent my feelings without fear or favour. I
|
|
composed my face as well as I could before leaving the 'phone
|
|
booth; then I sidled across the lobby and slipped out of the
|
|
side door. I found my way into the stable, where good old Peg
|
|
was munching in her stall. The fine, homely smell of
|
|
horseflesh and long-worn harness leather went right to my
|
|
heart, and while Bock frisked at my knees I laid my head on
|
|
Peg's neck and cried. I think that fat old mare understood
|
|
me. She was as tubby and prosaic and middle-aged as I--but
|
|
she loved the Professor.
|
|
|
|
Suddenly Andrew's words echoed again in my mind. I had barely
|
|
heeded them before, in the great joy of my relief, but now
|
|
their significance came to me. "In jail." The Professor in
|
|
jail! That was the meaning of his strange disappearance at
|
|
Woodbridge. That little brute of a man Shirley must have
|
|
telephoned from Redfield, and when the Professor came to the
|
|
Woodbridge bank to cash that check they had arrested him.
|
|
That was why they had shoved me into that mahogany
|
|
sitting-room. Andrew must be behind this. The besotted old
|
|
fool! My face burned with anger and humiliation.
|
|
|
|
I never knew before what it means to be really infuriated. I
|
|
could feel my brain tingle. The Professor in jail! The
|
|
gallant, chivalrous little man, penned up with hoboes and
|
|
sneak thieves suspected of being a crook... as if I couldn't
|
|
take care of myself! What did they think he was, anyway? A
|
|
kidnapper?
|
|
|
|
Instantly I decided I would hurry back to Port Vigor without
|
|
delay. If Andrew had had the Professor locked up, it could
|
|
only be on the charge of defrauding me. Certainly it couldn't
|
|
be for giving him a bloody nose on the road from Shelby. And
|
|
if I appeared to deny the charge, surely they would have to
|
|
let Mr. Mifflin go.
|
|
|
|
I believe I must have been talking to myself in Peg's
|
|
stall--at any rate, just at this moment the stableman appeared
|
|
and looked very bewildered when he saw me, with flushed face
|
|
and in obvious excitement, talking to the horse. I asked him
|
|
when was the next train to Port Vigor.
|
|
|
|
"Well, ma'am," he said, "they say that all the local trains is
|
|
held up till the wreck at Willdon's cleared away. This being
|
|
Sunday, I don't think you'll get anything from here until
|
|
to-morrow morning."
|
|
|
|
I reflected. It wasn't so awfully far back to Port Vigor. A
|
|
flivver from the local garage could spin me back there in a
|
|
couple of hours at the most. But somehow it seemed more
|
|
fitting to go to the Professor's rescue in his own Parnassus,
|
|
even if it would take longer to get there. To tell the truth,
|
|
while I was angry and humiliated at the thought of his being
|
|
put in jail by Andrew, I couldn't help, deep down within me,
|
|
being rather thankful. Suppose he had been in the wreck? The
|
|
Sage of Redfield had played the part of Providence after all.
|
|
And if I set out right away with Parnassus, I could get to
|
|
Port Vigor--well, by Monday morning anyway.
|
|
|
|
The good people of the Moose Hotel were genuinely surprised at
|
|
the hurry with which I dispatched my lunch. But I gave them
|
|
no explanations. Goodness knows, my head was full of other
|
|
thoughts and the apple sauce might have been asbestos. You
|
|
know, a woman only falls in love once in her life, and if it
|
|
waits until she's darn near forty--well, it _takes!_ You see
|
|
I hadn't even been vaccinated against it by girlish
|
|
flirtations. I began to be a governess when I was just a kid,
|
|
and a governess doesn't get many chances to be skittish. So
|
|
now when it came, it hit me hard. That's when a woman finds
|
|
herself--when she's in love. I don't care if she _is_ old or
|
|
fat or homely or prosy. She feels that little flutter under
|
|
her ribs and she drops from the tree like a ripe plum. I
|
|
didn't care if Roger Mifflin and I were as odd a couple as old
|
|
Dr. Johnson and his wife, I only knew one thing: that when
|
|
I saw that little red devil again I was going to be all
|
|
his--if he'd have me. That's why the old Moose Hotel in Bath
|
|
is always sacred to me. That's where I learned that life
|
|
still held something fresh for me--something better than
|
|
baking champlain biscuits for Andrew.
