The Associate Hermits Part 7

"Do you know what I think he is?" said Mr. Clyde, when Mr. Archibald had resumed his seat and his pipe. "I believe he is a wandering actor. Actors always have smoothly shaven faces, and he looks like one."

"Actor!" exclaimed Arthur Raybold. "That's nonsense. He's not in the least like an actor. Anybody could see by his tread and his air that he's never been on the stage. He's more like a travelling salesman. The next thing he'll do will be to pull out of that bag some samples of spool thread or patent thimbles."

"You are both wrong," said Margery--"entirely wrong. I have been looking at him, and I believe he is a Methodist minister with a dead horse. They ride circuits, and of course when their horses die they walk. Just wait a little, and see if I am not right."

They waited a little, and then they waited a little longer, and they had begun to be tired of waiting before the stranger finished his meal and approached the fire. His face was brighter, his smile was more pleasant, and his step had a certain jauntiness in it.

"I thank you all," he said, "for the very good meal I have just enjoyed. I am now going to go, but before I start I would like very much--indeed, I crave it as a favor--to place myself before you in my proper light. May I have permission to do so, madam and sir?" he said, addressing Mrs. and Mr.

Archibald, but with a respectful glance at the others, as if he would not ignore any one of them.

"Certainly," said Mrs. Archibald. "Sit down and tell us about yourself."

The stranger seated himself with alacrity a little back from the circle, and nearer to the young men than to the Archibald party.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BISHOP'S TALE

The stranger placed his broad-brimmed hat on the ground beside him, exposing a large round head somewhat bald in front, but not from age, and the rest of it covered with close-cut brown hair. His black clothes fitted him very closely, their extreme tightness suggesting that they had shrunken in the course of wearing, or that he had grown much plumper since he had come into possession of them; and their general worn and dull appearance gave considerable distance to the period of their first possession. But there was nothing worn or dull about the countenance of the man, upon which was an expression of mellow geniality which would have been suitably consequent upon a good dinner with plenty of wine. But his only beverage had been coffee, and in his clear bright eye there was no trace of any exhilaration, except that caused by the action of a hearty meal upon a good digestion and an optimistic disposition.

"I am very glad," he said, looking about him at the company, and then glancing with a friendly air towards the two guides, who stood a little back of Mr. Archibald, "to have this opportunity to explain my appearance here. In the first place, I must tell you that I am a bishop whose diocese has been inundated, and who consequently has been obliged to leave it."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Archibald; and Margery looked at Mr. Clyde, with the remark:

"There! You see I was very near to it."

"I presume this statement will require some explanation," continued the man in black, "and I will make it presently. I am going to be exceedingly frank and open in all that I say to you, and as frankness and openness are so extremely rare in this world, it may be that I shall obtain favor in your eyes from the fact of my possessing those unusual qualities.

Originally I was a teacher, and for a year or two I had a very good country school; but my employment at last became so repugnant to me that I could no longer endure it, and this repugnance was due entirely to my intense dislike for children."

"That is not at all to your credit," observed Mrs. Archibald; "and I do not see how you became a bishop, or why you should have been made one."

"Was your diocese entirely meadow-land?" inquired Mr. Archibald.

"I am coming to all that," said the stranger, with a smile of polite consideration towards Mrs. Archibald. "I know very well that it is not at all to my credit to dislike children, but I said I would be honest, and I am. I do dislike them--not their bodies, but their minds. Children, considered physically, are often pleasant to the view, and even interesting as companions, providing their innate juvenility is undisturbed; but when their personalities are rudely thrown open by a teacher, and the innate juvenility prematurely exposed to the air, it is something so clammy, so chilly to the mental marrow, that I shrink from it as I would shrink from the touch of any cold, clammy thing."

"Horrible!" exclaimed Mrs. Archibald.

"I am not sure," observed Margery, "that there is not some truth in that.

I had a Sunday-school cla.s.s for a little while, and although I can't say there was a clamminess, there was--well, I don't know what there was, but I gave it up."

"I am glad," said the man in black, "that my candor is not sinking me in the estimation of every one present; but even if it did, I am obliged to tell the truth. I do not know what would have become of me if I had not had the good-fortune to catch the measles from a family with whom I was spending Sunday in another town. As soon as the disease plainly showed itself upon me my school was broken up, and it was never gathered together again, at least under me.

"I must make my story brief, and can only say that not long after this I found myself in another town, where it became necessary for me to do something to support myself. This was difficult, for I am an indefinite man, and definiteness seems necessary to success in any line. Happening one day to pa.s.s a house with open lower windows, I heard the sound of children's voices speaking in unison, and knowing that this must be a school, I looked in, compelled entirely by that curiosity which often urges us to gaze upon human suffering. I found, however, that this was a kindergarten conducted by a young woman. Un.o.bserved by scholars or teacher, I watched the proceedings with great interest, and soon became convinced that kindergartening was a much less repellent system of tuition than any I had known; but I also perceived that the methods of the young woman could be greatly improved. I thought a good deal upon this subject after leaving the open window. Soon afterwards, becoming acquainted with the young person in charge of the children, I offered to teach her a much better system of kindergartening than she was using. My terms were very low, and she became my scholar. I soon learned that there were other kindergartens in the town, and some of the teachers of these joined my cla.s.s. Moreover, there were young women in the place who were not kindergartners, but who would like to become such, and these I also taught, sometimes visiting them at their houses, and sometimes giving my lessons in a room loaned by one of my patrons. My system became very popular, because it was founded upon common-sense."

