I
The news of Professor Gridley's death filled Middletown College with
consternation. Its one claim to distinction was gone, for in spite of the
excessive quiet of his private life, he had always cast about the obscure
little college the shimmering aura of greatness. There had been no
fondness possible for the austere old thinker, but Middletown village, as
well as the college, had been touched by his fidelity to the very moderate
attractions of his birthplace. When, as often happened, some famous figure
was seen on the streets, people used to say first, "Here to see old Grid,
I suppose," and then, "Funny how he sticks here. They say he was offered
seven thousand at the University of California." In the absence of any
known motive for this steadfastness, the village legend-making instinct
had evolved a theory that he did not wish to move away from a State of
which his father had been Governor, and where the name of Gridley was like
a patent of nobility.
And now he was gone, the last of the race. His disappearance caused the
usual amount of reminiscent talk among his neighbors. The older people
recalled the bygone scandals connected with his notorious and popular
father and intimated with knowing nods that there were plenty of other
descendants of the old Governor who were not entitled legally to bear the
name; but the younger ones, who had known only the severely ascetic life
and cold personality of the celebrated scholar, found it difficult to
connect him with such a father. In their talk they brought to mind the man
himself, his quiet shabby clothes, his big stooping frame, his sad black
eyes absent almost to vacancy as though always fixed on high and distant
thoughts; and those who had lived near him told laughing stories about the
crude and countrified simplicity of his old aunt's housekeeping--it was
said that the president of Harvard had been invited to join them once in a
Sunday evening meal of crackers and milk--but the general tenor of feeling
was, as it had been during his life, of pride in his great fame and in the
celebrated people who had come to see him.
This pride warmed into something like affection when the day after his
death, came the tidings that he had bequeathed to his college the Gino
Sprague Fallères portrait of himself. Of course, at that time, no one in
Middletown had seen the picture, for the philosopher's sudden death had
occurred, very dramatically, actually during the last sitting. He had, in
fact, had barely one glimpse of it himself, as, according to Fallères's
invariable rule no one, not even the subject of the portrait, had been
allowed to examine an unfinished piece of work. But though Middletown had
no first-hand knowledge of the picture, there could be no doubt about the
value of the canvas. As soon as it was put on exhibition in London, from
every art-critic in the three nations who claimed Fallères for their own
there rose a wail that this masterpiece was to be buried in an unknown
college in an obscure village in barbarous America. It was confidently
stated that it would be saved from such an unfitting resting-place by
strong action on the part of an International Committee of Artists; but
Middletown, though startled by its own good fortune, clung with Yankee
tenacity to its rights. Raphael Collin, of Paris, commenting on this in
the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, cried out whimsically upon the woes of an
art-critic's life, "as if there were not already enough wearisome
pilgrimages necessary to remote and uncomfortable places with jaw-breaking
names, which must nevertheless be visited for the sake of a single
picture!" And a burlesque resolution to carry off the picture by force was
adopted at the dinner in London given in honor of Fallères the evening
before he set off for America to attend the dedicatory exercises with
which Middletown planned to install its new treasure.
For the little rustic college rose to its one great occasion. Bold in
their confidence in their dead colleague's name, the college authorities
sent out invitations to all the great ones of the country. Those to whom
Gridley was no more than a name on volumes one never read came because
the portrait was by Fallères, and those who had no interest in the world
of art came to honor the moralist whose noble clear-thinking had
simplified the intimate problems of modern life. There was the usual
residuum of those who came because the others did, and, also as usual,
they were among the most brilliant figures in the procession which filed
along, one October morning, under the old maples of Middletown campus.
It was a notable celebration. A bishop opened the exercises with prayer, a
United States senator delivered the eulogy of the dead philosopher, the
veil uncovering the portrait was drawn away by the mayor of one of
America's largest cities, himself an ardent Gridleyite, and among those
who spoke afterward were the presidents of three great universities. The
professor's family was represented but scantily. He had had one brother,
who had disappeared many years ago under a black cloud of ill report, and
one sister who had married and gone West to live. Her two sons,
middle-aged merchants from Ohio, gave the only personal note to the
occasion by their somewhat tongue-tied and embarrassed presence, for
Gridley's aunt was too aged and infirm to walk with the procession from
the Gymnasium, where it formed, to the Library building, where the
portrait was installed.
After the inevitable photographers had made their records of the memorable
gathering, the procession began to wind its many-colored way back to the
Assembly Hall, where it was to lunch. Everyone was feeling relieved that
the unveiling had gone off so smoothly, and cheerful at the prospect of
food. The undergraduates began lustily to shout their college song, which
was caught up by the holiday mood of the older ones. This cheerful
tumult gradually died away in the distance, leaving the room of the
portrait deserted in an echoing silence. A janitor began to remove the
rows of folding chairs. The celebration was over.
Into the empty room there now limped forward a small, shabby old woman
with a crutch. "I'm his aunt, that lived with him," she explained
apologetically, "and I want to see the picture."
She advanced, peering nearsightedly at the canvas. The janitor continued
stacking up chairs until he was stopped by a cry from the newcomer. She
was a great deal paler than when she came in. She was staring hard at the
portrait and now beckoned him wildly to do the same. "Look at it! Look at
it!"
Surprised, he followed the direction of her shaking hand. "Sure, it's
Professor Grid to the life!" he said admiringly.
"Look at it! Look at it!" She seemed not to be able to find any other
words.
After a prolonged scrutiny he turned to her with a puzzled line between
his eyebrows. "Since you've spoken of it, ma'am, I will say that there's a
something about the expression of the eyes ... and mouth, maybe ... that
ain't just the professor. He was more absent-like. It reminds me of
somebody else ... of some face I've seen ..."
She hung on his answer, her mild, timid old face drawn like a mask of
tragedy. "Who? Who?" she prompted him.
For a time he could not remember, staring at the new portrait and
scratching his head. Then it came to him suddenly: "Why, sure, I ought to
ha' known without thinkin', seeing the other picture as often as every
time I've swep' out the president's office. And Professor Grid always
looked like him some, anyhow."
The old woman leaned against the wall, her crutch trembling in her hand.
Her eyes questioned him mutely.
"Why, ma'am, who but his own father, to be sure ... the old Governor."