Parnassus on Wheels Page 9

  “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.

  XII

  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 Red-beard 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 reread 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?”