CARDINGTON
Leigh stood before the mirror in his bedroom and wrestled with his tie
in preparation for the bishop's dinner. The week had brought in due
course that procession of events which makes the opening of a college
term a period of exceptional activity, but for the first time he had
passed through the trial untaxed. He was slowly recovering from a
sense of disappointment similar to that felt by a metropolitan at some
Arcadian retreat, when he stands on the lonely platform at nightfall,
listening to the trilling of the frogs increasing as the rumble of the
train diminishes in the distance, and experiences a wild impulse to
return at once to the fulness of life from which he has fled.
In the ample leisure afforded by his new position Leigh discovered an
analogous consciousness of loss, with its consequent dismay. He had
known many solitary hours when, as a student in the Lick Observatory,
he had searched the skies for long months together; but the experience
was overlaid by one more recent, so that now, with the varied life of a
great university still ringing in his ears, he looked about and asked
himself disconsolately if this were all. Had he plumbed the
possibilities of the place in so short a time? And, if so, what was
left for him in the year to come?
An answer to this question was suggested by his present occupation. If
he could now and again leave the rarefied atmosphere of the hill for
some such diversion as the one in prospect, he would return better able
to make good use of that solitude in which real achievement is shaped.
As yet there seemed small chance that such diversions would become
sufficiently numerous to interfere with his work. He had met the other
nine members of the faculty, and while he found them courteous, he
became at once aware that their attitude toward him as a newcomer was
one of indifference. The smallness of their number did not operate to
draw them more closely together, as might have been supposed. Each
returned to the city at the end of his day's work, and was lost to view
in his own peculiar circle. Some time, no doubt, their social
obligation to the new professor in the tower would become imperative,
but the time was not yet. Meanwhile, he felt himself regarded warily,
an attitude which to his friendly Western nature seemed to betoken a
vague disapprobation. He did not realise that there was nothing
personal in this aloofness, except in so far as he personified a larger
life, whose hopeful outlook stirred in more cabined natures an
unacknowledged resentment. Here he found no remnant of the traditional
hospitality of the borderland. The conditions of this old community of
specialised interests were the opposite of those he had encountered in
the West, where a stranger was welcomed on the slim credentials of his
appearance.
Leigh had been told that the road to promotion led through the small
college, and he had taken that road hopefully; but now he felt like one
who had drifted into an eddy below the bank, while the great stream of
the national educational tendency went tossing and foaming past.
These unaccustomed circumstances gave an unwonted significance to the
simple occupation in which he was employed, and focussed his mind
expectantly upon the event which, in the fuller life he had left, would
have been accepted as a matter of course.
His preparations completed, he donned his overcoat and hat, and stood
looking from his window over the valley toward the west. The sun was
setting in an angry splendour that threatened storms, Even as he
looked, the wind attained increased velocity and began to whine and
whistle about the solid masonry of the tower. Leigh drew in the heavy,
leaded panes against the possible beating of the rain. He passed his
fingers lightly down the cold stone casement, thinking of its immense
thickness and of the beauty of its careful cutting. Never had he lived
in such rooms. His was an habitat fit for a prince of the Middle Ages,
and some glimpse of the fascination which this secluded life might come
to possess was given him at that moment. Evidently, Professor
Cardington, his neighbour across the hall, had felt it and succumbed;
else how could a man of his extraordinary talent have remained so long
buried, as it were, from the world?
Revolving this mystery in his mind, he passed into his sitting-room on
the eastern side of the building. It was pleasant to think that
Cardington was to accompany him to the bishop's, but as it was still
too soon to call for him, he stood for a few moments looking down upon
the campus. The giant shadow of the Hall had now crept to the verge of
the plateau. There was no human figure on its bleak expanse, but the
small trees which found scant nourishment in the rock beneath swayed
gently in the broken wind, like a line of sentries marking time. In
the centre of the line the flagpole sprang up, thin and white, lifting
the stars and stripes into the lurid light above the shadow. He could
hear the whipping of the halyards against the pole; but suddenly the
sound ceased, the flag began to flutter downward till its colours were
quenched, and only the gilded ball above now caught the sun's last
rays. Straining his gaze, he saw the janitor fold the flag on the
grass and carry it within. Then darkness seemed to fall like a canopy,
beneath which the lights of the city trembled into view.
A moment later he stood in Cardington's doorway, and looked with relief
upon the sight presented to his eyes. The flickering fire in the
grate, the bewildering congeries of books, statues, and furniture, were
doubly homelike by contrast with Leigh's late vision of the descending
night without. The old caretaker of the tower was wont to say that she
never knew a neater man than Professor Cardington, or a more disorderly
room than his. The accumulation of articles in the room seemed to
symbolise the owner's mental furniture, while his personal neatness was
a habit acquired during his stay at West Point, where he had once
occupied the chair of a modern language. There was a suggestion of the
soldier also in his unbending back as he sat at his desk, so absorbed
in his work that he did not at first look up to see who had answered
his invitation to enter.
The face he turned upon his visitor presently was stern and grey in
effect, like that of a man who has seen service. His blue eyes, though
pale in tone, were brilliant, as if the intellect behind them burned
with steady intensity and force. Nature had concealed his true quality
behind a baffling mask, for there was not a line in his face to hint of
his sensitive spirit, or of the humorous moods that swept over him in
unexpected gusts. Now his aspect brightened, as from a warmth within.
