Their names, however, were known to the throng below them and were called.
Finally, unable by modesty to end the uproar, they rose, one by one and bowed, and the feeling engendered that moment has never died, but lives in the hearts of Cornell men to-day, who are wont in reminiscent mood to refer to it as the "finest show of fellowship on record."
A youth with a high tenor voice, who could not be distinguished from the rear of the theatre started the chorus of "The Yellow and the Blue." The boys around him took it up and the citizenry of Detroit, in the balcony, were treated to such a song recital as they had never before heard. In the midst of it the discovery was suddenly made by somekeen youth in the gallery that one man was missing from the right hand boxes. He nudged his companion. The word was passed along the rail. Then, with a suddenness that caused the women in the balcony to start with little screams, one name was shrieked above the clamor of the lower floor:—
"Adams! Adams! Adams!"
The singing ceased.
The cry was taken up, repeated, screeched.
A commotion was observed in the box and then a tall figure arose. It was the manager. A silence that was awesome descended upon the house.
He held up his hand.
"I'm sorry," he began.
"Adams!" some one shrieked. Part of the audience laughed. The rest hissed.
"I am sorry," the manager resumed, "but Mr. Adams is not here to-night."
He sat down.
It was well that at that instant the orchestra commenced a medley of college airs by way of overture.
Presently the shrill tinkle of a little bell was heard and with a swish the curtain lifted, disclosing the glittering, golden court of an Oriental monarch. There was a blare of trumpets and a score of lithe limbed dancers appeared upon the stage. Thecrowd cried its huge delight and the college yell was flung across the footlights to the end that several of the dancers made missteps, and, covered with a confusion that brought forth another cheer, rushed into the wings.
After that first catastrophe the audience lent itself to a full enjoyment of the piece. Occasionally when the chief comedian gave utterance to a joke of ancient manufacture, the throng gave voice to its displeasure, by way of criticism, but more often the clamor sprang from keen appreciation of a song or bit of funny "business."
In all the audience there was, perhaps, but a single spectator whose face showed him to have no interest either in the audience and its noise or the action on the stage. He sat at one end of the balcony, back from the rail, unnoticed by those about him, satisfied, seemingly, to look on without participation either in the pleasure or the anger of the crowd around him. When his gallery champion cried out his name he had shrunk in his seat and almost held his breath, but now he sat up, his arms folded across his deep, broad breast.
He had entered the theatre late. Indeed there had been no one in the lobby when he bought his ticket. He was glad when he learned the location of his seat. He had thus far avoided allcontact with the crowd. He would continue to avoid it. Through the first long act he sat looking down, apparently seeing nothing, staring blankly as though dreaming, yet awake.
When the second act was well under way, he glanced at his watch. He drew out his hat from beneath the chair and inconveniencing no one, left his seat. He glided up the aisle close to the wall. In the lobby, less brilliant now, he squared his shoulders and pulled in a long, deep breath. He lighted a cigarette and for a space stood just outside the door, in the street, idly watching the passers-by.
At the soldier's monument a group of students—he recognized them as such in the lighted thoroughfare—had formed a ring around some one who appeared to be dancing on the asphalt as they shouted, rythmically, and clapped their hands. As he watched, Adams saw the ring part on the side nearest him and he glimpsed the dancer. All the blood went out of his face. He threw away his cigarette and buttoned his coat nervously. With a cry, the ring resolved itself into two lines and paraded down the street with the dancer, who was obviously unsteady on his legs, supported by a twain of students at the front. Adams, at the edge of the curb, perceived the goal toward which the poor little procession was making its way—the portal ofa huge German restaurant which he knew well. A picture of its interior as he remembered it flashed upon his mind—the long room, filled with tables, many white clad waiters, stolid of face, light of tread. The head of the procession reached the wide door, bright beneath the great electric sign above. He waited until the last man had entered, then crossed the street swiftly. In the outer hall he heard a medley of noises beyond the mahogany and glass partition. He heard the quick shuffle of feet. Some one was trying to dance on the sanded floor. In the midst of the jig he flung back the connecting door and entered the room of riot.
IV
He was immediately perceived and the crowd with a single voice shouted him a welcome. Through the shifting gossamer of smoke that filled the room he distinguished many familiar faces.
"Come over here, old man," he heard some one call, and turned. He stared without sign of recognition at a young man, who, with many gestures, indicated a vacant chair at a near-by table. He saw the smoke, the waiters gliding noiselessly through it, the littered floor, the wet, glistening table-tops. These misty details he saw mistily, as one sees things in a dream.
His face was pale; there were unfamiliar lines about his mouth, and an unnatural glitter was in his eyes.
He saw the dancer, a man of age who wore the clothes of a laborer, fling himself heavily upon a frail chair at the nearest table, across which he leaned unsteadily, wagging his head and muttering incoherently.
Adams strode over to him and laid a hand upon his shoulder.
"Come," he said, quietly.
With an effort the man balanced his head and lifted his heavy eyes.
"Come," Adams repeated.
It was as though the youths at the other tables knew it to be a psychological moment. The noise subsided. Every eye in the room was intent upon Adams, strong in his splendid youth, and the man beside whom he stood and who was weak in his age.
