I fell into an infatuation for Mrs. Pendrake right then. I guess even at my present time of life, I am still weak on the subject of elegant and gracious ladies. Authority is also involved, as in her handling that constable and feed merchant, and having a knowledge of fine aspects, like the way she held the works of Mr. Pope, with her head inclined against the afternoon sun from the west window so that the margins of her nose and forehead was crystalline and her hair old gold. She always knowed the
I figured to have got the idea of white life, right then. It hadn’t ought to do with the steam engine or arithmetic or even Mr. Pope’s verse. Its aim was to turn out a Mrs. Pendrake.
I said infatuation, but you can call it love, and directly I was awed by it and moved over to my end of the bench again.
Just about then, while I was sliding my butt across the plush, in comes the Reverend from the door behind us which connected with his study. He had stopped rumbling there when the men had showed up. Now he moves ponderously around in front of us, and for some moments his wife kept reading whatever poem she was on then, so he waited till she was done. Then he spoke to me.
“Boy,” he said, real kindly. “Boy, it is my opinion that you have labored earnestly at your studies in these three months since coming to this house.” The next thing he done was to falter and stroke his beard. The wonders of this day was never-ceasing. After that first afternoon, he had no more spoke to me than to Mrs. Pendrake in my hearing.
“I do not want you to have the misapprehension,” he finally said, “that we here see life as all duty. Therefore tomorrow, which is Saturday, and if Mrs. Pendrake does not require you and if you are favorably disposed to the project, I should be willing to take you fishing.”
Now, it being November of the year and while not winter as yet the weather was cold and damp and not the time any sane person would have fished for sport, I lost no time in accepting the invite. Add to the other reasons against so doing that I really couldn’t stand the Reverend except when he was eating, and you won’t understand why I did until I say that if he seemed to be in his wife’s debt, I had just now got to feeling in his.
So there we was, out to the creek next day in fairly miserable weather where the air was like a big sponge full of water and no sooner had we reached the stream when someone squeezed it and rain begun to pour down. We had come out in a buckboard, with Lavender driving and only he had sense enough to bring protection against the inclemency, for he had a big toe that was infallible as a weather gauge.
I could see right off that the Reverend didn’t know anything about fishing from the way he put a doughball on the hook—that was what we used, for Lavender claimed he couldn’t find worms in late November. And the day was sufficiently unpleasant to drive off a fellow who was crazy for the sport. But Pendrake had said he was going fishing, and that’s what he fixed to do, the water swirling around his hatbrim and running off his black coat. He was dressed in his usual, by the way, with no provision for leisure.
Lavender offered us his umbrella in insincere fashion, for which I didn’t blame him, but Pendrake said no, he didn’t require it, so Lavender kept it over himself and put a blanket underneath a tree and set there and looked at an illustrated paper someone had give him though he couldn’t read, but seemed to get more out of it than those who could, for he was laughing at it.
Me and the Reverend went down to the bank a ways along by some willows which was now brown and he says: “What’s your opinion of this location, boy?”
“It’s as good as any,” says I. My hair was all matted from the rain and water coursed down my cheeks; it seemed ridiculous in view of what we was supposed to be doing to have a good time, but I never minded the soaking as such, having been wetted down plenty as an Indian inside as well as outside the lodge, for tepee skins generally leak after they been in use for a while, especially at the seams.
But here he looked at me out of that black beard and said with genuine feeling, for which his voice was less ponderous: “Ah, boy, you’re getting wet.” With that he drew a big handkerchief and wiped my face right gently.
