laughing. "Isn't there a law of compensation in science? May we not hope
to make up in quality what we lack in quantity?"
"I think not," remarked the Professor gravely. "But there is your
luncheon-gong. No, thank you, Mrs. Esdaile, I cannot stay. My carriage
is waiting. Good-bye. Good-bye, Mrs. O'James."
He raised his hat and stalked slowly away among the laurel bushes.
"He has no taste," said Mrs. Esdaile--"no eye for beauty."
"On, the contrary," Mrs. O'James answered, with a saucy little jerk of
the chin. "He has just asked me to be his wife."
* * * * *
As Professor Ainslie Grey ascended the steps of his house, the hall-door
opened and a dapper gentleman stepped briskly out. He was somewhat
sallow in the face, with dark, beady eyes, and a short, black beard with
an aggressive bristle. Thought and work had left their traces upon his
face, but he moved with the brisk activity of a man who had not yet bade
good-bye to his youth.
"I'm in luck's way," he cried. "I wanted to see you."
"Then come back into the library," said the Professor; "you must stay
and have lunch with us."
The two men entered the hall, and the Professor led the way into his
private sanctum. He motioned his companion into an arm-chair.
"I trust that you have been successful, O'Brien," said he. "I should be
loath to exercise any undue pressure upon my sister Ada; but I have
given her to understand that there is no one whom I should prefer for a
brother-in-law to my most brilliant scholar, the author of 'Some Remarks
upon the Bile-Pigments, with special reference to Urobilin.'"
"You are very kind, Professor Grey--you have always been very kind,"
said the other. "I approached Miss Grey upon the subject; she did not
say No."
"She said Yes, then?"
"No; she proposed to leave the matter open until my return from
Edinburgh. I go to-day, as you know, and I hope to commence my research
to-morrow."
"On the comparative anatomy of the vermiform appendix, by James M'Murdo
O'Brien," said the Professor sonorously. "It is a glorious subject--a
subject which lies at the very root of evolutionary philosophy."
"Ah, she is the dearest girl," cried O'Brien, with a sudden little spurt
of Celtic enthusiasm--"she is the soul of truth and of honour."
"The vermiform appendix----" began the Professor.
"She is an angel from heaven," interrupted the other. "I fear that it is
my advocacy of scientific freedom in religious thought which stands in
my way with her."
"You must not truckle upon that point. You must be true to your
convictions; let there be no compromise there."
"My reason is true to agnosticism, and yet I am conscious of a void--a
vacuum. I had feelings at the old church at home between the scent of
the incense and the roll of the organ, such as I have never experienced
in the laboratory or the lecture-room."
"Sensuous--purely sensuous," said the Professor, rubbing his chin.
"Vague hereditary tendencies stirred into life by the stimulation of the
nasal and auditory nerves."
"Maybe so, maybe so," the younger man answered thoughtfully. "But this
was not what I wished to speak to you about. Before I enter your family,
your sister and you have a claim to know all that I can tell you about
my career. Of my worldly prospects I have already spoken to you. There
is only one point which I have omitted to mention. I am a widower."
The Professor raised his eyebrows.
"This is news indeed," said he.
"I married shortly after my arrival in Australia. Miss Thurston was her
name. I met her in society. It was a most unhappy match."
Some painful emotion possessed him. His quick, expressive features
quivered, and his white hands tightened upon the arms of the chair. The
Professor turned away towards the window.
"You are the best judge," he remarked; "but I should not think that it
was necessary to go into details."
"You have a right to know everything--you and Miss Grey. It is not a
matter on which I can well speak to her direct. Poor Jinny was the best
of women, but she was open to flattery, and liable to be misled by
designing persons. She was untrue to me, Grey. It is a hard thing to say
of the dead, but she was untrue to me. She fled to Auckland with a man
whom she had known before her marriage. The brig which carried them
foundered, and not a soul was saved."
"This is very painful, O'Brien," said the Professor, with a deprecatory
motion of his hand. "I cannot see, however, how it affects your relation
to my sister."
"I have eased my conscience," said O'Brien, rising from his chair; "I
have told you all that there is to tell. I should not like the story to
reach you through any lips but my own."
