第65章

The Master and I had been thinking for some time of trying to get the Young Astronomer round to our side of the table.There are many subjects on which both of us like to talk with him, and it would be convenient to have him nearer to us.How to manage it was not quite so clear as it might have been.The Scarabee wanted to sit with his back to the light, as it was in his present position.He used his eyes so much in studying minute objects, that he wished to spare them all fatigue, and did not like facing a window.Neither of us cared to ask the Man of Letters, so called, to change his place, and of course we could not think of making such a request of the Young Girl or the Lady.So we were at a stand with reference to this project of ours.

But while we were proposing, Fate or Providence disposed everything for us.The Man of Letters, so called, was missing one morning, having folded his tent--that is, packed his carpet-bag--with the silence of the Arabs, and encamped--that is, taken lodgings--in some locality which he had forgotten to indicate.

The Landlady bore this sudden bereavement remarkably well.Her remarks and reflections; though borrowing the aid of homely imagery and doing occasional violence to the nicer usages of speech, were not without philosophical discrimination.

--I like a gentleman that is a gentleman.But there's a difference in what folks call gentlemen as there is in what you put on table.

There is cabbages and there is cauliflowers.There is clams and there is oysters.There is mackerel and there is salmon.And there is some that knows the difference and some that doos n't.I had a little account with that boarder that he forgot to settle before he went off, so all of a suddin.I sha'n't say anything about it.I've seen the time when I should have felt bad about losing what he owed me, but it was no great matter; and if he 'll only stay away now he 's gone, I can stand losing it, and not cry my eyes out nor lay awake all night neither.I never had ought to have took him.Where he come from and where he's gone to is unbeknown to me.If he'd only smoked good tobacco, I wouldn't have said a word; but it was such dreadful stuff, it 'll take a week to get his chamber sweet enough to show them that asks for rooms.It doos smell like all possest.

--Left any goods? --asked the Salesman.

--Or dockermunts?--added the Member of the Haouse.

The Landlady answered with a faded smile, which implied that there was no hope in that direction.Dr.Benjamin, with a sudden recurrence of youthful feeling, made a fan with the fingers of his right hand, the second phalanx of the thumb resting on the tip of the nose, and the remaining digits diverging from each other, in the plane of the median line of the face,--I suppose this is the way he would have described the gesture, which is almost a specialty of the Parisian gamin.That Boy immediately copied it, and added greatly to its effect by extending the fingers of the other hand in a line with those of the first, and vigorously agitating those of the two hands, --a gesture which acts like a puncture on the distended self-esteem of one to whom it is addressed, and cheapens the memory of the absent to a very low figure.

I wish the reader to observe that I treasure up with interest all the words uttered by the Salesman.It must have been noticed that he very rarely speaks.Perhaps he has an inner life, with its own deep emotional, and lofty contemplative elements, but as we see him, he is the boarder reduced to the simplest expression of that term.Yet, like most human creatures, he has generic and specific characters not unworthy of being studied.I notice particularly a certain electrical briskness of movement, such as one may see in a squirrel, which clearly belongs to his calling.The dry-goodsman's life behind his counter is a succession of sudden, snappy perceptions and brief series of coordinate spasms; as thus:

"Purple calico, three quarters wide, six yards."Up goes the arm; bang! tumbles out the flat roll and turns half a dozen somersets, as if for the fun of the thing; the six yards of calico hurry over the measuring nails, hunching their backs up, like six cankerworms; out jump the scissors; snip, clip, rip; the stuff is wisped up, brown--papered, tied, labelled, delivered, and the man is himself again, like a child just come out of a convulsion-fit.Think of a man's having some hundreds of these semi-epileptic seizures every day, and you need not wonder that he does not say much; these fits take the talk all out of him.

But because he, or any other man, does not say much, it does not follow that he may not have, as I have said, an exalted and intense inner life.I have known a number of cases where a man who seemed thoroughly commonplace and unemotional has all at once surprised everybody by telling the story of his hidden life far more pointedly and dramatically than any playwright or novelist or poet could have told it for him.I will not insult your intelligence, Beloved, by saying how he has told it.

--We had been talking over the subjects touched upon in the Lady's letter.

--I suppose one man in a dozen--said the Master--ought to be born a skeptic.That was the proportion among the Apostles, at any rate.

--So there was one Judas among them,--I remarked.

--Well,--said the Master,--they 've been whitewashing Judas of late.

But never mind him.I did not say there was not one rogue on the average among a dozen men.I don't see how that would interfere with my proposition.If I say that among a dozen men you ought to find one that weighs over a hundred and fifty pounds, and you tell me that there were twelve men in your club, and one of 'em had red hair, Idon't see that you have materially damaged my statement.

--I thought it best to let the old Master have his easy victory, which was more apparent than real, very evidently, and he went on.

--When the Lord sends out a batch of human beings, say a hundred--Did you ever read my book, the new edition of it, I mean?