That brook, and that singing girl, caught me! The rest of it might have belonged to any retiring old gentleman who was afraid of or bored by his neighbours—not that Marvin was so old, though, I came to find out. But this was of a distinguishing quality. And it started me off on trails of curiosity which rather indecently made up for my previous indifference. I would have given a good deal to meet the man. There was no one, however, through whom the thing could be brought about in the ordinary way of the world, and to approach him directly was more than I dared. It was not merely that he was older than I. He suddenly gave me an impression of being more genuine; and I was ashamed to go to him with no better excuse than a summer boarder’s inquisitiveness. So I had to content myself with getting at him through other people’s versions.
It grew into quite a little game just to make out the deviation of each particular compass, and then to chart the probable course. In the general opinion, I quickly found, Marvin was mad. It was all that saved him from open persecution. Could a person be regarded as responsible who insisted that he heard voices in running water, and who told the minister to his face that there was more religion in an apple orchard than in a church? And there were things queerer still, intimated Mrs. Bennett. Mary could tell about them.
What Mary could tell, what Mary did tell, most of all what Mary did not tell, would make a story by itself! It was such a case of the unconscious diversity between character and opinions. I gathered that among the reasons why the girl was allowed to serve one so manifestly in league with evil was the hope that her influence might be edifying. Certainly it was for me, during the daily catechisms which she underwent at the hands of her family. These, I was informed in private, were intended to lay bare any incipient work of contamination. Marvin’s money was a welcome addition to the family exchequer, but of course it could not be accepted if the girl were coming to any harm. There was special danger, said Mrs. Bennett, that Mary might contract habits of intemperance. Marvin himself drank, and there was no telling but what he would attempt as well the corruption of his handmaid. He was as odd about his drinking as he was about everything else, it seemed. A particular upon which my informant dwelt was that Marvin, instead of patronising the drug-store like those who had legitimate uses for strong waters, obtained his supply from Boston, as he did his money. But there was something odder still. The man had actually set up a regular bar in his house, in a small entry between the sitting-room and dining-room. He kept it stocked with liquids of strange colours, and he had counters which he could let down across the doorways.
“An’ he’ll be in the settin’-room,” went on Mrs. Bennett, “an’ he’ll suddenly get up an’ say, ‘Good-evenin’, Jack; can you fix me up a nice dry Martini?’—or somethin’ or other like that. Mary’s heard him lots o’ times. He don’t mind her bein’ ’round. An’ then he’ll walk around outside, through the hall, into the dinin’-room, an’ so to the other door of the entry. An’ he’ll say, same as if he was answerin’ himself, ‘Sure, Cap! I guess we can to-night.’ An’ then he’ll pour out his liquor, an’ put it down on the counter, an’ walk around outside to the settin’-room again. An’ then he’ll take up the stuff he left on the counter, and taste it, an’ say, ‘That’s a good one you made me to-night, Jack,’ an’ he’ll drink it up just as if he was in company. He never seems to get real drunk, though, so far as anybody can make out. An’ he never tries to make Mary take any. He just tells her he’d agree to do all the drinkin’ if she’d only do the mixin’ for him, an’ that she’d save him a power o’ steps if she’d only help him play his game.
“She’s don’ her best to stop it, but it ain’t no use. She just stood up to him one day an’ quoted Scriptur’. Wine is a mocker, she said; strong drink is ragin’, said she, an’ whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. An’ there’s a whole lot more in Proverbs about they that tarry long at the wine, an’ look upon it when it is red, an’ what not. But Henry, he took her right up. ‘Yes,’ he pops out, ‘an’ what else does it say? Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more!’ Did you ever hear the likes of that?”
I had to admit, on the whole, that I never did.
II
It is strange how small a residue will be left by how large a volume of life. Experiences that run through weeks and months can be summed up at last in an epigram. Not that I am one, let me say in passing, who is given to that form of expression. The thing done has for me no such interest as the thing doing—to dip again into that dictionary. Yet the rest of my summer in Marshbury added very little to the picture which I have begun to sketch. I had had my impression. I merely spent my time turning it over, taking it in. And the most curious thing was that, savouring the impression as much as I did, I could go away and think no more about it. I went away, and I stayed away three years. The attractions of Italy for the time outweighed all others. But after my “beaker full of the warm South,” I had a whim to go back to Marshbury. To speak in homely terms, I suppose it was on the same principle that one likes a cold shower after a hot scrub. At any rate, I am never so fond of the North as after a prolonged sojourn in the South, or of America as after Europe. And the picture of my pagan came to me again more strikingly than ever—that picture which would have been so impossible in the country from which I returned, which was so of the soil of that to which I went back. To Marshbury, therefore, I proceeded; and, of course, for old times’ sake, I put up at Mrs. Bennett’s. Indeed I could not put up anywhere else. They were all so a part of the impression.
As for that, however—! I was not in the least prepared for the changes it had undergone. I must even confess that I was at first a little disappointed. I somehow felt that Marshbury had not honourably kept its tryst with me. So does one insist on opposing one’s childish singleness of idea to the richness of life! The background, to be sure, was exactly as I remembered it. The hills looked just as they had from the time of the Flood. So, I felt certain, did the houses and the people. By whom I mean the lay figures, the supernumeraries. And Mrs. Bennett herself, who was no supernumerary, was good enough to spare a shock to my sensibilities. But that only made Mary seem the more unnatural. She had suffered one of those metamorphoses to which the young are so peculiarly susceptible—and which, apparently, no amount of experience can ever teach their absent elders to foresee. The curious thing about it was that I could trace, after the event, how impossible it would have been for her to turn out otherwise. Even through her solidest days she had always been prettier than she could help. It was only natural that she should have grown up into a handsome dignity that barely fell short of beauty and stateliness. And while she was little freer of words than she ever had been, she no longer gave one the feeling that she stood in want of them. Altogether she distinctly left me staring.
And she by no means put an end to it when, in response to my inquiry as to whether she still went to Mr. Marvin’s, she replied: