Kitabı oku: «The Associate Hermits», sayfa 4
CHAPTER VIII
THE BISHOP’S TALE
The stranger placed his broad-brimmed hat on the ground beside him, exposing a large round head somewhat bald in front, but not from age, and the rest of it covered with close-cut brown hair. His black clothes fitted him very closely, their extreme tightness suggesting that they had shrunken in the course of wearing, or that he had grown much plumper since he had come into possession of them; and their general worn and dull appearance gave considerable distance to the period of their first possession. But there was nothing worn or dull about the countenance of the man, upon which was an expression of mellow geniality which would have been suitably consequent upon a good dinner with plenty of wine. But his only beverage had been coffee, and in his clear bright eye there was no trace of any exhilaration, except that caused by the action of a hearty meal upon a good digestion and an optimistic disposition.
“I am very glad,” he said, looking about him at the company, and then glancing with a friendly air towards the two guides, who stood a little back of Mr. Archibald, “to have this opportunity to explain my appearance here. In the first place, I must tell you that I am a bishop whose diocese has been inundated, and who consequently has been obliged to leave it.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Archibald; and Margery looked at Mr. Clyde, with the remark:
“There! You see I was very near to it.”
“I presume this statement will require some explanation,” continued the man in black, “and I will make it presently. I am going to be exceedingly frank and open in all that I say to you, and as frankness and openness are so extremely rare in this world, it may be that I shall obtain favor in your eyes from the fact of my possessing those unusual qualities. Originally I was a teacher, and for a year or two I had a very good country school; but my employment at last became so repugnant to me that I could no longer endure it, and this repugnance was due entirely to my intense dislike for children.”
“That is not at all to your credit,” observed Mrs. Archibald; “and I do not see how you became a bishop, or why you should have been made one.”
“Was your diocese entirely meadow-land?” inquired Mr. Archibald.
“I am coming to all that,” said the stranger, with a smile of polite consideration towards Mrs. Archibald. “I know very well that it is not at all to my credit to dislike children, but I said I would be honest, and I am. I do dislike them – not their bodies, but their minds. Children, considered physically, are often pleasant to the view, and even interesting as companions, providing their innate juvenility is undisturbed; but when their personalities are rudely thrown open by a teacher, and the innate juvenility prematurely exposed to the air, it is something so clammy, so chilly to the mental marrow, that I shrink from it as I would shrink from the touch of any cold, clammy thing.”
“Horrible!” exclaimed Mrs. Archibald.
“I am not sure,” observed Margery, “that there is not some truth in that. I had a Sunday-school class for a little while, and although I can’t say there was a clamminess, there was – well, I don’t know what there was, but I gave it up.”
“I am glad,” said the man in black, “that my candor is not sinking me in the estimation of every one present; but even if it did, I am obliged to tell the truth. I do not know what would have become of me if I had not had the good-fortune to catch the measles from a family with whom I was spending Sunday in another town. As soon as the disease plainly showed itself upon me my school was broken up, and it was never gathered together again, at least under me.
“I must make my story brief, and can only say that not long after this I found myself in another town, where it became necessary for me to do something to support myself. This was difficult, for I am an indefinite man, and definiteness seems necessary to success in any line. Happening one day to pass a house with open lower windows, I heard the sound of children’s voices speaking in unison, and knowing that this must be a school, I looked in, compelled entirely by that curiosity which often urges us to gaze upon human suffering. I found, however, that this was a kindergarten conducted by a young woman. Unobserved by scholars or teacher, I watched the proceedings with great interest, and soon became convinced that kindergartening was a much less repellent system of tuition than any I had known; but I also perceived that the methods of the young woman could be greatly improved. I thought a good deal upon this subject after leaving the open window. Soon afterwards, becoming acquainted with the young person in charge of the children, I offered to teach her a much better system of kindergartening than she was using. My terms were very low, and she became my scholar. I soon learned that there were other kindergartens in the town, and some of the teachers of these joined my class. Moreover, there were young women in the place who were not kindergartners, but who would like to become such, and these I also taught, sometimes visiting them at their houses, and sometimes giving my lessons in a room loaned by one of my patrons. My system became very popular, because it was founded upon common-sense.”
“What was your system?” asked Mrs. Archibald. “I am interested in kindergartens myself.”
