“Do you think it would be possible to get a vehicle of any kind to take
me where I am to sleep?”
“I think so, sir.” His self-control was admirable.
“Well, will you please do it?”
“A sleigh has already been ordered, sir.” This came through tightly
closed lips.
“All right. Now down which aisle is the entrance to the platform?”
“This way, sir.” The highest glacier on Mont Blanc couldn't have been
colder or more impassive.
Just here a calming thought wedged itself into my brain-storm. These
patient, long-suffering people were not to blame; many of them had come
several miles through the storm to hear me speak and were entitled to
the best that was in me. To vent upon them my spent steam because--No,
that was impossible.
“Hold on, my friend,” I said, “stop where you are, let me pull myself
together. This isn't their fault--” We were passing behind the screen
hiding the little stage.
But he didn't hold on; he marched straight ahead; so did I, past the
pitcher of ice water and the two last winter's palms, where he motioned
me to a chair.
His introduction was not long, nor was it discursive. There was nothing
eulogistic of my various acquirements, occupations, talents; no remark
about the optimistic trend of my literature, the affection in which my
characters were held; nothing of this at all. Nor did I expect it. What
interested me more was the man himself.
The steam of my wrath had blurred his outline and make-up before; now I
got a closer, although a side, view of his person. He was a short man,
much thicker at the middle than he was at either end--a defect all the
more apparent by reason of a long-tailed, high-waisted, unbuttonable
black coat which, while it covered his back and sides, would have left
his front exposed, but for his snowy white waistcoat, which burst like a
ball of cotton from its pod.
His only gesture was the putting together of his ten fingers, opening
and touching them again to accentuate his sentences. What passed through
my mind as I sat and watched him, was not the audience, nor what I
was going to say to them, but the Christianlike self-control of this
gentleman--a control which seemed to carry with it a studied reproof.
Under its influence I unconsciously closed both furnace doors and opened
my forced draft. Even then I should have reached for the safety-valve,
but for an oily, martyr-like smile which flickered across his face,
accompanied by a deprecating movement of his elbows, both indicating his
patience under prolonged suffering, and his instant readiness to turn
the other cheek if further smiting on my part was in store for him. I
strode to the edge of the platform: “I know, good people,” I exploded,
“that you are not responsible for what has happened, but I want to tell
you before I begin, that I have been boiling mad for ten minutes and am
still at white heat, and that it is going to take me some time to get
cool enough to be of the slightest service to you. You notice that I
appear before you without a proper suit of clothes--a mark of respect
which every lecturer should pay his audience. You are also aware that I
am nearly an hour late. What I regret is, first, the cause of my frame
of mind, second, that you should have been kept waiting. Now, let me
tell you exactly what I have gone through, and I do it simply because
this is not the first time that this has happened to your lecturers, and
it ought to be your last. It certainly will be the last for me.” Then
followed the whole incident, including the Immaculate's protest about my
being late, my explosion, etc., etc., even to the incident of my flask.
There was a dead silence--so dead and lifeless that I could not tell
whether they were offended or not; but I made my bow as usual, and began
my discourse.
The lecture over, the Immaculate paid me my fee with punctilious
courtesy, waiving the customary receipt; followed me to the cloak-room,
helped me on with my coat, picked up one of the bags,--an auditor the
other, and the two followed me down Jacob's ladder into the night.
Outside stood a sleigh shaped like the shell of Dr. Holmes's _Nautilus_,
its body hardly large enough to hold a four-months-old baby. This was
surrounded by half the audience, anxious, I afterward learned, for
a closer view of the man who had “sassed” the Manager. Some of them
expected it to continue.
I squeezed in beside the bags and was about to draw up the horse
blanket, when a voice rang out:
“Mis' Plimsole's goin' in that sleigh, too.” It was at Mrs. Plimsole's
that I was to spend the night.
Then a faint voice answered back:
“No, I can just as well walk.” She evidently knew the danger of sitting
next to an overcharged boiler.
Mrs. Plimsole!--a woman--walk--on a night like this--I was out of the
sleigh before she had ceased to speak.
“No, madam, you are going to do nothing of the kind; if anybody is to
walk it will be I; I'm getting used to it.”
She allowed me to tuck her in. It was too dark for me to see what she
was like--she was so swathed and tied up. Being still mad--fires drawn
but still dangerous, I concluded that my companion was sour, and skinny,
with a parrot nose and one tooth gone. That I was to pass the night at
her house did not improve the estimate; there would be mottoes on the
walls--“What is home without a mother,” and the like; tidies on the
chairs, and a red-hot stove smelling of drying socks. There would also
be a basin and pitcher the size of a cup and saucer, and a bed that
sagged in the middle and was covered with a cotton quilt.
