CHAPTER VIII.MR. PERSEUS.
When Olive got home, she was at first pleased to see that her husband had not come in, therefore he had not been made uneasy about her absence. Napoleon Pompey had caught Rebel and turned him into the pasture field, and was returning after that job when he met Olive near the hen-house. Napoleon Pompey grinned at her and remarked with relish: “Ole hoss, he done throw yer, den run clar ’way home.”
“No, he didn’t,” retorted Olive, indignant at this slur upon her equestrian skill, “I just got off to change the saddle, and he ran away from me.”
“Land!” said Napoleon Pompey, “an’ didn’t yer chuck yer reins roun’ yer arm?”
“No, I forgot to,” confessed Olive.
“Golly Ned!” said Napoleon Pompey with vast amusement.
Olive felt annoyed and inquired stiffly where her husband was.
“Ole man he done gone ter git ole hoe men’d up, den he gwine ter go to der ’Sumbly, he done eatsupper ’ready. Me an’ you’uns got ter eat our’n now. Ole man done tol’ me.”
Napoleon Pompey meant no disrespect in speaking of Ezra as “ole man,” for the lad knew of only two titles to bestow on white men, one was “Mas’r” the other was “ole man.” Ezra had requested him not to use the expression Mas’r, which grated on his ears, and contained suggestions of servitude at variance with the ideas that prevailed at Perfection City. Napoleon Pompey was therefore obliged to fall back upon his one other title. Olive had been greatly shocked when she first heard her husband called “ole man,” but she was now used to the expression.
She was very disappointed not to see Ezra at once, for she was full of her adventure, but she knew from experience she must possess her soul in patience, for the “’Sumbly,” as Napoleon Pompey called it, was sure to take a good while, and Ezra always stayed conscientiously to the last. The institution was none other than the bi-weekly Assembly, which met at the Academy, and at which all the business of the Community was settled and the routine work of the farm arranged for. All the members were free to attend and speak their minds, but in practice it had resolved itself into a Junta of Madame, Ezra, Wright, Green, and Uncle David, of whom the two latter were sleeping members. The women of Perfection City did not care to attend the Assembly very often. Women are not good debaters, and they dislike arguments carried onunder strict rule. They prefer to go their own way, do what seems best at the moment, and reserve an unlimited right of grumbling and jealousy. Madame, who was an exception to the general rule, usually presided at the Assembly and ruled it, as she did most things, without seeming to do so. Ezra and Brother Wright understood the farm work and generally mapped out the daily labour pretty well. Brother Dummy required only to be told what to do and went on contentedly doing it, without comment or commotion. Nobody, of course, was ordered to work, but it was suggested that if Brother Wright would do so and so, Brother Ezra would be able to do this, that, or the other, while Brother Carpenter would be free to perform such another task, and Brother Dummy would probably prefer to work at whatever happened to be wanted at the moment. Madame seldom interfered, and then only when necessary to smooth over a rough edge. She usually found the men’s arrangements excellent and for the general weal. Brother Green, who was a first-rate smith, was the only member of the Community who, at this time, received any money, for he worked in his spare time for outsiders. With great pride he used to bring the money he earned to the ’Sumbly and give it into Madame’s charge to be expended as seemed best. She kept the accounts and used to furnish all the rest of the necessary cash. Sometimes the brethren expressed compunction at calling so often on her resources, but Madame alwaysmade the most graceful speeches in reply to their objections. Of course an undertaking such as this required capital to start it. It would be foolish to starve the whole project for want of a little expenditure now. By and by they would be self-supporting, but in order to reach that stage quickly they must not be stingy now. So she gave her dollars by the hundred when needed, and the brethren were eternally grateful and privately wondered if there was any limit to her wealth and generosity. At the Assembly it would be debated whether the next load of timber that was bought should go to building a hen-house for Brother Carpenter or to putting up a cattle-shed for Brother Ezra, and it speaks well for the honest conviction of the Pioneers that it was usually Brother Ezra who argued in favour of the hen-house, while Brother Carpenter expressed an anxious desire for the cattle-shed. The difficulty would perhaps be settled by Madame desiring to know how much timber was required for both buildings and deciding to buy that amount at the earliest opportunity.
At this particular Assembly to which we refer, Ezra was several times on the point of saying that he wished to get a pony for his wife, but his heart failed him. He knew he did want the pony very much, but he also knew that it was not really wanted for the Community. So he could not bring himself to give utterance to the individualistic wish, and after arranging the necessary business ofthe Community, he came home with his wish unstated.
