THE PROFESSOR.
Milford was aroused from his dozing by some one walking up and down the
veranda. "Don't let me disturb you," a cheery voice cried out, when he
got up. "I dropped over to pay you a visit, and finding you asleep,
thought I would wait till you reached the end of your nap. And I am
sorry if I have disturbed you." He held out his hand as Milford came
within reach, and in the heartiest manner said that his name was
Professor Dolihide. "I suppose you heard that I moved into your
neighborhood. Yes, sir, I have lived near you some ten days or more--a
longtime to live anywhere during these grinding times, sir."
Milford had heard that Professor Dolihide had moved into an old house
that had long stood deserted. He shook hands on suspicion, and then, on
better acquaintance, he brought out two chairs, planted the Professor in
one, sat down himself, and said he hoped that his visitor found the new
home pleasant. The Professor closed his eyes till he looked through
narrow cracks. "Well, as to that, I must say that I never expect to find
another pleasant home. It is one's occupation abroad that makes the home
pleasant, and when one has been compelled against his liking to change
his trade, the home suffers. But I must explain," he said, opening his
eyes and rubbing his hands together. "For years, I held the chair of
English literature in a Kansas college. My salary was small, but I was
happy, and my family had an exalted respect for me, as a learned man.
But now I keep books at a planing-mill up here at Lake Villa, and am
entitled to no respect whatever, not because I am not respectable, but
for the reason that I have failed."
He came as a fresh breeze, and Milford enjoyed him. He possessed a sort
of comical dignity. His eyes were lamp-dimmed. His beard was thin and
red.
"Failed," he repeated, "not on the account of incompetence, mind you,
but traceable, I may say, to a changed condition of the times. I had
been led to believe that my work was giving entire satisfaction. My
scope was not broad, it is true, but the ground was thoroughly tilled.
But a difference arose in the board of supervisors. And it was decided
that I was not idiomatic enough in my treatment of our mother tongue.
They argued that English is progressive. I did not doubt that, but I
said that slang was not true progress. They cited an extract from a
speech delivered by the president of an Eastern grove of learning, in
which he said that the purist was as dead as stagnant water. I was
pleased to be called a purist, sir. I had striven to maintain that
position; but it did not compensate me for the loss of my living. After
that, I taught in a common school, but they said I was wanting in
discipline. Then I drifted about, and now here I am, bookkeeper at a
planing-mill. But I have a hope that it will all come right, and I
could exist fairly, but my wife and my daughter do not share my hope. I
trust I do not shock you when I affirm that a woman has a contempt for
the hope of a man. She is a materialist; she wants immediate results,
and all that keeps her from being a gambler is the fear of losing. I
trust I have not shocked you."
He stroked his thin beard to a point, and twisted it. He cocked his
head, and looked at Milford as if he expected a weighty decision
concerning an important matter. His clothes were well-kept relics, but
his dignity came out fresh, as if it had been newly dusted. What a
tenderfoot he would have been in a mining camp; what a guy at a variety
show! Milford agreed that his views were no doubt correct. The man was
an unconscious joke, and argument would spoil him.
"I thank you," said the Professor. "Such ready and cheerful agreement is
rarely found, except between two intelligent men, and the admission of a
third man of equal intelligence would greatly lessen the chances. And
now I may tell you that my wife and daughter objected to my calling,
affirming, as they had a right to do, that it was your place to call on
me, as I was the newer comer. And I said, 'Madam, there are no women in
this case, so, therefore, we have no need to be finical and unnatural.'"
He cleared his throat, and cocked his head. The sharp face of his host
looked serious, but there was a titter in his breast.
"Of course," said the Professor, "one may have ever so hairy an ear, and
yet the gossip of the neighborhood will force its way in. I have heard
much concerning you. I heard that they did not understand you, and then
I said to myself that you must be a man worth knowing."
"Then I must be rare," said Milford.
"Ah, sharp; that is sharp, sir. A dignified contempt for man may not
belong to the text of the virtues, but it is one of the pictures that
brightens the page. I beg pardon for even the appearance of
infringement, but do you expect to reside here permanently?"
"No, I have stopped to stay over night, and to chop wood for breakfast."
"A judicious answer, sir; a shrewd statement. They told me that you were
strangely guarded in speech, that you suffered yourself to seem dull
rather than to trip off a waste of words. That is true wisdom, not,
indeed, to have nothing to say, but keeping the something that fain
would fly forth. I take it that you came from the city to these parts."
"Yes, directly. But I was there only a short time."
"A stranger, indeed. Have you ever chanced to live in Kansas?"
"I've broken out there in spots."
