Whether the Professor would have made any alterations or amendments
in his lecture, it is difficult to say; that he did not is due to the
fact that his eye fell upon a little photograph, which hung over his
fireplace. As he sits there, thinking over what Ned has told him, and
laughing at the idea of Tom’s being really in love, he gazes on this
little photograph, and smiles. The Professor has one or two real art
treasures, but nothing that he values quite as much as this fading
picture. This is the only copy in existence; and this hangs there,
and will hang there until the Professor dies. How well he remembers
the morning when the two boys, whom he loves so well, rushed into his
room, and left it there! As he looks at it now, there is an expression
of tenderness on his plain but strongly cut features that would greatly
astonish those of his pupils who only know him as a crusty instructor.
The Professor is somewhat crusty, it must be owned. It is, however,
an acquired and not a natural crustiness. Cause, the fact that at
thirty years of age he discovered that he cared more for a certain Miss
Spencer than for all the world beside. On intimating this fact to her,
she told him that she should always value his friendship; and that she
hoped soon to introduce to him her cousin Hugh, “who is,” she added
quietly, “to become my husband.” After this the Professor withdrew
almost entirely from society, and plunged deeper and deeper into study.
Before many years his reputation was cosmopolitan, his head bald, and
his life a matter of routine. Boys came and went; and at intervals he
repeated before them much of what he knew. It is to these two boys, of
whom he thinks now, as he gazes on the picture over the mantel, that he
owes his rescue from this lethargic life.
What does he see in the picture? He sees behind a chair, in which a
boy is sitting, another boy with soft, curling brown hair, deep blue
eyes, and dazzling complexion. His features are delicately cut; but the
especial beauty of his face is the brilliancy of color in his hair,
eyes, and complexion. There is the freshness of youth on his features;
and his whole attitude, as he leans over his companion, is full of that
quaint grace of boyish tenderness so indefinable and so transitory.
The boy in the chair has a face full of strength and weakness. The
photograph makes him appear the more striking of the two, though the
less handsome. The sunny sweetness of the first face, though it never
alters, never becomes wearisome; but the second face is now all love,
now disfigured by scorn and hatred, now full of intellect, and glowing
with animation, now sullen and morose. The complexion is olive, the
eyes brown, the lips strongly cut, yet so mobile as to be capable of
every variety of earnest and sneering expression. The face is always,
in all its varying phases, the face of one who is not dissatisfied but
unsatisfied. This is what the Professor sees, as the firelight throws
its glimmer over the room, making grotesque shadows waver fitfully on
the pictures and books around him, as well as on the heavy curtains
that hide the rays of afternoon light which struggle through the leafy
boughs of the old elms in the yard without.
As the Professor sits there thinking, he seems to recall again the
first visit of Tom and Ned to his room. Tom is a lovely boy,――the
original of the standing figure in the photograph; and the Professor
had been attracted by his face once or twice when he had met him in the
yard, soon after his entrance into college. Still he is surprised, one
evening, when he hears a knock at his door, and this Freshman enters
half shyly. The Professor asks him to be seated, and then looks at him
inquiringly.
“I was awfully homesick,” says Tom, with perfect trustfulness; “and
mother told me that you were once a very dear friend of hers; so I
thought I would come up and see you.” The Professor is bewildered.
Still he is a gentleman; so he smiles, and says to Tom:――
“Pray be seated. Your mother is well, I trust.”
“Oh, yes!” says Tom. “Perhaps, as she hasn’t seen you since before I
was born, I ought to have said who she was. Her name was Spencer.”