|
|
|
|
. . . . . . . . .
|
|
|
|
That Sunday was one of those mellow, golden days that we New
|
|
Englanders get in October. The year really begins in March,
|
|
as every farmer knows, and by the end of September or the
|
|
beginning of October the season has come to its perfect,
|
|
ripened climax. There are a few days when the world seems to
|
|
hang still in a dreaming, sweet hush, at the very fulness of
|
|
the fruit before the decline sets in. I have no words (like
|
|
Andrew) to describe it, but every autumn for years I have
|
|
noticed it. I remember that sometimes at the farm I used to
|
|
lean over the wood pile for a moment just before supper to
|
|
watch those purple October sunsets. I would hear the sharp
|
|
ting of Andrew's little typewriter bell as he was working in his
|
|
study. And then I would try to swallow down within me the beauty
|
|
and wistfulness of it all, and run back to mash the potatoes.
|
|
|
|
Peg drew Parnassus along the backward road with a merry little
|
|
rumble. I think she knew we were going back to the Professor.
|
|
Bock careered mightily along the wayside. And I had much time
|
|
for thinking. On the whole, I was glad; for I had much to
|
|
ponder. An adventure that had started as a mere lark or whim
|
|
had now become for me the very gist of life itself. I was
|
|
fanciful, I guess, and as romantic as a young hen, but by the
|
|
bones of George Eliot, I'm sorry for the woman that never has
|
|
a chance to be fanciful. Mifflin was in jail; aye, but he
|
|
might have been dead and--_unrecognizable!_ My heart refused
|
|
to be altogether sad. I was on my way to deliver him from
|
|
durance vile. There seemed a kinship between the season and
|
|
myself, I mused, seeing the goldenrod turning bronze and
|
|
droopy along the way. Here was I, in the full fruition of
|
|
womanhood, on the verge of my decline into autumn, and lo! by
|
|
the grace of God, I had found my man, my master. He had
|
|
touched me with his own fire and courage. I didn't care what
|
|
happened to Andrew, or to Sabine Farm, or to anything else in
|
|
the world. Here were my hearth and my home--Parnassus, or
|
|
wherever Roger should pitch his tent. I dreamed of crossing
|
|
the Brooklyn Bridge with him at dusk, watching the skyscrapers
|
|
etched against a burning sky. I believed in calling things by
|
|
their true names. Ink is ink, even if the bottle is marked
|
|
"commercial fluid." I didn't try to blink the fact that I was
|
|
in love. In fact, I gloried in it. As Parnassus rolled along
|
|
the road, and the scarlet maple leaves eddied gently down in
|
|
the blue October air, I made up a kind of chant which I called
|
|
|
|
_Hymn for a Middle-Aged Woman (Fat)_
|
|
_Who Has Fallen into Love_
|
|
|
|
_O God, I thank Thee who sent this great adventure my way! I
|
|
am grateful to have come out of the barren land of
|
|
spinsterhood, seeing the glory of a love greater than myself.
|
|
I thank Thee for teaching me that mixing, and kneading, and
|
|
baking are not all that life holds for me. Even if he doesn't
|
|
love me, God, I shall always be his._
|
|
|
|
I was crooning some such babble as this to myself when, near
|
|
Woodbridge, I came upon a big, shiny motor car stranded by the
|
|
roadside. Several people, evidently intelligent and
|
|
well-to-do, sat under a tree while their chauffeur fussed with
|
|
a tire. I was so absorbed in my own thoughts that I think I
|
|
should have gone by without paying them much heed, but
|
|
suddenly I remembered the Professor's creed--to preach the
|
|
gospel of books in and out of season. Sunday or no Sunday, I
|
|
thought I could best honour Mifflin by acting on his own
|
|
principle. I pulled up by the side of the road.
|
|
|
|
I noticed the people turn to one another in a kind of
|
|
surprise, and whisper something. There was an elderly man
|
|
with a lean, hard-worked face; a stout woman, evidently his
|
|
wife; and two young girls and a man in golfing clothes.
|
|
Somehow the face of the older man seemed familiar. I wondered
|
|
whether he were some literary friend of Andrew's whose photo
|
|
I had seen.
|
|
|
|
Bock stood by the wheel with his long, curly tongue running in
|
|
and out over his teeth. I hesitated a moment, thinking just
|
|
how to phrase my attack, when the elderly gentleman called out:
|
|
|
|
"Where's the Professor?"
|
|
|
|
I was beginning to realize that Mifflin was indeed a public character.
|
|
|
|
"Heavens!" I said. "Do you know him, too?"
|
|
|
|
"Well, I should think so," he said. "Didn't he come to see me
|
|
last spring about an appropriation for school libraries, and
|
|
wouldn't leave till I'd promised to do what he wanted! He stayed
|
|
the night with us and we talked literature till four o'clock
|
|
in the morning. Where is he now? Have you taken over Parnassus?"
|
|
|
|
"Just at present," I said, "Mr. Mifflin is in the jail at Port Vigor."
|
|
|
|
The ladies gave little cries of astonishment, and the
|
|
gentleman himself (I had sized him up as a school commissioner
|
|
or something of that sort) seemed not less surprised.
|
|
|
|
"In jail!" he said. "What on earth for? Has he sandbagged
|
|
somebody for reading Nick Carter and Bertha M. Clay? That's
|
|
about the only crime he'd be likely to commit."
|
|
|
|
"He's supposed to have cozened me out of four hundred
|
|
dollars," I said, "and my brother has had him locked up. But
|
|
as a matter of fact he wouldn't swindle a hen out of a
|
|
new-laid egg. I bought Parnassus of my own free will. I'm on
|
|
my way to Port Vigor now to get him out. Then I'm going to
|
|
ask him to marry me--if he will. It's not leap year, either"}
|
|
|
|
He looked at me, his thin, lined face working with
|
|
friendliness. He was a fine-looking man--short, gray hair
|
|
brushed away from a broad, brown forehead. I noticed his
|
|
rich, dark suit and the spotless collar. This was a man of
|
|
breeding, evidently.
|
|
|
|
"Well, Madam," he said, "any friend of the Professor is a
|
|
friend of ours." (His wife and the girls chimed in with
|
|
assent.) "If you would like a lift in our car to speed you on
|
|
your errand, I'm sure Bob here would be glad to drive
|
|
Parnassus into Port Vigor. Our tire will soon be mended."
|
|
|
|
The young man assented heartily, but as I said before, I was
|
|
bent on taking Parnassus back myself. I thought the sight of
|
|
his own tabernacle would be the best balm for Mifflin's
|
|
annoying experience. So I refused the offer, and explained
|
|
the situation a little more fully.
|
|
|
|
"Well," he said, "then let me help in any way I can." He took
|
|
a card from his pocketbook and scribbled something on it.
|
|
"When you get to Port Vigor," he said, "show this at the jail
|
|
and I don't think you'll have any trouble. I happen to know
|
|
the people there."
|
|
|
|
So after a hand-shake all round I went on again, much cheered
|
|
by this friendly little incident. It wasn't till I was some
|
|
way along the road that I thought of looking at the card he
|
|
had given me. Then I realized why the man's face had been
|
|
familiar. The card read quite simply.
|
|
|
|
RALEIGH STONE STAFFORD
|
|
|
|
The Executive Mansion,
|
|
Darlington.
|
|
|
|
It was the Governor of the State!
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
|
|
|
|
I couldn't help chuckling, as Parnassus came over the brow of
|
|
the hill, and I saw the river in the distance once more. How
|
|
different all this was from my girlhood visions of romance.
|
|
That has been characteristic of my life all along--it has been
|
|
full of homely, workaday happenings, and often rather comic in
|
|
spite of my best resolves to be highbrow and serious. All the
|
|
same I was something near to tears as I thought of the tragic
|
|
wreck at Willdon and the grief-laden hearts that must be
|
|
mourning. I wondered whether the Governor was now returning
|
|
from Willdon after ordering an inquiry.
