The old Master of Arts was as notable a man in his outside presentment
as one will find among five hundred college alumni as they file in
procession. His strong, squared features, his formidable scowl, his
solid-looking head, his iron-gray hair, his positive and as it were
categorical stride, his slow, precise way of putting a statement,
the strange union of trampling radicalism in some directions and
high-stepping conservatism in others, which made it impossible to
calculate on his unexpressed opinions, his testy ways and his generous
impulses, his hard judgments and kindly actions, were characteristics
that gave him a very decided individuality.
He had all the aspects of a man of books. His study, which was the best
room in Mrs. Hopkins's house, was filled with a miscellaneous-looking
collection of volumes, which his curious literary taste had got together
from the shelves of all the libraries that had been broken up during
his long life as a scholar. Classics, theology, especially of the
controversial sort, statistics, politics, law, medicine, science, occult
and overt, general literature,--almost every branch of knowledge was
represented. His learning was very various, and of course mixed up,
useful and useless, new and ancient, dogmatic and rational,--like his
library, in short; for a library gathered like his is a looking-glass in
which the owner's mind is reflected.
The common people about the village did not know what to make of such
a phenomenon. He did not preach, marry, christen, or bury, like the
ministers, nor jog around with medicines for sick folks, nor carry cases
into court for quarrelsome neighbors. What was he good for? Not a great
deal, some of the wiseacres thought,--had “all sorts of sense but common
sense,”--“smart mahn, but not prahctical.” There were others who read
him more shrewdly. He knowed more, they said, than all the ministers put
together, and if he'd stan' for Ripresentative they 'd like to vote for
him,--they hed n't hed a smart mahn in the Gineral Court sence Squire
Wibird was thar.
They may have overdone the matter in comparing his knowledge with that
of all the ministers together, for Priest Pemberton was a real scholar
in his special line of study,--as all D. D.'s are supposed to be, or
they would not have been honored with that distinguished title. But Mr.
Byles Gridley not only had more learning than the deep-sea line of the
bucolic intelligence could fathom; he had more wisdom also than they
gave him credit for, even those among them who thought most of his
abilities.
In his capacity of schoolmaster he had sharpened his wits against those
of the lively city boys he had in charge, and made such a reputation
as “Master” Gridley, that he kept that title even after he had become
a college tutor and professor. As a tutor he had to deal with many
of these same boys, and others like them, in the still more vivacious
period of their early college life. He got rid of his police duties when
he became a professor, but he still studied the pupils as carefully as
he used once to watch them, and learned to read character with a skill
which might have fitted him for governing men instead of adolescents.
But he loved quiet and he dreaded mingling with the brawlers of the
market-place, whose stock in trade is a voice and a vocabulary. So
it was that he had passed his life in the patient mechanical labor
of instruction, leaving too many of his instincts and faculties in
abeyance.
The alluvium of all this experience bore a nearer resemblance to worldly
wisdom than might have been conjectured; much nearer, indeed, than it
does in many old instructors, whose eyes get fish-like as their blood
grows cold, and who are not fit to be trusted with anything more
practical than a gerund or a cosine. Master Gridley not only knew a good
deal of human nature, but he knew how to keep his knowledge to himself
upon occasion. He understood singularly well the ways and tendencies
of young people. He was shrewd in the detection of trickery, and very
confident in those who had once passed the ordeal of his well-schooled
observing powers. He had no particular tendency to meddle with the
personal relations of those about him; but if they were forced upon him
in any way, he was like to see into them at least as quickly as any of
his neighbors who thought themselves most endowed with practical skill.
In leaving the duties of his office he considered himself, as he said
a little despondently, like an old horse unharnessed and turned out to
pasture. He felt that he had separated himself from human interests, and
was henceforth to live in his books with the dead, until he should be
numbered with them himself. He had chosen this quiet village as a
place where he might pass his days undisturbed, and find a peaceful
resting-place in its churchyard, where the gravel was dry, and the
sun lay warm, and the glowing woods of autumn would spread their
many-colored counterpane over the bed where he would be taking his rest.
