Cape Cod Folks Part 13

Just as we were coming out of the thickest part of the woods, about a mile beyond Wallencamp, we discovered a man walking in the distance. It was the only human being we had seen since we started.

"Hullo, there's Lovell!" exclaimed Grandpa. "I was wonderin' why we hadn't overtook him before. We gin'ally take him in on the road. Yis, yis; that's Lovell, ain't it, teacher?"

I put up my gla.s.ses, helplessly.

"I'm sure," I said, "I can't tell, positively. I have seen Mr. Barlow but once, and at that distance I shouldn't know my own father."

"Must be Lovell," said Grandpa. "Yis, I know him! Hullo, thar'! Ship ahoy! ship ahoy!"

Grandpa's voice suggested something of the fire and vigor it must have had when it rang out across the foam of waves and pierced the tempest's roar.

The man turned and looked at us, and then went on again.

"He don't seem to re_cog_nize us," said Grandma.

"Ship a-hoy! Ship a-hoy!" shouted Grandpa.

The man turned and looked at us again, and this time he stopped and kept on looking.

When we got up to him we saw that it wasn't Lovell Barlow at all, but a stranger of trampish appearance, drunk and fiery, and fixed in an aggressive att.i.tude.

I was naturally terrified. What if he should attack us in that lonely spot! Grandpa was so old! And moreover, Grandpa was so taken aback to find that it wasn't Lovell that he began some blunt and stammering expression of surprise, which only served to increase the stranger's ire.

Grandma, imperturbable soul! Who never failed to come to the rescue even in the most desperate emergencies--Grandma climbed over to the front, thrust out her benign head, and said in that deep, calm voice of hers:--

"We're a goin' to the house of G.o.d, brother; won't you git in and go too?"

"No!" our brother replied, doubling up his fists and shaking them menacingly in our faces: "I won't go to no house o' G.o.d. What d'ye mean by overhauling me on the road, and askin' me to git into yer d----d old travelling lunatic asylum?"

"Drive on, pa," said Grandma, coldly: "He ain't in no condition to be labored with now. Drive on kind o' quick!"

'Kind o' quick' we could not go, but f.a.n.n.y was made to do her best, and we did not pause to look behind.

When we got to the church, Sunday-school had already begun. There was Lovell Barlow looking preternaturally stiff in his best clothes, sitting with a cla.s.s of young men. He saw us when we came in, and gave me a look of deep meaning. It was the same expression--as though there was some solemn, mutual understanding between us--which he had worn on that night when he gave me his picture.

"There's plenty of young folks' cla.s.ses," said Grandma; "but seein' as we're late maybe you'd jest as soon go right along in with us."

I said that I should like that best, so I went into the "old folks'"

cla.s.s with Grandma and Grandpa Keeler.

There were three pews of old people in front of us, and the teacher, who certainly seemed to me the oldest person I had ever seen, sat in an otherwise vacant pew in front of all, so that, his voice being very thin and querulous, we could hear very little that he said, although we were edified in some faint sense by his pious manner of shaking his head and rolling his eyes toward the ceiling.

The church was a square wooden edifice, of medium size, and contained three stoves all burning brightly. Against this, and the drowsy effect of their long drive in the sun and wind, my two companions proved powerless to struggle.

Grandpa looked furtively up at Grandma, then endeavored to put on as a sort of apology for what he felt was inevitably coming, a sanctimonious expression which was most unnatural to him, and which soon faded away as the sweet unconsciousness of slumber overspread his features. His head fell back helplessly, his mouth opened wide. He snored, but not very loudly. I looked at Grandma, wondering why her vigilance had failed on this occasion, and lo! her head was falling peacefully from side to side.

She was fast asleep, too. She woke up first, however, and then Grandpa was speedily and adroitly aroused by some means, I think it was a pin; and Grandma fed him with bits of unsweetened flag-root which he munched penitently, though evidently without relish, until he dropped off to sleep again, and she dropped off to sleep again, and so they continued.

But it always happened that Grandma woke up first. And whereas Grandpa, when the avenging pin pierced his shins, recovered himself with a start and an air of guilty confusion, Grandma opened her eyes at regular intervals, with the utmost calm and placidity, as though she had merely been closing them to engage in a few moments of silent prayer.

Our cla.s.s occupied an humble place in the sanctuary, near the door.

Behind the pew in which Grandma, Grandpa, and I were sitting there was one more vacant. Presently the door opened, admitting a delightful waft of fresh air, and some one entered that pew, and bowed his head forward on the desk in a devotional att.i.tude.

After the brief excitement caused by the advent of this new and very late comer had subsided, the Sunday-school resumed its former lethargic condition, and then I heard my own name whispered very softly in my ear.

