BYLES GRIDLEY, A. M.
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.