Chapter 11

The boy removed his head-covering and looked at it. It was of coarse straw, very wide, very much out of shape, without a band, and with a hole in the crown surrounded by a tuft of broken straw.

"Well," said he, "it ain't worth much now, but it'll take a quarter to buy a new one."

"Here is a quarter for your hat," said the Greek scholar, "and another for your perspicacity. I suppose I shall find my hat on the road, but I cannot wait for that. The sun is too hot."

The Greek scholar now started homeward, leading Hammerstein. He liked walking, and had no intention whatever of again getting into that cart. If, when they reached the overturned wagon, the animal should again upheave himself, or in any way misbehave, Mr. Tippengray intended to let go of him, and allow him to pursue his homeward way in such manner and at such speed as might best please him.

The two walked a long distance without reaching the object of Hammerstein's fright, and Mr. Tippengray began to think that the road was a good deal narrower and more shaded than he had supposed it to be. The fact was, that a road diverged from the right, near the top of the hill, which he had not noticed when passing it in mad career, and naturally turning to the right, without thinking very much about it, he had taken this road instead of the one by which he had come. Our scholar, however, did not yet comprehend that he was on the wrong road, and kept on.

Soon his way led through the woods, with great outstretching trees, with wide-open spaces, interspersed here and there with masses of undergrowth. Mr. Tippengray greatly enjoyed the shaded road, the smell of the pines, and the flowers scattered along the edges of the wood. But in a few minutes he would doubtless have discovered that he had gone astray, and, notwithstanding the pleasantness of his surroundings, he would have turned back, had he not suddenly heard voices not far away. He stopped and listened.

The voices came from behind a clump of evergreens close by the roadside, and to his utter amazement Mr. Tippengray heard the voice of Lanigan Beam saying to some one that true love must speak out, and could not be silenced; that for days he had been looking for an opportunity, and now that it had come she must hear him, and know that his heart was hers only, and could never belong to anybody else. Then the voice of Ida Mayberry, very clear and distinct, replied that he must not talk to her in that way, that her line of life and his were entirely different. And she was doubtless going to say more, when her companion interrupted, and vowed with all possible earnestness that whatever line of life she chose should be his line; that he would gladly give up every plan and purpose, follow her in whatever direction she chose to lead, and do whatever she wished he should do.

Mr. Tippengray was very uneasy. The subject-matter of the conversation he was overhearing disturbed him in a manner which he did not understand, and he felt, moreover, that it was not proper for him to listen to another word. He did not know what to do; if he moved forward they would hear the wheels, and know that he had been near, and if he attempted to back out of the vicinity there was no knowing what hubbub he and Hammerstein might create. While standing undecided, he heard Lanigan speak thus:

"And as for Greek, and that sort of thing, you shall have all you want. I'll hire old Tippengray by the year; he shall be the family pedagogue, and we'll tap him for any kind of learning we may happen to want."

Instantly all thought of retreat fled from the mind of the scholar; his eyes glittered, and he was on the point of doing something, when there came from a little distance the voice of Mrs. Cristie, loudly calling for Ida. There was shuffling of feet, and in a few moments Mr. Tippengray perceived the nurse-maid rapidly walking away between the trees while Lanigan leisurely followed.

With head erect and nostrils dilated, as if he had been excited by the perception of something upside down, Mr. Tippengray again laid hold of the bridle of Hammerstein, and went on. In a few minutes he emerged upon an open space, through which flowed a little brook, and where sat Mrs. Cristie, Lodloe, Ida Mayberry with the baby in her lap, and Lanigan Beam. All of these persons, excepting the infant, were eating sandwiches.

At the sight of the little man and the tall horse, the former spattered with mud, smeared with the earth of the plowed field, and crowned with a misshapen hat with the expansive hole in the top, the sandwich-eaters stopped eating, gazed open-eyed, and then burst out laughing. Mr. Tippengray did not laugh; his eyes still glittered.

