Professor Ainslie Grey had not come down to breakfast at the usual
hour. The presentation chiming-clock which stood between the
terra-cotta busts of Claude Bernard and of John Hunter upon the
dining-room mantelpiece had rung out the half-hour and the
three-quarters. Now its golden hand was verging upon the nine, and yet
there were no signs of the master of the house.
It was an unprecedented occurrence. During the twelve years that she
had kept house for him, his youngest sister had never known him a
second behind his time. She sat now in front of the high silver
coffee-pot, uncertain whether to order the gong to be resounded or to
wait on in silence. Either course might be a mistake. Her brother was
not a man who permitted mistakes.
Miss Ainslie Grey was rather above the middle height, thin, with
peering, puckered eyes, and the rounded shoulders which mark the
bookish woman. Her face was long and spare, flecked with colour above
the cheek-bones, with a reasonable, thoughtful forehead, and a dash of
absolute obstinacy in her thin lips and prominent chin. Snow white
cuffs and collar, with a plain dark dress, cut with almost Quaker-like
simplicity, bespoke the primness of her taste. An ebony cross hung
over her flattened chest. She sat very upright in her chair, listening
with raised eyebrows, and swinging her eye-glasses backwards and
forwards with a nervous gesture which was peculiar to her.
Suddenly she gave a sharp, satisfied jerk of the head, and began to
pour out the coffee. From outside there came the dull thudding sound
of heavy feet upon thick carpet. The door swung open, and the
Professor entered with a quick, nervous step. He nodded to his sister,
and seating himself at the other side of the table, began to open the
small pile of letters which lay beside his plate.
Professor Ainslie Grey was at that time forty-three years of
age--nearly twelve years older than his sister. His career had been a
brilliant one. At Edinburgh, at Cambridge, and at Vienna he had laid
the foundations of his great reputation, both in physiology and in
zoology.
His pamphlet, On the Mesoblastic Origin of Excitomotor Nerve Roots, had
won him his fellowship of the Royal Society; and his researches, Upon
the Nature of Bathybius, with some Remarks upon Lithococci, had been
translated into at least three European languages. He had been
referred to by one of the greatest living authorities as being the very
type and embodiment of all that was best in modern science. No wonder,
then, that when the commercial city of Birchespool decided to create a
medical school, they were only too glad to confer the chair of
physiology upon Mr. Ainslie Grey. They valued him the more from the
conviction that their class was only one step in his upward journey,
and that the first vacancy would remove him to some more illustrious
seat of learning.
In person he was not unlike his sister. The same eyes, the same
contour, the same intellectual forehead. His lips, however, were
firmer, and his long, thin, lower jaw was sharper and more decided. He
ran his finger and thumb down it from time to time, as he glanced over
his letters.
"Those maids are very noisy," he remarked, as a clack of tongues
sounded in the distance.
"It is Sarah," said his sister; "I shall speak about it."
She had handed over his coffee-cup, and was sipping at her own,
glancing furtively through her narrowed lids at the austere face of her
brother.
"The first great advance of the human race," said the Professor, "was
when, by the development of their left frontal convolutions, they
attained the power of speech. Their second advance was when they
learned to control that power. Woman has not yet attained the second
stage."
He half closed his eyes as he spoke, and thrust his chin forward, but
as he ceased he had a trick of suddenly opening both eyes very wide and
staring sternly at his interlocutor.
"I am not garrulous, John," said his sister.
"No, Ada; in many respects you approach the superior or male type."
The Professor bowed over his egg with the manner of one who utters a
courtly compliment; but the lady pouted, and gave an impatient little
shrug of her shoulders.
"You were late this morning, John," she remarked, after a pause.
"Yes, Ada; I slept badly. Some little cerebral congestion, no doubt
due to over-stimulation of the centers of thought. I have been a
little disturbed in my mind."
His sister stared across at him in astonishment. The Professor's
mental processes had hitherto been as regular as his habits. Twelve
years' continual intercourse had taught her that he lived in a serene
and rarefied atmosphere of scientific calm, high above the petty
emotions which affect humbler minds.
"You are surprised, Ada," he remarked. "Well, I cannot wonder at it.
I should have been surprised myself if I had been told that I was so
sensitive to vascular influences. For, after all, all disturbances are
vascular if you probe them deep enough. I am thinking of getting
married."
