When Tredennis found himself standing out in the street, half an hour
later, it was this picture which remained in his mind, and no other. If
an effort had been required to retain the impression upon his mental
retina he would have made the effort with the deliberate intention of
excluding all else; but no effort was needed.
"I suppose it is sentiment," he said, taking his cigar out of his mouth,
and looking up at the starlit sky. "I have no doubt it is sentiment. A
man who has lived mooning alone as long as I have, drifts in that
direction naturally, I suppose. And I am a rigid, old-fashioned fellow.
I don't fit in with the rest of it. But, with her child in her arms and
her gewgaws laid on the table, I seemed to see something I knew. I'll
think of that, and not of the other."
It was just at this moment that he caught sight of a figure approaching
him from a distance of a few yards. It was the figure of a man, wrapped
in a cloak, and walking with bent head at a leisurely pace, which argued
that he was deep in meditation. As it drew nearer Tredennis recognized
something familiar in its outlines, and before it had taken half-a-dozen
steps forward the head was raised suddenly, almost as if attracted by
something in his gaze, and he recognized the professor, who, seeing him,
came toward him at once, and laid a friendly hand on his shoulder.
"You are coming away from the house, are you?" he said. "I might have
known I should have the chance of meeting you when I came out to take my
ramble before going to bed. I do it every night. I find I sleep better
for it. Perhaps Bertha told you."
"No," answered Tredennis; "I had not been told of it."
The professor gave him a little impetus forward with the hand he still
kept on his shoulder.
"Walk on with me," he said. "What I like is the deserted look of things,
and the silence. There is nothing more silent and deserted than such a
street as this at night. There is a quiet and emptiness about it which
impress themselves on you more than the stillness of a desert. Perhaps
it is the sleep around you in the houses,--the people who have lost
their hold on the world and life for the time being. They are far enough
away by this time, most of them, and we are no more certain where they
are than we shall be after they have lain down for the last time. How
did you find Bertha?"
His voice changed as he asked the question, dropping its key somewhat;
and, quiet though its tone was, Tredennis thought he recognized a faint
suggestion of consciousness in it.
"She looked very well," he answered; "and was very bright."
"She is generally that," said the professor. "Who was there?"
"A Mr. Arbuthnot."
"Arbuthnot! Yes; to be sure. He generally is there. He is a relative of
Richard's. They are fond of him. I was to have been there myself, but I
had a previous engagement. And I suppose they made light of each other,
as usual?"
"You mean"--began Tredennis.
"Arbuthnot and Bertha. They always do it, and Richard looks on and
enjoys it. He is a queer fellow."
"Mr. Amory?" Tredennis questioned, uncertainly.
"No, no; Arbuthnot. He is a queer fellow, Arbuthnot."
Tredennis laughed.
"That is what they said in the house," he responded.
"Well, it's true," said the professor, reflectively, "and there is no
denying it."
"They said that, too," said Tredennis. "And Mrs. Amory added that it was
a habit they had."
"I don't know," said the professor, still keeping his hand on Tredennis'
shoulder, and seeming to study the pavement as he walked,--"I don't know
what the man has done with his past, and I don't know what he is going
to do with his future. I don't think he knows about the future himself."
"It struck me," said Tredennis,--"I don't know why,--that he did not
care."
"That's it," said the professor. "He doesn't care."
They walked a few steps in silence, and then he went on:
"He never will care," he said, "unless something happens to rouse him."
"I am obliged to confess," said Tredennis, "that I am afraid I am
prepared to underrate him. And it seemed to me that there wasn't much in
him to rouse."
"Oh, you'll underrate him," returned the professor, "at first. And you
may never get over it; but there are also ten chances to one that you
do. I did."
"You began by underrating him?"
"I don't overrate him now," said the professor. "I don't know that I am
particularly fond of him, though there have been moments--just
moments--when I have been threatened with it. But I have come to the
conclusion that there is something in him to rouse, and that it wouldn't
be the wisest thing in the world to rouse it."
"Do you mean," said Tredennis, slowly, "that it would take a woman to
rouse it?"
"Yes," answered the professor, just as slowly, "it would take a woman.
And there are circumstances under which it would be better for the woman
if she let what she might rouse lie and sleep."
"For instance?" said Tredennis, with a fierce leap of every pulse in his
body.
"If," said the professor, deliberately,--"if she were not free to give
what his feeling for her demanded."
He paused to turn Tredennis round.