The _Nautilus_ stopped at a gate, beyond which was a smaller Jacob's
ladder leading to a white cottage. Was there nothing built on a level
in Sheffield? I asked myself. The bags which had been hung on the shafts
came first, then I, then the muffled head and cloak. Upward and onward
again, through a door, past a pretty girl who stood with her hand on
the knob in welcome, and into a hall. Here the girl helped unmummy her
mother, and then turned up the hall-lamp.
Oh, such a dear, sweet gray-haired old lady! The kind of an old lady
you would have wanted to stay--not a night with--but a year. An old lady
with plump fresh cheeks and soft brown eyes and a smile that warmed you
through and through. And such an all-embracing restful room with its
open wood fire, andirons and polished fender--and the plants and books
and easy-chairs! And the cheer of it all!
“Now you just sit there and get comfortable,” she said, patting my
shoulder--(the second time in one night that a woman's hand had been
that of an angel). “Maggie'll get you some supper. We had it all ready,
expecting you on the six-ten. Hungry, aren't you?”
Hungry! I could have gnawed a hole in a sofa to get at the straw
stuffing.
She drew up a chair, waited till her daughter had left the room, and
said with a twinkle in her eyes:
“Oh, I was glad you gave it to 'em the way you did, and when you sailed
into that snivelling old Hard-shell deacon, I just put my hands down
under my petticoats and clapped them for joy. There isn't anybody
running anything up here. They don't have to pay for this lecture
course. It was given to them by a man who is dead. All they think
they've got to do is to dress themselves up. They're all officers;
there's a recording secretary and a corresponding secretary and an
executive committee and a president and two vice-presidents, and a lot
more that I can't remember. Everyone of them is leaving everything
to somebody else to attend to. I know, because I take care of all the
lecturers that come. Only last winter a lady lecturer arrived here on a
load of wood; she didn't lose her temper and get mad like you did. Maybe
you know her; she told us all about the Indians and her husband, the
great general, who was surrounded and massacred by them.”
“Know her, Madam, not only do I know and love her, but the whole country
loves her. She is a saint, Madam, that the good Lord only allows to live
in this world because if she was transferred there would be no standard
left.”
“Yes, but then you had considerable cause. The hired girl next door--she
sat next to my daughter--said she didn't blame you a mite.” (Somebody
was on my side, anyhow.) “Now come in to supper.”
The next morning I was up at dawn: I had to get up at dawn because the
omnibus made only one trip to the station, to catch the seven-o'clock
train. I went by the eight-ten, but a little thing like that never makes
any difference in Sheffield.
When the omnibus arrived it came on runners. Closer examination from the
window of the cosey room--the bedroom was even more delightful--revealed
a square furniture van covered on the outside with white canvas, the
door being in the middle, like a box-car. I bade the dear old lady and
her daughter good-by, opened the hall door and stood on the top step.
The driver, a stout, fat-faced fellow, looked up with an inquiring
glance.
“Nice morning,” I cried in my customary cheerful tone--the dear woman
had wrought the change.
“You bet! Got over your mad?”
The explosion had evidently been heard all over the village.
“Yes,” I laughed, as I crawled in beside two other passengers.
“You was considerable het up last night, so Si was tellin' me,” remarked
the passenger, helping me with one bag.
I nodded. Who Si might be was not of special interest, and then again
the subject had now lost its inflammatory feature.
The woman made no remark; she was evidently one of the secretaries.
“Well, by gum, if they had left me where they left you last night, and
you a plumb stranger, I'd rared and pitched a little myself,” continued
the man. “When you come again--”
“Come again! Not by a--”
“Oh, yes, you will. You did them Hard-shells a lot of good! You just bet
your bottom dollar they'll look out for the next one of you fellows that
comes up here!”
The woman continued silent. She would have something to say about any
return visit of mine, and she intended to say it out loud if the time
ever came!
The station now loomed into sight. I sprang out and tried the knob. I
knew all about that knob--every twist and turn of it.
“Locked again!” I shouted, “and I've got to wait here an hour in this--”
“Hold on--_hold on_--” shouted back the driver. “Don't break loose
again. I got the key.”
My mail a week later brought me a county paper containing this
statement: “The last lecturer, owing to some error on the part of the
committee, was not met at the train and was considerably vexed. He said
so to the audience and to the committee. Everybody was satisfied with
his talk until they heard what they had to pay for it. He also said that
he had left his dress suit in his trunk. If what we hear is true, he
left his manners with it.” On reflection, the editor was right--_I had_.