DAVID ROLLIN IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM.
Mrs. Philander Keeler grew kind. At first, especially while the fisherman
was in Wallencamp, her demeanor towards me had been marked by a decided
touch of coldness and mistrust. She suspected me, I thought, of trifling
with the Cradlebow; now, she invariably deferred to me as a person worthy
of all honor and consideration--of congratulation even, in an eminent
degree.
She assumed to be on the most frank and confiding terms with me. She
found a thousand little ways for promoting my physical comfort that had
never occurred to her before.
So I was the more surprised, when after school, one Friday afternoon, as
I was sitting in my room, this same Madeline suddenly appeared before me
with her eyes glittering, her lips compressed, and her complexion of that
positive green hue which it always wore when she was in a high passion.
"There's a gentleman down stairs, waiting to see you, teacher," she said,
with a peculiarly dark inflection on the word gentleman. "Oh, he's got on
an awful interesting look!" snapped out Madeline, with a spiteful little
laugh; "and a suit of light clothes, and a new spring overcoat, and he
looked at me as though I was a pane of window-glass, and he says,
'Oh--ah--yes--is Miss Hungerford in?' I wonder if he's come back to make
his farewell calls--" with another unpleasant laugh. "One thing I can
tell him, he'd better steer clear of George Olver!"
Was ever a zealous young devotee, I pondered, more perplexed!
"Come this way, please," I said, holding out my hand to Madeline; and
leaning back in my chair with unaffected weariness, at least. "Is Mr.
Rollin down stairs?"
"They call him that, I believe," said Madeline, sententiously; "things
don't always get their right names in this world."
"Well, you may tell him," I said; "that I can't see him."
Madeline's countenance changed wonderfully in an instant. She gave me a
bright look, and without waiting for another word, ran down the stairs.
When she came back her tongue ran on glibly:--
"I told him," said she; "that you couldn't see him, and he kept on in
that window-glass way of looking, and his head as high as ever, and he
took his hat and 'I'm very sorry,' he says, 'that Miss Hungerford is
indisposed, and I hope I shall have an opportunity of seeing her this
evening.'
"He said he came to-day, and was going away to-morrow morning, and he had
something of importance to communicate, and I knew he expected I'd go up
and see you again about it, but I didn't. So he said he'd call again this
evening or to-morrow morning, just which 'd be most agreeable, and
expected I'd budge then, sure, but I didn't show any signs of it; and I
told him rightly, I guessed one time would be about as agreeable as
another; and I suppose he thought he wouldn't show mad before such common
bred folks. He smiled that window-glass looking smile of his, and says;
'Ah, thank you; now I won't detain you any longer, Mrs. Keeler,' and out
he went.
"I suppose he's come down to smooth everything over, and have it hushed
up with Beck and her folks. Well, money'll do a good deal for a man, but
it wouldn't stand him much if he got into George Olver's hands. However,
teacher," concluded Madeline, in a sprightly tone; "give the Devil his
due. It's better'n as if he'd run off and never showed his head again;
and I don't suppose he'll get much satisfaction out of you, if you do see
him, teacher. It's better to trust honest folks than rogues, and nobody
knows that better than the rogues themselves."
I knew that this last clause was not designed as a personal thrust by
Madeline, yet I could not help musing a little over it, smilingly, after
she had gone. The fiction, of which I was living a part, in Wallencamp,
was taking on, it seemed to me, a tinge even of the tragic--perplexities
were deepening. I was becoming, more than ever, the suffering though
exalted heroine of a romance.
I rose, and dressed myself before the glass, I remember, with particular
care. I did not know why I should dread or avoid seeing the fisherman in
the evening, since the part I had to sustain in the interview was so
distinctly calm, dispassionate, and spiritually remote. At the same
time, I wished that my cheeks had not grown so pale and my eyes so
dark-rimmed and hollow. They bespoke the interesting part I had to play
in the world's tragedy, but were not, otherwise, so becoming as I could
have wished.
Earlier, the fisherman had sent me books from Providence. I would rather,
I thought, that he should take them back again. I remembered that I had
left one of them in my desk at the school-house, and put on my hat to go
after it.