"Not Mrs. O'James" cried Ada Grey, laying down her egg-spoon.
"My dear, you have the feminine quality of receptivity very remarkably
developed. Mrs. O'James is the lady in question."
"But you know so little of her. The Esdailes themselves know so
little. She is really only an acquaintance, although she is staying at
The Lindens. Would it not be wise to speak to Mrs. Esdaile first,
John?"
"I do not think, Ada, that Mrs. Esdaile is at all likely to say
anything which would materially affect my course of action. I have
given the matter due consideration. The scientific mind is slow at
arriving at conclusions, but having once formed them, it is not prone
to change. Matrimony is the natural condition of the human race. I
have, as you know, been so engaged in academical and other work, that I
have had no time to devote to merely personal questions. It is
different now, and I see no valid reason why I should forego this
opportunity of seeking a suitable helpmate."
"And you are engaged?"
"Hardly that, Ada. I ventured yesterday to indicate to the lady that I
was prepared to submit to the common lot of humanity. I shall wait
upon her after my morning lecture, and learn how far my proposals meet
with her acquiescence. But you frown, Ada!"
His sister started, and made an effort to conceal her expression of
annoyance. She even stammered out some few words of congratulation,
but a vacant look had come into her brother's eyes, and he was
evidently not listening to her.
"I am sure, John, that I wish you the happiness which you deserve. If
I hesitated at all, it is because I know how much is at stake, and
because the thing is so sudden, so unexpected." Her thin white hand
stole up to the black cross upon her bosom. "These are moments when we
need guidance, John. If I could persuade you to turn to spiritual----"
The Professor waved the suggestion away with a deprecating hand.
"It is useless to reopen that question," he said. "We cannot argue
upon it. You assume more than I can grant. I am forced to dispute
your premises. We have no common basis."
His sister sighed.
"You have no faith," she said.
"I have faith in those great evolutionary forces which are leading the
human race to some unknown but elevated goal."
"You believe in nothing."
"On the contrary, my dear Ada, I believe in the differentiation of
protoplasm."
She shook her head sadly. It was the one subject upon which she
ventured to dispute her brother's infallibility.
"This is rather beside the question," remarked the Professor, folding
up his napkin. "If I am not mistaken, there is some possibility of
another matrimonial event occurring in the family. Eh, Ada? What!"
His small eyes glittered with sly facetiousness as he shot a twinkle at
his sister. She sat very stiff, and traced patterns upon the cloth
with the sugar-tongs.
"Dr. James M'Murdo O'Brien----" said the Professor, sonorously.
"Don't, John, don't!" cried Miss Ainslie Grey.
"Dr. James M'Murdo O'Brien," continued her brother inexorably, "is a
man who has already made his mark upon the science of the day. He is
my first and my most distinguished pupil. I assure you, Ada, that his
'Remarks upon the Bile-Pigments, with special reference to Urobilin,'
is likely to live as a classic. It is not too much to say that he has
revolutionised our views about urobilin."
He paused, but his sister sat silent, with bent head and flushed
cheeks. The little ebony cross rose and fell with her hurried
breathings.
"Dr. James M'Murdo O'Brien has, as you know, the offer of the
physiological chair at Melbourne. He has been in Australia five years,
and has a brilliant future before him. To-day he leaves us for
Edinburgh, and in two months' time, he goes out to take over his new
duties. You know his feeling towards you. It rests with you as to
whether he goes out alone. Speaking for myself, I cannot imagine any
higher mission for a woman of culture than to go through life in the
company of a man who is capable of such a research as that which Dr.
James M'Murdo O'Brien has brought to a successful conclusion."
"He has not spoken to me," murmured the lady.
"Ah, there are signs which are more subtle than speech," said her
brother, wagging his head. "But you are pale. Your vasomotor system
is excited. Your arterioles have contracted. Let me entreat you to
compose yourself. I think I hear the carriage. I fancy that you may
have a visitor this morning, Ada. You will excuse me now."
With a quick glance at the clock he strode off into the hall, and
within a few minutes he was rattling in his quiet, well-appointed
brougham through the brick-lined streets of Birchespool.
