Cape Cod Folks Part 22

"From the very beginning," said Mr. Rollin; "thank you; so I can begin all over again; meanwhile,--you will forgive me? Imagine that I'm one of those dirty little beggars that go to school to you. If one of them should come to you and say that he was sorry?--"

"I should only be intensely surprised," I said; "they never do such things."

"Then I have a superior claim on your clemency," said the fisherman; "for I am sorry and humiliate my soul to the lowest depths of the confessional."

It was the voice of the plausible, easy-going fisherman again.

My hand was on the latch. "I am not angry; I would rather be friends," I said with averted face, as we were returning through the dark "keeping-rooms."

"When you get out of this realm of myths and missions, and general dread and discomfort," said Mr. Rollin, "on to comprehensible soil again, where ordinary sinners are sure of some sort of a footing,--and bad as a fellow is he knows there are plenty more like him,--then I shan't appear to you in such a deucedly poor light as I do now, a doubtful sort of pearl in a setting of isolated cedars, with my beauty and my genius and my heavenly aspirations all unappreciated, or made to descend as a greater measure of condemnation on my devoted auburn head. Truly, I believe that an evil star attends my course in Wallencamp. My own ideas seem strange to me. I cannot grasp them. My language is wild and disconnected, I fancy, like that of the early Norse poets. When I meet you in the world, I shall hope to recover some of the old-time coherence and felicity of speech which I remember to have heard practised among the world's people; and it isn't long now, thank Heaven, before you'll leave Wallencamp behind you. When you go home----"

When I should go home, indeed! I had hardly dared to cherish the thought.

I stifled the rising flood of exultation in my breast--but how pale and interesting I should look! And, then, I would describe Wallencamp to my own loving friends as it really was, and what a lion they would make of me! Had they not always lionized my virtuous efforts to the fullest extent!

My face must have been very happy in the dark. I felt even almost kindly towards Mr. Rollin. We were at the last door. As we entered the lighted room, Grandma's broad face began to beam with slow surprise, "Why," said she; "where's the little no-back cheer?"

Mr. Rollin's resources in such extremities usually bespoke a lifetime of patient and adroit application, but now he hesitated. The acc.u.mulated glory of years seemed likely to be wrecked on the phantom of a little no-back chair.

"Moonstruck? Eh, Mr. Rollin?" inquired Harvey Dole.

The fisherman regarded Harvey with a smile of quiet and amused sufferance.

"Ah! Mrs. Keeler," said he, with a graceful bow in Grandma's direction; "Mrs. Philander did me the honor when I came in, to ask me to stand up with the singers at the melodeon; a position which I shall be most happy to take, although I fear that my vocal powers are of an exceptionally poor order."

The fisherman turned over the leaves of the despised Moody and Sankey hymnal for Madeline, was profoundly attentive while the singing was going on, and made suave and affable remarks here and there during the intervals; then glanced at his watch with an expression of highly-affected concern, bade an elaborate adieu to the company, and retired from the scene.

"Oh, I think that Mr. Rollin is so elegant, don't yew?" said Mrs. Barlow.

"Oh, yes; I think he's so genteel!"

"_I_ don't think so at all," said Lovell. "_I_ don't, certainly. _I_ don't think so."

"He _ain't_ got much voice;" said Mrs. Barlow, clasping her hands in raptured appreciation of her matchless Lovell.

Finally, Grandpa, with a haggard smile on his features, stumbled across the little landing of the stairway, between the parlor and the kitchen, bearing with him a pan of much scorched and battered pop-corn.

"Oh, _ain't_ them beautiful!" arose Mrs. Barlow's rea.s.suring cry.

Grandma had already set an example to her guests by making a convenient receptacle of her capacious lap, and pouring some of the corn into it, an example which the fortunate scions of the skirted tribe, now arranged in rows on one side of the room, followed, each in turn. Of the male species on the other side of the room, Lovell happened to be first in line. As the corn came nearer and nearer to him, he began to look about wildly, and to cough. His legs trembled violently with the effort he was making to keep them close together. He accepted the pan of pop-corn with a gesture of feverish haste, and proceeded to pour the contents into his lap, but, as he poured they disappeared, and the faster he poured the faster they disappeared, and the more strenuous exertions he made to keep his legs close together, the wider seemed to grow the chasm through which the corn went rattling down on to the floor, until Lovell's eyes began to whirl in their orbits and drops of sweat stood out upon his forehead.