|
|
|
|
On his card he had written: "Please release R. Mifflin at
|
|
once and show this lady all courtesies." So I didn't
|
|
anticipate any particular trouble. This made me all the more
|
|
anxious to push on, and after crossing the ferry we halted in
|
|
Woodbridge only long enough for supper. I drove past the bank
|
|
where I had waited in the anteroom, and would have been glad
|
|
of a chance to horsewhip that sneaking little cashier. I
|
|
wondered how they had transported the Professor to Port Vigor,
|
|
and thought ironically that it was only that Saturday morning
|
|
when he had suggested taking the hoboes to the same jail.
|
|
Still I do not doubt that his philosophic spirit had made the
|
|
best of it all.
|
|
|
|
Woodbridge was as dead as any country town is on Sunday night.
|
|
At the little hotel where I had supper there was no topic of
|
|
conversation except the wreck. But the proprietor, when I
|
|
paid my bill, happened to notice Parnassus in the yard.
|
|
|
|
"That's the bus that pedlar sold you, ain't it?" he asked
|
|
with a leer.
|
|
|
|
"Yes," I said, shortly.
|
|
|
|
"Goin' back to prosecute him, I guess?" he suggested. "Say,
|
|
that feller's a devil, believe _me_. When the sheriff tried to
|
|
put the cuffs on him he gave him a black eye and pretty near
|
|
broke his jaw. Some scrapper fer a midget!"
|
|
|
|
My own brave little fighter, I thought, and flushed with pride.
|
|
|
|
The road back to Port Vigor seemed endless. I was a little
|
|
nervous, remembering the tramps in Pratt's quarry, but with
|
|
Bock sitting beside me on the seat I thought it craven to be
|
|
alarmed. We rumbled gently through the darkness, between
|
|
aisles of inky pines where the strip of starlight ran like a
|
|
ribbon overhead, then on the rolling dunes that overlook the
|
|
water. There was a moon, too, but I was mortally tired and
|
|
lonely and longed only to see my little Redbeard. Peg was
|
|
weary, too, and plodded slowly. It must have been midnight
|
|
before we saw the red and green lights of the railway signals
|
|
and I knew that Port Vigor was at hand.
|
|
|
|
I decided to camp where I was. I guided Peg into a field
|
|
beside the road, hitched her to a fence, and took the dog into
|
|
the van with me. I was too tired to undress. I fell into the
|
|
bunk and drew the blankets over me. As I did so, something
|
|
dropped down behind the bunk with a sharp rap. It was a
|
|
forgotten corncob pipe of the Professor's, blackened and
|
|
sooty. I put it under my pillow, and fell asleep.
|
|
|
|
Monday, October seventh. If this were a novel about some
|
|
charming, slender, pansy-eyed girl, how differently I would
|
|
have to describe the feelings with which I woke the next
|
|
morning. But these being only a few pages from the life of a
|
|
fat, New England housewife, I must be candid. I woke feeling
|
|
dull and sour. The day was gray and cool: faint shreds of
|
|
mist sifting up from the Sound and a desolate mewing of
|
|
seagulls in the air. I was unhappy, upset, and--yes--shy.
|
|
Passionately I yearned to run to the Professor, to gather him
|
|
into my arms, to be alone with him in Parnassus, creaking up
|
|
some sunny by-road. But his words came back to me: I was
|
|
nothing to him. What if he didn't love me afterall?
|
|
|
|
I walked across two fields, down to the beach where little
|
|
waves were slapping against the shingle. I washed my face and
|
|
hands in salt water. Then I went back to Parnassus and brewed
|
|
some coffee with condensed milk. I gave Peg and Bock their
|
|
breakfasts. Then I hitched Peg to the van again, and felt
|
|
better. As I drove into the town I had to wait at the grade
|
|
crossing while a wrecking train rumbled past, on its way back
|
|
from Willdon. That meant that the line was clear again. I
|
|
watched the grimy men on the cars, and shuddered to think what
|
|
they had been doing.
|
|
|
|
The Vigor county jail lies about a mile out of the town, an
|
|
ugly, gray stone barracks with a high, spiked wall about it.
|
|
I was thankful that it was still fairly early in the morning,
|
|
and I drove through the streets without seeing any one I knew.