His lecture over, Professor Ainslie Grey paid a visit to his
laboratory, where he adjusted several scientific instruments, made a
note as to the progress of three separate infusions of bacteria, cut
half-a-dozen sections with a microtome, and finally resolved the
difficulties of seven different gentlemen, who were pursuing researches
in as many separate lines of inquiry. Having thus conscientiously and
methodically completed the routine of his duties, he returned to his
carriage and ordered the coachman to drive him to The Lindens. His
face as he drove was cold and impassive, but he drew his fingers from
time to time down his prominent chin with a jerky, twitchy movement.
The Lindens was an old-fashioned, ivy-clad house which had once been in
the country, but was now caught in the long, red-brick feelers of the
growing city. It still stood back from the road in the privacy of its
own grounds. A winding path, lined with laurel bushes, led to the
arched and porticoed entrance. To the right was a lawn, and at the far
side, under the shadow of a hawthorn, a lady sat in a garden-chair with
a book in her hands. At the click of the gate she started, and the
Professor, catching sight of her, turned away from the door, and strode
in her direction.
"What! won't you go in and see Mrs. Esdaile?" she asked, sweeping out
from under the shadow of the hawthorn.
She was a small woman, strongly feminine, from the rich coils of her
light-coloured hair to the dainty garden slipper which peeped from
under her cream-tinted dress. One tiny well-gloved hand was
outstretched in greeting, while the other pressed a thick,
green-covered volume against her side. Her decision and quick, tactful
manner bespoke the mature woman of the world; but her upraised face had
preserved a girlish and even infantile expression of innocence in its
large, fearless, grey eyes, and sensitive, humorous mouth. Mrs.
O'James was a widow, and she was two-and-thirty years of age; but
neither fact could have been deduced from her appearance.
"You will surely go in and see Mrs. Esdaile," she repeated, glancing up
at him with eyes which had in them something between a challenge and a
caress.
"I did not come to see Mrs. Esdaile," he answered, with no relaxation
of his cold and grave manner; "I came to see you."
"I am sure I should be highly honoured," she said, with just the
slightest little touch of brogue in her accent. "What are the students
to do without their Professor?"
"I have already completed my academic duties. Take my arm, and we
shall walk in the sunshine. Surely we cannot wonder that Eastern
people should have made a deity of the sun. It is the great beneficent
force of Nature--man's ally against cold, sterility, and all that is
abhorrent to him. What were you reading?"
"Hale's Matter and Life."
The Professor raised his thick eyebrows.
"Hale!" he said, and then again in a kind of whisper, "Hale!"
"You differ from him?" she asked.
"It is not I who differ from him. I am only a monad--a thing of no
moment. The whole tendency of the highest plane of modern thought
differs from him. He defends the indefensible. He is an excellent
observer, but a feeble reasoner. I should not recommend you to found
your conclusions upon Hale."
"I must read Nature's Chronicle to counteract his pernicious
influence," said Mrs. O'James, with a soft, cooing laugh.
Nature's Chronicle was one of the many books in which Professor Ainslie
Grey had enforced the negative doctrines of scientific agnosticism.
"It is a faulty work," said he; "I cannot recommend it. I would rather
refer you to the standard writings of some of my older and more
eloquent colleagues."
There was a pause in their talk as they paced up and down on the green,
velvet-like lawn in the genial sunshine.
"Have you thought at all," he asked at last, "of the matter upon which
I spoke to you last night?"
She said nothing, but walked by his side with her eyes averted and her
face aslant.
"I would not hurry you unduly," he continued. "I know that it is a
matter which can scarcely be decided off-hand. In my own case, it cost
me some thought before I ventured to make the suggestion. I am not an
emotional man, but I am conscious in your presence of the great
evolutionary instinct which makes either sex the complement of the
other."
"You believe in love, then?" she asked, with a twinkling, upward glance.
"I am forced to."
"And yet you can deny the soul?"
"How far these questions are psychic and how far material is still sub
judice," said the Professor, with an air of toleration. "Protoplasm
may prove to be the physical basis of love as well as of life."
"How inflexible you are!" she exclaimed; "you would draw love down to
the level of physics."
"Or draw physics up to the level of love."
"Come, that is much better," she cried, with her sympathetic laugh.
"That is really very pretty, and puts science in quite a delightful
light."
Her eyes sparkled, and she tossed her chin with the pretty, wilful air
of a woman who is mistress of the situation.