It was half an hour before the tale was told, order restored, and Mr. Tippengray had washed his face and hands in the brook and taken refreshment. Then he found himself alone with Mrs. Cristie.

"Truly you have had a hard time," said she, kindly.

"Madam," answered the Greek scholar, "you are entirely correct. This has been an unfortunate day for me. I have been cunningly entrapped, and heartlessly deserted; I have been nearly frightened out of my wits; have had my soul nearly burned out of my body, and have been foully besmirched with dirt and mud. But, worse than all, I have heard myself made the subject of contempt and contumely."

"How is that?" exclaimed Mrs. Cristie. "I do not understand."

"I will quickly make it plain to you," said the indignant scholar, and he related the conversation he had overheard.

"What a shameful way to speak of you, Mr. Tippengray!" cried Mrs. Cristie. "I did not suppose that Mr. Beam would dare to say such things to one whom he knew to be your friend. I have no doubt that if I had not called Ida at that moment, you would have heard her resent that disrespectful speech."

"I hope so; with all my heart, I hope so," replied the Greek scholar.

He said this with so much feeling that his companion looked at him a few moments without speaking.

"Mr. Tippengray," she said presently, "it is time for us to go home. How would you like to take Ida Mayberry back in your cart?"

The brightness in the eyes of the Greek scholar changed from the glitter of indignation to gleams of joy.

"Madam," said he, "I should like it of all things. It would remove from the anticipated pleasures of this day the enormous Alpha privative which has so far overshadowed them."

The young widow did not exactly comprehend this answer, but it was enough to know that he was glad to accept the opportunity she offered him. No sooner had he spoken than Mr. Tippengray remembered the hazards to which he was exposing himself by again taking the reins of Hammerstein, but not for an instant did he think of drawing back. His desire to take Ida Mayberry away from that fellow, and have her by himself, overpowered fear and all other feelings.

Mrs. Cristie's arrangement for the return pleased everybody except Lanigan Beam. The nurse-maid was perfectly willing to go in the village cart, and was not at all afraid of horses, and Walter Lodloe had no objection to sit on the back seat of the wagon with his lady-love, and help take care of the baby. Lanigan made few remarks about the situation; he saw that he had made a mistake, and was being punished for it, and without remonstrance he took the front seat and the reins of the grays.

XXIV

TRANSLATIONS

Lanigan Beam had no more fear of Mr. Tippengray as a rival than he would have had of Mr. Petter, but the apportionment of companions for the return trip nettled him a good deal, and, as a consequence of this, the pair of grays traveled homeward at a smarter pace, and Hammerstein and the village cart were soon left far behind.

The road was not the one by which Mr. Tippengray had arrived on the scene, but led through the woods to the main road, which it joined at a point not far from the sign of the Squirrel Inn. Hammerstein traveled very quietly and steadily of his own accord, slackening his gait at the rough places, thus giving Mr. Tippengray every opportunity for an uninterrupted converse with his fellow scholar; and he lost no time in submitting to her his Greek version of the lines from "Pickwick."

"I am very glad you have it with you," said Ida, "for I put my Greek dictionary in my pocket this morning, when I first came down, hoping to have a chance to do some translating, and what better chance could I have than this?"

Drawing out her dictionary and a little blank-book she immediately began her labors. Mr. Tippengray did not altogether like this. He felt an intense and somewhat novel desire to converse with the young woman on no matter what subject, and he would have preferred that she should postpone the translation. But he would not interrupt the engrossing occupation into which she now plunged with ardor. Rapidly turning backward and forward the leaves of the little dictionary, and tapping her front teeth with her pencil as she puzzled over the correlation of Greek and English words and expressions, she silently pursued her work.

Although he did not talk to her, it was very pleasant for Mr. Tippengray to sit and look upon this fair young scholar. At her request he made the tall steed walk, in order that her pencil might not be too much joggled, slyly thinking, the while, that thus the interview would be prolonged. The air was warm and balmy. Everything was still about them. They met no one, and every minute Mr. Tippengray became more and more convinced that, next to talking to her, there could be no greater joy in life than basking in the immediate atmosphere of this girl.

