I RIDE KNIGHT ERRANT
It is easy to see that I should have made a poor novelist; it has been
hard enough for me to give you any idea of scenes I did not myself
witness, even though I had Roger and Margarita to help me out and an
intimate knowledge of both of them, and when I try to fancy myself
composing a tissue of fictitious events "all out of my head," as the
children say, my pen drops weakly out of my fingers, in horror at the
very thought.
But now, thank heaven, the pull is over. From now on, I need tell only
what I knew and saw, in the strange, interwoven life we three have
led. Three only? Nay, Harriet of the true heart, Harriet of the tender
hand, could we have been three without you? My fingers should wither
before they left your name unwritten.
I remember so well the night the telegram came. I had been vexed all
day. Everything had gone wrong. Roger, to meet whom I had come back
early to town, had neither turned up nor sent me any message; the day
had been sickeningly hot, with that mid-September heat that comes to
the Eastern States after the first crisp days and wilts everything and
everybody. I found my rooms atrociously stale and dusty, and worse
than that, perfectly useless, since by some miracle of carelessness I
had left my keys behind me at the shore and hadn't so much as a clean
collar to look forward to.
The club valet assured me that he had received no call for trunk or
bag, but that Roger had assuredly not entered the house for five days.
I went into his rooms, but they told me nothing, and I, worse luck,
should have been lost in his collar, so I glared angrily at the
drawers of linen, wired for my own keys and made for the Turkish bath.
There with a thrill of delight I discovered a complete change of
clothing; I had, before leaving for the summer, jumped hastily into
dinner things, leaving a heap of forgotten garments behind me and they
awaited me now, trim and creased, russet shoes polished, and a
wine-colored tie, a particular favourite of mine, topping the fresh
linen. It seems absurd, but I recall few moments in my life of such
pure, heartfelt thanksgiving. The very colour of life seemed changed
for me. I wonder if we do well in despising these small thrills as we
do? Surely enough of them sedulously preserved in grateful memory must
equal in intensity those great, theoretical moments we all regard as
our due but so often pass through life, I am sure, without
experiencing.
However that may be, the little gratifications of that evening are
graven in my mind, undoubtedly, you will say, because of the startling
climax for which they were preparing me. The clean tingling of my
soapy scrub, the delicious coolness of the plunge, the leisurely,
fresh dressing all caressed my nerves delightfully. In the plunge a
pleasant enough fellow had accosted me and we had splashed together
contentedly. I expected to recall his name every moment, for his face
was vaguely familiar, but I could not, and when we met in the hall and
went down the steps together, it still escaped me. We hesitated a bit
on the pavement, and then before I realised it we were hailing a
hansom and bound for dinner together.
It was a pleasant drive up along the river, for a little breeze had
sprung up and the watered asphalt smelt cool. We were both comfortably
hungry and very placid after our bath and we chatted in a desultory
sort of way, I, amused at my utter inability to place the fellow, he
quite unconscious, of course, and perfectly certain of me. He asked
after Roger, sympathised with our failure to make connections,
remarked to my surprise that he had only been out of town for his
Sundays (America had not adopted the "week-end" at that time) and
asked me, I remember, if I knew anything about a game called
basket-ball. It seemed he was anxious to find someone who did. We drew
up at last to our white, glistening little table looking out over the
water, looked about for possible friends, nodded to the head-waiter
and ordered our dinner. It turned out that neither of us had yet
celebrated the oyster month, and leaving my unknown to bespeak the
blue points, for the more conservative among us clung to the smaller
oyster then, I telephoned the club to let Roger know where to find me
in case he should appear there.
