Parnassus on Wheels (5 page)

"Well," I said (I felt a little contrite, as I was sincerely
sorry to have offended him), "I've passed forty myself in some
measurements, so youth no longer has any terrors for me."

He looked at me rather comically.

"My dear madam," he said, "your age is precisely eighteen. I think
that if we escape the clutches of the Sage of Redfield you may
really begin to live."

"Oh, Andrew's not a bad sort," I said. "He's absentminded, and hot
tempered, and a little selfish. The publishers have done their best
to spoil him, but for a literary man I guess he's quite human. He
rescued me from being a governess, and that's to his credit. If only
he didn't take his meals quite so much as a matter of course...."

"The preposterous thing about him is that he really can
write
,"
said Mifflin. "I envy him that. Don't let him know I said so, but
as a matter of fact his prose is almost as good as Thoreau. He
approaches facts as daintily as a cat crossing a wet road."

"You should see him at dinner," I thought; or rather I meant to
think it, but the words slipped out. I found myself thinking aloud
in a rather disconcerting way while sitting with this strange
little person.

He looked at me. I noticed for the first time that his eyes were
slate blue, with funny birds' foot wrinkles at the corners.

"That's so," he said. "I never thought of that. A fine prose style
certainly presupposes sound nourishment. Excellent point that...
And yet Thoreau did his own cooking. A sort of Boy Scout I guess,
with a badge as kitchen master. Perhaps he took Beechnut bacon with
him into the woods. I wonder who cooked for Stevenson—Cummy? The
'Child's Garden of Verses' was really a kind of kitchen garden,
wasn't it? I'm afraid the commissariat problem has weighed rather
heavily on you. I'm glad you've got away from it."

All this was getting rather intricate for me. I set it down as I
remember it, inaccurately perhaps. My governess days are pretty
far astern now, and my line is common sense rather than literary
allusions. I said something of the sort.

"Common sense?" he repeated. "Good Lord, ma'am, sense is the most
uncommon thing in the world. I haven't got it. I don't believe your
brother has, from what you say. Bock here has it. See how he trots
along the road, keeps an eye on the scenery, and minds his own
business. I never saw him get into a fight yet. Wish I could say the
same of myself. I named him after Boccaccio, to remind me to read
the 'Decameron' some day."

"Judging by the way you talk," I said, "you ought to be quite a
writer yourself."

"Talkers never write. They go on talking."

There was a considerable silence. Mifflin relit his pipe and watched
the landscape with a shrewd eye. I held the reins loosely, and Peg
ambled along with a steady clop-clop. Parnassus creaked musically,
and the mid-afternoon sun lay rich across the road. We passed
another farm, but I did not suggest stopping as I felt we ought to
push on. Mifflin seemed lost in meditation, and I began to wonder,
a little uneasily, how the adventure would turn out. This quaintly
masterful little man was a trifle disconcerting. Across the next
ridge I could see the Greenbriar church spire shining white.

"Do you know this part of the country?" I asked finally.

"Not this exact section. I've been in Port Vigor often, but then I
was on the road that runs along the Sound. I suppose this village
ahead is Greenbriar?"

"Yes," I said. "It's about thirteen miles from there to Port Vigor.
How do you expect to get back to Brooklyn?"

"Oh, Brooklyn?" he said vaguely. "Yes, I'd forgotten about Brooklyn
for the minute. I was thinking of my book. Why, I guess I'll take
the train from Port Vigor. The trouble is, you can never get to
Brooklyn without going through New York. It's symbolic, I suppose."

Again there was a silence. Finally he said, "Is there another town
between Greenbriar and Port Vigor?"

"Yes, Shelby," I said. "About five miles from Greenbriar."

"That'll be as far as you'll get to-night," he said. "I'll see you
safe to Shelby, and then make tracks for Port Vigor. I hope there's
a decent inn at Shelby where you can stop overnight."

I hoped so, too, but I wasn't going to let him see that with the
waning afternoon my enthusiasm was a little less robust. I was
wondering what Andrew was thinking, and whether Mrs. McNally had
left things in good order. Like most Swedes she had to be watched or
she left her work only three quarters done. And I didn't depend any
too much on her daughter Rosie to do the housework efficiently. I
wondered what kind of meals Andrew would get. And probably he would
go right on wearing his summer underclothes, although I had already
reminded him about changing. Then there were the chickens...