|
|
Finally I reached the gate in the prison wall. Here some kind
|
|
of a keeper barred my way. "Can't get in, lady," he said.
|
|
"Yesterday was visitors' day. No more visitors till next month."
|
|
|
|
"I _must_ get in," I said. "You've got a man in there on a
|
|
false charge."
|
|
|
|
"So they all say," he retorted, calmly, and spat halfway
|
|
across the road. "You wouldn't believe any of our boarders
|
|
had a right to be here if you could hear their friends talk."
|
|
|
|
I showed him Governor Stafford's card. He was rather
|
|
impressed by this, and retired into a sentry-box in the
|
|
wall--to telephone, I suppose.
|
|
|
|
Presently he came back.
|
|
|
|
"The sheriff says he'll see you, ma'am. But you'll have to
|
|
leave this here dynamite caboose behind." He unlocked a little
|
|
door in the immense iron gate, and turned me over to another
|
|
man inside. "Take this here lady to the sheriff," he said.
|
|
|
|
Some of Vigor county's prisoners must have learned to be
|
|
pretty good gardeners, for certainly the grounds were in good
|
|
condition. The grass was green and trimly mowed; there were
|
|
conventional beds of flowers in very ugly shapes; in the
|
|
distance I saw a gang of men in striped overalls mending a
|
|
roadway. The guide led me to an attractive cottage to one
|
|
side of the main building. There were two children playing
|
|
outside, and I remember thinking that within the walls of a
|
|
jail was surely a queer place to bring up youngsters.
|
|
|
|
But I had other things to think about. I looked up at that
|
|
grim, gray building. Behind one of those little barred
|
|
windows was the Professor. I should have been angry at
|
|
Andrew, but somehow it all seemed a kind of dream. Then I was
|
|
taken into the hallway of the sheriff's cottage and in a
|
|
minute I was talking to a big, bull-necked man with a
|
|
political moustache.
|
|
|
|
"You have a prisoner here called Roger Mifflin?" I said.
|
|
|
|
"My dear Madam, I don't keep a list of all our inmates in my
|
|
head. If you will come to the office we will look up the records."
|
|
|
|
I showed him the Governor's card. He took it and kept looking
|
|
at it as though he expected to see the message written there
|
|
change or fade away. We walked across a strip of lawn to the
|
|
prison building. There, in a big bare office, he ran over a
|
|
card index.
|
|
|
|
"Here we are," he said. "Roger Mifflin; age, 41; face, oval;
|
|
complexion, florid; hair, red but not much of it; height, 64
|
|
inches; weight, stripped, 120; birthmark...."
|
|
|
|
"Never mind," I said. "That's the man. What's he here for?"
|
|
|
|
"He's held in default of bail, pending trial. The charge is
|
|
attempt to defraud one Helen McGill, spinster, age..."
|
|
|
|
"Rubbish!" I said. "I'm Helen McGill, and the man made no
|
|
attempt to defraud me."
|
|
|
|
"The charge was entered and warrant applied for by your
|
|
brother, Andrew McGill, acting on your behalf."
|
|
|
|
"I never authorized Andrew to act on my behalf."
|
|
|
|
"Then do you withdraw the charge?"
|
|
|
|
"By all means," I said. "I've a great mind to enter a
|
|
counter-charge against Andrew and have _him_ arrested."
|
|
|
|
"This is all very irregular," said the sheriff, "but if the
|
|
prisoner is known to the Governor, I suppose there is no
|
|
alternative. I cannot annul the warrant without some
|
|
recognizance. According to the laws of this State the next of
|
|
kin must stand surety for the prisoner's good behaviour after
|
|
release. There is no next of kin...."
|
|
|
|
"Surely there is!" I said. "I am the prisoner's next of kin."
|
|
|
|
"What do you mean?" he said. "In what relationship do you
|
|
stand to this Roger Mifflin?"
|
|
|
|
"I intend to marry him just as soon as I can get him away from here."
|
|
|
|
He burst into a roar of laughter. "I guess there's no
|
|
stopping you," he said. He pinned the Governor's card to a
|
|
blue paper on the desk, and began filling in some blanks.
