The Associate Hermits Part 22

"What makes me?" he exclaimed, as if it were impossible to restrain his words. "My heart makes me, my soul makes me. I--"

"Your heart? Your soul?" interrupted Margery. "I don't understand."

For a moment he looked at the astonished girl in silence, and then he said: "Miss Dearborn, it's of no use for me to try to hide what I feel. If I hadn't got so angry I might have been able to keep quiet, but I can't do it now. If that man thinks he loves you, his love is like a grain of sand compared to mine."

"Yours?" cried Margery.

"Yes," said Martin, his face pallid and his eyes sparkling, "mine. You may think it is an insult for me to talk this way, but love is love, and it will spring up where it pleases; and besides, I am not the common sort of a fellow you may think I am. After saying what I have said, I am bound to say more. I belong to a good family, and am college bred. I am poor, and I love nature. I am working to make money to travel and become a naturalist.

I prefer this sort of work because it takes me into the heart of nature. I am not ashamed of what I am, I am not ashamed of my work, and my object in life is a n.o.bler one, I think, than the practice of the law, or a great many other things like it."

Margery stood and looked at him with wide-open eyes. "Do you mean to say,"

she said, "that you want to marry me? It would take years and years for you to become naturalist enough to support a wife."

"I have made no plans," he said, quickly, "I have no purpose. I did not intend to tell you now that I love you, but since I have said that, I will say also that with you to fight for there could be no doubt about my success. I should be bound to succeed. It would be impossible for me to fail. As for the years, I would wait, no matter how many they should be."

He spoke with such hot earnestness that Margery involuntarily drew herself a little away from him. At this the flush went out of his face.

"Oh, Miss Dearborn," he exclaimed, "don't think that I am like that man out there! Don't think that I will persecute you if you don't wish to hear me; that I will follow you about and make your life miserable. If you say to me that you do not wish to see me again, you will never see me again.

Say what you please, and you will find that I am a gentleman."

She could see that now. She felt sure that if she told him she did not wish ever to see him again he would never appear before her. But what would he do? She was not in the least afraid of him, but his fierce earnestness frightened her, not for herself, but for him. Suddenly a thought struck her.

"Martin," said she, "I don't doubt in the least that what you have said to me about yourself is true. You are as good as other people, although you do happen now to be a guide, and perhaps after a while you may be very well off; but for all that you are a guide, and you are in Mr. Sadler's employment, and Mr. Sadler's rights and powers are just like gas escaping from a pipe: they are everywhere from cellar to garret, so to speak, and you couldn't escape them. It would be a bad, bad thing for you, Martin, if he were to hear that you make propositions of the kind you have made to the ladies that he pays you to take out into the woods to guide and to protect."

Martin was on the point of a violent expostulation, but she stopped him.

"Now I know what you are going to say," she exclaimed, "but it isn't of any use. You are in his employment, and you are bound to honor and to respect him; that is the way a guide can show himself to be a gentleman."

"But suppose," said Martin, quickly, "that he, knowing my family as he does, should think I had done wisely in speaking to you."

A cloud came over her brow. It annoyed her that he should thus parry her thrust.

"Well, you can ask him," she said, abruptly; "and if he doesn't object, you can go to see my mother, when she gets home, and ask her. And here comes Mr. Matlack. I think he has been calling you. Now don't say another word, unless it is about fish."

But Matlack did not come; he stopped and called, and Martin went to him.

Margery walked languidly towards the woods and sat down on the projecting root of a large tree. Then leaning back against the trunk, she sighed.

"It is a perfectly dreadful thing to be a girl," she said; "but I am glad I did not speak to him as I did to Mr. Raybold. I believe he would have jumped into the lake."

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 enn.o.bled. 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 bra.s.s, 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 pa.s.s 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?"