"You are right, O'Brien. Your action has been most honourable and
considerate. But you are not to blame in the matter, save that perhaps
you showed a little precipitancy in choosing a life-partner without due
care and inquiry."
O'Brien drew his hand across his eyes.
"Poor girl!" he cried. "God help me, I love her still. But I must go."
"You will lunch with us?"
"No, Professor; I have my packing still to do. I have already bade Miss
Grey adieu. In two months I shall see you again."
"You will probably find me a married man."
"Married!"
"Yes, I have been thinking of it."
"My dear Professor, let me congratulate you with all my heart. I had no
idea. Who is the lady?"
"Mrs. O'James is her name--a widow of the same nationality as yourself.
But to return to matters of importance, I should be very happy to see
the proofs of your paper upon the vermiform appendix. I may be able to
furnish you with material for a footnote or two."
"Your assistance will be invaluable to me," said O'Brien, with
enthusiasm, and the two men parted in the hall. The Professor walked
back into the dining-room, where his sister was already seated at the
luncheon-table.
"I shall be married at the registrar's," he remarked; "I should strongly
recommend you to do the same."
Professor Ainslie Grey was as good as his word. A fortnight's cessation
of his classes gave him an opportunity which was too good to let pass.
Mrs. O'James was an orphan, without relations and almost without friends
in the country. There was no obstacle in the way of a speedy wedding.
They were married, accordingly, in the quietest manner possible, and
went off to Cambridge together, where the Professor and his charming
wife were present at several academic observances, and varied the
routine of their honeymoon by incursions into biological laboratories
and medical libraries. Scientific friends were loud in their
congratulations, not only upon Mrs. Grey's beauty, but upon the unusual
quickness and intelligence she displayed in discussing physiological
questions. The Professor was himself astonished at the accuracy of her
information. "You have a remarkable range of knowledge for a woman,
Jeannette," he remarked upon more than one occasion. He was even
prepared to admit that her cerebrum might be of the normal weight.
One foggy, drizzling morning they returned to Birchespool, for the next
day would reopen the session, and Professor Ainslie Grey prided himself
upon having never once in his life failed to appear in his lecture-room
at the very stroke of the hour. Miss Ada Grey welcomed them with a
constrained cordiality, handed over the keys of office to the new
mistress. Mrs. Grey pressed her warmly to remain, but she explained that
she had already accepted an invitation which would engage her for some
months. The same evening she departed for the south of England.
A couple of days later the maid carried a card just after breakfast into
the library where the Professor sat revising his morning lecture. It
announced the rearrival of Dr. James M'Murdo O'Brien. Their meeting was
effusively genial on the part of the younger man, and coldly precise on
that of his former teacher.
"You see there have been changes," said the Professor.
"So I heard. Miss Grey told me in her letters, and I read the notice in
the _British Medical Journal_. So it's really married you are. How
quickly and quietly you have managed it all!"
"I am constitutionally averse to anything in the nature of show or
ceremony. My wife is a sensible woman--I may even go the length of
saying that, for a woman, she is abnormally sensible. She quite agreed
with me in the course which I have adopted."
"And your research on Vallisneria?"
"This matrimonial incident has interrupted it, but I have resumed my
classes, and we shall soon be quite in harness again."
"I must see Miss Grey before I leave England. We have corresponded, and
I think that all will be well. She must come out with me. I don't think
I could go without her."
The Professor shook his head.
"Your nature is not so weak as you pretend," he said. "Questions of this
sort are, after all, quite subordinate to the great duties of life."
O'Brien smiled.
"You would have me take out my Celtic soul and put in a Saxon one," he
said. "Either my brain is too small or my heart is too big. But when may
I call and pay my respects to Mrs. Grey? Will she be at home this
afternoon?"
"She is at home now. Come into the morning-room. She will be glad to
make your acquaintance."
They walked across the linoleum-paved hall. The Professor opened the
door of the room, and walked in, followed by his friend. Mrs. Grey was
sitting in a basket-chair by the window, light and fairy-like in a
loose-flowing, pink morning gown. Seeing a visitor, she rose and swept
towards them. The Professor heard a dull thud behind him. O'Brien had
fallen back into a chair, with his hand pressed tight to his side.