"Going out to spend the evening, teacher?" said Madeline, as I opened the
door of the Ark, giving me at the same time a gay and knowing look.
"No," I said, gravely tolerant of the little woman's surveillance; "I'm
only going to the school-house for a book that I want. I shall be back in
a few moments."
It was hardly dusk then.
Aunt Patty, as usual after school on Friday, had swept the room and put
down the dark and dingy paper curtains.
I opened the door and stood an instant looking into the gloom before
entering. Then I saw that there was some one sitting in my chair--a man
with his head bent forward and buried in his arms, which were folded on
the desk.
It was Mr. Rollin, and before I had time to retreat, he lifted his head
and saw me standing at the door.
I had expected that the first revelation of that glance would contain
something of grief, wretchedness, remorse. The fisherman's countenance
wore a shadow of annoyance, but it was expressive, above all, of a
childish petulance and irritation.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, speaking with the utmost abruptness, and rising from
the chair; "if you had only left this place at the end of the first term,
it would have saved the whole of this abominable misadventure!"
"I don't think I understand you," I said, freezing now in sober earnest.
"Because in your eyes only, it is a misadventure," he continued rapidly,
with growing excitement. "You came to this miserable hole--this
Wallencamp--resolved to view everything in a new light--the light of
unselfish devotion to great ends, and exalted aspiration, and ideal
perfection, and all that. Well, how has the wretched, giggling, conniving
little community shown out in that light? I suppose there's one--that
larking Cradlebow--who has stood the test and come out creditably, by
reason of an uncommonly artistic shock of hair and a Raphaelite
countenance. As for me, taken in the ordinary sense, I'm no worse than a
thousand others, but I say that it was a decidedly unfortunate light to
put me in! It was a decidedly unfair light!"
"I have no wish to judge you in any light," I said, and explaining
briefly my errand to the school-house, I expressed regret at having
interrupted the fisherman's meditations, and turned to go.
"Miss Hungerford!" he exclaimed, with a gesture of whimsical force and
impatience; "it's my last chance for an explanation. Don't, for God's
sake, cut it short at this point. You might know--you might _know_, that
I'm not a bad fellow at heart. But you will never see the best side of
me--there's fate in it. I never wanted to seem specially contrite but I
must set myself jumping like a jack-in-the box for your infernally cold
amusement! I had an explanation at my tongue's end. D--n it! I don't
remember a word of it."
"I don't think it is necessary," I said.
"Oh, no!" he continued in a deeply aggrieved, almost a whining tone;
"nothing's necessary that would set me out in a little better shape!
Anything will do for these grovelling Wallencampers, but just as soon as
it comes to me, all the extenuating circumstances of my life--that I was
left so early orphaned, sisterless, brotherless, my nearest of kin a
wicked, carousing old uncle; taken to see the world here, and to see the
world there; homeless, if ever one was homeless; never trained to any
correct way of thinking, or settled manner of life, but just to spend my
money and aim at enjoying myself--they all amount to nothing in my case.
"Well, I used to come to Wallencamp just for that same purpose--to have a
good time; it was such a jolly wild place to let the Old Nick loose in;
and now it seems that's to be taken for a man's natural level, and the
best that he's capable of! Then I met you. You would voluntarily give up
ease and luxury, for a time, for the sake of an abstract idea--whether
misguided or not, I will not say, the fact remains the same--and I swear
it was a new revelation to me. It was strange and perverse, and it was
deuced taking! Then I tried to get you to include _me_ among the objects
of your mission, to accept _me_ as a candidate for temporal leniency and
final salvation, and you wouldn't. It is only the happy, ragged,
unconscious heathen that are looked out for in this world; the real ones
don't get any sympathy."
The fisherman paused.
"I should be glad to give you the first lesson in the code of salvation,"
I said--"that the fate of souls is not left to human hands."
"Oh, I've heard that formula somewhere before!" exclaimed the fisherman,
impatiently, with a little sneer in his laugh. "Why don't you tell me
that God will help me? Perhaps you will even remember me in your prayers,
some time."
