The Associate Hermits

CHAPTER XXI

THE INDIVIDUALITY OF PETER SADLER

“Martin,” said Matlack, sharply, before the young man had reached him, “it seems to me that you think that you have been engaged here as lady’s-maid, but there’s other things to do besides teaching young women about trees and fishes. If you think,” continued Matlack, when the two had reached the woodland kitchen, “that your bein’ a hermit is goin’ to let you throw all the work on me, you’re mistaken. There’s a lot of potatoes that’s got to be peeled for dinner.”

Without a word Martin sat down on the ground with a pan of potatoes in front of him and began to work. Had he been a proud crusader setting forth to fight the Saracens his blood could not have coursed with greater warmth and force, his soul could not have more truly spurned the earth and all the common things upon it. What he had said to Margery had made him feel ennobled. If Raybold had that instant appeared before him with some jeering insult, Martin would have pardoned him with lofty scorn; and yet he peeled potatoes, and did it well. But his thoughts were not upon his work; they were upon the future which, if he proved himself to be the man he thought himself to be, might open before him. When he had finished the potatoes he put the pan upon a table and stood near by, deep in thought.

“Yes,” said he to himself, “I should go now. After what I have said to her I cannot stay here and live this life before her. I would wait on her with bended knee at every step, but with love for her in my soul I cannot wash dishes for other people. I have spoken, and now I must act; and the quicker the better. If all goes well I may be here again, but I shall not come back as a guide.” Then a thought of Raybold crossed his mind, but he put it aside. Even if he stayed here he could not protect her, for she had shown that she did not wish him to do it in the only way he could do it, and he felt sure, too, that any further annoyance would result in an appeal to Mr. Archibald.

“Well,” said Matlack, sharply, “what’s the matter with you? Don’t you intend to move?”

“Yes,” said Martin, turning quickly, “I do intend to move. I am going to leave this camp just as soon as I can pack my things.”

“And where in the name of thunder are you goin’ to?”

“I’m going to Sadler’s,” said Martin.

“What for?”

“On my own business,” was the reply.

Matlack looked at him for a moment suspiciously. “Have you got any complaints to make of me?” he said.

“No,” said Martin, promptly, “not one; but I have affairs on hand which will take me off immediately.”

“Before dinner?” asked Matlack.

“Yes,” said the other, “before dinner; now.”

“Go ahead then,” said Matlack, putting some sticks of wood into the stove; “and tell Sadler that if he don’t send me somebody before supper-time to help about this camp, he’ll see me. I’ll be hanged,” he said to himself, as he closed the door of the stove, “if this isn’t hermitism with a vengeance. I wonder who’ll be the next one to cut and run; most likely it will be Mrs. Perkenpine.”

Early in the afternoon, warm and dusty, Martin presented himself before Peter Sadler, who was smoking his pipe on the little shaded piazza at the back of the house.

“Oh, ho!” said Peter. “How in the name of common-sense did you happen to turn up at this minute? This is about as queer a thing as I’ve known of lately. What did you come for? Sit down.”

“Mr. Sadler,” said Martin, “I have come here on most important business.”

“Lake dry?” asked Peter.

“It is a matter,” said Martin, “which concerns myself; and if all the lakes in the world were dry, I would not be able to think about them, so full is my soul of one thing.”

“By the Lord Harry,” said Peter, “let’s have it, quick!”

In a straightforward manner, but with an ardent vehemence which he could not repress, Martin stated his business with Peter Sadler. He told him how he loved Margery, what he had said to her, and what she had said to him.

“And now,” said the young man, “I have come to ask your permission to address her; but whether you give it or not I shall go to her mother and speak to her. I know her address, and I intend to do everything in an honorable way.”

Peter Sadler put down his pipe and looked steadfastly at the young man. “I wish to Heaven,” said he, “that there was a war goin’ on! I’d write a letter to the commander-in-chief and let you take it to him, and I’d tell him you was the bravest man between Hudson Bay and Patagonia. By George! I can’t understand it! I can’t understand how you could have the cheek, the unutterable brass, to come here and ask me – me, Peter Sadler – to let you court one of the ladies in a campin’-party of mine. And, what’s more, I can’t understand how I can sit here and hear you tell me that tale without picking up a chair and knocking you down with it.”