“My object,” he answered, “was to make the operation of teaching interesting to the teacher. It struck me very forcibly that a continuance of a few years in the present inane performances called kindergartening would infallibly send to our lunatic asylums a number of women, more or less young, with more or less depleted intellects. The various games and exercises I devised were very interesting, and I am sure I had scholars who never intended to become kindergartners, and who studied with me solely for their own advantage. It was at this time that I adopted the clerical dress as being more suitable to my vocation than any other costume, and some one having called me the bishop, the name soon became popular, and I was generally known by it.”
“But what is your real name?” asked Mrs. Archibald.
“Madam,” said the man, “you must excuse me if I ask you to recall your question. I have a good name, and I belong to a very good family, but there are reasons why I do not at present wish to avow that name. Some of these reasons are connected with the report that I purposely visited the family with the measles in order to get rid of my school; others are connected with the inundation of my diocese, of which I shall speak; others refer to my present indefinite method of life. There is reason to suppose that the time is not far distant when my resumption of my family name will throw no discredit upon it, but that period has not yet arrived. Do you press your question, madam?”
“Oh no,” said Mrs. Archibald; “it really makes no difference; and out here in the woods a man may call himself a bishop or a cardinal or anything he likes.”
“Thank you very much,” said he, “and I will continue to speak in figures, and call myself a bishop.”
“Where I was brought up,” interpolated Phil Matlack, still standing behind Mr. Archibald, “I was taught that figures don’t lie.”
“My good sir,” said the speaker, with a smile, “in mathematics they don’t, in poetry and literature they often do. Well, as I was saying, my diocese extended itself, my revenues were satisfactory, and I had begun to believe that I had found my true work in life, when suddenly there was a misfortune. There arrived in our town three apostles of kindergartening – two of them were women, and one was a man. They had heard of my system, and had come to investigate it. They did so, with the result that in an astonishingly short time my diocese was inundated with a flood of Froebelism which absolutely swept me away. With this bag, this umbrella, and this costume, which has now become my wardrobe, I was cast out in all my indefiniteness upon a definite world.”
“And how did you get here?” asked Mrs. Archibald.
“I had heard of Sadler and his camps,” said he; “and in this beautiful month and in this beautiful weather I thought it would be well to investigate them. I accordingly went to Mr. Sadler’s, where I arrived yesterday afternoon. I found Mr. Sadler a very definite man, and, I am sorry to say, that as he immediately defined me as a tramp, he would listen to no other definition. ‘You have no money to pay for food and lodgings,’ said he, ‘and you come under my tramp laws. I don’t harbor tramps, but I don’t kick them out into the woods to starve. For labor on this place I pay one dollar and a half a day of ten hours. For meals to day-laborers I charge fifteen cents each. If you want your supper, you can go out to that wood-shed and split wood for one hour.’ I was very hungry; I went out into the wood-shed; I split wood for one hour, and at the end of that time I had a sufficient meal. When I had finished, Mr. Sadler sent for me. ‘Do you want to stay here all night?’ he said. ‘I do,’ I answered. ‘Go, then, and split wood for another hour.’ I did so, and it was almost dark when I had finished. In the morning I split wood for my breakfast, and when I had finished I went to Mr. Sadler and asked him how much he would charge for a luncheon wrapped in a piece of paper. ‘Seven and a half cents,’ he said. I split wood for half an hour, and left Sadler’s ostensibly to return to the station by the way I had come; but while I had been at work, I found from the conversation of some of the people that one of the camps was occupied, and I also discovered in what direction it lay. Consequently, after I had passed out of the sight of the definite Peter Sadler, I changed my course, and took a path through the woods which I was told would lead to this road, and I came here because I might just as well pass this way as any other, and because, having set out to investigate camp life, I wished to do so, and I hope I may be allowed to say that although I have seen but little of it, I like it very much.”
“Now, then,” said Phil Matlack, walking around the circle and approaching the stranger, “you said, when you first came here, that you were going to go, and the time has come when you’ve got to go.”
“Very well,” said the other, looking up with a smile; “if I’ve got there I’d better stop.”
Mr. Archibald and the young men laughed, but Matlack and Martin, who had now joined him, did not laugh.
“You’ve barely time enough,” said the former, “to get to Sadler’s before it is pitch-dark, and – ”
“Excuse me,” said the other, “but I am not going back to Sadler’s to-night. I would rather have no bed than split wood for an hour after dark in order to procure one. I would prefer a couch of dried leaves.”
“You come along into the road with this young man and me; I want to talk to you,” said Matlack.
“Now, Matlack,” said Mr. Archibald, “don’t be cruel.”
“I am not,” said the guide. “I am the tenderest-hearted person in the world; but even if you say so, sir, I can’t let a stranger stay all night in a camp that I’ve got charge of.”
“Look here, Matlack,” exclaimed Mr. Clyde, “you haven’t got charge of our camp!”
“No, I haven’t,” said the other.
“Well, then, this person can come over and stay with us. We have a little tent that we brought to put over the cooking-stove, and he can sleep in that.”
“Very well,” said Matlack; “if you take him out of this camp I haven’t anything to say – that is, to-night.”
“My dear sir,” said the stranger, rising, and approaching Mr. Clyde, “I accept your offer with pleasure, and thank you most heartily for it. If you had proffered me the hospitality of a palace, I could not be more grateful.”
“All right,” said Clyde; “and I suppose it is time for us to be off, so I will bid you all good-night. Come along, Arthur. Come along, bishop.”
The face of the last-named individual beamed with delight as he heard this appellation, and bidding everybody good-night, and thanking them for the kindness with which he had been treated, he followed the two young men.
The three walked some little distance towards Camp Roy, and then Clyde came running back to speak to Margery, who was now standing by herself watching the young moon descend among the trees. Then Mr. Raybold also stopped and came back to Margery, upon which the bishop stopped and waited for them. In about ten minutes he was joined by the two young men, and the three proceeded to Camp Roy.
“There is one thing, Harriet,” said Mr. Archibald, “which I wish you would speak to Margery about. I don’t want her to get up so early and go out for a morning walk. I find that those young men are also early risers.”
“I will speak to her,” said Mrs. Archibald; “where is she?”
“Over there, talking to young Martin,” said her husband. “It isn’t quite dark yet, but I think it is time we were all in bed.”
“Quite time,” said she. “Margery tells me that that young guide, who is a handsome fellow, is going to teach her how to fish with flies. I wish you would sometimes take her out in the boat with you, Mr. Archibald; I am sure that you could teach her how to fish.”
He smiled. “I suppose I could,” he said; “and I also suppose I could pull her out of the water the first time she hooked a big fish. It would be like resting a boat on a pivot to put her into it.”
“Then you don’t take her,” said Mrs. Archibald, decisively. “And you can’t take her with you up the stream, because, of course, she can’t wade. I don’t want her to get tired of camp-life, but – ”
“Don’t be afraid of the young men,” interrupted her husband, with a laugh; “so long as there are three of them there is no danger.”
“Of course I will not, if you don’t wish it, Aunt Harriet,” said Margery, when Mrs. Archibald had spoken to her about the early morning walks; “and I will stay in my room until you call me.”
The next morning, when Mrs. Archibald was ready to leave the cabin, she did call Margery, but received no answer. Then she went to the little studio-room, and when she opened the door she found its occupant leaning out of the window talking to Mr. Clyde and Mr. Raybold, who stood outside.
“Good-morning, Aunt Harriet!” exclaimed Margery, gayly. “Mr. Clyde has brought me nearly an armful of birch-bark, all thin and smooth. I am going to make a birch-bark bedspread out of it. I’ll cover a sheet with these pieces, you see, and sew them on. Then I can have autographs on them, and mottoes, and when I cover myself up with it I shall really feel like a dryad.”
“And here is what I have brought,” said Mr. Raybold, holding up an armful of bark.
“Oh, thank you very much,” said Margery, taking the mass, but not without dropping a good many of the pieces. “Of course it was kind of him to bring it,” she said to Mrs. Archibald, as they left the room together, “but he needn’t have bothered himself: I don’t want to sleep under a wood-pile.”
CHAPTER IX
MATLACK’S THREE TROUBLES
“Have you asked those two young men to breakfast again?” inquired Mr. Archibald, after examining, with a moderate interest, the specimen of birch-bark which Margery had shown him.
“Oh no, indeed,” said she, “they have had their breakfast. They have been telling me about it. The bishop got up very early in the morning and cooked it for them. He’s a splendid cook, and he found things in their hampers that they didn’t know they had. They said his coffee was delicious, and they have left him there in their camp now, washing the dishes and putting everything in order. And do you think, Uncle Archibald, that it is going to rain?”
“I do,” said he, “for it is sprinkling already.”
This proved to be the first bad day since the Archibald party had gone into camp, and the rain soon began to come down in a steady, practised way, as if the clouds above were used to that sort of thing and could easily keep it up all day.