"I have reason to believe," said the Professor, "that my position here
will prove to be only a stepping-stone to some wider scene of
scientific activity. Yet, even here, my chair brings me in some
fifteen hundred pounds a year, which is supplemented by a few hundreds
from my books. I should therefore be in a position to provide you with
those comforts to which you are accustomed. So much for my pecuniary
position. As to my constitution, it has always been sound. I have
never suffered from any illness in my life, save fleeting attacks of
cephalalgia, the result of too prolonged a stimulation of the centres
of cerebration. My father and mother had no sign of any morbid
diathesis, but I will not conceal from you that my grandfather was
afflicted with podagra."
Mrs. O'James looked startled.
"Is that very serious?" she asked.
"It is gout," said the Professor.
"Oh, is that all? It sounded much worse than that."
"It is a grave taint, but I trust that I shall not be a victim to
atavism. I have laid these facts before you because they are factors
which cannot be overlooked in forming your decision. May I ask now
whether you see your way to accepting my proposal?"
He paused in his walk, and looked earnestly and expectantly down at her.
A struggle was evidently going on in her mind. Her eyes were cast
down, her little slipper tapped the lawn, and her fingers played
nervously with her chatelain. Suddenly, with a sharp, quick gesture
which had in it something of <i>abandon</i> and recklessness, she held out her
hand to her companion.
"I accept," she said.
They were standing under the shadow of the hawthorn. He stooped
gravely down, and kissed her glove-covered fingers.
"I trust that you may never have cause to regret your decision," he
said.
"I trust that you never may," she cried, with a heaving breast.
There were tears in her eyes, and her lips twitched with some strong
emotion.
"Come into the sunshine again," said he. "It is the great restorative.
Your nerves are shaken. Some little congestion of the medulla and
pons. It is always instructive to reduce psychic or emotional
conditions to their physical equivalents. You feel that your anchor is
still firm in a bottom of ascertained fact."
"But it is so dreadfully unromantic," said Mrs. O'James, with her old
twinkle.
"Romance is the offspring of imagination and of ignorance. Where
science throws her calm, clear light there is happily no room for
romance."
"But is not love romance?" she asked.
"Not at all. Love has been taken away from the poets, and has been
brought within the domain of true science. It may prove to be one of
the great cosmic elementary forces. When the atom of hydrogen draws
the atom of chlorine towards it to form the perfected molecule of
hydrochloric acid, the force which it exerts may be intrinsically
similar to that which draws me to you. Attraction and repulsion appear
to be the primary forces. This is attraction."
"And here is repulsion," said Mrs. O'James, as a stout, florid lady
came sweeping across the lawn in their direction. "So glad you have
come out, Mrs. Esdaile! Here is Professor Grey."
"How do you do, Professor?" said the lady, with some little pomposity
of manner. "You were very wise to stay out here on so lovely a day.
Is it not heavenly?"
"It is certainly very fine weather," the Professor answered.
"Listen to the wind sighing in the trees!" cried Mrs. Esdaile, holding
up one finger. "It is Nature's lullaby. Could you not imagine it,
Professor Grey, to be the whisperings of angels?"
"The idea had not occurred to me, madam."
"Ah, Professor, I have always the same complaint against you. A want
of rapport with the deeper meanings of nature. Shall I say a want of
imagination. You do not feel an emotional thrill at the singing of
that thrush?"
"I confess that I am not conscious of one, Mrs. Esdaile."
"Or at the delicate tint of that background of leaves? See the rich
greens!"
"Chlorophyll," murmured the Professor.
"Science is so hopelessly prosaic. It dissects and labels, and loses
sight of the great things in its attention to the little ones. You
have a poor opinion of woman's intellect, Professor Grey. I think that
I have heard you say so."
"It is a question of avoirdupois," said the Professor, closing his eyes
and shrugging his shoulders. "The female cerebrum averages two ounces
less in weight than the male. No doubt there are exceptions. Nature
is always elastic."
"But the heaviest thing is not always the strongest," said Mrs.
O'James, laughing. "Isn't there a law of compensation in science? May
we not hope to make up in quality for what we lack in quantity?"