At last she shut up her dictionary.

"Now, then!" she exclaimed, "I have translated it, and I assure you that it is a fair and square version, for I do not in the least remember the original paragraph."

"I have the original here," said Mr. Tippengray, pulling the second volume of "Pickwick" from his pocket, "and we will compare it with your translation, if you will be so good as to read it. You do not know with what anxious enthusiasm I await the result."

"And I, too," said Ida, earnestly. "I do not think there could be a better test of the power of the Greek language to embalm and preserve for future generations the spirit of Dickens. Now I will read, and you can compare my work with the original as I go on."

The translation ran thus:

"For the reason that he who drives a vehicle of the post-road holds high office above the masses," to him answered the Sire Weller with eyes affiliated; "for the reason that he who drives a vehicle of the post-road acteth at will, undoubted, humanity otherwise prohibited. For the reason that he who drives a vehicle of the post-road is able to look with affection on a woman of eighty far distant, though it is not publicly believed that in the midst of any it is his desire to wed. Among males which one discourseth similarly, Sammy?"

"I wrote Sammy," she explained, "because I remembered that is the way the name is used in English."

Mr. Tippengray raised his eyebrows very high, and his chin slowly began to approach the sailor knot of his cravat.

"Oh, dear," he said, "I am afraid that this would not express to future ages the spirit and style of Dickens. The original passage runs thus," and he read:

"'Cos a coachman's a privileged individual," replied Mr. Weller, looking fixedly at his son. "'Cos a coachman may do without suspicion wot other men may not; 'cos a coachman may be on the very amicablest terms with eighty mile o' females and yet nobody thinks that he ever means to marry any vun among 'em. And wot other man can say the same, Sammy?"

"They are not much alike, are they?" said Miss Mayberry. "I think if Dickens could read my translation he would not in the least recognize it. The fact is, Mr. Tippengray, I do not believe that your method of Greek pickling will answer to preserve our fiction for the future. It may do for histories and scientific work, but when you come to dialect and vernacular, if you once get it into Greek you can never get it back again as it used to be."

"That will be a great pity," said Mr. Tippengray, "for fiction makes up such a large part of our literature. And it does seem that good English might be properly translated into good Greek."

"Oh, it isn't the translation," said Ida; "that is all easy enough: it's the resurrection back into the original condition. Look at the prophet Enoch. He was translated, but if it were possible now to bring him back again, he would not be the same Enoch, you know."

"One might infer from that simile," said the Greek scholar, smiling, "that when a bit of English gets into Greek it goes to heaven, and would better stay there. Perhaps you are right in what you say about fiction. Anyway it is very pleasant to talk with one who can appreciate this subject, and reason sensibly about it."

Mr. Tippengray shut up his book and put it back into his pocket, while his companion tore her translation from her note-book and scattered it in little bits along the road.

"I would not like it," she said, "if any one but you were to read that and know I did it."

Mr. Tippengray's eyes and Mr. Tippengray's heart turned towards her. Those words, "any one but you," touched him deeply. He had a feeling as if he were being translated into something better than his original self, and that this young woman was doing it. He wished to express this in some way, and to say a good many other things which came crowding upon his mind, but he expressed nothing and said none of these things. An exclamation from Ida caused him to look in front of him, and there was the spring wagon with the horses standing still.

Mrs. Cristie turned round and called to them:

"Mr. Beam says that there are some by-roads just ahead of us, and as he was afraid you might turn into one and get lost, he thought it better to wait for you."

"Nonsense!" cried Miss Mayberry; "there was no danger that we would turn into any by-ways. The road is plain enough."

"I'm not so sure of that," said Mr. Tippengray to himself. "I think that just now I was on the point of turning into a by-way."