Olive was waiting for him with the greatest impatience. She went, indeed, as far as the bars to meet him, but the road looked so lonesome and the sky so black with cold trembling specks of stars, that she ran back again in a flutter of panic to the house and shut herself in with the candles for company. At last he came back, and Olive poured forth the pent-up torrent of her news. Ezra was much amused at her description of the disaster and interested in her account of the rescuer.
“And I am so vexed,” said Olive, “I can’t for the life of me remember what he said his name was. I know I never heard it before, but he lives here on the prairie. It is so silly!”
“Call him Perseus,” said Ezra laughing, “he was the gallant who came to the rescue of distressed damsels.”
“What a good joke!” said Olive gleefully, “and I was a distressed damsel, I assure you. I cried with vexation.”
“I have no doubt that Andromeda shed tears when she was bound to the rock,” said Ezra, amused.
“And I was bound to that odious saddle by the bonds of duty,” said Olive. “What a joke! Mr. Perseus!”
So they laughed and chatted, and Olive was as bright as possible, and Ezra thought again with a pangof that pony and almost wished he had spoken at the Assembly about it. Olive, however, never mentioned what Mr. Perseus had said about the pony Mills had for sale. The idea seemed to have passed from her mind.
It happened that about a week later Olive again found herself in the neighbourhood of Little Cotton Wood Creek, and by an extraordinary coincidence Mr. Perseus chanced to meet her. She was very much surprised, and he seemed to be no less so. However, the meeting was mutually pleasant, and they soon fell into conversation, as it appeared he was going her way.
“I have thought a great deal about what you said to me the other day, about trying to make life better and all that,” said he with a certain self-consciousness, as if he was unaccustomed to speaking upon such a subject. Olive looked at him with bright clear eyes.
“I am very glad if anything I said could be of use to you, but I am myself very ignorant. I should like you to come and hear what Brother Wright says, and Ezra. Brother Wright is considered very eloquent. I can’t always understand him myself, but that is my own deficiency!”
“I would much prefer talking with you, Mrs. Weston,” said the stranger hastily. “I am very restive under men’s teaching, but I am docile enough when led by a woman’s gentle hand.”
“Why are you living here?” asked Olive suddenly. “You seem so unsuited to this life.”
“I am sick of civilization and all its horrors,” said he. “I wanted to get away to something fresh and new.”
“That is almost like what a Pioneer would say,” remarked Olive with a smile. “They don’t think very highly of what civilization has done so far.”
“Materially it has done much, morally it has done badly for a good number of human beings,” he remarked.
“I think you sound like a very hopeful convert to the principles of communism. Why don’t you come to Perfection City?” asked Olive.
“Would you be glad to see me there, Mrs. Weston?”
“Certainly, Mr. Perseus, and I should be so pleased to make you and my husband known to each other.”
He looked at her curiously for some moments and then said, “Why do you call me Mr. Perseus?”
Olive gave him one horrified glance and then blushed scarlet.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” she stammered in great confusion. “I did not know I said so. I really am most sorry.”
“But why that name?” he persisted, still looking at her blushing face.
“I may as well tell you the truth,” she said still much confused. “The fact is I forgot what you saidyour name was, and my husband suggested in a joke that I should call you Perseus, because—because——”
“I rescued you in distress,” said he as he broke into a deep musical laugh. “It is a capital name, I am delighted with it.”
“I am so ashamed of myself,” said Olive, also laughing, “but I was in the habit of speaking of you as Mr. Perseus, and the name slipped off my tongue unawares. What is your real name? Pray tell me.”
“Not for worlds, dear Mrs. Weston. To you I shall remain Mr. Perseus, and I shall never think of the name without a thrill of pleasure.”
“But this is most unfair,” said Olive. “You know my name and who I am and all about me, and yet I am to be kept in the dark as to your identity.”
“Forgive my not doing at once what you wish, but really I cannot. This will be a sweet little innocent romance to me, and before you I shall appear in my very best light, leaving all the vices and evils of my real nature behind me for the time. Ah no! don’t deprive me of such a harmless joy. If you knew what a lonely uncared for life is mine, your tender heart would be touched.”
Her heart was touched by the quiver in his deep voice, as he intended it should be, and Olive did not press her point any further. They rode on together talking about a hundred subjects, and she found him the most agreeable of men. She happened to mentiona great novel just then coming out in Harper’s, the scene of which was laid in Florence, and he said musingly:
“Ah yes! Florence is a lovely city, nestling among the blue hills.”
“Have you ever seen it then?” asked Olive much surprised.
“Yes, long ago, when I was a young fellow.”