Harvey, who appreciated the situation and was bursting with a desire to roar out his mirthful emotions, showed a kind heart above all, and turned the tables nicely in poor Lovell's behalf.

"Look here, Lovell!" he cried; "that's a pretty trick to play on us fellows, you rascal! you'd better let up on that, now!"

Lovell grasped at the idea as a drowning man might grasp at a good substantial raft that should come floating down his way.

"T-that's so," he stammered. "It is too bad, Harvey. It-t-t is, certainly, but anything for a j-joke, you know. Here, take it yourself, Harvey, t-take it; take it, quick!"

And Lovell got down on his knees as though he would have rendered dumb thanks to Heaven for his unexpected deliverance, and proceeded to gather up the corn with glad alacrity.

After this, the water was pa.s.sed, and, at such times, it was always comforting to consider how bountiful nature had been in this respect to Wallencamp, and that the demand could never be quite equal to the supply.

Then the company began to disperse with many hand-shakings and "Why don't ye all drop into my house?" etc., etc.

Lovell Barlow came back twice to shake hands with me; and returning the third time, got lost, somehow, in the general confusion, and shook hands very fervently with his mother, who was standing in the door.

I heard one of the departing visitors exclaim: "Why, where's Lute? I should a thought he'd a dropped in, sure!"

And another answered: "Oh, he's got some new notion into his head, I reckon! goin' on a cruise, may be!"

Rebecca was going out with a girl companion, talking rather loudly. I was moved to take her hand a moment, gently detaining her. She looked exceedingly bright and pretty. Her physical beauty was perfect, yet I believed that the soul was only half awakened in the girl.

So as I held her hand a moment, with the others taking noisy leave about us, I looked into her face with what she might have read as: "Weren't you laughing rather loudly, my dear? I can see now that you are not so happy as you would have people believe. Why not confide in me, and let me straighten your difficulty out for you?"

But Rebecca's eyes were downcast, and her cheeks crimson. She let her hand slip pa.s.sively out of mine, and pa.s.sed on, without a word.

CHAPTER IX.

LOVELL "POPS THE QUESTION."

One morning, ere we had breakfasted at the Ark, Lovell Barlow, like some new-fangled orb of day, was seen to surmount the ruddy verge of the horizon. He bore a gun upon his shoulders, and advanced with a singularly martial and self-confident tread. As he entered the Ark, he placed the gun against the wall, and sat down and folded his arms, and looked as though he could be brave without it.

"Well, Madeline," said he, with a determined gaze fixed straight before him on vacuity, and with a desperate affectation of spontaneity in his tone--"Well, Madeline, mother and father have gone to Aunt Marcia's, _I_ suppose to spend a week, _I_ suppose--ahem!--ahem!--_I_ suppose so."

"You don't say so, Lovell!" exclaimed Madeline. "And what'll poor Robin do now, Lovell? Oh, what'll poor Robin do now?"

"Yes," said he gravely; "that's what _they_ thought, ahem! _They_ thought they should stay a week, _they_ thought so, certainly."

"Wall, I declar' for't, Lovell," said Grandma; "now's the time you'd ought to have a wife. Jest to think how comf'table 'twould be fu ye, now, instead of stayin' there all alone, if ye only had a nice little wife to home, to cook for ye, and watch for ye, and keep ye company, and----"

"_I_ think so," exclaimed Lovell, giving a quick glance backward in the direction of his gun. "Certainly, ahem! _I_ think so. _I_ do."

"Lookin' for game? Eh, Lovell?" inquired Grandpa.

"Pa," said Grandma, solemnly: "I wish you'd put another stick of wood in the stove."

Grandpa was awake now, and a youthful and satanic gleam shone from under his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows; he glanced at me, too, as was his habit on such occasions, as though I had a sort of sympathy for and fellows.h.i.+p with him in his bold iniquities of speech.

But the guileless Lovell interpreted not the deeper meaning of Grandpa's words.

"I think some of it, Cap'n," he answered unsmilingly, and then continued: "It's been--ahem!--it's been a very mild winter on the--ahem!--I should say on the Cape. It's been a very mild winter on the Cape, Miss Hungerford."

Lovell's nervous glance falling again on his gun, took me in wildly on the way.

I had been directing some letters that I expected to have an opportunity to send that morning.