As there was no place under roof to which company could be conveniently invited, Margery retired to her room and set herself diligently to work on her birch-bark quilt.
Mrs. Archibald established herself in the division of the cabin which was intended to be used as a sitting and dining room in bad weather, and applied herself to some sewing and darning, which had been reserved for just such a day as this. Mr. Archibald, in a water-proof suit, tried fishing for half an hour or so, but finding it both unpleasant and unprofitable, he joined his wife, made himself as comfortable as possible on two chairs, and began to read aloud one of the novels they had brought with them.
Mr. Clyde and Mr. Raybold had considerately gone to their own camp when it began to rain, hoping, however, that the shower would be over in a short time. But the rain was not a shower, and they spent the morning on their backs in their tent, talking and smoking. Of course they could not expect the bishop to depart in the rain, so they had told him to make himself as comfortable as he could in the little kitchen tent, and offered him a pipe and a book. The first he declined, as he never smoked, but the latter he accepted with delight.
After the mid-day dinner Phil Matlack, in a pair of high hunting-boots and an oil-skin coat, came to Mr. Archibald and said that as there was nothing he could do that afternoon, he would walk over to Sadler’s and attend to some business he had there.
“About the bishop?” asked Mr. Archibald.
“Partly,” said Matlack. “I understand the fellow is still over there with those two young men. I don’t suppose they’ll send him off in the rain, and as he isn’t in my camp, I can’t interfere. But it may rain for two or three days.”
“All right,” said Mr. Archibald, “and if we want anything we’ll ask Martin.”
“Just so,” said Matlack. “If there’s anything to do that you don’t want to do yourself, you can get him to do it; but if you want to know anything you don’t know yourself, you’d better wait until I come back.”
When Matlack presented himself before Peter Sadler he found that ponderous individual seated in his rolling-chair near the open door, enjoying the smell of the rain.
“Hello, Phil!” he cried. “What’s wrong at the camp?”
The guide left his wet coat and cap on the little piazza outside, and after carefully wiping his feet, seated himself on a chair near the door.
“There’s three things wrong,” said he. “In the first place, there’s a tramp out there, and it looks to me as if he was a-goin’ to stick, if he can get allowed to do it.”
“Is he too big for you to bounce?” roared Peter. “That’s a pretty story to come tell me!”
“No, he ain’t,” said the other; “but I haven’t got the bouncin’ of him. He’s not in my camp. The young men have took him in; but I expect he’ll come over with them as soon as it’s done rainin’, for when that happens they’re bound to come themselves.”
“Look here, Phil,” said Peter, “is he dressed in black?”
“Yes, he is,” said the guide.
Mr. Sadler slapped his hand on the arm of his chair. “Phil Matlack,” he shouted, “that’s my favorite tramp. I never had a man here who paid his bill in work as he did. It was cash down, and good money. Not a minute of wood-splitting more or less than the market-price for meals and bed. I’d like to have a tramp like that come along about twice a week. But I tell you, Phil, he ain’t no tramp. Couldn’t you see that? None of them loafers ever worked as he did.”
“He may not be a tramp,” said Matlack, “but he’s trampin’. What are you goin’ to do about him? Let him stay there?”
“What’s he doin’ now?” asked Sadler.
“He’s cookin’ for those two young men.”
“Well, they need some one to do it for them, and they didn’t want to go to the expense of a guide. Let the parson alone for a day or two, and if he does anything out of the way just you take him by one ear and Martin take him by the other and bring him to me. I’ll attend to him. What’s the next trouble?”
“That’s out of my camp, too,” said Matlack, “but I’m bound to report it. The bicycle fellow that you hired a gun to don’t know the fust thing about usin’ it, and the next thing you’ll hear will be that he’s shot his pardner, who’s worth six of him.”
Mr. Sadler sat up very straight in his chair and stared at the guide. “Phil Matlack,” he shouted, “what do you take me for? I hired that gun to that young man. Don’t you suppose I know what I’m about?”
“That’s all right,” said Matlack, “but the trouble is he don’t know what he’s about.”
“Get away man,” said Peter, with a contemptuous sniff, “he’ll never hurt anybody. What do you take me for? When he came to me and wanted a gun, I handed him two or three, so that he might choose one that suited him, and by the way he handled them I could see that most likely he’d never handled one before, and so I set him up all right. He’s got a good gun, and all the cartridges he’ll be likely to want; and the cartridges are all like this. They’re a new kind I heard of last winter, and I got a case from Boston last week. I don’t see how I ever managed to run my camps without them. Do you see that shot?” said he, opening one end of a cartridge. “Well, take one in your hand and pinch it.”