Over the soup my companion got on to the subject--somehow--of
evolution, and talked about it very ably indeed. It is absurd, but I
shall never be able to eat jellied consomme as long as I live without
connecting it with the Saurian Period! I remember that those quaint
and apparently highly important beasts lasted well into our
guinea-chick and lettuce-hearts, and I can see him now, his eager,
dark face all lighted with enthusiasm while he spread mayonnaise
neatly over the crimson quarters of tomato on his plate, and made
short nervous mouthfuls, in order to talk the better. Half amused,
half interested I listened, trying to place the fellow, but for the
life of me I could not. Was he a scientist, a lecturer, a magazine
writer, a schoolmaster? We finished with some Port du Salut and
Bar-le-duc--an admitted weakness of mine--and I had decided to
regularly pump him and find out his name without his guessing my game,
when he began as I supposed, to help me out.
"Heavens!" he said with compunction, "you'll think me an awful bore,
Jerrolds, but I've been more or less practising on you, haven't I? But
you'll remember, perhaps, this used to be a sort of hobby of mine, and
I work it into shape nowadays for a young men's club I'm running."
I yawned and lit a cigar and we sipped our coffee in silence. The
plates rattled around us, the curacoa in my tiny glass smelled sweet
and strong, everything was natural, easy, well fed and well groomed
(as the phrase goes now) about me, the day and hour were like any
other; and yet from that moment on my life was never to be quite the
same, for surprise and change were hurrying toward me, and the man
opposite--how curiously!--was to be drawn into the wide net that fate
had sunk for me and must have even then been preparing to draw
smoothly and effectively to the surface.
We think, when we are young, that we live alone. I recall, as a boy of
twenty, certain hot-headed, despairing midnight walks when the horror
of my hopeless, unapproachable, unreachable identity surged over me in
melancholy waves. Heavens! I would have plunged into a monastery if I
had believed that any sort of prayer and fasting could bring me
close--really close--to God; for to any human creature, I had learned,
I could never be close. After that, we grow into that curious stage of
irresponsibility which we deduce from this loneliness, and distress
our patient relatives with windy explanations of "matters that concern
ourselves alone." And later still, if we have the right kind of women
about us, some faint idea of the twisted net we weave--you and I and
the other fellow, all together, whether we will or no--comes to us,
and we stare awhile and then ... shrug our shoulders or bend our knees
or set our jaws, according as we are made.
I like to believe, now, that a dim idea of what was going to happen
was in some mysterious way growing on me before I got the telegram. I
am certain that when the head-waiter touched my arm and told me I was
wanted at the telephone, a curious oppression fell over my hitherto
contented after-dinner spirit which grew into a kind of excitement as
I made my way to the booth. And yet I expected nothing more than to
hear Roger's voice with some reasonable explanation of his failure to
meet me. It was the night porter, however, reading me a telegram
missent to the shore and returned to the club.
"Shall I read it, sir?"
"Yes, Richard, let's have it."
He mumbled the name of a place I had never heard of and went on in the
peculiarly expressionless style consecrated to messages, thus
transmitted.
"_Please bring bag of clothes and razors here will meet
train arriving four thirty Tuesday bring sensible parson
don't fail. Roger._"
I stared at the receiver stupidly. This was Wednesday.
"That's crazy, Richard," I stammered finally, "bring what? Read it
again."
"It's quite plain, sir, except the town," and again the strange
message reached me.
"Well," I managed to get out, "it's clear he wants clothes, anyway.
Tell Hodgson to pack a complete change for Mr. Bradley and his razors.
And see if you can find the name of the place from the chief operator
and the correct message. It can't be parson, of course. And look up
the next train for that place, if you can, Richard. I'll be down there
directly."
I puffed hard at my dying cigar and went slowly back to the veranda,
trying to make sense of that telegram.
"No bad news, I hope?" my companion inquired kindly, for I suppose I
looked worried.
"No," I said slowly, "only an idiotic sort of telegram from Roger. He
wants me to meet him at some place or other at present unknown, and to
bring him his razors and a sensible parson."
My unknown friend burst into a chuckle of laughter.
"Well," he said cheerfully, "you get the razors and I'll attend to the
parson end of it. Any special denomination?"