At those last words an unbearable pang of self-conviction and remorse
shot through my heart. I, who had not felt greatly the need of any
supernatural aid, but rather that I was able to manage my own affairs
with becoming discretion--of what saving power and grace could I speak to
one who was weak enough to fall, and for whom there was no help in
himself? In the dark school-room I involuntarily lifted my hands to my
face. When I heard the fisherman's voice again, he had come a step or two
nearer to me down the aisle.
"Let me tell you what I was thinking about when you came in," he said, in
an altered tone. "Rather, how I was allowing my imagination to run away
with itself, for my own particular delectation. I was imagining, when
you opened the door and stood revealed there in the light, how you might
come to me, indeed, as the angel of some better life and hope, offering
me a forgiveness as full as it was unmerited."
"It is not I who have to forgive you," I repeated.
"It is you, if any one," replied the fisherman, quickly. "I tell you, you
feel that girl Becky Weir's fault ten times more deeply than she feels it
for herself. You should never have come to this place. It was deucedly
odd and entertaining, but it was a step in the wrong direction. You put
yourself in the place of these people and translate all their possible
moods and tenses according to your own. It's a mistake. That girl, Becky,
would stare in perfect bewilderment if she could know of some of the
thoughts and emotions you doubtless attribute to her. She might even
laugh at you for your pains."
"I do not believe you," I said, not angrily nor resentfully, as might
have been earlier in our acquaintance, but with a painful, slow
positiveness. "Perhaps I was wrong in assuming the place I did in
Wallencamp, but it was not in the way you think. I don't know--I can't
see the way myself, clearly--always, but I believe that what you have
said is utterly false!"
"At least," continued the fisherman, in the old gay, frivolous tone,
which I heard now for the first time during this conversation; "I can
make her tenfold and abundant reparation--ah, you don't know--I say you
don't understand these people. It's a disagreeable subject; let it go!
But I'm very rich, you know," with an easy laugh, and the air of a man
only conscious, at last, of his good worldly fortune, and the exquisite
fit of his clothes. "Oh, I've got no end of money. After all, that's the
chief thing in this world. If a fellow's ordinarily clever and
good-natured, with a good reputation in town, what's a little row in the
suburban districts! It's an awfully insignificant affair, anyway, it
seems to me. We may as well talk sense, and the plainer the better.
People don't employ lenses for shortsightedness in that
particular--common sense, I mean. You walk without seeing, Miss
Hungerford, and you're bound to get infernally cheated, in some shape.
Why not me, I say, as well as another?"
Still, the fisherman's words roused no bitterness in me. His hardened
recklessness of speech served rather to strengthen me in the part I had
to play of the unapproachably sublime.
"I cannot consider that question," I said, with my hand on the door.
He swept my face with a keen glance that had lost none of its derisive
quality.
"So it's true, then!" he said. "The ultimatum has been reached, at last,
in the possessor of a pretty face and a broken fiddle! and dreams for the
restoration of the race are to end in a broken-down hovel by the sea,
in darning the Cradlebow's socks, and dressing the clams for dinner,
while the bucolic George Olver and the versatile Harvey, and all the rest
of the awkward, moon-gazing crew, take turns in sitting on the door-step,
and dilating on the weather! Ravishing idyll but it lacks substantiality.
It lacks seriousness."
I heard that mocking laugh again without emotion, except it might be for
a faint, far-off echo in my breast of the fisherman's own scorn. Above
all, I was weary, and willing to make my escape.
"We cannot help each other by standing here talking," I said, and added a
"good bye."
It was the last time, probably, that I should see the fisherman's face;
but he refused the valediction with a toss of the head.
"Oh, no!" he said; "it isn't time for my obsequies. I shall return to
town for a few days or weeks only; this detestable place has always
thrown a spell over me. I can't rid myself of it. Like the natives of
Wallencamp, I always drift back to it again."
It was growing dark. I found Madeline waiting for me in the lane.
Somewhat piqued at the persistency of the little woman's ministrations, I
informed her briefly, that I had found the fisherman in the school-house,
and had been conversing with him there; but she put her hand in my arm
with an air of unshaken confidence.