Adams was seen to encircle the man's shoulders with one arm and fairly lift him from the chair. On his feet he was unsteady. Adams supported him to the door of the restaurant, which swung back noiselessly as the ill-mated couple disappeared.
Then were exchanged many glances among those who had watched the little play in silence.
"What's he going to do with the old guy?" some one asked.
A general, half-forced laugh of relief ensued, which broke the tension, and immediately the company relapsed into its previous state of conviviality. The songs were resumed. The noise developed swiftly and the strangely incongruous incident of Adams' disappearance with the drunken moulder was forgotten straightway.
No one even took the trouble to go to a window to see if developments had occurred outside. And if one had been thus sufficiently interested, he would merely have observed Adams hail a passing cab, into which, as it drew up at the curb, he thrust the man, hesitating an instant with his hand on the door to mutter a certain address to the cabman leaning from his box.
The driver touched his horse, and the vehicle swung into Woodward Avenue. Of a sudden, from the dark patch of pavement that the restaurant faced, Adams felt himself flung into a maelstrom of light.
The façades of two theatres were all a-glitter; an immense confectionery across the street was ablaze, and, looking down at the pavement through the window in the cab door, Adams noted the weird, distorted reflections in the asphalt ooze that givesthe city streets at night the uncertain quality of a looking-glass wantonly smeared with pitch.
He blinked in the yellow glare of the street illumination. It was as though he were passing through a tunnel of brilliance. A car whirred by, with clanging gong. He caught a fleeting, swift glimpse of the several passengers.
As the cab proceeded, his attention was attracted now and then to groups of young men loitering at various corners as though in contemplation of some deed, very secret, if not very terrible. The lilting chorus of a college song that he recognized was brought to him in the noiselessly rolling cab. Before the last store-lights in the business district were passed, he had obtained such an impression of the city as he had never had before.
Through the window in the door he saw the skeleton trees in Grand Circus Park as the cab cut the circle of its area, and he shivered at the prospect of the winter they suggested.
A sound very close to him caused him to start. He smiled, looked down, and the smile went out of his eyes and left them cold and hard.
The man beside him had succumbed to the comfort of the cab, and, asleep, was snoring gently. Passing beneath an electric lamp, the light fell an instant on his face—pale beneath the stubble beardand the splotches of grime. His knees were high and his hands, broad, work-hardened, lay limp upon them.
Adams turned again to the window.
The cab was passing through a residence district now. He noted with a shifting, vague interest, the houses—big, shapeless for the most part, and set far back in broad yards. The lights in the lower stories glared yellow like the earth-close eyes of crouching monsters.
Suddenly Adams pulled himself together. He began to experience a livelier interest in the dark picture of the street, with its broad curbs, its iron fences, dark hedges, and wide yards. He pressed his face against the window in the cab door, and now and again twisted his neck to gaze as far back down the street as the swift motion of the vehicle would permit.
He remembered definitely, vividly, certain landmarks of his young boyhood, as he was whirled on, noiselessly, save for the rythmicclackety-clackof the horse's hoofs on the echoing asphalt. There was the house from the side yard of which he had once, as a tiny lad, stolen a great armful of roses. There, again, was the house with the smoke tree near the porch behind which Pauline, his little sister, and he had once hidden until thepoliceman passed, indolently swinging his night stick.
Adams smiled at the recollection.
The cab came opposite a tall apartment house at the junction of a cross-town car line. On the ground now occupied by the ungainly, rambling pile of stone, he remembered vividly, had stood, when he was a very small boy—hardly big enough to push his cart—a little shack occupied by an old cobbler, deserted in his age by a son who had robbed him. Very many were the hours he had spent in that little shop. He recalled certain of those hours with a momentary pang of sadness. The cobbler had been a soldier in Poland, in his time, and was wont to tell great stories of his own valor, to which the yellow-headed lad, all forgetful of his mission and his cart, had listened wide-eyed and open-mouthed. The memory came swift and certain and distinct in detail and in the richness of it Adams shrank from the ugly stone pile in passing, as though it were a horrid thing thus to thrust itself upon a young man's memory of his little boyhood.
As he dreamed thus the cab turned a corner, suddenly. The rich residential thoroughfare vanished like the palace in the pantomime, and Adams, his face still close to the glass, saw a row of little,squat, mean houses, set regularly behind low white picket fences. Only here and there a light shone from small, square windows. The street seemed totally deserted, save for a single dog that he saw crawl under one of the low latched gates and vanish behind a house that was like all the others in the little squalid street. And as he noted these things, the cab pulled up before such another house, and, mechanically, he passed his hand over his forehead, as a child does when awakened.
A brief parley ensued with the burly driver of the cab, comical in his bristling fur cape.
"Kin yeh git 'im out?" he asked.
"Yes."
One of the windows in the second story of the cottage before which the cab had stopped, was aglow, and across the drawn shade a shadow passed, and passed again.
Adams shook the sleeper in the cab. Finally after a series of muffled grunts and grumblings that were like remonstrances, the man was gotten out.
"All right?" inquired the driver, gathering up the reins.
"All right," Adams replied; whereat the driver spoke to his horse, turned, and drove back down the squalid street.
