There was nothing mysterious about Professor Surd’s dislike for me. I
was the only poor mathematician in an exceptionally mathematical class.
The old gentleman sought the lecture-room every morning with eagerness,
and left reluctantly. For was it not a thing of joy to find seventy
young men who, individually and collectively, preferred _x_ to XX; who
had rather differentiate than dissipate; and for whom the limbs of the
heavenly bodies had more attractions than those of earthly stars upon
the spectacular stage?
So affairs went on swimmingly between the professor of mathematics
and the junior class at Polyp University. In every man of the seventy
the sage saw the logarithm of a possible La Place, of a Sturm, or of
a Newton. It was a delightful task for him to lead them through the
pleasant valleys of conic sections, and beside the still waters of the
integral calculus. Figuratively speaking, his problem was not a hard
one. He had only to manipulate and eliminate and to raise to a higher
power, and the triumphant result of examination day was assured.
But I was a disturbing element, a perplexing unknown quantity, which
had somehow crept into the work, and which seriously threatened to
impair the accuracy of his calculations. It was a touching sight to
behold the venerable mathematician as he pleaded with me not so utterly
to disregard precedent in the use of cotangents; or as he urged, with
eyes almost tearful, that ordinates were dangerous things to trifle
with. All in vain. More theorems went on to my cuff than into my head.
Never did chalk do so much work to so little purpose. And, therefore,
it came that Furnace Second was reduced to zero in Professor Surd’s
estimation. He looked upon me with all the horror which an unalgebraic
nature could inspire. I have seen the professor walk around an entire
square rather than meet the man who had no mathematics in his soul.
For Furnace Second were no invitations to Professor Surd’s house.
Seventy of the class supped in delegations around the periphery of the
professor’s tea-table. The seventy-first knew nothing of the charms of
that perfect ellipse, with its twin bunches of fuchsias and geraniums
in gorgeous precision at the two foci.
This, unfortunately enough, was no trifling deprivation. Not that I
longed especially for segments of Mrs. Surd’s justly celebrated lemon
pies; not that the spheroidal damsons of her excellent preserving had
any marked allurements; not even that I yearned to hear the professor’s
jocose table-talk about binomials, and chatty illustrations of abstruse
paradoxes. The explanation is far different. Professor Surd had a
daughter. Twenty years before, he made a proposition of marriage to the
present Mrs. S. He added a little corollary to his proposition not long
after. The corollary was a girl.
Abscissa Surd was as perfectly symmetrical as Giotto’s circle, and as
pure withal as the mathematics her father taught. It was just when
spring was coming to extract the roots of frozen-up vegetation that I
fell in love with the corollary. That she herself was not indifferent I
soon had reason to regard as a self-evident truth.
The sagacious reader will already recognize nearly all the elements
necessary to a well-ordered plot. We have introduced a heroine,
inferred a hero, and constructed a hostile parent after the most
approved model. A movement for the story, a _deus ex machina_, is alone
lacking. With considerable satisfaction I can promise a perfect novelty
in this line, a _deus ex machina_ never before offered to the public.
It would be discounting ordinary intelligence to say that I sought
with unwearying assiduity to figure my way into the stern father’s
good-will; that never did dullard apply himself to mathematics more
patiently than I; that never did faithfulness achieve such meager
reward. Then I engaged a private tutor. His instructions met with no
better success.
My tutor’s name was Jean-Marie Rivarol. He was a unique Alsatian,
though Gallic in name, thoroughly Teuton in nature; by birth a
Frenchman, by education a German. His age was thirty; his profession,
omniscience; the wolf at his door, poverty; the skeleton in his closet,
a consuming but unrequited passion. The most recondite principles of
practical science were his toys; the deepest intricacies of abstract
science, his diversions. Problems which were foreordained mysteries
to me were to him as clear as Tahoe water. Perhaps this very fact
will explain our lack of success in the relation of tutor and pupil;
perhaps the failure is alone due to my own unmitigated stupidity.
Rivarol had hung about the skirts of the university for several years,
supplying his few wants by writing for scientific journals or by
giving assistance to students who, like myself, were characterized by
a plethora of purse and a paucity of ideas; cooking, studying, and
sleeping in his attic lodgings; and prosecuting queer experiments all
by himself.
We were not long discovering that even this eccentric genius could not
transplant brains into my deficient skull. I gave over the struggle in
despair. An unhappy year dragged its slow length around. A gloomy year
it was, brightened only by occasional interviews with Abscissa, the
Abbie of my thoughts and dreams.
Commencement day was coming on apace. I was soon to go forth, with
the rest of my class, to astonish and delight a waiting world.
The professor seemed to avoid me more than ever. Nothing but the
conventionalities, I think, kept him from shaping his treatment of me
on the basis of unconcealed disgust.
At last, in the very recklessness of despair, I resolved to see him,
plead with him, threaten him if need be, and risk all my fortunes on
one desperate chance. I wrote him a somewhat defiant letter, stating my
aspirations, and, as I flattered myself, shrewdly giving him a week to
get over the first shock of horrified surprise. Then I was to call and
learn my fate.
During the week of suspense I nearly worried myself into a fever. It
was first crazy hope, and then saner despair. On Friday evening, when I
presented myself at the professor’s door, I was such a haggard, sleepy,
dragged-out specter that even Miss Jocasta, the harsh-favored maiden
sister of the Surds, admitted me with commiserate regard, and suggested
pennyroyal tea.
Professor Surd was at a faculty meeting. Would I wait?
Yes, till all was blue, if need be. Miss Abbie?
Abscissa had gone to Wheelborough to visit a school-friend. The aged
maiden hoped I would make myself comfortable, and departed to the
unknown haunts which knew Jocasta’s daily walk.
Comfortable! But I settled myself in a great uneasy chair, and waited
with the contradictory spirit common to such junctures, dreading every
step lest it should herald the man whom, of all men, I wished to see.