The Return of Peter Grimm Part 11

"Thank you, no," declined the rector, with an apprehensive gesture towards his wife.

"Oh, come, come!" urged Peter hospitably. "Why, the other evening when you dropped over here after the vespers, sir, you----"

"I only use it when absolutely needful for medicinal purposes," insisted the rector hurriedly. "Not to-day, I thank you."

"I believe," said Peter irrelevantly, "that St. Paul was a single man, was he not, Pastor?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I believe," said Peter irrelevantly, "that St. Paul was a single man, was he not, Pastor?"]

"I--I believe so. It is not definitely known. But why?"

"I was only wondering," mused Peter, "how he would have accounted to St.

Pauline, or whatever his wife's name would have been, for what he wrote in favour of 'a little wine for--'"

"Oh," explained Mrs. Batholommey, still safe, and ever feeling safer, now that temperance was again the theme, "St. Paul referred to unfermented wine, you know. Every one ought to understand that. It is so hard to make people see the difference."

"One bottle would convince them," said Peter very gravely.

"No," Mrs. Batholommey corrected him with serene loftiness. "You do not quite get my point, dear Mr. Grimm. For instance, when the poets,--even good men like the late Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Whittier--speak of 'wine,'

they use the word of course in its poetical sense. They use it merely to typify----"

"Booze," growled McPherson.

"Good cheer," amended Mrs. Batholommey, withering him with a single frown. "And yet it is terribly misleading. I remember when we had the Walter Scott Tableaux and Recitations at the church last fall, and old Mr. Bertholf from Pompton was going to recite 'Lochinvar,' I had to suggest a change in the poem, lest the ignorant people in the village might get a wrong impression of dear Sir Walter Scott's principles. You remember the couplet occurs:

"'And now I have come with this lost love of mine To tread one last measure, drink one cup of wine.'

"So I asked Mr. Bertholf to alter the words into something like this:

"'And now I have come with this beautiful maid To tread one last measure,--drink one lemonade.'

"It left the poetry just as beautiful and it took away the dangerous reference to wine. Mr. Bertholf didn't like it very much, I'm afraid.

But I insisted, and at last----"

"And at last," snarled McPherson, to whom the thought of any mutilation of his fellow Scotchman's verse was as sacrilege, "and at last, poor Bertholf got so mixed up that he clean forgot the silly rot you'd taught him. And when he came to that part of the poem, he stammered for a second and then blurted out:

"'And now I have come with my lovely lost mate To tread one last measure, drink one whiskey straight.'"

"Yes," blazed Mrs. Batholommey, "and I have always believed _you_ put him up to it."

"Well," shrugged the noncommittal McPherson, "if I had, it would at least be more in keeping with what Sir Walter intended than your straining an immortal poem through a lemon-squeezer."

"Andrew and I," announced Peter, hastening to pour oil on the troubled waters of conversation, by filling two gla.s.ses and handing one of them to McPherson, "are going to drink a toast to spooks."

"_What?_" squealed Mrs. Batholommey, in the accents of a rabbit that has been stepped on.

"To spooks--we----"

"Oh, how _can_ you?" she gasped. "How _can_ you? To spooks! _You_ of all men! The very idea!"

"Mrs. Batholommey!" exclaimed Peter in real alarm, setting down his gla.s.s and moving toward her. "Something _has_ happened! You are quite----"

"No, no!" she wailed helplessly.

"It is nothing, Mr. Grimm," soothed the rector. "Nothing at all, I a.s.sure you. My wife is a trifle overwrought this morning. Nothing of any consequence. I mean--that is, of course--we must all keep our spirits up, Mr. Grimm."

"Good Lord, deliver us!" intoned McPherson in mingled fervour and disgust.

"I know what it is," declared Peter with sudden enlightenment. "You've just come from a wedding! That's it! I know. Women love weddings better than anything on earth. They'll talk about it for months beforehand.

They'll walk miles to attend one.--And they'll weep all the rest of the day. I don't know why. But they do it. I should be grateful, I suppose, that no women were ever called upon to shed tears at _my_ wedding. But I hope, before so very long----"

Mrs. Batholommey had not in the very least caught the drift of the laughing speech whereby he had sought to put the poor woman at her ease.

And now all at once, the last sagging vestige of self-control went from her.

"Oh, Mr. Grimm!" she moaned, breaking in upon his words. "You were always so kind to us. There never was a better, kinder, gentler man in all this world than you were."

"Than I _was_?" asked Peter bewildered. "Is my character changing or----?"

"No, no!" she corrected herself flounderingly. "I don't mean that. I mean--I meant----"

Her gaze fluttered helplessly about the big room and chanced at last to fall upon the reading boy, asprawl on the gallery bench above them.

"I meant," she plunged along, "what would become of poor little Willem if you----?"

This time her glance was caught and transfixed by McPherson's furious glare, much as a great flopping beetle might be pierced by the sting of a wasp. Mrs. Batholommey prided herself upon her tact. That glare nerved her to another effort.

"You see," she shrilled, wildly and awkwardly clambering out of the slough, "it's fearful he had such a 'M.'"

"Such a 'M'?" queried Peter. "What does that mean?"

With a warning glance toward the absorbed boy she shaped her lips noiselessly into the word "Mother."

"Oh!" said Peter. "I understand. But----"

"She ought to have told Mr. Batholommey or me," went on Mrs.

Batholommey, climbing still higher on to solid ground, "who the 'F'

was."

"'F'? What does that mean?"

And again the rabbit-like lips shaped themselves into a soundless word, this time 'Father.'

"Oh," grunted Peter, "the word you want isn't 'Father,' but 'Scoundrel!'

Whoever he is----"

Willem flung aside his book and leaped to his feet as though his little body were galvanised. The others looked at him in guilty dread, fearing he had heard and had somehow understood their awkwardly veiled allusions to his parentage. But they were mistaken. A sound, far more potent to every normal child's ear than the fiercest thunders of morality, had reached his keen senses as he lounged up there. And a moment later they all heard it.

It was the braying of a distant but steadily approaching bra.s.s band.

With it came a confused but ever louder medley of shouts, handclapping, raucous voices, and the higher tones of delighted children. As Kathrien came running in at one door, followed by Marta, and Frederik sauntered in from the office, Willem rushed down the stairway and into the window seat, where he sprang upon a chair and craned his neck to see the stretch of village street beyond. Nearer and louder came the music and the attendant vocal Babel.