Adams supported the tottering figure of the manto the door of the house and fumbled for the knob, which, when his fingers found it, turned in his hand and the door swung open. On a table in the room at the end of the narrow, bare, unlighted hallway, stood a lamp, turned low. As he half carried, half led the man into the room, Adams heard footsteps overhead. And as he cast his burden down upon a carpet-covered lounge, pushed back against the wall at the further end of the room, he heard a voice from above call:
"Iss dat you?"
"Come down," he answered.
There was a little frightened, feminine "Oh!" followed by quick, heavy footfalls on the bare stairs. The next instant the short, thick figure of a woman was framed by the doorway. The light of the lamp struck her face which was broad and kindly.
"Chon!" she exclaimed.
His eyes met hers and he smiled faintly. Then his gaze wandered to the lithograph of the Christ tacked to the wall, and to the couch beneath, and he said:
"There's father; I brought him home."
The woman uttered a little cry and bent over the prostrate figure.
"Ah," she muttered. Then, glancing back overher rounded shoulder, she asked: "Where you git heem?"
"Down town," the boy replied, quietly.
"So." And the woman sat down again, and as long as her son was with her she kept her eyes upon him, oblivious, seemingly, of the unfeeling body on the couch.
"Ven you come in?" she asked.
"This morning," he replied. "I played football to-day."
"Och, yes," she murmured, nodding. "I heard dee noise. Yes."
There ensued a moment's silence that was complete, save for the heavy breathing of the sleeper on the couch.
"Chon," the woman said, calmly, "you don't do dat?" And she indicated with a gesture the prone shape on the lounge.
The boy laughed forcedly, and shook his head.
"No," he said.
"Och, yes, no," his mother muttered.
"How's Pauline?" he asked.
"She's vell; she's to a dance."
He shivered as with cold.
"Isn't it late?" he asked.
"No," his mother replied. "She be home maype a hour; maype two hour."
Each seemed conscious of the infinite labor of the conversation.
"Well," John said after half an hour, "I guess I'd better be going."
"So soon!" his mother exclaimed. "Vy not in de morning? We go to church, you ant me."
He shook his head, sadly.
"No," he said. "I must go back to-night. The train leaves before long."
"All right," she muttered.
At the gate in the low fence he turned. His mother's figure was silhouetted against the light of the room at the end of the hall.
"Good-bye," he said, "and tell Pauline to take care."
"Goot-pye," she called to him softly.
She turned back into the house at once and he heard the door shut.
Passing beneath an electric light he examined his watch. The train was due to leave in an hour. He decided to walk to the station. The cold felt good on his face.
He straightened his shoulders and walked with long, even strides, looking neither to right nor left.
He found Janet waiting in the shadow of the baggage-room doorway. The station was thronged with a shouting, jostling crowd. Taking her arm,he guided her through the gate and assisted her to the platform of the last coach.
"You hold the seat, will you?" he asked. "I want to smoke. We broke training to-night, you know."
She nodded, smiling.
And until the porter's call he paced up and down the long train shed. As the train pulled out he swung himself to the platform of the rear coach and entered.
V
A throng of several hundred awaited the arrival of the train at midnight in the railway yards. At the first shriek of the whistle away beyond the bend of the river the cheering commenced. It gathered force sufficiently to smother completely the pounding of the great engine as it thundered past the trim little station and came to a grinding stop.
In the crowd that packed the platform the old men were as eager as the lads; and there were not a few such old men with white in their hair and lined faces, that the lights of the station made radiant. Professors were there, eagerly jostling, squirming, edging in the crowd, holding their own in the tight-squeezed mass with elbows every whitas pointed as the elbows of the youngsters that the youngsters thrust intotheirsides.
The crowd discovered at once that the team was in the second coach and before a man of the eleven had reached the platform the car was surrounded.
Late as was the hour, speeches were demanded, nor was a path opened through the throng until the demand had been acceded to. A circle formed around the band and its brassy noise blared out upon the night until every townsman within range of the farthest-carrying horn flung up his window and poked a head wonderingly into the outer darkness.
As the crowd surged down the platform to the front of the train, Adams, taking advantage of the clear way at the rear, assisted Janet to the ground and unobserved they passed out into the street through the tall turnstile in the shadow of the baggage-room.
She breathed deeply of the cool night air and he felt the pressure of her hand upon his arm as her steps quickened to his.
In the crowded train she had refrained from all attempts to learn the reason for his silence. Only now and then, as in answer to some question that she asked him, had he spoken in the hour and a half required to cover the forty miles between Detroit and Ann Arbor.
But now in the silence of the darkened street she took courage. At the top of the steep hill, as they passed beneath a sputtering electric lamp, she looked up at him and asked:
"What is it, John—tell me—what is it?"
She hung upon his reply eagerly, a little frightened, though she realized, in seeking to analyze her foreboding that she could not tell herself why she should.
"There's a great deal, Janet," he replied calmly. She perceived an unfamiliar note in his voice, a note that seemed to her to sound a sort of resignation.
"Butwhat—— Can't you tell me? Has anything happened?"
For a moment he did not answer, but then he said: "Yes, dear; several things have happened—several things——"
"What?" she asked, almost in a whisper, and he felt her hand's pressure upon his arm again.
He continued, ruminatively, quite as though she had not spoken: "Several things, that make other things clearer to me now—much clearer."
She had never heard him speak like this before. Perhaps it was a matter intimately personal with him, too intimately personal even for her to share his knowledge, his consideration of it. She almostregretted having asked him. Why had she not prattled on about the game, the splendid victory, his own skill? But when next he spoke she understood she had done no wrong.
"I must tell you about those things, Janet; I must tell you now—to-night—I have meant to before."
Her hand upon his arm tightened its grasp.
"John, whatisit?Whathas happened?" Now she made no effort to conceal the fright that sounded in her voice.
He patted her hand, white on his black sleeve, and laughed lightly—forcedly, she thought.
"There, don't be afraid," he said, "I haven't committed any crime."
She laughed then herself, and said, "Youdidfrighten me, though."
They had come to the library. As they passed, the deep throated bell in the tower rang out twice upon the stillness—tang—tung.
Fifteen minutes past one, Janet calculated.
They took the diagonal walk to the crossing of South and East University Avenues. Her room was in the second house from the corner, on the former street.
He seemed of a sudden to perceive where they were, for, looking about him, he said: "Janet, itis something I must tell you for your own sake. And when I'm through, you can say to me what you think; it won't hurt."
A step and they were at her home.
"Can't you sit here on the porch a few minutes?" he asked; "I shan't keep you long."
With sudden anger she replied:—
"John, if you don't speak out at once what you have to say, I shall go in immediately. You've said again and again that there is something you must tell me; why don't you? Couldn't you see; can't you see now that I haven't begged you to tell because it seems to pain you."
"It does," he exclaimed, "you can't know how it pains me." He looked down at her where she sat on the step and into her uplifted face.
"What is it?" she asked calmly, now.
He sat beside her.
"I hardly know where to begin," he commenced and hesitated. He seemed to be arranging the words in his mind, for, after a moment he resumed.
"I told you it wasn't any crime," he said. "Well, maybe it isn't, but Janet," he went on quickly, "while you were standing at the window of the club this afternoon, you saw a man—do you remember? He wore overalls. His face and hands were black. You said you saw a policeman pushhim back into the crowd, and you believed him to be drunk—— He was drunk, Janet——"
"How do you know?" she asked, quite indifferently, "did you see him again?"
"Yes, I saw him again," he said. "I saw him in a big restaurant that was crowded with students, men whom I know, whom I have eaten with, whose cheers till now have been—been inspiring to me——"
"John—really——" the girl put in impatiently. "I can't see why that drunk man should have made such an impression—that common laborer—nor what he can have to do——"
"Wait a moment," he remonstrated. "You remember, when you called my attention to him, I took you out across the field, and down town another way? Yes? Well, I had a reason. I didn't want that drunken man to see me—to see you——"
"But, dear," she exclaimed with a little laugh.
"It was my father," he said, quietly.
"John!"
Passion, shock, anger, perhaps pity, were all in the tone of her exclamation. Unconsciously she drew away from him.
"Don't be afraid," he said, holding out a hand to her, "I shan't smirch you——"
She realized her movement then, and pity filled her heart, pity for this great creature beside her whose own heart, the heart she knew, was like a child's.
"Dear," she murmured, "don't think that. Don't. I didn't mean to."
He seemed not to notice the plea in her voice.
"I don't blame you," he went on as calmly as before, "but it was because Iknewyou would do just that that I haven't told you before. But now—I can't wait any longer. Listen. My parents are Poles, Janet. My father and mother were born in the same tiny town in Poland a little way from Cracow. They came to this country when I was only five years old—before my sister—my little sister Pauline, was born. My father was a peddler at first; afterward for a time he was a street sweeper; and then, during a strike, a good many years ago, he went into the Stove Works and learned the moulder's trade. It's a good trade, Janet; the men sometimes earn four dollars a day, pouring the hot iron into the sand. My father earns that now——"
She had listened to him raptly, the pale light white upon her lifted face.
"But John," she exclaimed, "your name—your name isn't foreign?"
He laughed.
"My name isn't 'Adams,'" he replied.
"John!"
"No," he went on—"but maybe my name is, too, after all. I should have said 'perhaps.' My father's name is not. It is Adamowski——" He heard her little quick in-taking of breath and looked away.
"You have never heard of such things before, have you?" he asked. "But it is a custom with Polish young men nowadays. Their names handicap them in their work, in their advancement, so they often change them."
"Yes, I understand," she murmured.
"Well," he went on, "until I was ten years old I attended the parochial school——"
"John, you're not aCatholic!" she exclaimed.
"No—you needn't be afraid of that either—I'm not—now," he answered. "And then," he continued as calmly as before, "I was sent to the public schools. It was the superintendent who wrote my name 'Adams.' He did it perhaps by accident; anyway it has been my name ever since. Plain 'John Adams.' I don't suppose I could make you understand the relation between parents and an only son among my people, so I shan't try, but it is to the son that the parents look for the fulfilment of all their happiest hopes. That I should have been sent here tocollege is not so surprising as you may consider it. Iwassent here. I was sent here by my father who works in the sand of the moulding room; by my mother who, to help, has for three years taken in washing; and by my little sister, Pauline, who sits all day at a bench and tears the stems out of tobacco leaves in a great, gray factory. They are the ones who have sent me here to college—to study, to learn, to make something of myself——"
Thus far to the girl, save for little moments when from the narrative she had suffered twinges of pain, it was as though she were listening to a story of one whom she knew not. She had been moved and strangely thrilled at times and now leaning forward eagerly she exclaimed:
"And you have made something of yourself; you have, John! Oh, don't you see how brave you are—what you candowith the education they have given you; what you can accomplish for yourself, and so, for them?"
He did not interrupt her but when she had done he looked down at her pityingly and muttered, as though suffering an intense physical agony: "Oh Janet! to hear you talk like that—to hear you say such things; to feel you haven't understood."
She looked away from him piqued, chagrined that she had erred.
"I brave!" he went on, "Ibrave? Do you thinkIdare call myself brave when I think of that little girl tearing stems out of tobacco leaves until her fingers are stiff; when I think of my mother bent over a tub, her face wreathed in steam—I can hear the smooth rasp of the wet clothes now as she rubs them on the board? Ibravewhen I see my father working in the awful heat of a moulding room—cooked alive—that I may dawdle here and kick a leather ball about a field." He looked away with a sneer. But the bitterness in his voice failed to move her.
"Your education!" she exclaimed, tersely,—"you have that!"
He laughed harshly. "Education! my education! What is it? There are my people—my father a moulder, a good workman who sometimes is drunk, and, so, a drunkard; my mother a wash-woman; my little sister a stripper in a cigar factory. They have given me my education and in giving me it what have they done? They have made mehatethem!"
"John, John, you mustn't say that," she implored.
"I must say it," he replied,—"for it's the truth. They have lifted me above them. All the love I should have for them is gone, obliterated. My feeling toward them is the feeling a man has for a dogthat has helped him, perhaps saved him from drowning. It is a feeling but it is not love. I've known this a long time, Janet, but not till now have I known what to do. There is my place, there beside them. Back in the little home I should be ashamed to take you into. I have been educated away from them; from my father, my mother, my little sister; yes," he added with a virulent bitterness, "I have even been educated away from my God."
She placed her hand on his arm but she did not speak.
"Educated even away from my God!" he repeated sadly. "They are Catholics. I should be. I am not. And what has been given me in return? Nothing; less than nothing; yes, something, for I have been given by this 'education' that has been paid for by my sister's blood, my mother's body, and my father's soul, the power to see my own false position. I thank heaven for that! O, don't remonstrate," he said, as she leaned toward him as though to speak. "I understand. From the high plane of your view the picture is not the same. I am closer to it. I see the fault of the method, the absurdity of the thing, the miserable falsity of the conception. You cannot understand, Janet. It is because I have known you could not, that I have not told you till now."
"But, John, dear," she murmured tenderly, pityingly, "Idounderstand."
"No," he contradicted, gently, "you don't; you can't; it is notforyou to understand."
He stood up, and looking down at her where she sat, smiled sadly. The bell in the tower of the library rang out upon the stillness, six times—tang—ting—tang—ting—tang—ting!
"But perhaps you can feel a little as I feel and know something of how I have felt for weeks. I shall go back to-morrow." There was no drama in the declaration. It was uttered calmly.
The girl stood up now suddenly and leaned toward him.
"What do you mean?" she asked, "you're not really going—going back—there?"
"Yes," he said. "I'm going back. I am going to try to find what has been stolen from me. I am going to try to rid myself of my unrest; to undo for myself the wrong that all unconsciously has been done me, by hands that have hit me when they only meant to be gentle. I'm going back, Janet, to work in the moulding-room beside my father."
She stared into his face, in mute wonder.
"And give up your course, John?Now!" she cried, as the full force of his determination dawned upon her.
"I am going to give up the false that has been thrust upon me, for the good that I have flung away," he answered. "I shall work until I have paid back all my mother's money and my father's money, and my little sister's money. Would to God I could pay them for the aching backs, the stiff fingers, and the tortured souls. I shall try. And if when I have tried, I find that, after all, it has been of no avail, that these debts can never be paid, perhaps I shall come back. Good-bye."
He held out his hand. He felt hers cold in his palm.
"Will you forgive me?" he asked simply,—"I should not have—I should not have cared for you. It was wrong. Forgive me——"
"There is nothing to forgive," she said, quite firmly. He drew away his hand then and hers fell limp at her side.
She stood motionless and watched his figure as it swung up the street.
Her heart bade her lips call out to him. But the million voices of the night bade her heart be still. And then, even as she watched, where he was, there was he not, but only blackness.
THE OLD PROFESSOR
(A Portrait)
I
Generally he was to be found in one of the galleries of the library, surrounded by tiers on tiers of books that formed for him a veritable barricade of erudition. Or it was as though he sat at the bottom of a well the bricks of which were the solid thoughts of men, themselves gone these many, many years. But there he would sit hour after hour and read, read, read, by the ragged light that filtered down upon him through the unscrubbed glass above. Always he was the first person the librarian met on the broad stone steps when he came over in the morning with his huge key to unlock the great, thick door and throw the building open for another day.
"Good-morning, sir," the old professor would say, in his dry, thin, little voice, and bow stiffly.
"'Morning," the librarian would respond, not so gruffly as characteristically, and bustle away.
Then, on tiptoe, the old professor would pass theswinging doors of baize and silently mount the gray iron stairs to the narrow galleries of the book-room where the life of his waking hours was lived among his unresponsive loves.
For he did love them, his books, whose friendship did not suffer change be the day gay or gray, and with them all about him—he the centre of the chaos of wisdom—he was happy. Among them he lived his simple life in sweet companionship and was joyous for the privilege, for without the books darkness would be his, whilst in them was light for his dim eyes and solace for his gently beating heart. So, day in, day out, in sunshine and in rain, in cold and snow and warmth, the old professor mounted, silently, the gray iron stairs in the childhood of the day, to come down again, as silently, when the lights were extinguished one by one and the broad campus without was wrapped in melancholy black.
Once he had been young. But that was in the day of hard work, when youth toiled to live. Then no lad was more sprightly than he. His early home was a long, low, rambling farmhouse in a southern state, where the flowers came early in the spring and bloomed and bloomed again late into autumn. There, to him, imaginative, dreaming, for all his boyish activity, the life out-of-doors was little less thanparticipation in a splendid pageant—the Pageant of Summer.
On the farm adjoining lived another boy and together they builded air-castles and procrastinated through the long, still evenings, when the work of the day was done. And of such sort were the castles that they lived in them, even as they worked afield, and sowed, and reaped, and sowed again.
Of all their dreams one was fairer than the others. It was of a college in the north where boys might go, and, once there, might learn the finer things. One day they resolved to make their goal that college. They toiled longer each day, then, until the red sun slipped below the wood-line to the west, and when the summer died they fared forth together.
Side by side they sat at lectures and at recitations. They lived together in a little room across the river where rooms were more cheaply to be had and where landladies were more accommodating and framed no loud objections to simple cooking on a smoky oil stove. Halcyon days those were to the lads, and the very experience of poverty whetted their appetites for the luxuries they dreamed one day would be for them.
Together they had from the hands of the president their diplomas, squares of sheepskin all writtenover in stately Latin—the golden fleece of their heroic quest.
He who later was to be the old professor, became the young professor then; and the friend of the four years in the little room across the river, where simple cooking was permitted, went away, nor ever came back again.
So near had been their lives that for a time the young professor was sad. A portrait on tin was all he had to recall the face of him who was gone, and frequently, of a Sunday afternoon which was set apart for a walk afield, he would seat himself beside the river and with the little portrait on his knee indulge in retrospections of the by-gone days when they were lads together on adjoining farms. Such fragrant reveries constituted the leaven needed in the young professor's life, for in the University circle he was much sought. He was a brilliant man; his ideas were "advanced" then, original and new. His conversation at dinner was sprightly, vivacious. He had the gallantry of generations of Southern gentlemen and was beloved of all the ladies. He was wont on occasion to pass the compliment with an almost Italian grace and he rejoiced in the tap of the fan upon his wrist which was his feminine reward.
"You must not fail us," a hostess would say,"you know Professor —— will be here; such a brilliant man; such charming manners."
And the bidden guest would promise straightway, whilst the hostess would turn back from the door with a sigh, betokening, perhaps, a discontent that her Henry had not the graces of Professor ——. Then the children would cry to her from the nursery and she would forget——
Or—
"That is Professor ——," a fellow academician would say to a stranger on the campus as the erect, lithe-limbed young man veered round a corner. "A pillar, sir, a pillar of the institution. The making of a great man, a great man, sir."
But all this was long before the advent of the old professor, long before the day when people ceased to seek him out, to fawn before his talent, and to cherish in memory the brilliant phrases that he was so apt in making. For when that day came he was no more noticed in his passage to and fro across the campus than one of the rats that were wont to scamper from building to building in the dead hours of the night.
The transition from the young professor to the old professor was not sudden, but stealthily gradual. He loved the past, its doctrines and its methods. What had beenhisyouth should be, he thought,the youth for all time, and he never knew his error. Little by little, year by year, he became less often the honored guest at a faculty dinner. He clung to the manners of his youth and the younger wives called him an old fogey and smiled when his name was mentioned.
Thus it continued until he became a mere ghost of dead days, an occasional, living reminder of an ancient system of education or method of class-room work long since relegated to that dusty storehouse where are heaped "old things" that have served their usefulness, flung aside to make room forpapier machémanikins and varnished maps of pasteboard with the mountains raised to scale and the winding streams indented.
And yet in the official circle of the institution there lingered a certain reverence for the old professor. His sweetness of character, his gentleness of spirit, his humility, made it a sad duty to point the way to him; and so, from month to month, the president's request for his resignation was delayed, and then there occurred a little incident that secured for him, unknowing, another period of service.
The trembling country awaited application of the torch of war. In the college town a meeting was called and the citizenry swarmed into a churchwhere the president of the University was to deliver an address.
On a bench at the front sat the old professor, his face uplifted, drawn with the pain that tore his gentle heart, for the South he loved was proving its disloyalty to the Union that he worshipped.
Through the open windows came a breeze of gentle April that moved the old professor's hair, and he lifted a trembling hand to his high smooth forehead.
Even as the president spoke there was heard a cry in the street that caused the faces of strong men to pale and their eyes to start.
"Sumpter has been fired upon!"
