There was a knock at his door and in response to his call the door
opened--and she stood there.
"May I come in?" she said.
"Certainly."
Before he knew it some impulse of gallantry hoisted him to his feet. He
lifted a bundle of archeological reviews from a chair close to his desk
and waited until she sat down. The chair was nearer his than he
realized, and as Professor Binley dropped into it she was so close that
Professor Litton pushed his spectacles up to his forehead.
It was the first time she had seen his eyes except through glasses
darkly. She noted their color instantly, woman-like. They were not dull,
either, as she had imagined. A cloying fragrance saluted his nostrils.
"What are the flowers you are wearing, may I ask?" he said. He hardly
knew a harebell from a peony.
"These are hyacinths," she said. "One of the girls gave them to me. I
just pinned them on."
"Ah, hyacinths!" he murmured. "Ah yes; I've read so much about them. So
these are hyacinths! Such a pretty story the Greeks had. You remember
it, no doubt?"
She said she did; but, schoolmaster that he was, he went right on:
"Apollo loved young Hyacinthus--or Huakinthos, as the Greeks called
it--and was teaching him to throw the discus, when a jealous breeze blew
the discus aside. It struck the boy in the forehead. He fell dead, and
from his blood this flower sprang. The petals, they said, were marked
with the letters Ai, Ai!--Alas! Alas! And the poet Moschus, you
remember, in his 'Lament for Bion,' says:
"Nun huakinthe lalei ta sa grammata kai pleon aiai!
"Or, as I once Englished it--let me see, I put it into hexameters--it
was a long while ago. Ah, I have it!"
And with the orotund notes a poet assumes when reciting his own words,
he intoned:
"Now, little hyacinth, babble thy syllables--louder yet--Aiai!
Whimper with all of thy petals; a beautiful singer has perished."
Professor Binley stared at him in amazement and cried: "Charming!
Beautiful! Your own translation, you say?"
And he, somewhat shaken by her enthusiasm, waved it aside.
"A little exercise of my Freshman year. But to get back to
our--hyacinths: Theocritus, you remember, speaks of the 'lettered
hyacinth.' May I see whether we can find the words there?"
He bent forward to take and she bent forward to give the flowers. Her
hair brushed his forehead with a peculiar influence; and when their
fingers touched he noted how soft and warm her hand was. He flushed
strangely. She was flushed a little, too, possibly from
embarrassment--possibly from the warmth of the day, with its insinuation
of spring.
He pulled his spectacles over his eyes in a comfortable discomfiture and
peered at the flowers closely. And she peered, too, breathing foolishly
fast. When he could not find the living letters he shook his head and
felt again the soft touch of her hair.
"I can't find the words--can you? Your eyes are brighter than mine."
She bent closer and both their hands held the flowers. He looked down
into her hair. It struck him that it was a remarkably beautiful idea--a
woman's hair--especially hers, streaked as it was with white--silken
silver. When she shook her head a snowy thread tickled his nose
amusingly.
"I can't find anything like it," she confessed.
Then he said: "I've just remembered. Theocritus calls the hyacinth
black--_melan_--and so does Vergil. These cannot be hyacinths at all."
He was bitterly disappointed. It would have been delightful to meet the
flower in the flesh that he knew so well in literature. Doctor Martha
answered with quiet strength:
"These are hyacinths."
"But the Greeks--"
"Didn't know everything," she said; "or perhaps they referred to another
flower. But then we have dark-purple hyacinths."
"Ah!" he said. "Sappho speaks of the hyacinth as purple--_porphuron_."
Thus the modern world was reconciled with the Greek and he felt easier;
but there was a gentle forcefulness about her that surprised him. He
wondered whether she would not be interested in hearing about his
edition of Nonnus. He assumed that she would be, being evidently
intelligent. So he told her. He told her and told her, and she listened
with almost devout interest. He was still telling her when the students
in other classes stampeded to lunch with a many-hoofed clatter. When
they straggled back from lunch he was still telling her.
It was not until he was interrupted by an afternoon class of his own
that he realized how long he had talked. He apologized to Professor
Binley; but she said she was honored beyond words. She had come to ask
him a technical question in prosody, as from one professor to another;
but she had forgotten it altogether--at least she put it off to another
visit. She hastened away in a flutter, feeling slightly as if she had
been to a tryst.