"Confound him!" he said, with a curiously irritable seriousness. "If he
once reached a white heat,--that fellow with his objectless follies, and
his dress-coat, and his white necktie, and his opera hat under his
arm,--if he once forgot them and himself, it would be her fate to
remember him as long as her life should last."
"_Her_ fate?" said Tredennis.
"I said it would have to be a woman," said the professor. "I should not
like it to be a woman I felt an interest in. We have reached the end of
the block. Let us walk back again."
When he spoke again it was of Richard Armory, not of Arbuthnot.
"You went upstairs into the Museum, as Bertha calls it?" he said.
"Yes," answered Tredennis; "and into the workroom."
"And saw the models, and the collections, and the books?"
"Yes."
"He has a good many enthusiasms, Richard," said the professor. "They
might form a collection of themselves. He won't tire of life easily. He
is a fine contrast to--the other."
They were nearing the house again by this time, and he glanced up at its
front.
"There is a light in the nursery window," he said. "It must be one of
Janey's restless nights."
"Yes," said Tredennis. "Mrs. Amory was with her when we came downstairs,
and she told us that the child was nervous and needed her."
"She has wonderful patience with them," said the professor, "and a sort
of genius for understanding their vague young needs and desires. She
never does them an injustice for want of thought, and never fails them.
I have seen her spend half an hour half-kneeling, half-sitting on the
nursery floor, by one of them, with her arm round it, questioning it,
and helping it to tell its own story, in a way that was very motherly.
There is a great deal of the maternal instinct in her."
Tredennis made no reply, but there rose before his mental vision the
picture before the nursery fire, and he saw again the soft, close clasp
of the fair hand and arm.
"It's curious how seldom we speak of paternal instinct," the professor
went on. "It is always maternal instinct. Well, it is a great thing. And
it is a great safeguard where--where life is not satisfactory. And as
one grows older one sees a good deal of that. It is pitiful sometimes,
when one finds it, as one so often does, in young things who haven't got
over their desperate mental insistence on their right to be happy."
He checked himself with a faint laugh.
"I'm prosing, my boy," he said. "I always do it when I take my saunter
at night. It is a sort of safeguard against doing it in the day. And I
find I am specially given to it when I talk of Bertha. It is the
paternal instinct, if there is such a thing. You remember how we talked
of her when she came home from school. Do you find her much changed?"
"She has changed from a girl--a child, almost--to a woman," said
Tredennis.
"Yes," said the professor, "from a child to a woman. And yet, when you
look back upon it, eight years is a very short time. Sometimes it seems
only yesterday that she startled me at the dinner-table by saying that
she expected me to classify and label her."
"There have been times," said Tredennis, "when it seemed only yesterday
to me; but to-night it is something far away."
The professor looked up at him quickly.
"Is it?" he said. "Well, well," rather vaguely, "it is a habit they have
fallen into, that of making light of things. It is a kind of fashion
nowadays. She did not treat things lightly then, did she? How she
believed all that she believed--how frankly she impugned your veracity
in argument, without being at all conscious of the incivility! How
bright her eyes and lips were when she asked me if she could not have
the label without the pin! I wish"--
He stopped suddenly once more.
"We have reached the end of the block again, my boy," he said, "and I
have walked long enough, and talked long enough. We must say good-night
to each other."
They were standing beneath a street-lamp, and having looked up at
Tredennis to say this, he drew back a pace to look again, in whimsically
gentle admiration of his stalwart proportions.
"What a soldierly fellow you are!" he said; "and how you stand out among
the rest of us!" And then, with an odd change of manner, he drew nearer,
and laid his hand on his shoulder once more. "I'll say again," he said,
"what I have said before. I wish you had been a son of mine, my boy."
And, as he said it, there fell upon the quiet of the street the sound of
approaching footsteps ringing on the pavement, and, turning
instinctively toward them, each saw an easily recognized masculine
figure, which, reaching the house in which the Amorys lived, paused for
a moment beneath the lighted window, and flung forth to the night,
airily, and by no means unmusically, a few bars of one of the popular
airs from a gay French opera, and then, crossing the street, applied a
latch-key to the door of the opposite house, and, entering, closed it.
"The fellow has a pleasant voice," said the professor. "It is a voice
you like to hear. And that is one of his whims."
"I thought I recognized the figure," said Tredennis. "It is"--
"Arbuthnot," said the professor. "Arbuthnot."
And then they parted.