Parnassus on Wheels Read online

  “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.

  XV

  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—curtained 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.

  OTHER TITLES IN THE ART OF THE NOVELLA SERIES

  BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER

  HERMAN MELVILLE

  THE LESSON OF THE MASTER

  HENRY JAMES

  MY LIFE

  ANTON CHEKHOV

  THE
DEVIL

  LEO TOLSTOY

  THE TOUCHSTONE

  EDITH WHARTON

  THE HOUND OF THE

  BASKERVILLES

  ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  THE DEAD

  JAMES JOYCE

  FIRST LOVE

  IVAN TURGENEV

  A SIMPLE HEART

  GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

  THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

  RUDYARD KIPLING

  MICHAEL KOHLHAAS

  HEINRICH VON KLEIST

  THE BEACH OF FALESÁ

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

  THE HORLA

  GUY DE MAUPASSANT

  THE ETERNAL HUSBAND

  FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

  THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED

  HADLEYBURG

  MARK TWAIN

  THE LIFTED VEIL

  GEORGE ELIOT

  THE GIRL WITH THE

  GOLDEN EYES

  HONORÉ DE BALZAC

  A SLEEP AND A FORGETTING

  WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

  BENITO CERENO

  HERMAN MELVILLE

  MATHILDA

  MARY SHELLEY

  STEMPENYU: A JEWISH ROMANCE

  SHOLEM ALEICHEM

  FREYA OF THE SEVEN ISLES

  JOSEPH CONRAD

  HOW THE TWO IVANS

  QUARRELLED

  NIKOLAI GOGOL

  MAY DAY

  F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

  RASSELAS, PRINCE ABYSSINIA

  SAMUEL JOHNSON

  THE DIALOGUE OF THE DOGS

  MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

  THE LEMOINE AFFAIR

  MARCEL PROUST

  THE COXON FUND

  HENRY JAMES

  THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH

  LEO TOLSTOY

  TALES OF BELKIN

  ALEXANDER PUSHKIN

  THE AWAKENING

  KATE CHOPIN

  ADOLPHE

  BENJAMIN CONSTANT

  THE COUNTRY OF

  THE POINTED FIRS

  SARAH ORNE JEWETT

  PARNASSUS ON WHEELS

  CHRISTOPHER MORLEY

  THE NICE OLD MAN

  AND THE PRETTY GIRL

  ITALO SVEVO

  LADY SUSAN

  JANE AUSTEN

  JACOB’S ROOM

  VIRGINIA WOOLF

  THE DUEL

  GIACOMO CASANOVA

  THE DUEL

  ANTON CHEKHOV

  THE DUEL

  JOSEPH CONRAD

  THE DUEL

  HEINRICH VON KLEIST

  THE DUEL

  ALEXANDER KUPRIN

  THE ALIENIST

  MACHADO DE ASSIS

  ALEXANDER’S BRIDGE

  WILLA CATHER

  FANFARLO

  CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

  THE DISTRACTED PREACHER

  THOMAS HARDY

  THE ENCHANTED WANDERER

  NIKOLAI LESKOV