|
|
|
|
"Well, Miss McGill," he went on, "don't take away more than
|
|
one of my prisoners or I'll lose my job. The turnkey will
|
|
take you up to the cell. I'm exceedingly sorry: you can see
|
|
that the mistake was none of our fault. Tell the Governor
|
|
that, will you, when you see him?"
|
|
|
|
I followed the attendant up two flights of bare, stone stairs,
|
|
and down a long, whitewashed corridor. It was a gruesome
|
|
place; rows and rows of heavy doors with little, barred
|
|
windows. I noticed that each door had a combination knob,
|
|
like a safe. My knees felt awfully shaky.
|
|
|
|
But it wasn't really so heart-throbby as I had expected. The
|
|
jailer stopped at the end of a long passageway. He spun the
|
|
clicking dial, while I waited in a kind of horror. I think I
|
|
expected to see the Professor with shaved head (they couldn't
|
|
shave much off his head, poor lamb!) and striped canvas suit,
|
|
and a ball and chain on his ankle.
|
|
|
|
The door swung open heavily. There was a narrow, clean little
|
|
room with a low camp bed, and under the barred window a table
|
|
strewn with sheets of paper. It was the Professor in his own
|
|
clothes, writing busily, with his back toward me. Perhaps he
|
|
thought it was only an attendant with food, or perhaps he
|
|
didn't even hear the interruption. I could hear his pen
|
|
running busily. I might have known you never would get any
|
|
heroics out of that man! Trust him to make the best of it!
|
|
|
|
"Lemon sole and a glass of sherry, please, James," said the
|
|
Professor over his shoulder, and the warder, who evidently had
|
|
joked with him before, broke into a cackle of laughter.
|
|
|
|
"A lady to see yer Lordship," he said.
|
|
|
|
The Professor turned round. His face went quite white. For
|
|
the first time in my experience of him he seemed to be at a
|
|
loss for speech.
|
|
|
|
"Miss--Miss McGill," he stammered. "You _are_ the good
|
|
Samaritan. I'm doing the John Bunyan act, see? Writing in
|
|
prison. I've really started my book at last. And I find the
|
|
fellows here know nothing whatever about literature. There
|
|
isn't even a library in the place."
|
|
|
|
For the life of me, I couldn't utter the tenderness in my
|
|
heart with that gorilla of a jailer standing behind us.
|
|
|
|
Somehow we made our way downstairs, after the Professor had
|
|
gathered together the sheets of his manuscript. It had
|
|
already reached formidable proportions, as he had written
|
|
fifty pages in the thirty-six hours he had been in prison. In
|
|
the office we had to sign some papers. The sheriff was very
|
|
apologetic to Mifflin, and offered to take him back to town in
|
|
his car, but I explained that Parnassus was waiting at the
|
|
gate. The Professor's eyes brightened when he heard that, but
|
|
I had to hurry him away from an argument about putting good
|
|
books in prisons. The sheriff walked with us to the gate and
|
|
there shook hands again.
|
|
|
|
Peg whickered as we came up to her, and the Professor patted
|
|
her soft nose. Bock tugged at his chain in a frenzy of joy.
|
|
At last we were alone.
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
|
|
|
|
I never knew just how it happened. Instead of driving back
|
|
through Port Vigor, we turned into a side road leading up over
|
|
the hill and across the heath where the air came fresh and
|
|
sweet from the sea. The Professor sat very silent, looking
|
|
about him. There was a grove of birches on the hill, and the
|
|
sunlight played upon their satin boles.
|
|
|
|
"It feels good to be out again," he said calmly. "The Sage
|
|
cannot be so keen a lover of open air as his books would
|
|
indicate, or he wouldn't be so ready to clap a man into quod.
|
|
Perhaps I owe him another punch on the nose for that."
|
|
|
|
"Oh, Roger," I said--and I'm afraid my voice was trembly--"I'm
|
|
_sorry_. I'm _sorry_."
|
|
|
|
"Not very eloquent, was it? And then, somehow or other, his
|
|
arm was around me.
|
|
|
|
"Helen," he said. "Will you marry me? I'm not rich, but I've
|
|
saved up enough to live on. We'll always have Parnassus, and
|
|
this winter we'll go and live in Brooklyn and write the book.