And at the cry right triumphed over wrong in the old professor's throbbing heart. Getting unsteadily upon his feet he raised his hand.
"Silence!" he called, and then, in the hush, he added, his voice trembling,
"I move that this meeting adjourn at once to Court House Square!"
A cheer was raised, and in the wake of the procession that was formed upon the instant the old professor marched—his head bowed, his eyes wet—to the open place where the speeches, now ablaze, with patriotic fervor, were resumed.
There were those who knew and somewhatunderstood what it had meant to the old professor to move that adjournment and when they spoke of him among themselves for many days thereafter it was with a little tremor of the voice and a certain mistiness of the eyes. And for three years he lived among them uncomplaining though stricken to the soul.
II
But the weeks became months and the months gathered into years, and after many years even the old professor himself forgot the incident save at such times as the appearance of a man in uniform recalled it to him. At such times he was wont to close his book—his long slim finger marking the place—and let it fall upon his knee, whilst his mind galloped back across the desert of the years to hover an instant about the past's neglected grave.
Perhaps some ray of humor would creep in and part the clouds and the old professor's smile would reflect the glint of sunshine deeper in his heart. Then he would shake his head and sigh and open the book again, following the lines as he read, with that long, slim forefinger.
"A dream—a dream," he would murmur and forget.
And for a long time the memories of the dead days would sleep in his quiet mind.
He dwelt in peace in the midst of an active warring world; the peace that is the man's who feels that he has done his part, his little share, in making his world better. He knew his work was ended, that his time for rest had come, and knowing this he was satisfied to creep noiselessly and unnoticed into a dingy, unfrequented corner and there, with a book or two, a ream of pure white paper and a pen, to spend the time allowed him in the sweet society of his books.
Unhappy, you ask, this frail old man into whose thick hair the years had sprinkled many snowflakes?
All about him there was none happier.
Had you askedhim, he would have said, no doubt, with that pale little smile of his:
"I have my books. I live well. I have my room. I have my bed. I have my meals—and some of them I prepare myself. And I have a friend. Could a man ask more? As I grow older I find myself agreeing more and more with David Thoreau, who, you will remember, once said, as he passed a tool box standing beside a railway, that he could not understand why a man should want a better home than such a box would make."
And he would laugh with himself at the philosophic quip.
His friend in his later years was another old man; not a scholar, but a man who had worked hard and lived hard, and at sunset took his rest. He too, had many graces.
On Sunday afternoons whenever the weather would permit the old professor sought him out and they walked afield, or by the river where the old professor had loved to wander as a boy. If their path were barricaded by a turnstile it always meant a lengthy parley as to whom should cross it first.
"After you, my friend," the old professor would say, bowing low.
Lifting a protesting hand, "No," the other would respond, "after you."
"I insist," the old professor would contend.
The other would indicate the turnstile with a gesture. "You first," he would repeat.
And so they would stand there bowing, insisting, until, neither seeing fit to give way, they would retrace their steps and seek a path that had no turnstile.
But once, filled with zeal to explore the wood beyond a certain stile, an ingenious plan occurred to the old professor which was immediately carried to a successful issue. Both clambered over the fenceat one side of the opening and proceeded on their way.
And for a long time after each held the incident as a joke against the other.
The conversation of the friends on such occasions was of the life that lay before them, serious; never of the past. And they agreed in their philosophy at all points. They never argued.
"Well, friend," the old professor said one day, "when the time comes for us to go I hope we may go together—may continue our walk."
"I hope we may," the other answered.
"I have always thought," the old professor added with a twinkle in his eyes, "that there must be many a pleasant walk in heaven—after one has left the pavement."
III
Alike as they were, there was one joy that now and then came into the old professor's life that the other could not share.
It came to him when, at widely separated intervals, there crossed his path a man with hair almost as white as his own, who in the days long gone had sat before him on the benches of the class-room as a student, and absorbed his wider wisdom. When such an one he met, the old professor's voicealways caught in his throat and he sought to cover the confusion that he suffered by a closer pressure of his hand. Then, the emotion passing, something of the old light would flame up in his eyes.
He would step back and exclaim: "Well! well! well!" Then the memories would surge back into his mind and he would gaze abstractedly without speaking.
"You remember me?" the other old fellow would ask, gaily.
"Rememberyou!" the old professor would exclaim and nudge him, playfully. "Rememberyou? Well, well, I guess I couldn'tforgetyou if I tried! Why you were the scamp that tied the white mule to my desk-leg and left him there over night so I should be greeted by his bray when I entered the room in the morning! Rememberyou! Ha! ha! I've been waiting all these years to get at you!"
Then he would stride upon the white haired "grad" with hand raised, ominously, but with the merry twinkle still lighting up his eyes; whilst the victim would quail mockingly, with a brighter twinkle in his own.
The old professor was known often to have kissed gray haired boys when they met on alumni day.
"I have always called you the mule-pupil," hewould continue as, arm in arm they strolled back and forth along the broad main corridor.
"And do you remember what you said to the class when you found that mule at your desk, in the morning?" the scamp would ask, with a chuckle, perhaps.
"No, what?"
