The Virginian
XIX
DR. MACBRIDE BEGS PARDON
Judge and Mrs. Henry, Molly Wood, and two strangers, a lady and a gentleman,
were the party which had been driving in the large three-seated wagon. They had
seemed a merry party. But as I came within hearing of their talk, it was a
fragment of the minister's sonority which reached me first: "—more opportunity
for them to have the benefit of hearing frequent sermons," was the sentence I
heard him bring to completion.
"Yes, to be sure, sir." Judge Henry gave me (it almost seemed) additional
warmth of welcome for arriving to break up the present discourse. "Let me
introduce you to the Rev. Dr. Alexander MacBride. Doctor, another guest we have
been hoping for about this time," was my host's cordial explanation to him of
me. There remained the gentleman with his wife from New York, and to these I
made my final bows. But I had not broken up the discourse.
"We may be said to have met already." Dr. MacBride had fixed upon me his
full, mastering eye; and it occurred to me that if they had policemen in heaven,
he would be at least a centurion in the force. But he did not mean to be
unpleasant; it was only that in a mind full of matters less worldly, pleasure
was left out. "I observed your friend was a skilful horseman," he continued. "I
was saying to Judge Henry that I could wish such skilful horsemen might ride to
a church upon the Sabbath. A church, that is, of right doctrine, where they
would have opportunity to hear frequent sermons."
"Yes," said Judge Henry, "yes. It would be a good thing."
Mrs. Henry, with some murmur about the kitchen, here went into the house.
"I was informed," Dr. MacBride held the rest of us, "before undertaking my
journey that I should find a desolate and mainly godless country. But nobody
gave me to understand that from Medicine Bow I was to drive three hundred miles
and pass no church of any faith."
The Judge explained that there had been a few a long way to the right and
left of him. "Still," he conceded, "you are quite right. But don't forget that
this is the newest part of a new world."
"Judge," said his wife, coming to the door, "how can you keep them standing
in the dust with your talking?"
This most efficiently did break up the discourse. As our little party, with
the smiles and the polite holdings back of new acquaintanceship, moved into the
house, the Judge detained me behind all of them long enough to whisper
dolorously, "He's going to stay a whole week."
I had hopes that he would not stay a whole week when I presently learned of
the crowded arrangements which our hosts, with many hospitable apologies,
disclosed to us. They were delighted to have us, but they hadn't foreseen that
we should all be simultaneous. The foreman's house had been prepared for two of
us, and did we mind? The two of us were Dr. MacBride and myself; and I expected
him to mind. But I wronged him grossly. It would be much better, he assured Mrs.
Henry, than straw in a stable, which he had tried several times, and was quite
ready for. So I saw that though he kept his vigorous body clean when he could,
he cared nothing for it in the face of his mission. How the foreman and his wife
relished being turned out during a week for a missionary and myself was not my
concern, although while he and I made ready for supper over there, it struck me
as hard on them. The room with its two cots and furniture was as nice as
possible; and we closed the door upon the adjoining room, which, however, seemed
also untenanted.
Mrs. Henry gave us a meal so good that I have remembered it, and her husband
the Judge strove his best that we should eat it in merriment. He poured out his
anecdotes like wine, and we should have quickly warmed to them; but Dr. MacBride
sat among us, giving occasional heavy ha-ha's, which produced, as Miss Molly
Wood whispered to me, a "dreadfully cavernous effect." Was it his sermon, we
wondered, that he was thinking over? I told her of the copious sheaf of them I
had seen him pull from his wallet over at the foreman's. "Goodness!" said she.
"Then are we to hear one every evening?" This I doubted; he had probably been
picking one out suitable for the occasion. "Putting his best foot foremost," was
her comment; "I suppose they have best feet, like the rest of us." Then she grew
delightfully sharp. "Do you know, when I first heard him I thought his voice was
hearty. But if you listen, you'll find it's merely militant. He never really
meets you with it. He's off on his hill watching the battle-field the whole
time."
"He will find a hardened pagan here."
"Judge Henry?"
"Oh, no! The wild man you're taming brought you Kenilworth safe back."
She was smooth. "Oh, as for taming him! But don't you find him intelligent?"