Well, the Rubicon was crossed now, and there was nothing to be done.

To my surprise, little Redbeard had divined my anxiety. "Now don't
you worry about the Sage," he said kindly. "A man that draws his
royalties isn't going to starve. By the bones of John Murray, his
publishers can send him a cook if necessary! This is a holiday for
you, and don't you forget it."

And with this cheering sentiment in my mind, we rolled sedately down
the hill toward Greenbriar.

I am about as hardy as most folks, I think, but I confess I balked a
little at the idea of facing the various people I know in Greenbriar
as the owner of a bookvan and the companion of a literary huckster.
Also I recollected that if Andrew should try to trace us it would be
as well for me to keep out of sight. So after telling Mr. Mifflin
how I felt about matters I dived into the Parnassus and lay down
most comfortably on the bunk. Bock the terrier joined me, and I
rested there in great comfort of mind and body as we ambled down the
grade. The sun shone through the little skylight gilding a tin pan
that hung over the cook stove. Tacked here and there were portraits
of authors, and I noticed a faded newspaper cutting pinned up. The
headlines ran: "Literary Pedlar Lectures on Poetry." I read it
through. Apparently the Professor (so I had begun to call him, as
the aptness of the nickname stuck in my mind) had given a lecture
in Camden, N.J., where he had asserted that Tennyson was a greater
poet than Walt Whitman; and the boosters of the Camden poet had
enlivened the evening with missiles. It seems that the chief Whitman
disciple in Camden is Mr. Traubel; and Mr. Mifflin had started the
rumpus by asserting that Tennyson, too, had "Traubels of his own."
What an absurd creature the Professor was, I thought, as I lay
comfortably lulled by the rolling wheels.

Greenbriar is a straggling little town, built around a large common
meadow. Mifflin's general plan in towns, he had told me, was to
halt Parnassus in front of the principal store or hotel, and when
a little throng had gathered he would put up the flaps of the van,
distribute his cards, and deliver a harangue on the value of good
books. I lay concealed inside, but I gathered from the sounds that
this was what was happening. We came to a stop; I heard a growing
murmur of voices and laughter outside, and then the click of the
raised sides of the wagon. I heard Mifflin's shrill, slightly nasal
voice making facetious remarks as he passed out the cards. Evidently
Bock was quite accustomed to the routine, for though his tail wagged
gently when the Professor began to talk, he lay quite peaceably
dozing at my feet.

"My friends," said Mr. Mifflin. "You remember Abe Lincoln's joke
about the dog? If you call a tail a leg, said Abe, how many legs
has a dog? Five, you answer. No, says Abe; because calling a tail a
leg doesn't make it a leg. Well, there are lots of us in the same
case as that dog's tail. Calling us men doesn't
make
us men. No
creature on earth has a right to think himself a human being if he
doesn't know at least one good book. The man that spends every
evening chewing Piper Heidsieck at the store is unworthy to catch
the intimations of a benevolent Creator. The man that's got a few
good books on his shelf is making his wife happy, giving his
children a square deal, and he's likely to be a better citizen
himself. How about that, parson?"

I heard the deep voice of Reverend Kane, the Methodist minister:
"You're dead right, Professor!" he shouted. "Tell us some more about
books. I'm right with you!" Evidently Mr. Kane had been attracted
by the sight of Parnassus, and I could hear him muttering to himself
as he pulled one or two books from the shelves. How surprised he
would have been if he had known I was inside the van! I took the
precaution of slipping the bolt of the door at the back, and drew
the curtains. Then I crept back into the bunk. I began to imagine
what an absurd situation there would be if Andrew should arrive on
the scene.

"You are all used to hucksters and pedlars and fellows selling every
kind of junk from brooms to bananas," said the Professor's voice.
"But how often does any one come round here to sell you books?
You've got your town library, I dare say; but there are some books
that folks ought to own. I've got 'em all here from Bibles to cook
books. They'll speak for themselves. Step up to the shelves,
friends, and pick and choose."