It sometimes came over him painfully that he was never more to be of any
importance to his fellow-creatures. There was nobody living to whom he
was connected by any very near ties. He felt kindly enough to the good
woman in whose house he lived; he sometimes gave a few words of counsel
to her son; he was not unamiable with the few people he met; he bowed
with great consideration to the Rev. Dr. Pemberton; and he studied with
no small interest the physiognomy of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker,
to whose sermons he listened, with a black scowl now and then, and a
nostril dilating with ominous intensity of meaning. But he said sadly to
himself, that his life had been a failure,--that he had nothing to show
for it, and his one talent was ready in its napkin to give back to his
Lord.
He owed something of this sadness, perhaps, to a cause which many would
hold of small significance. Though he had mourned for no lost love,
at least so far as was known, though he had never suffered the pang
of parting with a child, though he seemed isolated from those joys and
griefs which come with the ties of family, he too had his private urn
filled with the ashes of extinguished hopes. He was the father of a dead
book.
Why “Thoughts on the Universe, by Byles Gridley, A. M.,” had not met
with an eager welcome and a permanent demand from the discriminating
public, it would take us too long to inquire in detail. Indeed; he
himself was never able to account satisfactorily for the state of things
which his bookseller's account made evident to him. He had read and
re-read his work; and the more familiar he became with it, the less was
he able to understand the singular want of popular appreciation of what
he could not help recognizing as its excellences. He had a special copy
of his work, printed on large paper and sumptuously bound. He loved to
read in this, as people read over the letters of friends who have long
been dead; and it might have awakened a feeling of something far removed
from the ludicrous, if his comments on his own production could have
been heard. “That's a thought, now, for you!--See Mr. Thomas Babington
Macaulay's Essay printed six years after thus book.” “A felicitous
image! and so everybody would have said if only Mr. Thomas Carlyle had
hit upon it.” “If this is not genuine pathos, where will you find it, I
should like to know? And nobody to open the book where it stands written
but one poor old man--in this generation, at least--in this generation!”
It may be doubted whether he would ever have loved his book with such
jealous fondness if it had gone through a dozen editions, and everybody
was quoting it to his face. But now it lived only for him; and to him it
was wife and child, parent, friend, all in one, as Hector was all in all
to his spouse. He never tired of it, and in his more sanguine moods he
looked forward to the time when the world would acknowledge its merits,
and his genius would find full recognition. Perhaps he was right: more
than one book which seemed dead and was dead for contemporary readers
has had a resurrection when the rivals who triumphed over it lived only
in the tombstone memory of antiquaries. Comfort for some of us, dear
fellow-writer.
It followed from the way in which he lived that he must have some means
of support upon which he could depend. He was economical, if not over
frugal in some of his habits; but he bought books, and took newspapers
and reviews, and had money when money was needed; the fact being, though
it was not generally known, that a distant relative had not long before
died, leaving him a very comfortable property.
His money matters had led him to have occasional dealings with the late
legal firm of Wibird and Penhallow, which had naturally passed into
the hands of the new partnership, Penhallow and Bradshaw. He had entire
confidence in the senior partner, but not so much in the young man who
had been recently associated in the business.
Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, commonly called by his last two names, was
the son of a lawyer of some note for his acuteness, who marked out his
calling for him in having him named after the great Lord Mansfield.
Murray Bradshaw was about twenty-five years old, by common consent
good-looking, with a finely formed head, a searching eye, and a
sharp-cut mouth, which smiled at his bidding without the slightest
reference to the real condition of his feeling at the moment. This was
a great convenience; for it gave him an appearance of good-nature at
the small expense of a slight muscular movement which was as easy as
winking, and deceived everybody but those who had studied him long and
carefully enough to find that this play of his features was what a watch
maker would call a detached movement.