"Come in, Mr. Leigh," he cried cheerily. "Come in. I thought it was
some student who wished to ask me what use there was in studying Latin.
I am just outlining an article on the Roman Forum for the new
encyclopaedia. You might like to see Boni's latest contribution, and
the photographs I took myself last summer."
He reached for his meerschaum pipe, and paused to gaze with a smoker's
admiration at the red-brown perfection of the polished bowl.
"But you have n't forgotten the dinner?" Leigh asked, perceiving that
the other was preparing to settle back in his chair for one of those
discursive talks in which his guests delighted.
"The dinner! I had quite forgotten it." And he put down the pipe with
evident reluctance. "Such is the power of preoccupation."
"We 're a tall set of men here," Leigh said, as the professor rose to
his feet. "You and the bishop and I would measure eighteen feet or
more, placed one above the other."
"Pelion on Ossa!" Cardington cried. "How much more impressive it makes
us seem than if you had merely stated that each of us was six feet
tall! It takes an astronomer to calculate great distances. I quite
compassionate those little fellows, our colleagues." His eyes twinkled
behind his rimless spectacles. "Just amuse yourself with these
photographs awhile. Not in your line, perhaps, but interesting to us
glow-worms that flit about in ruinous places. I 'll be with you in a
few moments."
Even from the room beyond he continued the conversation in his own odd
manner, passing to antipodal subjects by paths of association beyond
the guess of an imagination less vagrant than his own. With Cardington
conversation was a fine art. He loved the adequate or picturesque word
as a miner loves an ingot of gold, yet he was able to display his
linguistic stores without incurring the charge of pedantry, much as
certain women can carry without offence clothes that would smother a
more insignificant personality.
"We still have a few minutes to spare," he announced, when he presently
reappeared. "Now, which will you have, a Roman Catholic, or an
Episcopalian, or a Presbyterian beverage,--Benedictine, port wine, or
whiskey?"
Leigh's mood expanded in response to the hospitality. Here was a
little fling of the spirit of which he stood in need, a promise of
comradeship that was all the more welcome from the fact that his other
colleagues had kept him waiting in the vestibule of their regard.
"I'll drink your health in a little whiskey," he replied with alacrity.
"Quite right," Cardington commented, producing a bottle of Scotch. "I
hope you 'll find that this has the true Calvinistic flavour. And
here's to you likewise. May you yet discover the length, the depth,
and the uses of all the canals of Mars." Over the rim of his glass his
eyes began to brighten in a manner which his guest already knew to be a
prophecy of something good. "That was an excellent jest of the
bishop's you told me of yesterday, calling you Peter when he handed you
the keys of the door that leads to heaven. Now what did you say in
reply?"
"Nothing," Leigh confessed. "He didn't give me fair warning of what
was coming."
"Then you lost the opportunity of your life. If you had only said,
'Thank you, my Lord!' Even a Yankee bishop would have had no objection
to being my-lorded, you know. Ah, that would have been the retort
courteous, and the story is incomplete without it. By your kind
permission I shall tell it with that addendum."
"A footnote by Professor Cardington," Leigh suggested.
"No, no, not at all. I 'll work it into the text as your own. The
story must go down in history along with the classic jest in regard to
the position of the statue's outstretched palm. The bishop told you
that, no doubt, anticipating my own good offices."
"It may interest you to know," he went on, as they began to descend the
stairs, "that you are to meet a very charming young lady to-night.
Miss Wycliffe is a very remarkable young woman in some respects. Have
you yet had the pleasure of making her acquaintance?"
"What is she like?" Leigh asked, wondering whether the answer would
suggest in any way the young woman he had met the morning of his
arrival.
"I shall not allow my enthusiasm to betray me into an inadequate
description," Cardington declared. "I could no more make the subject
clear to you than you could explain to me the _n_th degree of _x+z_, if
there is any such expression in algebra, which I should n't be
surprised to discover is the case."
"Then I shall have to possess my soul in patience," Leigh answered,
with apparent indifference.
When they emerged from the shadow of the Hall, and plunged between the
lines of maples, they were obliged to go in single file, for the
narrowness of the way. The young mathematician glanced at the last
melancholy glow of the sunset which spread out in a faint, fan-shaped
aurora above a dun rampart of clouds. His love of nature was no less
keen than his appreciation of people and events. The mathematician and
the poet held alternate sway over him. This di-psychic quality was
evidenced by the rapidity with which the expression of his eye would
frequently change from cold calculation to a certain rapt observation,
as if he looked up from a complicated problem to contemplate a glimpse
of blue distance. Thus it was that he appreciated to the full the
panorama spread out before him, though his mind was intent upon another
subject; or rather, it might be said that the sight gave warmth and
colouring to his thought. He had passed the place of that first
meeting several times during the week, and never without a vivid
remembrance of it. If the young woman who had made such an impression
upon him were the bishop's daughter, why had he not seen her in the
interim, at the initial service in the chapel when visitors were
present, upon the grounds, or in the streets of the city? Perhaps she
had been away, and had just returned. At all events, he should know
before long.
Of one thing he felt assured. If Miss Wycliffe turned out to be some
one else, she would hold no interest for him, not even if she possessed
all the indescribable qualities of which Cardington had hinted.
Speculating upon this possibility, he scarcely listened now to the
words of his companion swinging on ahead, as they came brokenly to his
ears in the gusts of wind.