"Jinny!" he gasped--"Jinny!"
Mrs. Grey stopped dead in her advance, and stared at him with a face
from which every expression had been struck out, save one of
astonishment and horror. Then with a sharp intaking of the breath she
reeled, and would have fallen had the Professor not thrown his long,
nervous arm round her.
"Try this sofa," said he.
She sank back among the cushions with the same white, cold, dead look
upon her face. The Professor stood with his back to the empty fireplace
and glanced from the one to the other.
"So, O'Brien," he said at last, "you have already made the acquaintance
of my wife!"
"Your wife," cried his friend hoarsely. "She is no wife of yours. God
help me, she is _my_ wife."
The Professor stood rigidly upon the hearth-rug. His long, thin fingers
were intertwined, and his head had sunk a little forward. His two
companions had eyes only for each other.
"Jinny!" said he.
"James!"
"How could you leave me so, Jinny? How could you have the heart to do
it? I thought you were dead. I mourned for your death--ay, and you have
made me mourn for you living. You have withered my life."
She made no answer, but lay back among the cushions with her eyes still
fixed upon him.
"Why do you not speak?"
"Because you are right, James. I have treated you cruelly--shamefully.
But it is not as bad as you think."
"You fled with De Horta."
"No, I did not. At the last moment my better nature prevailed. He went
alone. But I was ashamed to come back after what I had written to you. I
could not face you. I took passage alone to England under a new name,
and here I have lived ever since. It seemed to me that I was beginning
life again. I knew that you thought I was drowned. Who could have
dreamed that Fate would throw us together again! When the Professor
asked me----"
She stopped and gave a gasp for breath.
"You are faint," said the Professor--"keep the head low; it aids the
cerebral circulation." He flattened down the cushion. "I am sorry to
leave you, O'Brien; but I have my class duties to look to. Possibly I
may find you here when I return."
With a grim and rigid face he strode out of the room. Not one of the
three hundred students who listened to his lecture saw any change in his
manner and appearance, or could have guessed that the austere gentleman
in front of them had found out at last how hard it is to rise above
one's humanity. The lecture over, he performed his routine duties in the
laboratory, and then drove back to his own house. He did not enter by
the front door, but passed through the garden to the folding glass
casement which led out of the morning-room. As he approached he heard
his wife's voice and O'Brien's in loud and animated talk. He paused
among the rose-bushes, uncertain whether to interrupt them or no.
Nothing was further from his nature than to play the eavesdropper; but
as he stood, still hesitating, words fell upon his ear which struck him
rigid and motionless.
"You are still my wife, Jinny," said O'Brien; "I forgive you from the
bottom of my heart. I love you, and I have never ceased to love you,
though you had forgotten me."
"No, James, my heart was always in Melbourne. I have always been yours.
I thought that it was better for you that I should seem to be dead."
"You must choose between us now, Jinny. If you determine to remain here,
I shall not open my lips. There shall be no scandal. If, on the other
hand, you come with me, it's little I care about the world's opinion.
Perhaps I am as much to blame as you are. I thought too much of my work
and too little of my wife."
The Professor heard the cooing, caressing laugh which he knew so well.
"I shall go with you, James," she said.
"And the Professor----?"
"The poor Professor! But he will not mind much, James; he has no heart."
"We must tell him our resolution."
"There is no need," said Professor Ainslie Grey, stepping in through the
open casement. "I have overheard the latter part of your conversation. I
hesitated to interrupt you before you came to a conclusion."
O'Brien stretched out his hand and took that of the woman. They stood
together with the sunshine on their faces. The Professor paused at the
casement with his hands behind his back and his long black shadow fell
between them.
"You have come to a wise decision," said he. "Go back to Australia
together, and let what has passed be blotted out of your lives."
"But you--you----" stammered O'Brien.
The Professor waved his hand.
"Never trouble about me," he said.
The woman gave a gasping cry.