The wagon now moved slowly on, and the village cart followed. Mr. Tippengray would gladly have dropped a good deal behind, but he found this not practicable, because whenever he made Hammerstein walk Stolzenfels and Falkenberg also walked. It was plain enough that Lanigan Beam did not wish any longer to cut himself off from the society of the lady to whom he had made a proposal of marriage, and whenever he could find a pretext, which was not difficult for Lanigan, he called back to her to direct her attention to something, or to ask her opinion about something. Miss Mayberry did not respond with any readiness, but the persistence of the young man succeeded in making the conversation a general one, and the Greek scholar made no attempt to explain to the nurse-maid that he was in course of translation.

Dinner was very late at the Squirrel Inn that day, and Mrs. Petter gave her guests a scolding. But this did not in the least disturb the mind of Mr. Tippengray, who was well used to being scolded for coming late to his meals. But something else disturbed him, and for nearly an hour after dinner he wandered about the lawn and around the house. He wanted very much to see Miss Mayberry again, and to tell her the things he did not have a chance to tell her on the road, and he also very much wished to prevent that rascally Lanigan Beam from getting ahead of him, and continuing his broken-off interview with the lady.

XXV

MR. TIPPENGRAY MOUNTS HIGH

It seemed as if every one must be taking an afternoon nap, for the Greek scholar had the grounds to himself. When he began to be tired of walking, he seated himself where he had a good view of the house, and presently saw Ida Mayberry at her window, with the young Douglas in her arms. Almost at the same moment he saw Lanigan Beam approaching from the direction of the barns.

"If he turns his steps towards that window," thought the scholar, "I shall see to it that I am there before him."

But the young man did not walk towards the front of the house, but went in the direction of his room, where the ladder stood leaning against the open window. Mounting this, he disappeared within.

The eyes of Mr. Tippengray flashed, and his face was lighted by a bright thought. In an instant he was on his feet and running lightly towards Lanigan's room. Cautiously and silently he approached the ladder; deftly, and without making the least noise, he moved the upper end of it from the side of the building, and then, putting it on his shoulder, gently walked away with it.

Around to the front of the house Mr. Tippengray carried the ladder, and boldly placed it nearly upright, under Miss Mayberry's window. In astonishment that young lady looked out, and asked him what in the world he was doing.

"I want to speak to you," said Mr. Tippengray, "on a subject of great importance, and I cannot afford to lose this opportunity. May I come up?"

"Certainly," said Ida.

In a moment the Greek scholar was standing on one of the upper rounds of the ladder, with his head and shoulders well above the window-sill. Little Douglas was delighted to see him, and, taking hold of his outstretched forefinger, gave it a good wag.

"It was a capital notion," said Mr. Tippengray, "for me to take this ladder. In the first place, it enables me to get up to you, and secondly, it prevents Lanigan Beam from getting down from his room."

Miss Mayberry laughed, and the baby crowed in sympathy.

"Why shouldn't he get down, Mr. Tippengray?" said she.

"If he did," was the answer, "he would be sure to interfere with me. He would come here, and I don't want him. I have something to say to you, Miss Mayberry, and I must be brief in saying it, for bystanders, no matter who they might be, would prevent my speaking plainly. I have become convinced, Miss Mayberry, that my life will be imperfect, and indeed worthless, if I cannot pass it in prosecuting my studies in your company, and with your assistance. You may think this strong language, but it is true."

"That would be very pleasant," said the nurse-maid, "but I do not see how you are going to manage it. My stay here will soon come to an end, for if Mrs. Cristie does not return to the city in a week or two, I must leave her. I am a teacher, you know, and before the end of the summer vacation, I must go and make my arrangements for the next term, and then you can easily see for yourself that when I am engaged in a school I cannot do very much studying with you."