Phil did so, and it crumbled to dust in his hand.
“When that load’s fired,” said Peter, “all the shot will crumble into dust. It wouldn’t do to give raw hands blank-cartridges, because they’d find that out; but with this kind they might sit all day and fire at a baby asleep in its cradle and never disturb it, provided the baby was deaf. And he can’t use his pardner’s cartridges, for I gave that fellow a twelve-bore gun and his is a ten-bore.”
Phil grinned. “Well, then,” said he, “I suppose I might as well make my mind easy, but if that bicycle man hunts much he’ll get the conviction borne in on him that he’s a dreadful bad shot.”
“Then he’ll give up shooting, which is what is wanted,” said Sadler. “What’s your third bother?”
“That young woman has made up her mind to go out in the boat by herself the very fust time she feels like it,” said Matlack; “she didn’t say so with her mouth, but she said it with the back of her head and her shoulders, and I want to know if that rule of yours is going to hold good this summer. Women is gettin’ to do so many things they didn’t use to that I didn’t know but what you’d consider they’d got far enough to take themselves out on the lake, and if you do think so, I don’t want to get myself in hot water with those people and then find you don’t back me up.”
“If you don’t want to get yourself into hot water with me, Phil Matlack, you’d better get it into your head just as soon as you can that when I make a rule it’s a rule, and I don’t want people comin’ to me and talkin’ about changes. Women in my camp don’t go out in boats by themselves, and it’s easy enough to have that rule kept if you’ve got backbone enough to do it. Keep the boat locked to the shore when it ain’t in use, and put the key in your pocket, and if anybody gets it that ’ain’t any right to it, that’s your lookout. Now that’s the end of your troubles, I hope. How’s things goin’ on generally in the camp?”
“Oh, well enough,” said Matlack. “I thought at fust the old lady’d give out in a day or two, but I’ve taught her parlor-fishin’, which she’s took to quite lively, and she’s got used to the woods. The boss, he sticks to fishin’, as if it was office-work, and as for the rest of them, I guess they’re all gettin’ more and more willin’ to stay.”
“Why?” asked Peter.
“Well, one of them is a gal and the others isn’t,” replied Matlack, “that’s about the p’int of it.”
During Matlack’s walk back the skies cleared, and when he reached the camp he found Mrs. Archibald seated in her chair near the edge of the lake, a dry board under her feet, and the bishop standing by her, putting bait on her hook, and taking the fish off of it when any happened to be there. Out in the boat sat Mr. Archibald, trusting that some fish might approach the surface in search of insects disabled by the rain. Farther on, at a place by the water’s edge that was clear of bushes and undergrowth, Martin was giving Miss Dearborn a lesson in fly-fishing.
“He’s a mighty good fisherman,” thought Matlack, looking at the young fellow as he brought his rod back from the water with a long graceful sweep, and then, with another sweep and an easy inclination of his body forward, sending the fly far out on the smooth surface of the lake, “although there ain’t no need to tell him so; and I don’t wonder she’d rather stand and watch him than try to do it herself.”
Walking up and down near the edge of the wood were Messrs. Clyde and Raybold.
Phil smiled. “They don’t seem to be happy,” he said to himself. “I guess they’re hankerin’ to take a share in her edication; but if you don’t know nothin’ yourself, you can’t edicate other people.”
Matlack directed his steps towards Mrs. Archibald; but before he reached her he was met by the bishop, who hurried towards him.
“I shall be obliged to surrender my post to you,” he said, “which will be greatly to the lady’s satisfaction, I imagine, for I must appear a poor attendant after you.”
“Goin’ to leave us?” said Matlack. “You look quite spruced up.”
The bishop smiled. “You allude, I suppose,” said he, “to the fact that my hat and clothes are brushed, and that I am freshly shaved and have on a clean collar. I like to be as neat as I can. This is a gutta-percha collar, and I can wash it whenever I please with a bit of damp rag, and it is my custom to shave every day, if I possibly can. But as to leaving you, I shall not do so this evening. I have promised those young gentlemen who so kindly invited me to their camp that I would prepare their supper for them, and I must now go to make the fire and get things in readiness.”
“Have they engaged you as cook and general help?” asked Matlack.
“Oh no,” said the bishop, with a smile, “they are kind and I am grateful, that is all.”
