Bohemian Days Part 27

The two men looked at each other silently a few minutes, Duff Salter in profound astonishment, Calvin Van de Lear with an impudent smile.

"And so religious!" wrote Duff Salter.

"That is always incidental to the condition," answered Calvin.

"It must be a great blow to your affection?"

"Not at all," scrawled the minister's son. "It gives me a sure thing."

"Explain that!"

"I will throw the marriage mantle over her. She will need me now!"

"But you would not take a wife out of such a situation?"

"Oh! yes. She will be as handsome as ever, and only half as proud."

Duff Salter walked up and down the floor and stroked his long beard, and his usually benevolent expression was now dark and ominous, as if with gloom and anger. He spoke in a low tone as if not aware that he was heard, and his voice sounded as if he also did not hear it, and could not, therefore, give it pitch or intonation:

"Is this the best of old Kensington? This is the East! Where I dreamed that life was pure as the water from the dear old pump that quenched my thirst in boyhood--not bitter as the alkali of the streams of the plains, nor turbid like the rills of the Arkansas. I pined to leave that life of renegades, half-breeds, squaws, and nomads to bathe my soul in the clear fountains of civilization,--to live where marriage was holy and piety sincere. I find, instead, mystery, blood, dishonor, hypocrisy, and shame. Let me go back! The rough frontier suits me best. If I can hear so much wickedness, deaf as I am, let me rather be an unsocial hermit in the woods, hearing nothing lower than thunder!"

As Duff Salter went to his dinner that day he looked at Agnes sitting in her place, so ill at ease, and said to himself,

"It is true."

Another matter of concern was on Mr. Duff Salter's mind--his serving-man. Such an unequal servant he had never seen--at times full of intelligence and snap, again as dumb as the bog-trotters of Ireland.

"What was the matter with you yesterday?" asked the deaf man of Mike one day.

"Me head, yer honor!"

"What ails your head?"

"Vare-tigo!"

"How came that?"

"Falling out of a ship!"

"What did you strike but water?"

"Wood; it nearly was the death of me. For weeks I was wid a cracked head and a cracked leg, yer honor!"

Still there was something evasive about the man, and he had as many moods and lights as a sea Proteus, ugly and common, like that batrachian order, but often enkindled and exceedingly satisfactory as a servant. He often forgot the place where he left off a certain day's work, and it had to be recalled to him. He was irregular, too, in going and coming, and was quite as likely to come when not wanted as not to be on the spot when due and expected. Duff Salter made up his mind that all the Eastern people must have b.u.mped their heads and became subject to vertigo.

One day Duff Salter received this note:

"MR. DEAF DUFF: Excuse the familiarity, but the coincidence amuses me. I want you to make me a visit this evening after dark at my quarters in my brother, Knox Van de Lear's house, on Queen Street nearly opposite your place of lodging. If Mars crosses the orbit of Venus to-night, as I expect--there being signs of it in the milky way,--you will a.s.sist me in an observation that will stagger you on account of its results. Do not come out until dark, and ask at my brother's den for CAL."

"I will not be in to-night, Mike," exclaimed Duff Salter a little while afterward. "You can have all the evening to yourself. Where do you spend your spare time?"

"On Traity Island," replied Mike with a grin. "I doesn't like Kinsington afther dark. They say it has ghosts, sur."

"But only the ghosts of they killed as they crossed from Treaty Island."

"Sure enough! But I've lost belafe in ghosts since they have become so common. Everybody belaves in thim in Kinsington, and I prefer to be exclusive and sciptical, yer honor."

"Didn't you tell me yesterday that you believed in spirits going and coming and hoping and waiting, and it gave you great comfort?"

"Did I, sur? I forgit it inthirely. It must have been a bad day for my vartigo."

Duff Salter looked at his man long and earnestly, and from head to foot, and the inspection appeared to please him.

"Mike," he said, in his loud, deafish voice, "I am going to cure you of your vertigo."

"Whin, dear Mister Salter."

"Perhaps to-morrow," remarked Duff Salter significantly. "I shall have a man here who will either confer it on you permanently or cure you instantly."

Duff Salter put on his hat, took his stick, and drew the curtains down.

Mike was sitting at the writing table arranging some models of vessels and steam tugs as his employer turned at the doorway and looked back, and, with a countenance more waggish than exasperated, Duff Salter shook his cane at the un.o.bservant Irishman, and sagely gestured with his head.

Agnes was about to take the head of the tea-table as he came down the stairs.

"No," motioned Duff Salter, and pointed out of doors.

He gave a slight examination to Agnes, so delicate as to be almost unnoticed, though she perceived it.

Duff sat at the tea side and wrote on his tablets:

"How is little Podge coming on?"

"Growing better," replied Agnes, "but she will be unfit to teach her school for months. Kind friends have sent her many things."

Duff Salter waited a little while, and wrote:

"I wish I could leave everybody happy behind me when I go away."

"Are you going soon?"

"I am going at once," wrote Duff Salter with a sudden decision. "I am not trusted by anybody here, and my work is over."

Agnes sat a little while in pain and wistfulness. Finally she wrote:

"There is but one thing which prevents our perfect trust in you; it is your distrust of us."