"Ha! an idiomatic answer. I see that you belong to the new school.
Perhaps it is better, but I am too old to learn. Did you ever happen to
break out in a spot called Grayson?"
"I passed through there on my way to break out somewhere else."
"You did? That was my town, sir--a seat of learning made famous by a
bank robbery. When our city was ten years old, I read a paper at the
celebration. Were you ever engaged in any educational work?"
"Yes, one of the greatest. I sold a cook-book."
"Shrewd; yes, sharp. From what I heard, I thought that you would be
worth knowing. I have met your landlady, a most impressive woman, but
with a vulgar contempt for my profession. She said that it was a good
thing that I had left off fooling and at last got down to work. And I
think that this has precluded any relationship between her and my wife.
She can't stand a reference, not that kind of a reference, to my
decline. In this regard, women haven't so much virtue as a man
possesses. They can not piece a torn quilt with an aphorism. In what
part of the country have your labors been mostly confined?"
"Mostly between here and sunset."
"More poetic than sharp," said the Professor, clearing his throat. "May
I trouble you for a drink of water?"
Milford drew water from the well near the walnut tree, and in the
kitchen dipper conveyed a quart of it to the Professor, who drank with
the thirst of a toper and the suck of a horse. "I am sufficiently
watered," he said, bowing and returning the dipper to Milford, who threw
it out upon the grass where the hired man could find it. "What a
delightful way to live!" said the Professor. "You throw things about as
you please, and there is no one to complain. You may leave your pipe
anywhere, and probably find it again; you let hunger, instead of time,
summon you to eat. I trust I do not shock you when I say that Adam
enjoyed his greatest freedom before the appearance of Eve."
Milford said that he was not shocked, and the Professor thanked him. It
was pleasant to meet a philosopher, a man who did not foolishly feel
called upon in resentment to declare, that his mother was a woman. A
shrewder man than Milford might have inferred that the Professor had
been nagged by his wife through the tedium of a Sunday forenoon.
Work-day annoyances fester on Sunday. In the country, when a man has, on
a Sunday, killed the chickens for dinner, salted the sheep in the
pasture, and returned to the house, he is in the way; everything he does
is wrong; everything he leaves undone is worse. He is kept on the
ducking verge of a constant dodge.
"No man has more respect for a woman than I have," said the Professor,
"but I am forced to admit that she is a constant experiment. Nature
herself does not as yet know what to make of her. One moment she is a
joy, and the next she is searching for a man's weak spots, like a
disease. I think that it was some such expression, spoken in a
sententious mood, that helped to oust me from the easy chair of
congenial letters." A clock struck the hour of five. The Professor
seemed surprised at the swift rush of time. "Well, I must take my
leave," said he, getting up and standing with his hands resting on the
back of the chair. "Ah, and would you mind walking over to my home with
me?"
The lingering dawn of Milford's suspicions was now streaked with gray.
"I'd like to, but the hired man's gone out, and I've got to do the
chores about the place."
"But perhaps I may return with you and assist you. I am an apt hand."
"No, thank you, not to-day; some other time."
A shade of disappointment fell upon him and darkened his dignity. "I am
sorry," he said. "I had hoped to know you better, and we were making
such fair progress. It is not often that I get along so well with a new
acquaintance." He brightened suddenly, as if the reserve forces of his
mind had been brought up. "Ah, would you object to my helping you with
your work, and then taking a bachelor's supper with you?"
"That's all right--fits me like a glove," said Milford.
"Good!" cried the Professor. "Idiomatic, and divested of all shrewdness.
Now, what shall we do first?"
"I'll hatch up a bite to eat, and then we'll feed the stock. You sit
here."
He protested against a decree that might make a lazy guest of him, but
he yielded, and sat down to hum a tune of contentment, pliant heart
postponing trouble, procrastinator of annoyances. It did not take
Milford long to prepare the meal, crisp strips of bacon, bread, and
coffee boiled in a tin pail. The host said that it was but ranch fare.