"I think not," remarked the Professor, gravely. "But there is your
luncheon-gong. No, thank you, Mrs. Esdaile, I cannot stay. My
carriage is waiting. Good-bye. Good-bye, Mrs. O'James."
He raised his hat and stalked slowly away among the laurel bushes.
"He has no taste," said Mrs. Esdaile--"no eye for beauty."
"On the contrary," Mrs. O'James answered, with a saucy little jerk of
the chin. "He has just asked me to be his wife."
As Professor Ainslie Grey ascended the steps of his house, the
hall-door opened and a dapper gentleman stepped briskly out. He was
somewhat sallow in the face, with dark, beady eyes, and a short, black
beard with an aggressive bristle. Thought and work had left their
traces upon his face, but he moved with the brisk activity of a man who
had not yet bade good-bye to his youth.
"I'm in luck's way," he cried. "I wanted to see you."
"Then come back into the library," said the Professor; "you must stay
and have lunch with us."
The two men entered the hall, and the Professor led the way into his
private sanctum. He motioned his companion into an arm-chair.
"I trust that you have been successful, O'Brien," said he. "I should
be loath to exercise any undue pressure upon my sister Ada; but I have
given her to understand that there is no one whom I should prefer for a
brother-in-law to my most brilliant scholar, the author of Some Remarks
upon the Bile-Pigments, with special reference to Urobilin."
"You are very kind, Professor Grey--you have always been very kind,"
said the other. "I approached Miss Grey upon the subject; she did not
say No."
"She said Yes, then?"
"No; she proposed to leave the matter open until my return from
Edinburgh. I go to-day, as you know, and I hope to commence my
research to-morrow."
"On the comparative anatomy of the vermiform appendix, by James M'Murdo
O'Brien," said the Professor, sonorously. "It is a glorious subject--a
subject which lies at the very root of evolutionary philosophy."
"Ah! she is the dearest girl," cried O'Brien, with a sudden little
spurt of Celtic enthusiasm--"she is the soul of truth and of honour."
"The vermiform appendix----" began the Professor.
"She is an angel from heaven," interrupted the other. "I fear that it
is my advocacy of scientific freedom in religious thought which stands
in my way with her."
"You must not truckle upon that point. You must be true to your
convictions; let there be no compromise there."
"My reason is true to agnosticism, and yet I am conscious of a void--a
vacuum. I had feelings at the old church at home between the scent of
the incense and the roll of the organ, such as I have never experienced
in the laboratory or the lecture-room."
"Sensuous-purely sensuous," said the Professor, rubbing his chin.
"Vague hereditary tendencies stirred into life by the stimulation of
the nasal and auditory nerves."
"Maybe so, maybe so," the younger man answered thoughtfully. "But this
was not what I wished to speak to you about. Before I enter your
family, your sister and you have a claim to know all that I can tell
you about my career. Of my worldly prospects I have already spoken to
you. There is only one point which I have omitted to mention. I am a
widower."
The Professor raised his eyebrows.
"This is news indeed," said he.
"I married shortly after my arrival in Australia. Miss Thurston was
her name. I met her in society. It was a most unhappy match."
Some painful emotion possessed him. His quick, expressive features
quivered, and his white hands tightened upon the arms of the chair.
The Professor turned away towards the window.
"You are the best judge," he remarked "but I should not think that it
was necessary to go into details."
"You have a right to know everything--you and Miss Grey. It is not a
matter on which I can well speak to her direct. Poor Jinny was the
best of women, but she was open to flattery, and liable to be misled by
designing persons. She was untrue to me, Grey. It is a hard thing to
say of the dead, but she was untrue to me. She fled to Auckland with a
man whom she had known before her marriage. The brig which carried
them foundered, and not a soul was saved."
"This is very painful, O'Brien," said the Professor, with a deprecatory
motion of his hand. "I cannot see, however, how it affects your
relation to my sister."
"I have eased my conscience," said O'Brien, rising from his chair; "I
have told you all that there is to tell. I should not like the story
to reach you through any lips but my own."
"You are right, O'Brien. Your action has been most honourable and
considerate. But you are not to blame in the matter, save that perhaps
you showed a little precipitancy in choosing a life-partner without due
care and inquiry."
O'Brien drew his hand across his eyes.
"Poor girl!" he cried. "God help me, I love her still! But I must go."
"You will lunch with us?"