I had to turn my head but a little to meet the deprecating, though evidently irreverent eyes of Emily's fisherman.

"How do you do, Miss Hungerford?" he murmured brightly. "Please don't consider me in the light of an intruder. I know I'm rather young for the cla.s.s, to which you are admitted by reason of some extraordinary acquaintance with biblical lore."

"But it's an excellent opportunity for you to address the little boys and girls," I said.

"Nonsense!" said Mr. Rollin, reddening. "I only meant that for a joke, you know."

Without pausing to reflect at all on the moral consequences of the act, I welcomed the appearance of this voluble, fashionably-dressed young man among the "ancient and fish-like" odors of the West Wallen meeting-house with a positive sense of relief.

"If I might venture to suppose," Mr. Rollin continued, whispering, "that I came here to-day clothed, in any sense, as an angel of light--and, indeed, I feel a good deal like that sort of thing to-day--so sweet are the solaces of an approving conscience, and the consciousness of having resisted temptation. You see I was--yes, I was going fishing this morning, but I saw Captain Keeler go by to church--observe, too, the beauty of setting a good example--and I persuaded myself that it was wrong to go fishing on Sunday, and so I concluded to come to church, too."

At the light mockery of the fisherman's tone, the bolder flattery of his eyes, I felt the same quick flash of resentment that his words had occasioned when he walked with me up the lane. I turned my head away with the n.o.ble resolve to keep it there persistently.

Then I heard the whisper, "Miss Hungerford, you are driving me to the last extreme of idol worship. I shall, keep on addressing my pet.i.tions to that ostrich tip in your hat until you give me, at least, the benefit of your profile."

"I don't see why you should say such irreverent things to me, Mr.

Rollin," I said, quite seriously, turning, and looking him full in the face, for an instant.

"Heaven forbid!" he replied, in an almost inaudible tone. "And if I could have conceived of such a thing, I would beg your pardon. You have brothers, Miss Hungerford?"

"Yes," I answered, nodding my head slightly, with my eyes fixed steadfastly on the ancient instructor of our cla.s.s.

"How would you feel if your brother was off, alone, in some wild country, in need of good and gentle influences, and some young lady should treat him as you are treating me? Please turn your head a little this way.

But, on the whole, I'm very glad I'm not your brother. Shall I tell you Why? Miss Hungerford," the fisherman continued, after a pause, "do you know I've always heard that auburn-haired people come, by right, into possession of the worst tempers. Your hair is brown--dark brown, and mine is red, almost--don't you think so?--and yet my mind is all peace within, and hope, and joy, and

'What is the blooming tincture of the skin, To peace of mind and purity, within?'

Miss Hungerford, it has been full two minutes, by my watch, since I caught the last beam from your eye. Let us forget the idle wranglings of the hour, and compose our minds to the great subjects which agitate eternity. One of those insects which infest ancient church edifices has been hovering about Captain Keeler's mouth. It has been drawn in. It has disappeared. Such are we, hovering on the vortex of eternity. How calm and undisturbed the old captain's face! how utterly unconscious of the tragedy just enacted! So eternity swallows us and leaves no trace behind, and no ripple marks its surface. How infer--how more than odd the old captain looks, anyway! I say, she ought to have touched up his eyebrows a little, you know, while she was at the nefarious business, Miss Hungerford."

"Yes," I answered, listening deliberately.

"Do you suppose that the time will ever come when she to whom I once gave the love of my young heart, and all that sort of thing, you know, will take me in hand, and dye my hair, and rig me up, and make such an infernal-looking old guy of me?"

"I don't see how you can escape," I said. "But you won't care so much, then."

"No, that's true." Mr. Rollin sighed deeply "I shall be old, then;--

'When I am old, I shall not care To deck with flowers my faded hair.'"

The idea of Mr. Rollin decking his hair with flowers was a specially entertaining one to me.

Presently, he continued:--

"To descend for a moment to secular subjects--I've got my own horses here now, Miss Hungerford. I had my man Bob bring them down from Providence.

They got here last night, and they're a pair of spankers, too, if I do say it that shouldn't, as the phrase is. That was one of the inducements which led me to follow your--to follow Captain Keeler's example in coming to church this morning. And now I have a calm, serious, and reasonable proposal to make. No doubt we are both familiar with the small conventionalities of life, but on such a day as this, and with such a glorious air outside, and such a unique framework of society--everything delightfully pagan--scruples worthy only of small consideration at any time should be thrown aside. I don't know what perils you encountered on your way to church this morning, in the canvas-covered vehicle. But, if you will drive back to Wallencamp with me, I promise to take you there fleetly and safely, and you may have the consciousness, besides, if you care for it, that you have made the day one of spiritual reclamation to an erring fellow-creature."