She gazed at him. “You are a most incomprehensible person,” she said, “living here on this prairie and yet you have seen Florence.”
“You forget Perseus travels easily with his winged feet, from here to Florence would be a bagatelle to him.”
“I begin to think there must be something uncanny about you.”
“Now don’t go and change me into any other personality. Remember you are all-powerful, and by your word alone have made me Perseus. Your word is mighty, and you can cast me down into hell and make me a devil by a breath,” said he half banteringly.
“What odd language!” said Olive, looking a little frightened. “How you must astonish the natives when you talk in that way!”
“Do you fancy I talk to anyone as I do to you? Don’t you understand that I am Perseus to you, but to nobody else in the world?”
Olive laughed, and put her horse to a canter in order to snap the thread of talk which was becomingtoo difficult for her. Mr. Perseus remained in her company while she was driving home the cattle, but they had no further particular conversation, as the exigencies of driving the herd occupied their attention most of the time. On parting from her about a mile from her home, he promised to come some day to see her, and Olive added, “I do hope Ezra will be in, for I should so like you two to talk together. I am sure you have much in common.”
“We have one point in common, at all events,” thought Mr. Perseus as he rode away back towards the Big Cotton Wood Creek, “but I doubt very much if that would at all add to the harmony of our relations.”
Olive was full of her meeting with Mr. Perseus, an account of which she retailed to Ezra at supper.
“And just fancy his oddity! He wouldn’t tell me his real name after my unlucky slip, so he is Mr. Perseus to the end of the chapter, I suppose. He thought it such a joke.”
“So he saw the application,” remarked Ezra. “He must be a man of education.”
“He is a most superior man, I can see that. He has read everything I ever did and more too. And do you know, Ezra, I shouldn’t wonder if he had leanings towards community-life, many things he said pointed that way. Wouldn’t it be funny if I were to be the one to bring in your first convert, poor little me that never had any leanings until I saw you.”
Ezra looked sharply at his wife during this speech, for a sudden and by no means pleasant suspicion sprang into his mind concerning the mysterious Mr. Perseus. However, Olive looked so perfectly innocent of even all knowledge of evil that he felt ashamed of himself.
“I wouldn’t be too friendly with this man. We don’t know anything about him, nor who he is, remember,” remarked Ezra.
“He said he knew you and that you were a fine-looking man, you old dear, and he is acquainted with most of the members of the Community by sight. Besides, I thought it was a point of etiquette on the prairie to make no inquiries into a person’s character, but to take him in his boots just as he stands, and ask him to dinner. Don’t you remember Charlie Clarke, and how he came to supper by your invitation and you found him so pleasant, and he a horse-thief and a murderer all the while, only we didn’t know it.”
This was all very true, but Charlie Clarke had evinced no “leanings” to community-life, and above all Olive had been profoundly uninterested in him and was delighted when he left. Ezra hated himself for the feeling in his heart, but he had his suspicions of Mr. Perseus, and he knew his wife was distractingly pretty. So he advised her to keep aloof from Mr. Perseus as much as practicable. Several times afterwards he made excuses to go riding with her, which Olive enjoyed immensely, but then something wassaid to her about his shirking his share of the work, and she was furiously angry. She wanted her husband to be first, and since the only theatre for the exhibition of his abilities was the somewhat restricted one of Perfection City, she wanted him to be always near the front.
“Shirking indeed!” she said tossing her pretty head. “I’ll have Mary Winkle know my husband never shirked in his life.”
In a blaze of wrath she met Ezra and ordered him to go to work and never mind riding with her till the harvest was over. She wouldn’t ride any more, she would work until she was black in the face. Shirking indeed! She’d let Mary Winkle see! And so on and so forth, till her burst of anger had spent itself.
Olive was not slow to perceive that her husband had some sort of dislike to the idea of her seeing Mr. Perseus. She could not exactly explain to herself why this should be, and she was heartily sorry for it. She had fancied that in time Mr. Perseus might possibly come to be a member of the Community. She would indeed have been frankly glad to have him become a brother, for, as far as she could judge, he seemed a man of brilliant parts, and certainly his manners were most charming. To tell the truth, she found the members as a whole very uninteresting. Mary Winkle she positively disliked, and yet she was the one nearest to her own age. She sometimes wondered how Ezra could be satisfied with the companionship ofthose same people, who seemed to her to be walking in such a narrow circle, and always to be saying the same things in pretty nearly the same words. Now, Mr. Perseus said such original things and in such a charming voice. Altogether it was a pity that Ezra should have taken a prejudice into his head against this stranger. Olive wondered whether, if they met, the mutual recognition of their abilities would dissipate her husband’s suspicions. Such being her notions, it was most unlucky that the first time Mr. Perseus came to see them Ezra should have been gone to Union Mills. He went so very seldom that it was a most unfortunate coincidence, as she explained to Mr. Perseus, who did not in return explain that having himself seen Ezra at Union Mills he had straightway ridden off to visit her, and ridden so hard too that his horse was in a white lather when he arrived at Perfection City by a somewhat circuitous route. Napoleon Pompey was gone, so Olive showed him where to put his horse in the dark stable so that the flies would not torment the animal. She remarked on the horse’s state and asked Mr. Perseus had he been running down cattle, and he muttered something about young horses showing every bit of work in hot weather.
