Parnassus on Wheels - Christopher Morley (books you need to read TXT) 📗

I decided to camp where I was. I guided Peg into a field beside the road, hitched her to a fence, and took the dog into the van with me. I was too tired to undress. I fell into the bunk and drew the blankets over me. As I did so, something dropped down behind the bunk with a sharp rap. It was a forgotten corncob pipe of the Professor’s, blackened and sooty. I put it under my pillow, and fell asleep.

Monday, October seventh. If this were a novel about some charming, slender, pansy-eyed girl, how differently I would have to describe the feelings with which I woke the next morning. But these being only a few pages from the life of a fat, New England housewife, I must be candid. I woke feeling dull and sour. The day was gray and cool: faint shreds of mist sifting up from the Sound and a desolate mewing of seagulls in the air. I was unhappy, upset, and⁠—yes⁠—shy. Passionately I yearned to run to the Professor, to gather him into my arms, to be alone with him in Parnassus, creaking up some sunny byroad. But his words came back to me: I was nothing to him. What if he didn’t love me after all?

I walked across two fields, down to the beach where little waves were slapping against the shingle. I washed my face and hands in salt water. Then I went back to Parnassus and brewed some coffee with condensed milk. I gave Peg and Bock their breakfasts. Then I hitched Peg to the van again, and felt better. As I drove into the town I had to wait at the grade crossing while a wrecking train rumbled past, on its way back from Willdon. That meant that the line was clear again. I watched the grimy men on the cars, and shuddered to think what they had been doing.

The Vigor county jail lies about a mile out of the town, an ugly, gray stone barracks with a high, spiked wall about it. I was thankful that it was still fairly early in the morning, and I drove through the streets without seeing anyone I knew. Finally I reached the gate in the prison wall. Here some kind of a keeper barred my way. “Can’t get in, lady,” he said. “Yesterday was visitors’ day. No more visitors till next month.”

“I must get in,” I said. “You’ve got a man in there on a false charge.”

“So they all say,” he retorted, calmly, and spat halfway across the road. “You wouldn’t believe any of our boarders had a right to be here if you could hear their friends talk.”

I showed him Governor Stafford’s card. He was rather impressed by this, and retired into a sentry box in the wall⁠—to telephone, I suppose.

Presently he came back.

“The sheriff says he’ll see you, ma’am. But you’ll have to leave this here dynamite caboose behind.” He unlocked a little door in the immense iron gate, and turned me over to another man inside. “Take this here lady to the sheriff,” he said.

Some of Vigor county’s prisoners must have learned to be pretty good gardeners, for certainly the grounds were in good condition. The grass was green and trimly mowed; there were conventional beds of flowers in very ugly shapes; in the distance I saw a gang of men in striped overalls mending a roadway. The guide led me to an attractive cottage to one side of the main building. There were two children playing outside, and I remember thinking that within the walls of a jail was surely a queer place to bring up youngsters.

But I had other things to think about. I looked up at that grim, gray building. Behind one of those little barred windows was the Professor. I should have been angry at Andrew, but somehow it all seemed a kind of dream. Then I was taken into the hallway of the sheriff’s cottage and in a minute I was talking to a big, bull-necked man with a political moustache.

“You have a prisoner here called Roger Mifflin?” I said.

“My dear Madam, I don’t keep a list of all our inmates in my head. If you will come to the office we will look up the records.”

I showed him the Governor’s card. He took it and kept looking at it as though he expected to see the message written there change or fade away. We walked across a strip of lawn to the prison building. There, in a big bare office, he ran over a card index.

“Here we are,” he said. “Roger Mifflin; age, 41; face, oval; complexion, florid; hair, red but not much of it; height, 64 inches; weight, stripped, 120; birthmark⁠—”

“Never mind,” I said. “That’s the man. What’s he here for?”

“He’s held in default of bail, pending trial. The charge is attempt to defraud one Helen McGill, spinster, age⁠—”

“Rubbish!” I said. “I’m Helen McGill, and the man made no attempt to defraud me.”

“The charge was entered and warrant applied for by your brother, Andrew McGill, acting on your behalf.”

“I never authorized Andrew to act on my behalf.”

“Then do you withdraw the charge?”

“By all means,” I said. “I’ve a great mind to enter a countercharge against Andrew and have him arrested.”

“This is all very irregular,” said the sheriff, “but if the prisoner is known to the Governor, I suppose there is no alternative. I cannot annul the warrant without some recognizance. According to the laws of this state the next of kin must stand surety for the prisoner’s good behaviour after release. There is no next of kin⁠ ⁠…”

“Surely there is!” I said. “I am the prisoner’s next of kin.”

“What do you mean?” he said. “In what relationship do you stand to this Roger Mifflin?”

“I intend to marry him just as soon as I can get him away from here.”

He burst into a roar of laughter. “I guess there’s no stopping you,” he said. He pinned