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.