He was profoundly interested in Olive’s little home. She showed him with pride the garden she had made, where already the balsams were just coming into blossom; she then took him to see the prairie chickens she was trying to rear, little black and yellow downythings, with fierce wild eyes utterly untamed and only looking out for a favourable opportunity to make a dash for freedom.
“Do you think I can ever tame them?” asked Olive, as she noted the hostile manner in which they scuttled away from her food-giving hand.
“If anyone could tame them you could, the ungrateful little brutes!” remarked Mr. Perseus.
“I don’t see that it is ungrateful of them to resent being taken from their proper home and natural mother to be put under a fat stupid hen,” said Olive.
“No, but it is rank ingratitude not to be tame to you,” said he.
“I don’t think you are truthful,” said Olive bluntly.
“Why?” asked Mr. Perseus.
“Because you are always saying things like that,” she answered, somewhat resentfully.
“Well, I do call that hard,” complained Mr. Perseus, “to charge a fellow with being untruthful when he was shaking in his shoes from terror at having perhaps let out too much of the truth.”
Olive looked down at his big boots, knitting her brows, and then led the way into the house.
“I’ll get you some dinner. I am sure you are hungry,” she said hospitably, it being about two o’clock in the afternoon.
“I am hungry, starving, mind, body, and soul,” said her visitor in reply.
“I’ll get a chicken-pie for you, that will go some way,” answered Olive with a laugh.
“And if you will talk with me, that will go far to complete the work of charity,” said he.
Olive brought him the food, and he set to work upon it, being evidently, as he said, very hungry.
“Do you know I am beginning to look upon Perfection City as a sort of earthly paradise,” said Mr. Perseus.
“Indeed.”
“Yes, a paradise from which I am shut out. Have you any young men here, Mrs. Weston, unmarried men, or are they against your rules?”
“No. Unmarried men are not against our rules,” said Olive archly. “We had one here lately, but we haven’t now.”
“Why, what did you do with him?” asked Mr. Perseus, in some surprise.
“I married him,” said Olive dimpling and blushing.
“Lucky beggar!” remarked her visitor, turning again to his dinner.
Mr. Perseus stayed some time, but refused Olive’s invitation to wait to see her husband, saying as an excuse that he had a long way to ride home. Olive wanted to know where he lived, but he laughingly put her off. He would not tell her, lest she should discover his real name, and then much of the romance of his life would be destroyed.
“You don’t know what this is to me, and how when I am leading my lonely life, I recall every word and look and again go through these meetings, Mrs. Weston. I suppose it seems silly to you, but remember, human companionship is man’s most precious inheritance, and those who have but little of it prize what they have at perhaps an extravagant figure. Did you ever hear of Silvio Pellico?” he asked abruptly.
“No,” replied Olive.
“Well, he was a prisoner entirely shut off from human companionship, and he at last made friends with a spider, and at length the spider was crushed by the turnkey’s foot, and Silvio wept tears of anguish. I am like a prisoner out here on this desolate prairie.”
“And am I like the horrible spider, then?” said Olive brightly.
“Mrs. Weston!” he exclaimed reproachfully. “I have opened my heart to you because I felt that you could feel with me, although the world might count us as strangers, but I thought you would understand what I meant even when I blundered through the expression of my thoughts. This is the first time you have misunderstood me. But I believe it was only pretended misunderstanding and that you do know what I meant.”
He said good-bye, and left Olive with a feeling of sadness and oppression on her mind. He had not been as bright as before, and she wondered who he wasand why he was so anxious not to see anyone but her. She mentioned his visit to Ezra, but somehow she had less to tell about him than on former occasions. There seemed nothing to say. Ezra, too, did not appear as much amused as formerly at the joke of Mr. Perseus. No doubt it was getting stale by this time.