I paid for our dinner (he had insisted upon paying the cab) and
gathered up my hat and stick.
"It's absurd," I went on, "perhaps he meant 'person,' though what's
the point in that? Anyhow I must start directly. There may be a night
train. Would you rather stop here a while?"
"No, no, let me see you through," he said good-naturedly. "I'm
interested. Perhaps he's going to fight a duel with the razors and
wants the parson for the other fellow! Perhaps he's made a bet to
shave a parson. Perhaps----"
But I was in no mood for joking. The telegram, so unlike Roger, and
yet so unmistakably his, in a way--I have often noted a curious
characteristic quality in telegrams--worried me. I wished I had got it
in time to make the train he mentioned. I wished I were in that
mysterious town. Suppose he had depended on me for it? Suppose he
needed me?
We drove down in silence. My man got out with me at the club and
smiled at the Gladstone the porter held out to me.
"There are the razors, anyhow," he said.
Richard had the name of the town for me, too (the town I prefer not to
tell you) and the next train that would make it: it left in fifteen
minutes.
"And it _is_ parson, sir--p-a-r-s-o-n: there's no mistake. Shall I
call you a cab, sir?"
I bit through my cigar with irritation.
"In heaven's name," I cried, "how am I to get a sensible parson in
fifteen minutes? In the first place, I don't believe there is such a
thing!"
"Hold on, there," said my friend suddenly, "there is, Jerrolds, for
I'm one, and you know it!"
I started at him. Who in the devil was he? Instinctively I began an
apology.
"I--I didn't recall at the moment----"
"Between you and me," he cut me short, "I'm just as well pleased that
you didn't, Jerrolds! The sooner we get through with all this white
choker and black coat business, the sooner we'll amount to something,
in my way of thinking. Well, seriously--will I do? Do you know anybody
better? Because I'll go, if you don't."
I grasped his offered hand.
"Heaven bless you," I thought, "whoever you are!" and, "All right," I
said shortly, "it's very kind of you. We'll have to hurry, I'm
afraid."
We had just time to jump for the last platform. I remember
apostrophising the Gladstone rather strongly as I fell on its metal
clasp, and glancing apologetically at my companion, but he was
tactfully deaf, and we found a seat together, by good luck, and
settled down for our hot and tiresome night.
I couldn't very well ask his name by that time, it would have been too
absurd. I trusted to Roger to get me out of that difficulty, for he
knew Roger, evidently, and me too, though not very well, I judged. He
certainly wasn't in my college class, for it would have come up, I was
sure, in our talk. Not that we talked much. It was a stuffy,
disagreeable ride, and I was alternately vexed with Roger and worried
about him. In a hopelessly foolish manner I connected the razors and
the parson, too closely for any reasonable inference in regard to the
latter. I knew the connection was ridiculous but it was persistent,
and as I had lost all hope of placing the man sitting beside me, my
mind was altogether in a horrid muddle. Once he asked me abruptly if
Roger were an Episcopalian.
"No," I answered, "he--his people are Unitarians."
"I'm a Congregationalist, as you know, of course," he went on, "but if
it makes no more difference to Roger than it will to me, there'll be
no trouble."
"Anyone would suppose he was going to christen Roger," I thought
disgustedly and returned to my troublesome thoughts, replying absently
that it would be all right, of course.
We changed cars at S---- and got into a queer little local train
filled with young village roughs, whose noisy horseplay annoyed me
exceedingly. My mysterious parson, however, was deeply interested in
them and related incident after incident in proof of what could be
accomplished with this offensive part of the rural population by
social organisation under competent direction. He even got out an old
letter and proved to me on the back of it, with a stub of a pencil,
what a pitiful outlay in money was sufficient to start a practical
boys' club, including the rent of a second-hand piano, to be purchased
ultimately on the instalment plan. In the midst of this lecture (it
was no less) I fell asleep, uncomfortably and rudely, and it was he
who shook me awake at last and carried the bag out of the close car.