They had not gone a hundred feet when Marvin thought he heard a bar of
sacred music floating out of space. It was a man’s voice, and the words
were faint, but they sounded like “joy of heaven to earth come down.”
And they seemed to lead his eye up the hill to a point where the path
entered a glade in the cedars. He could see a spot of yellow there, as
if buttercups made a patch of orpiment.
Fixing his eyes on the gold he presently saw a slender form emerge from
the cedars. He did not need to be told who it was—that slow step, that
silvery halo beneath the old straw hat.
The dog silently sprang forward, and Marvin gave chase. The hill was
steep, and the chemist arrived with just enough breath for four words:
“Good morning. Dr. Rich.”
“Good morning, sir. Sit down and rest. Your heart is not so strong as it
ought to be at your age.”
Marvin threw himself down, and the old man set down his basket of
vegetables, beside which Agricola at once went on guard.
“You look as if the enemy had made you a gift.”
“Only this,” panted Marvin, showing his gloved hand.
“But gift,” smiled Dr. Rich, “has a special sense in German. It means
love-gift, hence love-potion, hence poison. Were you not gassed?”
“No, this is only the poison of influenza, and I’m grateful for it. It
brings me here.”
The doctor sat down and plucked a buttercup.
“I think I can understand your feeling. You have escaped from the
poisoned air of cities into purer air. There is not a poisonous miasma
in all this region, and there are few poisonous flowers. These stamens
are male, but they suggest only the beauty of Persian gold, not the
blunder by which the Creeks called a certain substance arsenic, the male
element. From this hillside you may have the illusion of elysium, where
the mind moves freely and finds all things harmless. When you get your
breath, I should be glad to hear if you have hopes of elysium issuing
from war.”
“I have hopes of chemistry, sir.”
“You are a chemist, captain?”
“Yes, but please drop the title. Please call me Marvin.”
“Well, Marvin, you shall dream of a chemical heaven as much as you
please while you sojourn here. And you shall rob my garden without
asking permission. Agricola, give your new friend some strawberries.”
Agricola moved the basket over and politely wheedled.
“Not for me, governor. Strawberries picked by the editor of Tacitus are
too expensive for a Mahan.”
The old New Englander looked pleased, but he was dry about it.
“The name Mahan is Irish. I’ve no doubt your forefathers blarneyed
Agricola in the same fashion. But at least take some lettuce. You shall
not be like the poor fellow in Aristophanes, and take your sorrowful
leave without a lettuce.”
“But I’ve been invited to dinner.”
“Good enough! Is the heart all right now?”
Marvin arose, and the two men proceeded down the path.
“Where are you camping?”
“I’d like to camp on the Duckling.”
“So do. You are as welcome as sunlight.”
“Dr. Rich, the sign is not quite so hospitable as you are.”
“A sign? Has my daughter actually forbidden trespass?”
“Oh, not so bad as that, but it’s nailed to a pine. Dr. Rich, pines are
salable.”
“To you?”
“Yes, sir, and so is the island. And were these the days of marriage by
barter, I’d offer you all my worldly goods for your daughter.”
“Go slow, young man. In the first place, it’s her island, not mine.”
“Hers?”
“It is. She has owned it since she was a baby.”
“Then I wish to make love to the owner.”
The old man stopped short in his tracks. He reached out and plucked a
spray of cedar—flat, evergreen, like a flower so loved and pressed that
it could never lose its fragrance. The spray trembled a little as he
held it.
“Are you serious?”
“I was never more serious.”
There was a long silence, during which the old man gazed at the
Laurentians and turned the spray of cedar in his fingers.
“Dr. Rich, when I say make love, I mean for the next fifty years, but so
help me God, it shall never be unwelcome love.”
The old scholar laid a hand on his shoulder.
“In such matters, my boy, you are an open book that any man may read.
But it can’t be three hours since you met her.”
“Yes, it sounds like a freshman.”
“Not necessarily. Landor was thirty-six when he first met his wife. He
vowed that she was the nicest girl in the room and that he’d marry her.
He did so within six weeks, and lived to repent. But Jean’s father first
met his wife when he was forty-six, and married her within a week, and
has warmed his hands by that immortal fire till this very hour. How old
are you?”
“Twenty-six, sir.”
“Just the age of the son I lost.”
“Dr. Rich, she told me. If you could find it in your heart to let me try
to take his place so long as we both shall live, you’d make up to me for
all my disappointments.”
“In what have you been disappointed?”
“I have wished to study the innermost nature of matter. Instead I must
earn my living as a chemical engineer.”
“You have no desire for commercial success?”
“Not the slightest.”
The old man caught at the cedar tree as if to steady himself before a
firing squad.
“My son, I will not stand in your way.”
Then he slowly proceeded down the path, glancing neither to left nor to
right.
“Marvin, I assume that you will not be precipitate. Give her time. I
wish I were Laban, and could make you serve seven years.”
“I’m game, sir.”
“Better keep off business topics. She’s patriotic, but she’s like the
girls who mobbed Cato. She can’t be driven.”
“What had Cato done?”
“He wanted their earrings to convert into war galleys. He was determined
to crush Carthaginian competition in business. They declined, not that
they loved Rome less but that they loved earrings more. And my daughter
loves her island.”
Marvin sighed deeply as he began to see the complications ahead of him,
but was recalled to the present by his companion.
“How long is yonder grain boat?”
“About four hundred and twenty feet.”
“Correct to the foot. And it’s about the length of the Egyptian
transport used by Augustus to ruin Rome. He had lectured his nobles for
not marrying, but he brought their farmers into competition with
Egyptian slaves. By the same token, though our friends across the river
are not Egyptian slaves, the entire Canadian crop will go into storage
this year, and in 1920 American wheat will not bring what it cost to
raise it.”