At three o'clock in the afternoon I knocked at the door of the
professor's study.
"Come in," said the professor.
"Is--is Mabel at home?" asked I, when I had shaken hands with the
professor and seated myself in one of his hard, straight-backed
chairs.
"She will be down presently," answered he "There is _The Nation_. You
may amuse yourself with that until she comes."
I took up the paper; but the spectacles seemed to be burning in my
breast-pocket, and although I stared intently at the print, I could
hardly distinguish a word. What if I tried the power of the spectacles
on the professor? The idea appeared to me a happy one, and I
immediately proceeded to put it into practice. With a loudly beating
heart, I pulled the silver case from my pocket, rubbed the glasses
with my handkerchief, put them on my nose, adjusted the bows behind my
ears, and cast a stealthy glance at the professor over the edge of my
paper. But what was my horror! It was no longer the professor at all.
It was a huge parrot, a veritable parrot in slippers and
dressing-gown! I dared hardly believe my senses. Was the professor
_really_ not a man, but a parrot? My dear trusted and honored teacher,
whom I had always looked upon as the wisest and most learned of living
men, could it be possible that _he_ was a parrot? And still there he
sat, grave and sedate, a pair of horn spectacles on his large, crooked
beak, a few stiff feathers bristling around his bald crown, and his
small eyes blinking with a sort of meaningless air of confidence, as
I often had seen a parrot's eyes doing.
"My gnome has been playing a trick on me," I thought. "This is
certainly not to see things as they are. If I only had his tarn-cap
once more, he should not recover it so cheaply."
"Well, my boy," began the professor, as he wheeled round in his chair,
and knocked the ashes out of his pipe on the polished andirons which
adorned the empty fire-place. "How is the world using you? Getting
over your German whims, eh?"
Surely the spectacles must in some mysterious way have affected my
ears too. The professor's voice certainly did sound very curious--very
much like the croak of some bird that had learned human language, but
had no notion of what he was saying. The case was really getting
serious. I threw the paper away, stared my teacher full in the face,
but was so covered with confusion that I could hardly utter two
coherent words.
"Yes, yes,--certainly,--professor," I stammered. "German whims?--I
mean things as they are--and--and not as they seem--_das Ding an
sich_--beg your pardon--I am not sure, I--I comprehended your
meaning--beg your pardon?"
"My dear boy," croaked the professor, opening his beak in great
bewilderment, and showing a little thick red tongue, which curved
upward like that of a parrot, "you are certainly not well. Mabel!
Mabel! Come down! James is ill! Yes, you certainly look wretchedly.
Let me feel your pulse."
I suppose my face must have been very much flushed, for the blood had
mounted to my head and throbbed feverishly in my temples. As I heard
the patter of Mabel's feet in the hall, a great dread came over me.
What if she too should turn out to be somebody else--a strange bird or
beast? No, not for all the world would I see Mabel--the dear, blessed
Mabel--any differently from what she had always seemed to me. So I
tore the spectacles from my nose, and crammed them into the case,
which again I thrust into my pocket. In the same instant Mabel's sweet
face appeared in the door.
"Did you call me, papa?" she said; then, as she saw me reclining on
the sofa, where her father (now no longer a parrot) had forced me to
lie down, there came a sudden fright into her beautiful eyes, and she
sprang to my side and seized my hand in hers.
"Are you ill, Jamie?" she asked, in a voice of unfeigned anxiety,
which went straight to my heart. "Has anything happened to you?"
"Hush, hush!" said the professor. "Don't make him speak. It might have
proved a serious attack. Too much studying, my dear--too much
studying. To be sure, the ambition of young men nowadays is past
belief. It was different in my youth. Then, every young man was
satisfied if he could only make a living--found a home for himself,
and bring up his family in the fear of God. But now, dear me, such
things are mere nursery ambitions."
I felt wretched and guilty in my heart! To be thus imposing upon two
good people, who loved me and were willing to make every sacrifice for
my comfort! Mabel had brought a pillow, and put it under my head; and
now she took out some sort of crochet-work, and seated herself on a
chair close by me. The professor stood looking at his watch and
counting my pulse-beats.
"One hundred and five," he muttered, and shook his bald head. "Yes, he
has fever. I saw it at once, as he entered the room."