Litton went without his lunch that day, but he was browsing on memories
of his visitor. He had not talked so long to a woman since he could
remember. This was the only woman who had let him talk uninterruptedly
about himself--a very superior woman, everybody said.
When he went to his room that night he was still thinking of hyacinths
and of her who had brought them to his eyes.
He knocked from his desk a book. It fell open at a page. As he picked it
up he noted that it was a copy of the anonymous old spring rhapsody, the
_Pervigilium Veneris_, with its ceaselessly reiterated refrain,
"To-morrow he shall love who never loved before." As he fell asleep it
was running through his head like a popular tune: _Cras amet qui nunquam
amavit; quique amavit cras amet_.
It struck him as an omen; but it did not terrify him.
V
Professor Martha called again to ask her question in verse technic. The
answer led to further talk and the consultation of books. She was a
trifle nearsighted and too proud to wear glasses, so she had to bend
close to the page; and her hair tickled his nose again foolishly.
Conference bred conference, and one day she asked him whether she would
dare ask him to call. He rewarded her bravery by calling. She lived in a
dormitory, with a parlor for the reception of guests. Male students were
allowed to call on only two evenings a week. Litton did not call on
those evenings; yet the fact that he called at all swept through the
town like a silent thunderbolt. The students were mysteriously apprised
of the fact that old Professor Litton and Prof. Martha Binley were
sitting up and taking notice. To the youngsters it looked like a
flirtation in an old folks' home.
Litton's very digestion was affected; his brain was in a whirl. He was
the prey of the most childish alarms; gusts of petulant emotion swept
through him if Martha were late when he called; he was mad with jealousy
if she mentioned another professor.
She was growing more careful of her appearance. A new youth had come to
her. She took fifteen years off her looks by simply fluffing her hair
out of its professorial constriction. Professor Mackail noticed it and
mentioned to Professor Litton that Professor Binley was looking ever so
much better.
"She's not half homely for such an old maid!" he said.
Professor Litton felt murder in his heart. He wanted to slay the
reprobate twice--once for daring to observe Martha's beauty and once for
his parsimony of praise.
That evening when he called on Martha he was tortured with a sullen
mood. She finally coaxed from him the astounding admission that he
suspected her of flirting with Mackail. She was too new in love to
recognize the ultimate compliment of his distress. She was horrified by
his distrust, and so hurt that she broke forth in a storm of tears and
denunciation. Their precious evening ended in a priceless quarrel of
amazing violence. He stamped down the outer steps as she stamped up the
inner.
For three days they did not meet and the university wore almost visible
mourning for its pets. Poor Litton had not known that the human heart
could suffer such agony. He was fairly burned alive with loneliness and
resentment--like another Hercules blistering in the shirt of Nessus. And
Martha was suffering likewise as Jason's second wife was consumed in
the terrible poisoned robe that Medea sent her.
One evening a hollow-eyed Litton crept up the dormitory steps and asked
the overjoyed maid for Professor Binley. When she appeared he caught her
in his arms as if she were a spar and he a drowning sailor. They made up
like young lovers and swore oaths that they would never quarrel
again--oaths which, fortunately for the variety of their future
existence, they found capable of infinite breaking and mending.
Each denied that the other could possibly love each. He decried himself
as a stupid, ugly old fogy; and she cried him up as the wisest and most
beautiful and best of men. Since best sounded rather weak, she called
him the bestest; and he did not charge the impossible word against her
as he had against Teed. He did not remember that Teed had ever used such
language. Nobody could ever have used such language, because nobody was
ever like her!
And when she said that he could not possibly love a homely, scrawny old
maid like her, he delivered a eulogy that would have struck Aphrodite,
rising milkily from the sea, as a slight exaggeration. And as for old
maid, he cried in a curious blending of puerility and scholasticism:
"Old maid, do you say? And has my little Margy-wargles forgotten what
Sappho said of an old maid? We'd have lost it if some old scholiast on
the stupid old sophist Hermogenes hadn't happened to quote it to
explain the word glukumalon--an apple grafted on a quince. Sappho said
this old maid was like--let me see!--'like the sweet apple that blushes
on the top of the bough--on the tip of the topmost; and the
apple-gatherers forgot it--no, they did not forget it; they just could
not get it!' And that's you, Moggles mine! You're an old maid because
you've been out of reach of everybody. I can't climb to you; so you're
going to drop into my arms--aren't you?"
She said she supposed she was. And she did.