"What was your system?" asked Mrs. Archibald. "I am interested in kindergartens myself."

"My object," he answered, "was to make the operation of teaching interesting to the teacher. It struck me very forcibly that a continuance of a few years in the present inane performances called kindergartening would infallibly send to our lunatic asylums a number of women, more or less young, with more or less depleted intellects. The various games and exercises I devised were very interesting, and I am sure I had scholars who never intended to become kindergartners, and who studied with me solely for their own advantage. It was at this time that I adopted the clerical dress as being more suitable to my vocation than any other costume, and some one having called me the bishop, the name soon became popular, and I was generally known by it."

"But what is your real name?" asked Mrs. Archibald.

"Madam," said the man, "you must excuse me if I ask you to recall your question. I have a good name, and I belong to a very good family, but there are reasons why I do not at present wish to avow that name. Some of these reasons are connected with the report that I purposely visited the family with the measles in order to get rid of my school; others are connected with the inundation of my diocese, of which I shall speak; others refer to my present indefinite method of life. There is reason to suppose that the time is not far distant when my resumption of my family name will throw no discredit upon it, but that period has not yet arrived.

Do you press your question, madam?"

"Oh no," said Mrs. Archibald; "it really makes no difference; and out here in the woods a man may call himself a bishop or a cardinal or anything he likes."

"Thank you very much," said he, "and I will continue to speak in figures, and call myself a bishop."

"Where I was brought up," interpolated Phil Matlack, still standing behind Mr. Archibald, "I was taught that figures don't lie."

"My good sir," said the speaker, with a smile, "in mathematics they don't, in poetry and literature they often do. Well, as I was saying, my diocese extended itself, my revenues were satisfactory, and I had begun to believe that I had found my true work in life, when suddenly there was a misfortune. There arrived in our town three apostles of kindergartening--two of them were women, and one was a man. They had heard of my system, and had come to investigate it. They did so, with the result that in an astonishingly short time my diocese was inundated with a flood of Froebelism which absolutely swept me away. With this bag, this umbrella, and this costume, which has now become my wardrobe, I was cast out in all my indefiniteness upon a definite world."

"And how did you get here?" asked Mrs. Archibald.

"I had heard of Sadler and his camps," said he; "and in this beautiful month and in this beautiful weather I thought it would be well to investigate them. I accordingly went to Mr. Sadler's, where I arrived yesterday afternoon. I found Mr. Sadler a very definite man, and, I am sorry to say, that as he immediately defined me as a tramp, he would listen to no other definition. 'You have no money to pay for food and lodgings,' said he, 'and you come under my tramp laws. I don't harbor tramps, but I don't kick them out into the woods to starve. For labor on this place I pay one dollar and a half a day of ten hours. For meals to day-laborers I charge fifteen cents each. If you want your supper, you can go out to that wood-shed and split wood for one hour.' I was very hungry; I went out into the wood-shed; I split wood for one hour, and at the end of that time I had a sufficient meal. When I had finished, Mr. Sadler sent for me. 'Do you want to stay here all night?' he said. 'I do,' I answered.

'Go, then, and split wood for another hour.' I did so, and it was almost dark when I had finished. In the morning I split wood for my breakfast, and when I had finished I went to Mr. Sadler and asked him how much he would charge for a luncheon wrapped in a piece of paper. 'Seven and a half cents,' he said. I split wood for half an hour, and left Sadler's ostensibly to return to the station by the way I had come; but while I had been at work, I found from the conversation of some of the people that one of the camps was occupied, and I also discovered in what direction it lay.

Consequently, after I had pa.s.sed out of the sight of the definite Peter Sadler, I changed my course, and took a path through the woods which I was told would lead to this road, and I came here because I might just as well pa.s.s this way as any other, and because, having set out to investigate camp life, I wished to do so, and I hope I may be allowed to say that although I have seen but little of it, I like it very much."

"Now, then," said Phil Matlack, walking around the circle and approaching the stranger, "you said, when you first came here, that you were going to go, and the time has come when you've got to go."

"Very well," said the other, looking up with a smile; "if I've got there I'd better stop."

Mr. Archibald and the young men laughed, but Matlack and Martin, who had now joined him, did not laugh.

"You've barely time enough," said the former, "to get to Sadler's before it is pitch-dark, and--"

"Excuse me," said the other, "but I am not going back to Sadler's to-night. I would rather have no bed than split wood for an hour after dark in order to procure one. I would prefer a couch of dried leaves."

"You come along into the road with this young man and me; I want to talk to you," said Matlack.

"Now, Matlack," said Mr. Archibald, "don't be cruel."

"I am not," said the guide. "I am the tenderest-hearted person in the world; but even if you say so, sir, I can't let a stranger stay all night in a camp that I've got charge of."

"Look here, Matlack," exclaimed Mr. Clyde, "you haven't got charge of our camp!"

"No, I haven't," said the other.

"Well, then, this person can come over and stay with us. We have a little tent that we brought to put over the cooking-stove, and he can sleep in that."

"Very well," said Matlack; "if you take him out of this camp I haven't anything to say--that is, to-night."

"My dear sir," said the stranger, rising, and approaching Mr. Clyde, "I accept your offer with pleasure, and thank you most heartily for it. If you had proffered me the hospitality of a palace, I could not be more grateful."

"All right," said Clyde; "and I suppose it is time for us to be off, so I will bid you all good-night. Come along, Arthur. Come along, bishop."