"Professor," I cried out, in an agony of remorse, "really I meant
nothing by it. I know very well that you are not a parrot--that you
are--"
"I--I--a parrot!" he exclaimed, smiling knowingly at Mabel. "No, I
should think not. He is raving, my dear. High fever. Just what I said.
Won't you go out and send Maggie for the doctor? No, stop, I shall go
myself. Then he will be sure to come without delay. It is high time."
The professor buttoned his coat up to his chin, fixed his hat at the
proper angle on the back of his head, and departed in haste.
"How do you feel now, Jamie dear?" said Mabel, after awhile.
"I am very well, I thank you, Mabel," answered I. "In fact, it is all
nonsense. I am not sick at all."
"Hush, hush! you must not talk so much," demanded she, and put her
hand over my mouth.
My excitement was now gradually subsiding, and my blood was returning
to its usual speed.
"If you don't object, Mabel," said I, "I'll get up and go home.
There's nothing whatever the matter with me."
"Will you be a good boy and keep quiet," rejoined she, emphasizing
each word by a gentle tap on my head with her crochet-needle.
"Well, if it can amuse you to have me lying here and playing sick,"
muttered I, "then, of course, I will do anything to please you."
"That is right," said she, and gave me a friendly nod.
So I lay still for a long while, until I came once more to think of my
wonderful spectacles, which had turned the venerable professor into a
parrot. I thought I owed Mabel an apology for what I had done to her
father, and I determined to ease my mind by confiding the whole story
to her.
"Mabel," I began, raising myself on my elbow, "I want to tell you
something, but you must promise me beforehand that you will not be
angry with me."
"Angry with you, Jamie?" repeated she, opening her bright eyes wide in
astonishment. "I never was angry with you in my life."
"Very well, then. But I have done something very bad, and I shall
never have peace until I have confided it all to you. You are so very
good, Mabel. I wish I could be as good as you are."
Mabel was about to interrupt me, but I prevented her, and continued:
"Last night, as I was going home from your house, the moonlight was so
strangely airy and beautiful, and without quite intending to do it, I
found myself taking a walk through the gorge. There I saw some curious
little lights dancing over the ground, and I remembered the story of
the peasant who had caught the gnome. And do you know what I did?"
Mabel was beginning to look apprehensive.
"No, I can't imagine what you did," she whispered.
"Well, I lifted my cane, struck at one of the lights, and, before I
knew it, there lay a live gnome on the ground, kicking with his small
legs."
"Jamie! Jamie!" cried Mabel, springing up and gazing at me, as if she
thought I had gone mad.
Then there was an unwelcome shuffling of feet in the hall, the door
was opened, and the professor entered with the doctor.
"Papa, papa!" exclaimed Mabel, turning to her father. "Do you know
what Jamie says? He says he saw a gnome last night in the gorge, and
that--"
"Yes, I did!" cried I, excitedly, and sprang up to seize my hat. "If
nobody will believe me, I needn't stay here any longer. And if you
doubt what I have been saying, I can show you--"
"My dear sir," said the doctor.
"My dear boy," chimed in the professor, and seized me round the waist
to prevent me from escaping.
"My dear Jamie," implored Mabel, while the tears started to her eyes,
"do keep quiet, do!"
The doctor and the professor now forced me back upon the sofa, and I
had once more to resign myself to my fate.
"A most singular hallucination," said the professor, turning his
round, good-natured face to the doctor. "A moment ago he observed that
I was _not_ a parrot, which necessarily must have been suggested by a
previous hallucination that I _was_ a parrot."
The doctor shook his head and looked grave.
"Possibly a very serious case," said he, "a case of ----," and he gave
it a long Latin name, which I failed to catch. "It is well that I was
called in time. We may still succeed in mastering the disease."
"Too much study?" suggested the professor. "Restless ambition? Night
labor--severe application?"
The doctor nodded and tried to look wise. Mabel burst into tears, and
I myself, seeing her distress, could hardly refrain from weeping. And
still I could not help thinking that it was very sweet to see Mabel's
tears flowing for my sake.
The doctor now sat down and wrote a number of curiously abbreviated
Latin words for a prescription, and handed it to the professor, who
folded it up and put it into his pocket-book.
Half an hour later, I lay in a soft bed with snowy-white curtains, in
a cozy little room upstairs. The shades had been pulled down before
the windows, a number of medicine bottles stood on a chair at my
bedside, and I began to feel quite like an invalid--and all because I
had said (what nobody could deny) that the professor was not a parrot.