CHAPTER XVI.
Itwas a most unexpected journey that the over-busy scientist took, on the following morning, with the young girl whose audacious appeal to him had resulted with so much success to her. That is, it would have been considered audacious by the hosts of anxious men who were always coming and going, eager to consult the professor on matters of grave importance; and obliged, many and many a time, to defer that consultation till “a more convenient occasion.” She had not only made her own “occasion,” but had not even dreamed that any formality had been necessary.
As they neared the little station at the foot of Deer Hill Mountain, Octave’s overflowing spirits found voice.
“Oh, I had such a lovely time! I never had a pleasanter visit in all my life, and I do appreciate all that you and sweet Mrs. Professor have done for me. Uncle Fritz may be able to find some way of returning some of the kindness. But, there is something you don’t know.”
More than one among the passengers in the car recognized the fine head of Professor von Holsneck, and pointed out the great man as a person to be seen once in a lifetime; but to those who beheld him and had known of his mighty intellect alone, he was to appear in a new character. He might have been the simplest traveller of them all, journeying into green pastures along with a favorite grandchild, so unpretending and joyous was he. For, great as he was,—because he was so great, it may be,—he had learned the happy secret of being true to the nature God had given him, and of tossing aside care like a useless garment, whenever he dared take time from his grave labors for a bit of rest.
Octave found him as companionable as Fritzy, and far more so than Paula would have been on such a trip. Her tongue rattled from one subject to another with humming-bird swiftness, if not with so much of grace. Professor von Holsneck found her infinitely diverting, and grew brighter and more rested as the distance lessened; but it was not till they were almost ready to leave the train that Octave treated him to a full account ofher “running away,” and the puzzle she had left for her family to solve.
“But, my dear child, if you had told me that last night, I would have relieved their anxiety by a telegram.”
“Don’t you see? I do not want it relieved. It isn’t every day I have a chance to do things out of the common, and you wouldn’t have had the heart to disappoint me when I did, would you?”
“I certainly would!” replied the professor, laughing.
“Oh! Then it is well I didn’t tell. Paula will be just dying to know what I have done and where I have been; but you see she isn’t to know, yet; neither she nor anybody. This is aMystery—a capital-letter MYSTERY! And it isn’t to be divulged until we are all ready for thedenouement. See?”
“Not very clearly, my dear.”
“Oh, bother!—I don’t mean that saucily, but because there is so little time to explain. We don’t wish anybody to know anything about what Melville hopes or what he may have discovered until he is all ready to test it. Whenyou are sure,—perfectly, perfectly sure,—and it has been tried in other ways ever so many times, then he is to try it on himself; when the great surgeon says the time has come. We want him to show his courage and get his fame all at once—in a blaze of glory! Poor laddie! he hasn’t had many blazes of glory, but he’s had lots of blazing tempers! He’s almost as spunky as I am. So, when we get to The Snuggery, you are to be—He, I am aHeroine, and this is part of my romance. I just have astonished Paula Pickel for once in my life, and I don’t want you to go and spoil the fun. You won’t, will you?”
“Not if I can help it,” answered thesavant, enjoying the nonsense like a boy. “But I may do so unintentionally.”
“I sha’n’t let you. If you go to say anything you should not, I will frown; and when I frown, you are to stop short off, no matter what it is.”
“That is destined to make me appear very silly, I fear. I shall be sure to say the thing you do not wish.”
“I think not; and you won’t mind being rathersilly for once, when you are so very wise most of the time, will you?”
“I don’t know about the wisdom, my dear. I often feel as if I had but learned the alphabet of wisdom, and that most imperfectly.”
The professor’s tone had become grave, and of the truth of his conviction there could be no doubt. Octave looked at him in astonishment.
“Why, Professor von Holsneck! If you are not wise, who in this world is?”
“The more we learn the greater is the vista of knowledge which opens before us. What I have gained in understanding is as nothing, nothing, to that I could desire, and, being almost at the end of life, that I must leave unknown; unless, indeed, in that other life I shall be permitted to advance forever.”
“Then—what must you think of poor me!” cried Octave, abashed at last by a thought of her own acquirements in comparison with his.
“That you are a very charming child,” responded the great man, so heartily and affectionately that her smiles returned.
When they had reached their station, and hadbeen driven up the mountain side in one of the lumbering stages which were on hand for the accommodation of stray passengers, their talk reverted to Germany and the son of the professor, who was still there, prosecuting his studies in art, and whose attainments seemed, to judge by the fond parent’s talk, to be something wonderful indeed.
The truth was, that Octave had walked straight into the deepest corner of his heart by her swift recognition of a humble scene which that absent son had depicted on his canvas, and had sent across the sea to convince his father that the absence was not unfruitful of good result. An artist’s career had been the last the professor would have chosen for his boy; but he was wise enough to let each nature work out its own salvation in its own way. “A good artist would have been a spoiled scientist,” he had philosophically reasoned with himself; though his disappointed hopes were sometimes still hard to bear. So, when Octave’s ignorant tongue had told him that the boy had been right, he had been better pleased than if she had brought him a costly offering.
Seeing it pleased him, if not wholly understanding why, the girl had gone on to describe in detail all the familiar scenes in which her previous summers had been passed; and the description brought the absent son’s present environment in clearest view to the father’s mental sight.
“Down the little path there by the gate, Hans always went of a morning with his tin dinner-pail, and his spade or shovel over his shoulder, the little best room,—I know that is the one they have given your boy,—the great bed stands so and so; and there is an old black chest of drawers. In those, I shouldn’t wonder but he keeps all his pictures, and wet sketches, to get them out of the dust. Gretchen is eternally stirring up a dust, you must know, and then laying it down again with a wet rag. Paula used to sketch in oils, and she and Gretchen were always in a riot on account of the ‘fuzz’ sticking so to the paint. She used to threaten putting her horrid daubs in the chest then, but I wouldn’t let her. I wasn’t going to have my Sunday frock spoiled and smutched by green and yellow spots, would you?”
“No, I would not,” responded the professor, heartily, if absently. He was seeing, at that very moment, the little Dutch bed-chamber and his happy, careless lad, putting away with the forethought he exercised only upon his “work” the half-finished sketch he had just been over the hill to make. Octave laughed, and her laugh recalled the old man to the actual, and to the knowledge that their stage had drawn up before the white palings of an old-fashioned house, in whose wide doorway a group of curious young faces were pictured.
“We’re here!” said Octave, springing down and standing with a great show of dignity, while the professor clambered after her.
Then they walked up the gravel path together, and just before the group of watchers Octave paused.
“You see, I did come back; and this is—He!”