"What can I do or say?" she wailed. "How could I have foreseen this? I
thought my old life was dead. But it has come back again, with all its
hopes and its desires. What can I say to you, Ainslie? I have brought
shame and disgrace upon a worthy man. I have blasted your life. How you
must hate and loathe me! I wish to God that I had never been born!"
"I neither hate nor loathe you, Jeannette," said the Professor quietly.
"You are wrong in regretting your birth, for you have a worthy mission
before you in aiding the life-work of a man who has shown himself
capable of the highest order of scientific research. I cannot with
justice blame you personally for what has occurred. How far the
individual monad is to be held responsible for hereditary and engrained
tendencies, is a question upon which science has not yet said her last
word."
He stood with his finger-tips touching, and his body inclined as one who
is gravely expounding a difficult and impersonal subject. O'Brien had
stepped forward to say something, but the other's attitude and manner
froze the words upon his lips. Condolence or sympathy would be an
impertinence to one who could so easily merge his private griefs in
broad questions of abstract philosophy.
"It is needless to prolong the situation," the Professor continued, in
the same measured tones. "My brougham stands at the door. I beg that you
will use it as your own. Perhaps it would be as well that you should
leave the town without unnecessary delay. Your things, Jeannette, shall
be forwarded."
O'Brien hesitated with a hanging head.
"I hardly dare offer you my hand," he said.
"On the contrary. I think that of the three of us you come best out of
the affair. You have nothing to be ashamed of."
"Your sister--"
"I shall see that the matter is put to her in its true light. Good-bye!
Let me have a copy of your recent research. Good-bye, Jeannette!"
"Good-bye!"
Their hands met, and for one short moment their eyes also. It was only a
glance, but for the first and last time the woman's intuition cast a
light for itself into the dark places of a strong man's soul. She gave a
little gasp, and her other hand rested for an instant, as white and as
light as thistle-down, upon his shoulder.
"James, James!" she cried. "Don't you see that he is stricken to the
heart?"
He turned her quietly away from him.
"I am not an emotional man," he said. "I have my duties--my research on
Vallisneria. The brougham is there. Your cloak is in the hall. Tell John
where you wish to be driven. He will faring you anything you need. Now
go."
His last two words were so sudden, so volcanic, in such contrast to his
measured voice and mask-like face, that they swept the two away from
him. He closed the door behind them and paced slowly up and down the
room. Then he passed into the library and looked out over the wire
blind. The carriage was rolling away. He caught a last glimpse of the
woman who had been his wife. He saw the feminine droop of her head, and
the curve of her beautiful throat.
Under some foolish, aimless impulse, he took a few quick steps towards
the door. Then he turned, and, throwing himself into his study chair, he
plunged back into his work.
* * * * *
There was little scandal about this singular domestic incident. The
Professor had few personal friends, and seldom went into society. His
marriage had been so quiet that most of his colleagues had never ceased
to regard him as a bachelor. Mrs. Esdaile and a few others might talk,
but their field for gossip was limited, for they could only guess
vaguely at the cause of this sudden separation.
The Professor was as punctual as ever at his classes, and as zealous in
directing the laboratory work of those who studied under him. His own
private researches were pushed on with feverish energy. It was no
uncommon thing for his servants, when they came down of a morning, to
hear the shrill scratchings of his tireless pen, or to meet him on the
staircase as he ascended, grey and silent, to his room. In vain his
friends assured him that such a life must undermine his health. He
lengthened his hours until day and night were one long, ceaseless task.
Gradually under this discipline a change came over his appearance. His
features, always inclined to gauntness, became even sharper and more
pronounced. There were deep lines about his temples and across his brow.
His cheek was sunken and his complexion bloodless. His knees gave under
him when he walked; and once when passing out of his lecture-room he
fell and had to be assisted to his carriage.
This was just before the end of the session; and soon after the holidays
commenced, the professors who still remained in Birchespool were shocked
to hear that their brother of the chair of physiology had sunk so low
that no hopes could be entertained of his recovery. Two eminent
physicians had consulted over his case without being able to give a name
to the affection from which he suffered. A steadily decreasing vitality
appeared to be the only symptom--a bodily weakness which left the mind
unclouded. He was much interested himself in his own case, and made
notes of his subjective sensations as an aid to diagnosis. Of his
approaching end he spoke in his usual unemotional and somewhat pedantic
fashion. "It is the assertion," he said, "of the liberty of the
individual cell as opposed to the cell-commune. It is the dissolution of
a co-operative society. The process is one of great interest."