"No, Professor; I have my packing still to do. I have already bade
Miss Grey adieu. In two months I shall see you again."
"You will probably find me a married man."
"Married!"
"Yes, I have been thinking of it."
"My dear Professor, let me congratulate you with all my heart. I had
no idea. Who is the lady?"
"Mrs. O'James is her name--a widow of the same nationality as yourself.
But to return to matters of importance, I should be very happy to see
the proofs of your paper upon the vermiform appendix. I may be able to
furnish you with material for a footnote or two."
"Your assistance will be invaluable to me," said O'Brien, with
enthusiasm, and the two men parted in the hall. The Professor walked
back into the dining-room, where his sister was already seated at the
luncheon-table.
"I shall be married at the registrar's," he remarked; "I should
strongly recommend you to do the same."
Professor Ainslie Grey was as good as his word. A fortnight's
cessation of his classes gave him an opportunity which was too good to
let pass. Mrs. O'James was an orphan, without relations and almost
without friends in the country. There was no obstacle in the way of a
speedy wedding. They were married, accordingly, in the quietest manner
possible, and went off to Cambridge together, where the Professor and
his charming wife were present at several academic observances, and
varied the routine of their honeymoon by incursions into biological
laboratories and medical libraries. Scientific friends were loud in
their congratulations, not only upon Mrs. Grey's beauty, but upon the
unusual quickness and intelligence which she displayed in discussing
physiological questions. The Professor was himself astonished at the
accuracy of her information. "You have a remarkable range of knowledge
for a woman, Jeannette," he remarked upon more than one occasion. He
was even prepared to admit that her cerebrum might be of the normal
weight.
One foggy, drizzling morning they returned to Birchespool, for the next
day would re-open the session, and Professor Ainslie Grey prided
himself upon having never once in his life failed to appear in his
lecture-room at the very stroke of the hour. Miss Ada Grey welcomed
them with a constrained cordiality, and handed over the keys of office
to the new mistress. Mrs. Grey pressed her warmly to remain, but she
explained that she had already accepted an invitation which would
engage her for some months. The same evening she departed for the
south of England.
A couple of days later the maid carried a card just after breakfast
into the library where the Professor sat revising his morning lecture.
It announced the re-arrival of Dr. James M'Murdo O'Brien. Their
meeting was effusively genial on the part of the younger man, and
coldly precise on that of his former teacher.
"You see there have been changes," said the Professor.
"So I heard. Miss Grey told me in her letters, and I read the notice
in the British Medical Journal. So it's really married you are. How
quickly and quietly you have managed it all!"
"I am constitutionally averse to anything in the nature of show or
ceremony. My wife is a sensible woman--I may even go the length of
saying that, for a woman, she is abnormally sensible. She quite agreed
with me in the course which I have adopted."
"And your research on Vallisneria?"
"This matrimonial incident has interrupted it, but I have resumed my
classes, and we shall soon be quite in harness again."
"I must see Miss Grey before I leave England. We have corresponded,
and I think that all will be well. She must come out with me. I don't
think I could go without her."
The Professor shook his head.
"Your nature is not so weak as you pretend," he said. "Questions of
this sort are, after all, quite subordinate to the great duties of
life."
O'Brien smiled.
"You would have me take out my Celtic soul and put in a Saxon one," he
said. "Either my brain is too small or my heart is too big. But when
may I call and pay my respects to Mrs. Grey? Will she be at home this
afternoon?"
"She is at home now. Come into the morning-room. She will be glad to
make your acquaintance."
They walked across the linoleum-paved hall. The Professor opened the
door of the room, and walked in, followed by his friend. Mrs. Grey was
sitting in a basket-chair by the window, light and fairy-like in a
loose-flowing, pink morning-gown. Seeing a visitor, she rose and swept
towards them. The Professor heard a dull thud behind him. O'Brien had
fallen back into a chair, with his hand pressed tight to his side.
"Jinny!" he gasped--"Jinny!"
Mrs. Grey stopped dead in her advance, and stared at him with a face
from which every expression had been struck out, save one of
astonishment and horror. Then with a sharp intaking of the breath she
reeled, and would have fallen had the Professor not thrown his long,
nervous arm round her.
"Try this sofa," said he.