The guest rubbed his hands together, and declared that freedom was a
pudding's sweetest sauce. He had read of many great feasts, in the days
of the barons, when bulls were roasted whole, of the wild boar's head
served upon the golden platter of the king, but to him there was one
banquet mellower with sentiment than all the rest--General Marion and
the British officer in the forest, with a pile of roasted sweet potatoes
on a log. He sipped the dreggy coffee as if it were the mulled wine of a
New Year's night. He talked loudly as if he enjoyed the resonant freedom
of his own voice. He laughed in the present, and then was silent as a
cool shadow of the future fell upon him. But he shifted from under the
shadow, and went on with his talk, in florid congratulation of his host,
his ease, his independence. There were no soft cushions, but there was
rough repose, the undisturbed rest of honest weariness. Milford's
judgment of men told him that this man had ever been a laughing-stock,
afflicted as he was with a certain incompetent refinement of mind. But,
in the varied society of life, how important is the office of such a
failure! A shiftless man sometimes makes shiftless men more contented,
softening enmities against life, and quieting clamors against
discriminating nature. Here was a man who really was worth knowing, and
the cowboy gratefully accepted him. He opened up his Noah's Ark of
adventures, and entertained the man-child. He shoved back from the
table, and sang a roaring song of a plainsman who died for love. He
recited a poem by Antrobus, the herdsman's sneer of abandoned
recklessness--"Like a Centaur, he speeds where the wild bull feeds." The
Professor clapped his hands. He swore that no Eastcheap could afford a
more delicious entertainment. Milford brought cider from the cellar,
beading in a brown, earthen ewer, and the Professor snapped his eyes.
"Where the wild bull feeds," he laughed, passing his cup for more. They
shook hands, that they held in common so many old songs, lines familiar
to our grandmothers--"Come, dearest, the daylight hath gone;" "The
tiger's cub I'd bind with a chain." They sang till the daylight was
gone, and then went forth laughingly to feed the stock. But the
Professor left off his part of the singing before the work was
completed. The shadow of the future had again fallen upon him, and he
could not shift from under it.
"Look here," he said, "you must go home with me. Do you understand?"
"I think I do, and I'll go anywhere with you."
"Idiomatic, and accommodating. Put her there!" he cried, striking hands
with Milford. "Ha! how is that for idiom? Stay by me, gentle keeper, my
soul is heavy, and I fain would--would duck." He leaned against the barn
door and shook. Milford clapped him on the shoulder, and shook with him.
Across a field, through a wood and along a grassy slope, they went,
toward the Professor's home, passing a house which schoolboys said was
haunted. The Professor talked philosophy. He had a religious theory,
newly picked up on the way: If we die suddenly at night, dreaming a
sweet dream, we continue the dream throughout eternity--heaven. If we
die dreaming a troubled dream, we go on dreaming it after death--hell.
Moral, then let us strive to live conducively to pleasant dreams.
Milford agreed that, as a theory, it was good enough. Nearly anything
was good enough for a theory. But wise men had summed up the future, and
had died trusting in their creed. The Professor hung back at the word
future. The future was now too near to be discussed as a speculation. He
saw it shining through the window of his house. He heard it in the
slamming of a door.
"Well, here we are," he said, unwinding a chain from about a post, and
opening a gate. "Step in. We will sit on the veranda--cooler than in the
house."
The door opened, and a large woman stepped out upon the veranda. Seeing
who came, she uttered one of anger's unspellable words, a snort. She was
a good woman, no doubt, but she was of the class who, in the old days,
lent virtue to the ducking stool. In short, she was one who deemed
herself the most abused of all earthly creatures, a scold. Pretending
not to see her husband, she asked Milford what he wanted.
"Mrs. Dolihide," said the Professor, "this is my very dear friend, Mr.
Milford, our neighbor, and a man who has lived over most of the ground
between here and sunset."
"Oh, is that you? Really, I didn't expect to see you again. It's a
pretty time to come poking home now, when you were to be here to go to
church with us. Oh, you needn't blink your eyes, having us get ready and
set here and wait and wait."
"Mad and dressed up," muttered the Professor. "What could be more
pitiable? Don't go," he whispered to Milford. "I pray thee, gentle
keeper, stay by me. Idiomatically, I am half shot."
"Let me go," said Milford.
"Not on your idiomatic life," muttered the Professor. "Mother, I am very
sorry that I didn't get here in time to accompany you and my daughter to
the humble house of the Lord. But we may not be too late now to catch
the welcome end of a long sermon."
A voice came from within the house. "Is that pa?"
"Yes," the Professor's wife replied, "and he's as drunk as a fool."
"Oh, for pity sake! How dreadful, how humiliating to us! But he never
thinks of us." An inner door slammed.
Milford strove to pull away. The Professor clung to him. "It is not
fear," he said. "It is a sort of awe that the sex inspires. But there is
a time for boldness. Madam, you have told your daughter that I am drunk.
I am here to refute that statement. I am not drunk. My friend is not
drunk. We drank some cider, sinuous with age, but we are not drunk. He
is a man of high moral character, and I breathe a respect for
letters----"
"Your breath would scorch a feather right now," she snapped, looking at
him with contempt, her hands on her hips.