He had been a good scholar in college, not so much by hard study as
by skilful veneering, and had taken great pains to stand well with the
Faculty, at least one of whom, Byles Gridley, A. M., had watched him
with no little interest as a man with a promising future, provided he
were not so astute as to outwit and overreach himself in his excess of
contrivance. His classmates could not help liking him; as to loving him,
none of them would have thought of that. He was so shrewd, so keen, so
full of practical sense, and so good-humored as long as things went on
to his liking, that few could resist his fascination. He had a way of
talking with people about what they were interested in, as if it were
the one matter in the world nearest to his heart. But he was commonly
trying to find out something, or to produce some impression, as a
juggler is working at his miracle while he keeps people's attention by
his voluble discourse and make-believe movements. In his lightest talk
he was almost always edging towards a practical object, and it was an
interesting and instructive amusement to watch for the moment at which
he would ship the belt of his colloquial machinery on to the tight
pulley. It was done so easily and naturally that there was hardly a sign
of it. Master Gridley could usually detect the shifting action, but the
young man's features and voice never betrayed him.
He was a favorite with the other sex, who love poetry and romance, as
he well knew, for which reason he often used the phrases of both, and in
such a way as to answer his purpose with most of those whom he wished
to please. He had one great advantage in the sweepstakes of life: he was
not handicapped with any burdensome ideals. He took everything at its
marked value. He accepted the standard of the street as a final fact for
to-day, like the broker's list of prices.
His whole plan of life was laid out. He knew that law was the best
introduction to political life, and he meant to use it for this end.
He chose to begin his career in the country, so as to feel his way more
surely and gradually to its ultimate aim; but he had no intention of
burning his shining talents in a grazing district, however tall its
grass might grow. His business was not with these stiff-jointed,
slow-witted graziers, but with the supple, dangerous, far-seeing men who
sit scheming by the gas-light in the great cities, after all the lamps
and candles are out from the Merrimac to the Housatonic. Every strong
and every weak point of those who might probably be his rivals were laid
down on his charts, as winds and currents and rocks are marked on those
of a navigator. All the young girls in the country, and not a few in the
city, with which, as mentioned, he had frequent relations, were on his
list of possible availabilities in the matrimonial line of speculation,
provided always that their position and prospects were such as would
make them proper matches for so considerable a person as the future Hon.
William Murray Bradshaw.
Master Gridley had made a careful study of his old pupil since they had
resided in the same village. The old professor could not help admiring
him, notwithstanding certain suspicious elements in his character; for
after muddy village talk, a clear stream of intelligent conversation was
a great luxury to the hard-headed scholar. The more he saw of him,
the more he learned to watch his movements, and to be on his guard in
talking with him. The old man could be crafty, with all his simplicity,
and he had found out that under his good-natured manner there often
lurked some design more or less worth noting, and which might involve
other interests deserving protection.
For some reason or other the old Master of Arts had of late experienced
a certain degree of relenting with regard to himself, probably brought
about by the expressions of gratitude from worthy Mrs. Hopkins for acts
of kindness to which he himself attached no great value. He had been
kind to her son Gifted; he had been fatherly with Susan Posey,
her relative and boarder; and he had shown himself singularly and
unexpectedly amiable with the little twins who had been adopted by
the good woman into her household. In fact, ever since these little
creatures had begun to toddle about and explode their first consonants,
he had looked through his great round spectacles upon them with a
decided interest; and from that time it seemed as if some of the human
and social sentiments which had never leafed or flowered in him, for
want of their natural sunshine, had begun growing up from roots which
had never lost their life. His liking for the twins may have been an
illustration of that singular law which old Dr. Hurlbut used to lay
down, namely, that at a certain period of life, say from fifty to
sixty and upward, the grand-paternal instinct awakens in bachelors, the
rhythms of Nature reaching them in spite of her defeated intentions;
so that when men marry late they love their autumn child with a twofold
affection,--father's and grandfather's both in one.