“Mr. Sadler,” said Martin, rising, “I have spoken to you fairly and squarely, and if that’s all you’ve got to say, I will go.”

“Sit down!” roared Peter, bringing his hand upon the table as if he would drive it’s legs through the floor. “Sit down, and listen to what I have to say to you. It’s the strangest thing that ever happened to me that I am not more angry with you than I am; but I can’t understand it, and I pass it by. Now that you are seated again, I will make some remarks on my side. Do you see that?” said he, picking up a letter on the table. “Do you see who it is addressed to?”

“To me!” exclaimed Martin, in surprise.

“Yes, it’s to you,” said Peter, “and I wrote it, and I intended to send it by Bill Hammond this afternoon. That’s the reason I was surprised when I saw you here. But I’m not goin’ to give it to you; I’d rather tell you what’s in it, now you are here. Before I knew you were the abject ninnyhammer that you have just told me you are I had a good opinion of you, and thought that you were cut out to make a first-class traveller and explorer – the sort of a fellow who could lead a surveying expedition through the wilderness, or work up new countries and find out what they are made of and what’s in them. Only yesterday I heard of a chance that ought to make you jump, and this morning I wrote to you about it. A friend of mine, who’s roughed it with me for many a day, is goin’ to take an expedition down into New Mexico in the interests of a railroad and minin’ company. They want to know everything about the country – the game, fish, trees, and plants, as well as the minerals – and it struck me that if you are not just the kind of man they want you could make yourself so in a very short time. They’d pay you well enough, and you’d have a chance to dip into natural history, and all that sort of thing, that you had no reason to expect for a dozen years to come, if it ever came. If such a chance had been offered to me at your age I wouldn’t have changed lots with a king. All you’ve got to do is to pack up and be off. The party starts from New York in just three days; I’ll give you a letter to Joe Hendricks, and that’ll be all you want. He knows me well enough to take you without a word. If you haven’t got money enough saved to fit yourself out for the trip I’ll lend you some, and you can pay me back when they pay you. You can take the train this afternoon and maybe you can see Hendricks to-night. So pack up what you want and leave what you don’t want, and I’ll take care of it. I’ll write to Hendricks now.”

Many times did the face of Martin flush and pale as he listened. A vision of Paradise had been opened before him, but he felt that he must shut his eyes.

“Mr. Sadler,” he said, “you are very kind. You offer me a great thing – a thing which two weeks ago I should have accepted in the twinkling of an eye, and would have thanked you for all the rest of my life; but I cannot take it now. With all my heart I love a woman; I have told her so, and I am now going on the path she told me to take. I cannot turn aside from that for any prospects in the world.”

Peter Sadler’s face grew red, and then it grew black, and then it turned red again, and finally resumed its ordinary brown.

“Martin Sanders,” said he, speaking quietly, but with one hand fastened upon the arm of his chair with a grasp which a horse could not have loosened, “if you are cowardly enough and small enough and paltry enough to go to a girl who is living in peace and comfort and ask her to marry you, when you know perfectly well that for years to come you could not give her a decent roof over her head, and that if her family wanted her to live like a Christian they would have to give her the money to do it with; and if you are fool enough not to know that when she sent you first to me and then to her mother she was tryin’ to get rid of you without hurtin’ your feelin’s, why, then, I want you to get out of my sight, and the quicker the better. But if you are not so low down as that, go to your room and pack up your bag. The coach will start for the train at three o’clock, and it is now nearly half-past two; that will just give me time to write to Hendricks. Go!”

Martin rose. Whatever happened afterwards, he must go now. It seemed to him as if the whole world had suddenly grown colder; as if he had been floating in a fog and had neared an iceberg. Could it be possible that she had spoken, as she had spoken, simply to get rid of him? He could not believe it. No one with such honest eyes could speak in that way; and yet he did not know what to believe.