I heard the parson asking the price of something he had found on the
shelves, and I believe he bought it; but the hum of voices around
the flanks of Parnassus was very soothing, and in spite of my
interest in what was going on I'm afraid I fell asleep. I must have
been pretty tired; anyway I never felt the van start again. The
Professor says he looked in through the little window from the
driver's seat, and saw me sound asleep. And the next thing I knew I
woke up with a start to find myself rolling leisurely in the dark.
Bock was still lying over my feet, and there was a faint, musical
clang from the bucket under the van which struck against something
now and then. The Professor was sitting in front, with a lighted
lantern hanging from the peak of the van roof. He was humming some
outlandish song to himself, with a queer, monotonous refrain:

Shipwrecked was I off Soft Perowse
And right along the shore,
And so I did resolve to roam
The country to explore.
Tommy rip fal lal and a balum tip
Tommy rip fal lal I dee;
And so I did resolve to roam
The country for to see!

I jumped out of the bunk, cracked my shins against something, and
uttered a rousing halloo. Parnassus stopped, and the Professor
pushed back the sliding window behind the driver's seat.

"Heavens!" I said. "Father Time, what o'clock is it?"

"Pretty near supper time, I reckon. You must have fallen asleep
while I was taking money from the Philistines. I made nearly three
dollars for you. Let's pull up along the road and have a bite to
eat."

He guided Pegasus to one side of the road, and then showed me how
to light the swinging lamp that hung under the skylight. "No use
to light the stove on a lovely evening like this," he said. "I'll
collect some sticks and we can cook outside. You get out your basket
of grub and I'll make a fire." He unhitched Pegasus, tied her to a
tree, and gave her a nose bag of oats. Then he rooted around for
some twigs and had a fire going in a jiffy. In five minutes I had
bacon and scrambled eggs sizzling in a frying pan, and he had
brought out a pail of water from the cooler under the bunk, and was
making tea.

I never enjoyed a picnic so much! It was a perfect autumn evening,
windless and frosty, with a dead black sky and a tiny rim of new
moon like a thumb-nail paring. We had our eggs and bacon, washed
down with tea and condensed milk, and followed by bread and jam.
The little fire burned blue and cozy, and we sat on each side of it
while Bock scoured the pan and ate the crusts.

"This your own bread, Miss McGill?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "I was calculating the other day that I've baked more
than 400 loaves a year for the last fifteen years. That's more than
6,000 loaves of bread. They can put that on my tombstone."

"The art of baking bread is as transcendent a mystery as the art of
making sonnets," said Redbeard. "And then your hot biscuits—they
might be counted as shorter lyrics, I suppose—triolets perhaps.
That makes quite an anthology, or a doxology, if you prefer it."

"Yeast is yeast, and West is West," I said, and was quite surprised
at my own cleverness. I hadn't made a remark like that to Andrew in
five years.

"I see you are acquainted with Kipling," he said.

"Oh, yes, every governess is."

"Where and whom did you govern?"

"I was in New York, with the family of a wealthy stockbroker. There
were three children. I used to take them walking in Central Park."

"Did you ever go to Brooklyn?" he asked abruptly.

"Never," I replied.

"Ah!" he said. "That's just the trouble. New York is Babylon;
Brooklyn is the true Holy City. New York is the city of envy, office
work, and hustle; Brooklyn is the region of homes and happiness. It
is extraordinary: poor, harassed New Yorkers presume to look down on
low-lying, home-loving Brooklyn, when as a matter of fact it is the
precious jewel their souls are thirsting for and they never know it.
Broadway: think how symbolic the name is. Broad is the way that
leadeth to destruction! But in Brooklyn the ways are narrow, and
they lead to the Heavenly City of content. Central Park: there you
are—the centre of things, hemmed in by walls of pride. Now how
much better is Prospect Park, giving a fair view over the hills of
humility! There is no hope for New Yorkers, for they glory in their
skyscraping sins; but in Brooklyn there is the wisdom of the lowly."

"So you think that if I had been a governess in Brooklyn I should
have been so contented that I would never have come with Andrew
and compiled my anthology of 6,000 loaves of bread and the lesser
lyrics?"

But the volatile Professor had already soared to other points of
view, and was not to be thwarted by argument.