Suddenly I somehow knew that she didn't want to tame him. But what did she
want to do? The thought of her had made him blush this afternoon. No thought of
him made her blush this evening.
A great laugh from the rest of the company made me aware that the Judge had
consummated his tale of the "Sole Survivor."
"And so," he finished, "they all went off as mad as hops because it hadn't
been a massacre." Mr. and Mrs. Ogden—they were the New Yorkers-gave this story
much applause, and Dr. MacBride half a minute later laid his "ha-ha," like a
heavy stone, upon the gayety.
"I'll never be able to stand seven sermons," said Miss Wood to me.
"Talking of massacres,"—I now hastened to address the already saddened
table,—"I have recently escaped one myself."
The Judge had come to an end of his powers. "Oh, tell us!" he implored.
"Seriously, sir, I think we grazed pretty wet tragedy but your extraordinary
man brought us out into comedy safe and dry."
This gave me their attention; and, from that afternoon in Dakota when I had
first stepped aboard the caboose, I told them the whole tale of my experience:
how I grew immediately aware that all was not right, by the Virginian's kicking
the cook off the train; how, as we journeyed, the dark bubble of mutiny swelled
hourly beneath my eyes; and how, when it was threatening I know not what
explosion, the Virginian had pricked it with humor, so that it burst in nothing
but harmless laughter.
Their eyes followed my narrative: the New Yorkers, because such events do not
happen upon the shores of the Hudson; Mrs. Henry, because she was my hostess;
Miss Wood followed for whatever her reasons were—I couldn't see her eyes;
rather, I FELT her listening intently to the deeds and dangers of the man she
didn't care to tame. But it was the eyes of the Judge and the missionary which I
saw riveted upon me indeed until the end; and they forthwith made plain their
quite dissimilar opinions.
Judge Henry struck the table lightly with his fist. "I knew it!" And he
leaned back in his chair with a face of contentment. He had trusted his man, and
his man had proved worthy.
"Pardon me." Dr. MacBride had a manner of saying "pardon me," which rendered
forgiveness well-nigh impossible.
The Judge waited for him.
"Am I to understand that these—a—cow-boys attempted to mutiny, and were
discouraged in this attempt upon finding themselves less skilful at lying than
the man they had plotted to depose?"
I began an answer. "It was other qualities, sir, that happened to be revealed
and asserted by what you call his lying that—"
"And what am I to call it, if it is not lying? A competition in deceit in
which, I admit, he out did them.
"It's their way to—"
"Pardon me. Their way to lie? They bow down to the greatest in this?"
"Oh," said Miss Wood in my ear, "give him up."
The Judge took a turn. "We-ell, Doctor—" He seemed to stick here.
Mr. Ogden handsomely assisted him. "You've said the word yourself, Doctor.
It's the competition, don't you see? The trial of strength by no matter what
test."
"Yes," said Miss Wood, unexpectedly. "And it wasn't that George Washington
couldn't tell a lie. He just wouldn't. I'm sure if he'd undertaken to he'd have
told a much better one than Cornwall's."
"Ha-ha, madam! You draw an ingenious subtlety from your books."
"It's all plain to me," Ogden pursued. "The men were morose. This foreman was
in the minority. He cajoled them into a bout of tall stories, and told the
tallest himself. And when they found they had swallowed it whole—well, it would
certainly take the starch out of me," he concluded. "I couldn't be a serious
mutineer after that."
Dr. MacBride now sounded his strongest bass. "Pardon me. I cannot accept such
a view, sir. There is a levity abroad in our land which I must deplore. No
matter how leniently you may try to put it, in the end we have the spectacle of
a struggle between men where lying decides the survival of the fittest. Better,
far better, if it was to come, that they had shot honest bullets. There are
worse evils than war."
The Doctor's eye glared righteously about him. None of us, I think, trembled;
or, if we did, it was with emotions other than fear. Mrs. Henry at once
introduced the subject of trout-fishing, and thus happily removed us from the
edge of whatever sort of precipice we seemed to have approached; for Dr.
MacBride had brought his rod. He dilated upon this sport with fervor, and we
assured him that the streams upon the west slope of the Bow Leg Mountains would
afford him plenty of it. Thus we ended our meal in carefully preserved amity.