And so one grey morning his co-operative society dissolved. Very quietly
and softly he sank into his eternal sleep. His two physicians felt some
slight embarrassment when called upon to fill in his certificate.
"It is difficult to give it a name," said one.
"Very," said the other.
"If he were not such an unemotional man, I should have said that he had
died from some sudden nervous shock--from, in fact, what the vulgar
would call a broken heart."
"I don't think poor Grey was that sort of a man at all."
"Let us call it cardiac, anyhow," said the other physician.
So they did so.
VIII
BEHIND THE TIMES
My first interview with Dr. James Winter was under dramatic
circumstances. It occurred at two in the morning in the bedroom of an
old country house. I kicked him twice on the white waistcoat and knocked
off his gold spectacles, while he, with the aid of a female accomplice,
stifled my angry cries in a flannel petticoat and thrust me into a warm
bath. I am told that one of my parents, who happened to be present,
remarked in a whisper that there was nothing the matter with my lungs. I
cannot recall how Dr. Winter looked at the time for I had other things
to think of, but his description of my own appearance is far from
flattering. A fluffy head, a body like a trussed goose, very bandy legs,
and feet with the soles turned inwards--those are the main items which
he can remember.
From this time onwards the epochs of my life were the periodical
assaults which Dr. Winter made upon me. He vaccinated me, he cut me for
an abscess, he blistered me for mumps. It was a world of peace, and he
the one dark cloud that threatened. But at last there came a time of
real illness--a time when I lay for months together inside my
wicker-work basket bed, and then it was that I learned that that hard
face could relax, that those country-made, creaking boots could steal
very gently to a bedside, and that that rough voice could thin into a
whisper when it spoke to a sick child.
And now the child is himself a medical man, and yet Dr. Winter is the
same as ever. I can see no change since first I can remember him, save
that perhaps the brindled hair is a trifle whiter, and the huge
shoulders a little more bowed. He is a very tall man, though he loses a
couple of inches from his stoop. That big back of his has curved itself
over sick beds until it has set in that shape. His face is of a walnut
brown, and tells of long winter drives over bleak country roads with the
wind and the rain in his teeth. It looks smooth at a little distance,
but as you approach him you see that it is shot with innumerable fine
wrinkles, like a last year's apple. They are hardly to be seen when he
is in repose, but when he laughs his face breaks like a starred glass,
and you realise then that, though he looks old, he must be older than he
looks.
How old that is I could never discover. I have often tried to find out,
and have struck his stream as high up as George the Fourth and even of
the Regency, but without ever getting quite to the source. His mind must
have been open to impressions very early, but it must also have closed
early, for the politics of the day have little interest for him, while
he is fiercely excited about questions which are entirely prehistoric.
He shakes his head when he speaks of the first Reform Bill and expresses
grave doubts as to its wisdom, and I have heard him, when he was warmed
by a glass of wine, say bitter things about Robert Peel and his
abandoning of the Corn Laws. The death of that statesman brought the
history of England to a definite close, and Dr. Winter refers to
everything which had happened since then as to an insignificant
anti-climax.
But it was only when I had myself become a medical man that I was able
to appreciate how entirely he is a survival of a past generation. He had
learned his medicine under that obsolete and forgotten system by which a
youth was apprenticed to a surgeon, in the days when the study of
anatomy was often approached through a violated grave. His views upon
his own profession are even more reactionary than his politics. Fifty
years have brought him little and deprived him of less. Vaccination was
well within the teaching of his youth, though I think he has a secret
preference for inoculation. Bleeding he would practise freely but for
public opinion. Chloroform he regards as a dangerous innovation, and he
always clicks with his tongue when it is mentioned. He has even been
known to say vain things about Laennec, and to refer to the stethoscope
as "a newfangled French toy." He carries one in his hat out of deference
to the expectations of his patients; but he is very hard of hearing, so
that it makes little difference whether he uses it or not.