However this may be, there is no doubt that Mr. Byles Gridley was
beginning to take a part in his neighbors' welfare and misfortunes, such
as could hardly have been expected of a man so long lost in his books
and his scholastic duties. And among others, Myrtle Hazard had come in
for a share of his interest. He had met her now and then in her walks to
and from school and meeting, and had been taken with her beauty and her
apparent unconsciousness of it, which he attributed to the forlorn kind
of household in which she had grown up. He had got so far as to talk
with her now and then, and found himself puzzled, as well he might be,
in talking with a girl who had been growing into her early maturity in
antagonism with every influence that surrounded her.
“Love will reach her by and by,” he said, “in spite of the dragons up at
the den yonder.
“'Centum fronte oculos, centum cervice gerebat
Argus, et hos unus saepe fefellit amor.'”
But there was something about Myrtle,--he hardly knew whether to call it
dignity, or pride, or reserve, or the mere habit of holding back
brought about by the system of repression under which she had been
educated,--which kept even the old Master of Arts at his distance. Yet
he was strongly drawn to her, and had a sort of presentiment that he
might be able to help her some day, and that very probably she would
want his help; for she was alone in the world, except for the dragons,
and sure to be assailed by foes from without and from within.
He noticed that her name was apt to come up in his conversations with
Murray Bradshaw; and, as he himself never introduced it, of course the
young man must have forced it, as conjurers force a card, and with some
special object. This set him thinking hard; and, as a result of it, he
determined the next time Mr. Bradshaw brought her name up to set him
talking.
So he talked, not suspecting how carefully the old man listened.
“It was a demonish hard case,” he said, “that old Malachi had left
his money as he did. Myrtle Hazard was going to be the handsomest girl
about, when she came to her beauty, and she was coming to it mighty
fast. If they could only break that will, but it was no use trying. The
doctors said he was of sound mind for at least two years after making
it. If Silence Withers got the land claim, there'd be a pile, sure
enough. Myrtle Hazard ought to have it. If the girl had only inherited
that property--whew? She'd have been a match for any fellow. That old
Silence Withers would do just as her minister told her,--even chance
whether she gives it to the Parson-factory, or marries Bellamy Stoker,
and gives it to him after his wife's dead. He'd take it if he had to
take her with it. Earn his money, hey, Master Gridley?”
“Why, you don't seem to think very well of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy
Stoker?” said Mr. Gridley, smiling.
“Think well of him? Too fond of using the Devil's pitchfork for my
fancy! Forks over pretty much all the world but himself and his lot
into--the bad place, you know; and toasts his own cheese with it with
very much the same kind of comfort that other folks seem to take in that
business. Besides, he has a weakness for pretty saints--and sinners.
That's an odd name he has. More belle amie than Joseph about him, I
rather guess!”
The old professor smiled again. “So you don't think he believes all the
mediaeval doctrines he is in the habit of preaching, Mr. Bradshaw?”
“No, sir; I think he belongs to the class I have seen described
somewhere. 'There are those who hold the opinion that truth is only safe
when diluted,--about one fifth to four fifths lies,--as the oxygen of
the air is with its nitrogen. Else it would burn us all up.'”
Byles Gridley colored and started a little. This was one of his own
sayings in “Thoughts on the Universe.” But the young man quoted it
without seeming to suspect its authorship.
“Where did you pick up that saying, Mr. Bradshaw?”
“I don't remember. Some paper, I rather think. It's one of those good
things that get about without anybody's knowing who says 'em. Sounds
like Coleridge.”
“That's what I call a compliment worth having,” said Byles Gridley to
himself, when he got home. “Let me look at that passage.”
He took down “Thoughts on the Universe,” and got so much interested,
reading on page after page, that he did not hear the little tea-bell,
and Susan Posey volunteered to run up to his study and call him down to
tea.