"I deny that statement, also. I am here to refute it. I have been
merrier than is my wont; we have shaken warm hands over a stone jug,
but nobody's character was assailed. And I had thought, in view of the
fact that I present a neighbor, you would treat me with a little more
courtesy."
"You didn't know me."
"It appears not, madam. A man may think that he knows his wife to-day,
but to-morrow there appears in her system the symptoms of a strange
disease. But, if you will forgive me," he added, slowly advancing,
"forgive a memory for slipping up in a slippery place, I will promise
that there shall be no recurrence of the fall. Mrs. Dolihide, Mr.
Milford."
Milford roared with laughter. He broke loose from the Professor, and
fled through the gate, and he did not check his flight till he was far
down the road, and then he halted to laugh again.
Since early evening, the sky had been overcast, and drops of rain began
to fall. Milford hastened onward. In the woods, far across a willow
flat, the wind blew hard, and the rain lashed the leaves. He turned
aside into the haunted house. All the doors were open. He went to the
back door and stood looking out at the coming of the rain. A noise
quickened his blood, and looking about he saw a vision of white in the
front door.
"Who is that?"
A slight cry, a swaying of the vision, a voice replying: "Oh, I did not
know there was any one in here. I have stopped in out of the rain."
And now his blood jumped. "Is that you, Miss Strand?"
"Oh, yes, but I do not know you. Oh, is it Mr. Milford? How strange! But
you do not live here?"
"No, I've simply dodged in out of the wet. It's pouring down."
"Yes, the clouds were a long time here, but the rain was quick. I went
far over after a laundress. Mrs. Stuvic would have sent me in the buggy,
but I wanted to walk; and now I shall be made sorry."
"I hope not. Let me see if I can't make it more comfortable for you."
He struck a match, and looked about. The room was bare. In places the
floor was broken. She said, with a laugh, that she would not mind it so
much but for the dark.
"I hope you have many matches," she said.
"I haven't, but I can remedy it. Here is an old smudge pan. I'll build a
fire in it."
He broke up a piece of board, split fine pieces with his knife, tore up
a letter, and made a fire in the pan. In a shed-room he found a bench,
dusted it, and brought it in for her. She sat down, and he stood looking
at the play of the shadows and the light on her hair. The spirit of the
cider was gone. He wondered why he had run down the road, laughing. He
got down on his knees to feed the fire. It was a trick; it was stealing
an attitude to pay a homage.
"Mrs. Goodwin will be very much worried," she said. "I wish that I did
not come. It was so much further than they said. I left when the sun was
down. Now it is late, and I walked all the time."
"I will run over there and bring the buggy for you."
"Oh, no, no. The rain pours too much. When it is done I will go with
you. The road is hard. There will be not much mud. We found many flowers
in the woods to-day."
"I saw you with an armful."
"Did you see me wave at you when you stand on the high place in the
oats?"
"I did, but I was almost afraid to believe it."
"Almost afraid? Why, what harm? There is no harm to wave a flower. Now
it rains easier. It will soon quit."
Never did a promised clearing of the sky so mock a man. He mended the
fire, for, in his enraptured gazing, he had neglected it. He got up and
looked out, to see a glimmer of the threatening moon and a star peeping
from a nest of glinted cloud-wool. He returned and knelt near the
fire-pan.
"Is it clearing away?" she asked.
"It's going to pour down."
"But it is getting lighter."
"I know, but another cloud is coming."
"I may get home before the new rain falls."
"No, I hear it in the woods off yonder."
"If I run I may get to a house where some one lives."
"The rain will catch you. A wind is behind it."
"I don't hear the wind."
"It is a low wind, but it will soon be high."
"The smoke hurts my eyes. You have put on too much wood at once."
"And we must stay till it burns out to keep the house from catching
fire."
"Oh, the moon is out. I must go now."
"I will go with you."
"Take me to the straight road, and then I will go alone."
He took the pan between two sticks, and threw it far out upon the wet
grass. A flock of sheep pattered by. "Sheep always run past a haunted
house," he said, leading her to the road.
"Is this place haunted?" she asked, looking back.
"Yes, by a young man who drowned himself in the lake."
"Why did he drown himself?"
"On account of a young woman who lived here."
She laughed at the cowboy's impromptu lie. "He was foolish to drown
himself. Let us walk fast now. Mrs. Goodwin will be much afraid for me.
Can you not walk faster?"
When they reached the corners, where a broad road crossed their path,
she turned to him and said: "I know where I am now. This is my road, and
I am not far. I thank you ever so much, and I bid you good-night." She
fled swiftly down the road, and he stood there long after she had faded
from sight.