|
|
And we'll travel around with Peg, and preach the love of books
|
|
and the love of human beings. Helen--you're just what I need,
|
|
God bless you. Will you come with me and make me the happiest
|
|
bookseller in the world?"
|
|
|
|
Peg must have been astonished at the length of time she had
|
|
for cropping the grass, undisturbed. I know that Roger and I
|
|
sat careless of time. And when he told me that ever since our
|
|
first afternoon together he had determined to have me, sooner
|
|
or later, I was the proudest woman in New England. I told
|
|
Roger about the ghastly wreck, and my agony of apprehension.
|
|
I think it was the wreck that made us both feel inclined to
|
|
forgive Andrew.
|
|
|
|
We had a light luncheon together there on the dunes above the
|
|
Sound. By taking a short cut over the ridge we struck into
|
|
the Shelby road without going down into Port Vigor again. Peg
|
|
pulled us along toward Greenbriar, and we talked as we went.
|
|
|
|
Perhaps the best of it was that a cold drizzle of rain began
|
|
to fall as we moved along the hill road. The Professor--as I
|
|
still call him, by force of habit--curtined in the front of
|
|
the van with a rubber sheet. Bock hopped up and curled
|
|
himself aginst his master's leg. Roger got out his corncob
|
|
pipe, and I sat close to him. In the gathering gloom we
|
|
plodded along, as happy a trio--or quartet, if you include
|
|
fat, cheery old Peg--as any on this planet. Summer was over,
|
|
and we were no longer young, but there were great things
|
|
before us. I listened to the drip of the rain, and the steady
|
|
creak of Parnassus on her axles. I thought of my "anthology"
|
|
of loaves of bread and vowed to bake a million more if Roger
|
|
wanted me to. It was after supper time when we got to
|
|
Greenbriar. Roger had suggested that we take a shorter road
|
|
that would have brought us through to Redfield sooner, but I
|
|
begged him to go by way of Shelby and Greenbriar, just as we
|
|
had come before. I did not tell him why I wanted this. And
|
|
when finally we came to a halt in front of Kirby's store at the
|
|
crossroads it was raining heavily and we were ready for a rest.
|
|
|
|
"Well, sweetheart," said Roger, "shall we go and see what sort
|
|
of rooms the hotel has?"
|
|
|
|
"I can think of something better than that," said I. "Let's
|
|
go up to Mr. Kane and have him marry us. Then we can get back
|
|
to Sabine Farm afterward, and give Andrew a surprise."
|
|
|
|
"By the bones of Hymen!" said Roger. "You're right!"
|
|
|
|
It must have been ten o'clock when we turned in at the red
|
|
gate of Sabine Farm. The rain had stopped, but the wheels
|
|
sloshed through mud and water at every turn. The light was
|
|
burning in the sitting-room, and through the window I could
|
|
see Andrew bent over his work table. We climbed out, stiff
|
|
and sore from the long ride. I saw Roger's face set in a
|
|
comical blend of sternness and humour.
|
|
|
|
"Well, here goes to surprise the Sage!" he whispered.
|
|
|
|
We picked our way between puddles and rapped on the door.
|
|
Andrew appeared, carrying the lamp in one hand. When he saw
|
|
us he grunted.
|
|
|
|
"Let me introduce my wife," said Roger.
|
|
|
|
"Well, I'll be damned," said Andrew.
|
|
|
|
But Andrew isn't quite so black as I've painted him. When
|
|
he's once convinced of the error of his ways, he is almost
|
|
pathetically eager to make up. I remember only one remark in
|
|
the subsequent conversation, because I was so appalled by the
|
|
state of everything at Sabine Farm that I immediately set
|
|
about putting the house to rights. The two men, however, as
|
|
soon as Parnassus was housed in the barn and the animals under
|
|
cover, sat down by the stove to talk things over.
|
|
|
|
"I tell you what," said Andrew--"do whatever you like with
|
|
your wife; she's too much for me. But I'd like to buy that
|
|
Parnassus."
|
|
|
|
"Not on your life!" said the Professor.
|
|
|
|
[End.]
|
|
.
|