She sank back among the cushions with the same white, cold, dead look
upon her face. The Professor stood with his back to the empty
fireplace and glanced from the one to the other.
"So, O'Brien," he said at last, "you have already made the acquaintance
of my wife!"
"Your wife," cried his friend hoarsely. "She is no wife of yours. God
help me, she is <i>my</i> wife."
The Professor stood rigidly upon the hearthrug. His long, thin fingers
were intertwined, and his head sunk a little forward. His two
companions had eyes only for each other.
"Jinny!" said he.
"James!"
"How could you leave me so, Jinny? How could you have the heart to do
it? I thought you were dead. I mourned for your death--ay, and you
have made me mourn for you living. You have withered my life."
She made no answer, but lay back among her cushions with her eyes still
fixed upon him.
"Why do you not speak?"
"Because you are right, James. I <i>have</i> treated you cruelly--shamefully.
But it is not as bad as you think."
"You fled with De Horta."
"No, I did not. At the last moment my better nature prevailed. He
went alone. But I was ashamed to come back after what I had written to
you. I could not face you. I took passage alone to England under a
new name, and here I have lived ever since. It seemed to me that I was
beginning life again. I knew that you thought I was drowned. Who
could have dreamed that fate would throw us together again! When the
Professor asked me----"
She stopped and gave a gasp for breath.
"You are faint," said the Professor--"keep the head low; it aids the
cerebral circulation." He flattened down the cushion. "I am sorry to
leave you, O'Brien; but I have my class duties to look to. Possibly I
may find you here when I return."
With a grim and rigid face he strode out of the room. Not one of the
three hundred students who listened to his lecture saw any change in
his manner and appearance, or could have guessed that the austere
gentleman in front of them had found out at last how hard it is to rise
above one's humanity. The lecture over, he performed his routine
duties in the laboratory, and then drove back to his own house. He did
not enter by the front door, but passed through the garden to the
folding glass casement which led out of the morning-room. As he
approached he heard his wife's voice and O'Brien's in loud and animated
talk. He paused among the rose-bushes, uncertain whether to interrupt
them or no. Nothing was further from his nature than play the
eavesdropper; but as he stood, still hesitating, words fell upon his
ear which struck him rigid and motionless.
"You are still my wife, Jinny," said O'Brien; "I forgive you from the
bottom of my heart. I love you, and I have never ceased to love you,
though you had forgotten me."
"No, James, my heart was always in Melbourne. I have always been
yours. I thought that it was better for you that I should seem to be
dead."
"You must choose between us now, Jinny. If you determine to remain
here, I shall not open my lips. There shall be no scandal. If, on the
other hand, you come with me, it's little I care about the world's
opinion. Perhaps I am as much to blame as you. I thought too much of
my work and too little of my wife."
The Professor heard the cooing, caressing laugh which he knew so well.
"I shall go with you, James," she said.
"And the Professor----?"
"The poor Professor! But he will not mind much, James; he has no
heart."
"We must tell him our resolution."
"There is no need," said Professor Ainslie Grey, stepping in through
the open casement. "I have overheard the latter part of your
conversation. I hesitated to interrupt you before you came to a
conclusion."
O'Brien stretched out his hand and took that of the woman. They stood
together with the sunshine on their faces. The Professor paused at the
casement with his hands behind his back, and his long black shadow fell
between them.
"You have come to a wise decision," said he. "Go back to Australia
together, and let what has passed be blotted out of your lives."
"But you--you----" stammered O'Brien.
The Professor waved his hand.
"Never trouble about me," he said.
The woman gave a gasping cry.
"What can I do or say?" she wailed. "How could I have foreseen this?
I thought my old life was dead. But it has come back again, with all
its hopes and its desires. What can I say to you, Ainslie? I have
brought shame and disgrace upon a worthy man. I have blasted your
life. How you must hate and loathe me! I wish to God that I had never
been born!"
"I neither hate nor loathe you, Jeannette," said the Professor,
quietly. "You are wrong in regretting your birth, for you have a
worthy mission before you in aiding the life-work of a man who has
shown himself capable of the highest order of scientific research. I
cannot with justice blame you personally for what has occurred. How
far the individual monad is to be held responsible for hereditary and
engrained tendencies, is a question upon which science has not yet said
her last word."