"Oh, my dear young lady," cried Mr. Tippengray, "you do not catch my idea. I am not thinking of schools or positions, and I do not wish you to think of them. I wish you to know that you have translated me from a quiet scholar into an ardent lover, and that it would be of no use at all to try to get me back into my original condition. If I cannot be the man I want to be, I cannot be the man I was. I ask you for your hands, your heart, and your intellect. I invite you to join me in pursuing the higher education until the end of our lives. Take me for your scholar and be mine. I pray you give me--"

"Upon--my word!" was the ejaculation, loud and distinct, which came up from the foot of the ladder, and stopped Mr. Tippengray's avowal. Miss Mayberry instantly thrust her head out of the window, and Mr. Tippengray looked down. It was Calthea Rose who had spoken, and she stood under the window in company with Mr. and Mrs. Petter. A short distance away, and rapidly approaching, were Mrs. Cristie and Walter Lodloe.

"Here is gratitude!" cried Calthea, in stinging tones. "I came all the way back from Lethbury to see if anything had happened to you and that horse, and this is what I find. The top of a ladder and a child's nurse! Such a disgrace never fell on this county."

"Never, indeed," cried Mrs. Petter. "I wouldn't have believed it if angels had got down on their knees and sworn it to me. Come down from that ladder, Mr. Tippengray! Come down from it before I make my husband break it to bits beneath you. Come down, I say!"

"Mr. Tippengray," said Mr. Petter, in solemn voice, "in the name of the laws of domesticity and the hearthstone, and in the honorable name of the Squirrel Inn, I command you to come down."

There was but one thing for Mr. Tippengray to do, and that was to come down, and so down he came.

"Disgraceful!" cried Miss Rose; "you ought to be ashamed to look anybody in the face."

"Never would I have believed it," exclaimed Mrs. Petter. "Never, never, if I had not seen it with my own eyes, and in broad daylight too!"

What Mr. Tippengray would have said or done is not known, for at that instant Ida Mayberry leaned far out of the window and claimed the attention of the company.

"Look here!" she cried, "we have had enough of this. Mr. Tippengray has nothing to be ashamed of, and he had a perfect right to climb up this ladder. I want you all to understand that we are engaged to be married."

This announcement fell like a sudden downpour upon the people beneath the window, and they stood silenced; but in an instant the Greek scholar bounded up the ladder, and, seizing Miss Mayberry by the hand, kissed it rapturously.

"I may have been a little abrupt," she said, in a low voice, "but I wasn't going to stand here and let our affair be broken off like that."

At Mr. Tippengray's spontaneous exhibition of tender affection, Mr. Petter involuntarily and reverently took off his hat, while Mrs. Cristie and Lodloe clapped their hands. The lover, with radiant face, now descended the ladder and received congratulations from everybody except Miss Calthea, who, with her nose pointed about forty-five degrees above the horizon, walked rapidly to the post where she had tied her horse.

Miss Mayberry now appeared, with the baby in her arms, and an expression of great satisfaction upon her face. Mrs. Cristie relieved her of the first, but the latter increased as the little company heartily shook hands with her.

"I had supposed it would be different with you, Mr. Tippengray," said Mrs. Petter, "but people ought to know their own minds, and I have no doubt that Calthea would have often made it very hot for you, especially if you did not turn over an entirely new leaf in regard to coming to your meals. But there must be no more laddering; whether it is right or not, it does not look so. When Ida isn't tending to the child, and it's too wet to be out of doors, you can have the little parlor to yourselves. I'll have it dusted and aired."

"Excuse me," said Lodloe, coming forward, "but if you have no further use for that ladder, Mr. Tippengray, I will take it to Lanigan Beam, who is leaning out of his window, and shouting like mad. I presume he wants to come down, and as I have locked the door of my room he cannot descend in that way."

"Poor Lanigan!" ejaculated Mrs. Petter, "he doesn't know what he's coming down to. But no matter what he undertakes he is always a day after the fair."

Mr. Petter drew the Greek scholar aside.

"My dear sir," he said expressively, "I have a special reason for congratulating you on your decision to unite your blood and culture with those of another. Had you been entrapped by the wiles of our Lethbury neighbor, a person for whom I have but slight regard, and who is looked upon with decided disapprobation by those as competent to judge as the Rockmores of Germantown, I am afraid, my dear sir, I should have been compelled to sever those pleasant relations which for so many months have held us together, and which I hope may continue for years."