It was 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 of her “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 a _Mystery_--a capital-letter
MYSTERY! And it isn’t to be divulged until we are all ready for the
_denouement_. 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. When you 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 a HEROINE, 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 the _savant_, 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 rather silly 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 had been 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!”