Parnassus on Wheels Page 5

  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!”

  VII

  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 Red-beard 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.