Part 25 (1/2)
CHAPTER X.
A LETTER FROM THE FISHERMAN.
The fisherman had gone back to Providence. Rebecca, herself, returning from the Post Office at West Wallen, brought me a letter distinguished by its peculiar das.h.i.+ng chirography. As she handed it to me, the girl, whose glance had been downcast of late, gave me a clear, straightforward, unembarra.s.sed look.
”Do you like him, teacher?” she said.
”Oh, I tolerate him, my dear,” I answered. ”We're not expected to entertain a particular liking or dislike for everybody we know. There are a great many people we must just simply tolerate.”
Rebecca's eyes fell again. ”He won't harm you, teacher,” she said; ”for you was used to folks. Sometime you might remember--I wasn't used to folks.”
Occupied with my own thoughts, I pa.s.sed lightly over the girl's slow, trembling speech. She turned away, and I bent to the complacent perusal of my letter. In my then composed and exalted frame of mind its contents were not calculated to create in me either great emotion or surprise. And not because the mere fact of the fisherman's absence had suddenly rendered him more desirable in my eyes, but as the result of a recent determination on my part to take an utterly worldly and practical view of life, I resolved to give this letter the most careful and serious consideration.
The fisherman was of good family, and he was rich; these statements, artistically interwoven by him with the lighter fabric of his letter, were confirmed by an acquaintance of mine in Providence, of whom, in writing, I had incidentally inquired concerning the gentleman.
Respectability and wealth--items not supposed to weigh too heavily with the romantic mind of youth--but I believed that I was no longer either young or romantic. Moreover, I was slowly realizing the fact that school-teaching in Wallencamp was not likely to furnish me the means for making an excessively brilliant personal display, nor for carrying out to any extent my subordinate plans for a world-wide philanthropy.
”Perhaps, after all then,” I argued; ”it is only left for me to give up my ideas about being unique and independent and sublime, 'take up with a good offer,' and step resolutely, without any sentimental awe, into the great orderly ranks of the married sisterhood.”
My life had been but a varied list of surprises to my family and acquaintances, why not effect the crowning surprise of all, by doing something they might have expected of me?
Well, I had dreamed of higher things--but this was a strange, restless, disappointing world. If one saw a plain path open before one's feet, one might as well walk quietly along that way. There were thorns in every path, and it would be nice to be rich, very rich.
My thoughts wandered through a wide field of imaginary delight, encountering only one serious obstacle in the way of their elysium, and that was the fisherman himself considered as a life-long escort and companion.
In my youthful dreams, I had cherished, to be sure, a score of mild Arthur Greys and stern Stephen Montgomerys. My Arthurs had all died of inherited consumption. I had taken leave of their departing spirits under the most thrilling circ.u.mstances, having frequently been married to them at their deathbeds, and had lived but to plant flowers on their graves and wear c.r.a.pe for them ever afterwards; and my dark-browed Stephen Montgomerys had all gone to swell the avenging tide of righteous war, and had been fatally shot, while I remained to shed tears of unavailing grief over the locks of raven hair they left with me on the morning of their departure. But to marry a real, live, omnipresent man--a man, with red hair, sound lungs, and no wars to go to! My aspiring soul shrank from the realistic vision.
And all the while a tenderer vision would rise before my eyes, clothed with its pitiful romance--the Cradlebow, like some sadly out-of-fas.h.i.+on guest, arising unsolicited out of a half-forgotten dreamland, pa.s.sing indeed both the ideal strength of the warlike Stephen and the gentleness of the saintly Arthur, but, alas! so crude, so unworldly, so ridiculously poor! And the vision extended and then narrowed helplessly to a home in one of the forlorn houses in Wallencamp by the sea, with its dingy walls and bare floors, its general confusion of objects and misery, and my lord's grand eyes obscured, perchance, behind clouds of tobacco smoke, while I set the scanty table and fried the briny herrings.
With a shudder for romance, I returned to the contemplation of wealth and respectability; and took up graciously, once more, the briefly abandoned idea of duty.
I had often been told that it was my duty to accommodate myself to other people's views. Perhaps I should accomplish my designs for self-immolation, and thus, in one sense, effect my highest spiritual good, by marrying the fisherman and accommodating myself to his views--ah! but how could that be, I reflected, unsmilingly, when my views were so infinitely superior to his!
I wondered, for one thing, why he should have entertained, of late, such an excessive dislike for Wallencamp and its inhabitants. The natural beauty of Wallencamp had impressed me daily more and more, and the people were harmless, to say the least. I thought he should have enjoyed them; he had a humorous vein; he was not too sn.o.bbish; and he seemed of a nature to wish to make himself generally agreeable to people; but for these special objects of my care he had expressed only derision and contempt, with often a touch of positive malice; and had not been able to abstain from giving me a hard cut or two on my mission, barely avoiding it in his letter, and rejoicing with what seemed to me an unwarrantable warmth in the hope that I should soon quit forever the abominable place.
Then, in my miserable short-sightedness, my thoughts wandered indirectly to Rebecca. I wondered if she had taken to heart anything in the acquaintance she was said to have had with Mr. Rollin, before I came to Wallencamp, which had caused the change in her. I did not believe she had. The girl was too artless and simple to have concealed so completely the resentment she would naturally have cherished--too childish to have borne it so silently. As far as the fisherman was implicated in the affair, even if he had trifled a little for his own amus.e.m.e.nt with the vague impulses, possibly the affections, of this unsophisticated girl, the act was by no means unprecedented among people of wealth and respectability. It was a diversion in which Arthur Grey and Stephen Montgomery would not have indulged, perhaps, ”but this,” I mused, ”is a sadly commonplace sort of world, viewed in the broad daylight of wisdom and experience (and with such penetrating rays I felt my own optics to be only too wearily oppressed); we must give up our high ideals, take people as we find then, and submit gracefully to the inevitable.”
Still I was in as much of a quandary as ever as to what I should choose to consider the inevitable in my own path. It never occurred to me in this dilemma to seek advice from the elder members of my own family. They knew nothing really of my situation in Wallencamp, and even if they had been informed more truthfully in regard to it, I thought they could hardly be expected to appreciate the peculiarly trying circ.u.mstances in which I was placed just at present.
Mothers were excellent for mending gloves, taking ink stains out of white dresses with lemon juice, etc., etc.; but there were certain exigencies in the remote and exalted life of those who go on ”missions” which their humble though loving skill must ever fail to reach.
I did write home, by the way, for more spending-money. I had been obliged to send to Boston for a few of the latest novels, fresh ribbons, cologne water, and various other articles indispensable to the career of a truly devoted propagandist. I preferred my request no longer as the dependent offspring seeking gifts from a fond and indulgent parent, but as the solicitor of a mere temporary loan, until I should be able to draw on my salary at the close of the term.
One morning, having inured myself to extreme worldliness of soul and begun a deliberately reckless response to the fisherman's letter, I looked out through my window to see the Cradlebow trudging manfully down the lane, with a grotesquely antiquated portmanteau in his hand, and the general air of one who has started a-foot on a journey.
With a singular readiness to be diverted, I found that the picture was, somehow, not conducive to further worldliness of meditation; and when in the evening, Mrs. Cradlebow came in to call, in her mantilla, the impression thus made on my mind was inexpressibly deepened.
Mrs. Cradlebow was not a frequent caller. She had almost earned among the Wallencampers the direful anathema of ”not being neighborly.”