"Ah, I remember it as though it were yesterday; how you came bustling into the room. You saw the mule. We were all boiling inside. You did not scowl. You did not rant. You did not call down upon our heads the venging hand of a just heaven. You just turned to us as calm as you are now...."
The old professor would gurgle here, with rare delight.
" ... and said, 'young gentlemen, I perceive that you have already been provided with an instructor quite competent to teach you all you will ever be able to learn!' And then you walked out of the room with a polite 'good-morning.'"
Here the former student would roar with laughter.
"You don't tell me," the old professor would exclaim. "You don't tell me I saidthat! Well, well, well; thatwasrather hard on you boys, wasn'tit? I'd forgotten all about it. I—I just remembered themule!"
"And do you recall," the man who was a boy, again would ask, "how you found all the wood from the big wood-box in the south-wing corridor piled against your door?"
The old professor would wrinkle his forehead here and stare thoughtfully at the floor.
"No, I don't seem to recollect," he would say.
"Well youdid; we boys had piled it there, of course. Must have been a cord at least. Then we hung around to see what you would do."
"And whatdidI do?"
"You began to remove the pile, stick by stick, and to pack them all away in the great wood-box."
Here the old professor was always wont to shake with silent laughter.
"Well, we stood it as long as we could, and then Billy Green—you remember Billy Green; poor Billy, he was killed at Gettysburg. Billy went up to you, as brave as you please, and said: 'Professor, I don't know whopiledthis wood against your door butun-pilingit is no work for you.' And then he shouted to us, 'come on, boys,' and we fell to and got the wood away from that door in about two jerks of a lamb's tail. But didn't we feel small!Professor, why didn't you have a few of us fired bodily?"
"Oh, no, no, my friend," the old professor would perhaps exclaim, quickly. "Expel a boy for being a boy! It is not for you or me, dear sir, to seek to improve upon the handiwork of God!"
And there would ensue another laugh, and many more in the three days to follow, and then commencement would be over and the old student would go back to Kansas City and the old professor to his books.
But for more than three days a subtle effect of the meeting would remain with him. For many days he would carry his head a bit higher. A color flush would show upon his hollow cheeks; his step would take on an unaccustomed elasticity. For a discriminating Fate had touched to the old professor's lips the cup of life and he had sipped of the contents, and another year was his.
IV
I remember him best as I saw him first. It was in the late afternoon of a golden day in mid-October. A companion pointed him out to me as we approached the ivy-green library. He was coming slowly down the steps, one arm encirclinga great bundle of books, one hand fumbling at his neck scarf. The clothes he wore were of another day. The coat was full-skirted, long, and bulging at the breast. About his thin throat was twisted a black silk stock, frayed and rusty, over which the loose and unstarched collar rolled. On his broad-toed shoes his baggy trousers fell in folds. There was a seeming rigidity to the creases that induced the thought they must have been so always; like the wrinkles in the wrappings of a mummy. And yet, infinitely pathetic as the picture was, I knew that such a coat, such a stock, even such a round crowned, broad brimmed soft hat as that he wore, once had made the old professor a man of fashion—a quarter of a century before.
"That's the oldest professor on the campus," my companion said. "In college? No. He hasn't taught a class for twenty years. He was an old fogey and they removed him, I'm told, to make room for a younger man. He's only waiting for the end now. Every one says he'd give five years to get back on the faculty. You'll usually find him near the library, either just going in or just coming out. He hides himself all day among the books. The fellows call him 'The Ghost.' I've been told he saved a little from his salary every quarter and that now he lives in a little back roomsomewhere near the campus and cooks his own meals."
And whenever after that I saw him it was this last phrase that recurred to me with almost painful insistency ... "lives in a little back room somewhere ... and cooks his own meals."
It was hard for youth to realize that such could be humanity's reward to a man who had given a life of patience, forebearance, toil, and sacrifice, to make his little world the better for his having lived within it.
We stood apart and watched him as he came slowly down the broad, stone steps. At the last he stopped and looked up at the sky. We saw his face more clearly then. It was thin, pale, drawn about the mouth, but the eyes were infinitely tender. His lips trembled and seemed to form words that were not uttered. Then he walked on. Twice, before he turned the corner of the ivy-covered wall, he raised a hand to his face and passed the dangling finger-tips of his black cloth glove across his eyes.
That slow walk home beneath the canopy the painted maples made marked the ending of another day in the old professor's fading life; a day such as days had been for twenty years, a space of time in which a smile had flitted to his lips, a tear hadrisen, and he had held the book a little closer to his eyes.
It was not long thereafter that we learned the end had come. They found him in his chair, a book upon his knee, his slim forefinger marking the page where he had left off reading to close his eyes and dream. The pale ghost of a smile still lingered about his mouth.
Some one, gentler than the rest, placed a single rose in the cold hand, and a scant company followed the slow hearse to the cemetery.
No one wept. Perhaps no one even felt a sadness, standing there beside the open grave. Yet he would not have wished it otherwise. They covered him for the long, long sleep, and went away.
And now, on a day in June, when the air is heavy with the fragrance of the green and growing things and the grasses are alive with singing creatures, the breeze that stirs alike the tall tree-tops and the tender shoots of grain seems to whisper above the lonely grave, unmarked in that great City of the Dead: "Sleep on; thy work is done; done well. Thou shalt be rewarded."