He stood with his finger-tips touching, and his body inclined as one
who is gravely expounding a difficult and impersonal subject. O'Brien
had stepped forward to say something, but the other's attitude and
manner froze the words upon his lips. Condolence or sympathy would be
an impertinence to one who could so easily merge his private griefs in
broad questions of abstract philosophy.
"It is needless to prolong the situation," the Professor continued, in
the same measured tones. "My brougham stands at the door. I beg that
you will use it as your own. Perhaps it would be as well that you
should leave the town without unnecessary delay. Your things,
Jeannette, shall be forwarded."
O'Brien hesitated with a hanging head.
"I hardly dare offer you my hand," he said.
"On the contrary. I think that of the three of us you come best out of
the affair. You have nothing to be ashamed of."
"Your sister----"
"I shall see that the matter is put to her in its true light.
Good-bye! Let me have a copy of your recent research. Good-bye,
Jeannette!"
"Good-bye!"
Their hands met, and for one short moment their eyes also. It was only
a glance, but for the first and last time the woman's intuition cast a
light for itself into the dark places of a strong man's soul. She gave
a little gasp, and her other hand rested for an instant, as white and
as light as thistle-down, upon his shoulder.
"James, James!" she cried. "Don't you see that he is stricken to the
heart?"
He turned her quietly away from him.
"I am not an emotional man," he said. "I have my duties--my research on
Vallisneria. The brougham is there. Your cloak is in the hall. Tell
John where you wish to be driven. He will bring you anything you need.
Now go."
His last two words were so sudden, so volcanic, in such contrast to his
measured voice and mask-like face, that they swept the two away from
him. He closed the door behind them and paced slowly up and down the
room. Then he passed into the library and looked out over the wire
blind. The carriage was rolling away. He caught a last glimpse of the
woman who had been his wife. He saw the feminine droop of her head,
and the curve of her beautiful throat.
Under some foolish, aimless impulse, he took a few quick steps towards
the door. Then he turned, and throwing himself into his study-chair he
plunged back into his work.
There was little scandal about this singular domestic incident. The
Professor had few personal friends, and seldom went into society. His
marriage had been so quiet that most of his colleagues had never ceased
to regard him as a bachelor. Mrs. Esdaile and a few others might talk,
but their field for gossip was limited, for they could only guess
vaguely at the cause of this sudden separation.
The Professor was as punctual as ever at his classes, and as zealous in
directing the laboratory work of those who studied under him. His own
private researches were pushed on with feverish energy. It was no
uncommon thing for his servants, when they came down of a morning, to
hear the shrill scratchings of his tireless pen, or to meet him on the
staircase as he ascended, grey and silent, to his room. In vain his
friends assured him that such a life must undermine his health. He
lengthened his hours until day and night were one long, ceaseless task.
Gradually under this discipline a change came over his appearance. His
features, always inclined to gauntness, became even sharper and more
pronounced. There were deep lines about his temples and across his
brow. His cheek was sunken and his complexion bloodless. His knees
gave under him when he walked; and once when passing out of his
lecture-room he fell and had to be assisted to his carriage.
This was just before the end of the session and soon after the holidays
commenced the professors who still remained in Birchespool were shocked
to hear that their brother of the chair of physiology had sunk so low
that no hopes could be entertained of his recovery. Two eminent
physicians had consulted over his case without being able to give a
name to the affection from which he suffered. A steadily decreasing
vitality appeared to be the only symptom--a bodily weakness which left
the mind unclouded. He was much interested himself in his own case,
and made notes of his subjective sensations as an aid to diagnosis. Of
his approaching end he spoke in his usual unemotional and somewhat
pedantic fashion. "It is the assertion," he said, "of the liberty of
the individual cell as opposed to the cell-commune. It is the
dissolution of a co-operative society. The process is one of great
interest."
And so one grey morning his co-operative society dissolved. Very
quietly and softly he sank into his eternal sleep. His two physicians
felt some slight embarrassment when called upon to fill in his
certificate.
"It is difficult to give it a name," said one.
"Very," said the other.
"If he were not such an unemotional man, I should have said that he had
died from some sudden nervous shock--from, in fact, what the vulgar
would call a broken heart."
"I don't think poor Grey was that sort of a man at all."
"Let us call it cardiac, anyhow," said the older physician.
So they did so.