In any case, he would go away in the coach. He had spoken to Sadler, and now, whether he spoke to any one else or not, the sooner he left the better.

When he came to take the coach, Peter Sadler, who had rolled himself to the front of the house, handed him the letter he had written.

“I believe you are made of the right kind of stuff,” he said, “although you’ve got a little mouldy by bein’ lazy out there in the woods, but you’re all right now; and what you’ve got to do is to go ahead with a will, and, take my word for it, you’ll come out on top. Do you want any money? No? Very well, then, goodbye. You needn’t trouble yourself to write to me, I’ll hear about you from Hendricks; and I’d rather know what he thinks about you than what you think about yourself.”

“How little you know,” thought Martin, as he entered the coach, “what I am or what I think about myself. As if my purpose could be changed by words of yours!” And he smiled a smile which would have done justice to Arthur Raybold. The chill had gone out of him; he was warm again.

On the train he read the letter to Hendricks which Peter Sadler had given to him unsealed. It was a long letter, and he read it twice. Then he sat and gazed out of the window at the flying scenery for nearly half an hour, after which he read the letter again. Then he folded it up and put it into his pocket.

“If she had given me the slightest reason to hope,” he said to himself, “how easy it would be to tear this letter into scraps.”

Now an idea came into his mind. If he could see her mother quickly, and if she should ignore his honorable intentions and refuse to give him the opportunity to prove that he was worthy of a thought from her and her daughter, then it might not be too late to fall back on Peter Sadler’s letter. But he shook his head; that would be dishonorable and unworthy of him.

He shut his eyes; he could not bear to look at the brightness of the world outside the window of the car. Under his closed lids there came to him visions, sometimes of Margery and sometimes of the forests of New Mexico. Sometimes the visions were wavering, uncertain, and transitory, and again they were strong and vivid – so plain to him that he could almost hear the leaves rustle as some wild creature turned a startled look upon him.

That night he delivered his letter to Mr. Hendricks.

CHAPTER XXII

A TRANQUILLIZING BREEZE AND A HOT WIND

After Martin had left her, Margery sat on the root of the tree until Mr. Clyde came up and said he had been wondering what had become of her.

“I have been wondering that, myself,” she said. “At least, I have been wondering what is going to become of me.”

“Don’t you intend to be a hermit?” said he.

She shook her head. “I don’t think it is possible,” she answered. “There is no one who is better satisfied to be alone, and who can make herself happier all by herself, and who, in all sorts of ways, can get along better without other people than I can, and yet other people are continually interfering with me, and I cannot get away from them.”

Clyde smiled. “That is a pretty plain hint,” he said. “I suppose I might as well take it, and go off to some hermitage of my own.”

“Oh, nonsense!” said Margery. “Don’t be so awfully quick in coming to conclusions. I do feel worried and troubled and bothered, and I want some one to talk to; not about things which worry me, of course, but about common, ordinary things, that will make me forget.”

A slight shade came over the face of Mr. Clyde, and he seated himself on the ground near Margery. “It is a shame,” said he, “that you should be worried. What is it in this peaceable, beautiful forest troubles you?”

“Did you ever hear of a paradise without snakes?” she asked. “The very beauty of it makes them come here.”

“I have never yet known any paradise at all,” he replied. “But can’t you tell me what it is that troubles you?”

Margery looked at him with her clear, large eyes. “I’ll tell you,” she said, “if you will promise not to do a single thing without my permission.”

“I promise that,” said Clyde, eagerly.

“I am troubled by people making love to me.”

“People!” exclaimed Clyde, with a puzzled air.

“Yes,” said she. “Your cousin is one of them.”

“I might have supposed that; but who on earth can be the other one?”

“That is Martin,” said Margery.

For a moment Mr. Clyde did not seem to understand, and then he exclaimed: “You don’t mean the young man who cuts wood and helps Matlack?”

“Yes, I do,” she answered. “And you need not shut your jaw hard and grit your teeth that way. That is exactly what he did when he found out about Mr. Raybold. It is of no use to get angry, for you can’t do anything without my permission; and, besides, I tell you that if I were condemned by a court to be made love to, I would much rather have Martin make it than Mr. Raybold. Martin is a good deal more than a guide; he has a good education, and would not be here if it were not for his love of nature. He is going to make nature his object in life, and there is something noble in that; a great deal better than trying to strut about on the stage.”

“And those two have really been making love to you?” asked Clyde.

“Yes, really,” she answered. “You never saw people more in earnest in all your life. As for Mr. Raybold, he was as earnest as a cat after a bird. He made me furiously angry. Martin was different. He is just as earnest, but he is more of a gentleman; and when I told him what I wanted him to do, he said he would do it. But there is no use in telling your cousin what I want him to do. He is determined to persecute me and make me miserable, and there is no way of stopping it, except by making a quarrel between him and Uncle Archibald. It is a shame!” she went on, “Who could have thought that two people would have turned up to disturb me in this way.”

“Margery,” said Mr. Clyde, and although he called her by her Christian name she took no notice of it, “you think you have too many lovers: but you are mistaken. You have not enough; you ought to have three.”

She looked at him inquiringly.

“Yes,” he said, quickly, “and I want to be the third.”

“And so make matters three times as bad as they were at first?” she asked.

“Not at all,” said he. “When you have chosen one of them, he could easily keep away the two others.”

“Do you mean,” said Margery, “that if I were to agree to have three, and then, if I were to ask you to do it, you would go away quietly with one of the others and leave me in peace with the third one?”

Mr. Clyde half smiled, but instantly grew serious again, and a flush came on his face. “Margery,” said he, “I cannot bear trifling any more about this. No matter what anybody has said to you, whether it is any one in this camp or any one out of it, there is not a man in this world who – ”

“Oh, Mr. Clyde,” interrupted Margery, “you must not sit there and speak to me in such an excited way. If any one should see us they would think we were quarrelling. Let us go down to the lake; the air from the water is cool and soothing.”

Together they walked from under the shade of the tree, and so wended their way that it brought them to a mass of shrubbery which edged the water a little distance down the lake. On the other side of this shrubbery was a pretty bank, which they had seen before.

“It always tranquillizes me,” said Margery, as they stood side by side on the bank, “to look out over the water. Doesn’t it have that effect on you?”

“No!” exclaimed Clyde. “It does not tranquillize me a bit. Nothing could tranquillize me at a moment like this. Margery, I want you to know that I love you. I did not intend to tell you so soon, but what you have said makes it necessary. I have loved you ever since I met you at Peter Sadler’s, and, no matter what you say about it, I shall love you to the end of my life.”

“Even if I should send you away with one of the others?”

“Yes; no matter what you did.”

“That would be wrong,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter. Right or wrong, I’d do it.”

Margery gave him a glance from which it would have been impossible to eliminate all signs of admiration. “And if I were to arrange it otherwise,” she said, “would you undertake to keep the others away?”

There was no answer to this question, but in a minute afterwards Clyde exclaimed: “Do you think any one would dare to come near you if they saw you now?”

“Hardly,” said Margery, raising her head from his shoulder and looking up into his sparkling eyes. “Really, Harrison, you ought not to speak in such a loud voice. If Aunt Harriet were to hear you she might dare to come.”

Margery was late to dinner, although the horn was blown three times.

Much to the surprise of his wife, Mr. Archibald returned to camp about an hour before dinner.

“How is this?” she exclaimed. “Wasn’t the fishing good?”

“I have had a disagreeable experience,” he said, “and I will tell you about it. I was fishing in a little cove some distance down the lake and having good sport, when I heard a thumping, and looking around I saw Raybold in a boat rowing towards me. I suppose he thought he was rowing, but he was really floating with the current; but as he neared me he suddenly pulled his boat towards me with such recklessness that I was afraid he would run into me. I considered his rowing into the cove to be a piece of bad manners, for of course it would spoil my fishing, but I had no idea he actually intended to lay alongside of me. This he did, however, and so awkwardly that his boat struck mine with such force that it half tipped it over. Then he lay hold of my gunwale, and said he had something to say to me.