"No more to-night, Professor," said Milford. "I am going to get a bite to eat pretty soon. Won"t you join me?"
"To eat, to clog the stomach, to stupefy the nimble brain, that fine machinery of wheels invisible and pulleys more delicate than the silkworm"s dream of a gauzy thread! No, I will not eat, but I will drink--one more russet cup."
"Just one," said Milford.
"I spoke one, one in true sincerity; and if I squeeze the gentle hand of hospitality till the bones crack, and ask for more--give it to me," he roared, throwing his head back.
"Bob, bring him a cup of cider," said Milford.
"This has been an off day with me," the Professor remarked, following the hired man with his eyes. "The mill shut down to undergo repairs, and I am a boy out of school." He listened, as if straining his ears to catch the babble of the cider. "I sat about the house, with a dry book, to feel the contrast of the rain; I sniffed the dust of an Elizabethan"s pedantry--and then my wife and my daughter began on me. I beggared myself and got them a sofa, and now they want a set of chairs. I made with them a treaty of peace, and, barbarians, they violated it. What a reproach it is to woman to see a man think! She must stir him up, scatter his faculties."
"Not all women," said Milford.
"Ha! About how many women have you married, sir?"
Mitch.e.l.l came in with the cider, and the Professor reached for it. He placed the cup on the table and gazed at the bursting beads as if counting them. He drank, smacked his mouth, and no whip-lash could have popped keener; he gazed down into the cup, regretting the fall of the yellow tide. He leaned back, with his eyes turned upward, and breathed long; he whistled softly as if to coax back a thought that had escaped him; he leaned forward, drained the cup, and sadly put it down, shoving it far across the table. "Just within arm"s reach of a temptation to ask for more," he said, thrusting forth his hand. "But I will not. My word has been given. Yes, about how many women have you married?"
"Well, just about one fewer than yourself if you"ve married only one,"
Milford answered.
The Professor"s eyes snapped. "Was that word fewer contemplated or was it an accident? Do you study to find such niceties of distinction?"
"I don"t give a snap for niceties of distinction, Professor; I don"t know them, in fact. They might have been hammered into my head once, but they were jolted out by bucking horses. Sometimes we forced them out. We didn"t want to be hampered. I knew a rancher, an Oxford man, who wilfully clawed the polish off his tongue. He wanted to live down among men, he said, and the rougher the better. One day I saw him get down off his horse to kick a book that some one had dropped in the trail."
"I don"t blame him for kicking a book that he might find out there,"
said the Professor.
"You don"t? A scholar lost an aeschylus on the prairie, and some one might have kicked it."
"Ha! I draw you on apace. We"ll discuss the ancient goat-song next."
"No, I"d rather talk about sheep and calves. I know more about them. I never look at a learned man that I don"t fancy him weary of his burden.
Think of a professor"s moldy pack, dead languages, dried thought----"
"Hold on, my dear friend. I was a professor, and I had no such pack.
Like the modern peddler, I carried the wants of to-day. But, after all, I agree with you in the main. I know that the average doctor of learning is not able to see virtue in the new. To him old plat.i.tude is of more value than new vigor. And with one more cup I could----"
"No more."
"Not in the interest of clear elucidation?"
"Not in any interest that you can fish up. I don"t want you to go home drunk."
"Drunk! Why, my dear boy, I hadn"t thought of such a thing; it hasn"t entered my head. You mistake me, and I am here to refute it. A man needs something beyond his needs; there are times when we look for something aside from our own natural forces; there are wants which nature was ages in supplying. Look at tobacco. The Greeks missed it as they sat deep in the discussion of their philosophy. They did not know what it was they were missing, but they knew it was something and I know it was tobacco.
But be that as it may. You have said that I shall have no more, and I bow." He twisted his beard and seemed to force into himself the spirit of resignation. They heard a tramping on the veranda. A voice called Mitch.e.l.l. He went to the door and opened it, told some one to come in, and then stepped out. There came a mumbling, and then a profane exclamation. Mitch.e.l.l stepped back into the room and slammed the door.
He sat down and leaned over with his arms upon his knees. The Professor looked at him, still twisting his beard. Milford asked him what had happened. He looked up with a sour snarl. "It"s all off," he said.
"What"s all off?" Milford asked.
"It"s all off with me, that"s what. My girl"s married."
"You don"t mean it!" the Professor cried.
"Then what the devil do I want to say it for? She married about two hours ago, so Miles Brent tells me, and he was there--married a feller named Hogan. I see him around there once or twice, but don"t think anythin" of it. Well, I"ll swear. I thought I knowed her, and I did know her at one time, but she changed. Blamed if you can tell how soon they"ll change on you. Hogan--an old widower."
"I know him," said Milford. "He milks fifteen cows. His milk caught her."
"I hate to think that," Mitch.e.l.l drawled, "but I"ll have to. Yes, sir, hauled off in a milk-wagon. And she owns a piece of land worth fifty dollars an acre."
"She must have wanted milk to wash off her freckles," said Milford.
"Don"t, Bill--don"t make light of a man"s trouble. She"s a big loss to me, I tell you."
"But, Bob, you didn"t really love her, now, did you?"
"Bill, there"s different sorts of love. I loved her in my way, as much as any man ever loved a woman, I reckon, in his way. I put my faith in her, and that was goin" a good ways. Humph! I can"t hardly believe it, but I know it"s so."
"When the heart is rent," said the Professor, twisting his beard to aid his thought; "when the heart is rent----"
"It"s the failure of the rent--on the land, that gets Bob," Milford broke in. "His heart has nothing to do with it."
"Bill, I thought you had more sympathy than----"
"Sympathy for a man who has failed to beat a woman out of her property?
Of course, I wish you"d succeeded, but I"m not going to console you because you haven"t. I"m a scoundrel all right enough, but a scoundrel has his limits."
"That"s all right, Bill, but somebody may give you the slip."
"That"s true enough, but my heart and not my pocket will do the grieving. I haven"t any time to give to a man"s pocket grief."
"Wait till you have a real grief," said the Professor. "Wait till ignorance comes heavy of hoof down your hallway to tell you that your years of study are but a waste-land, covered with briars; to cut you with the blue steel of a chilling smile, and to turn you out of an inst.i.tution that you hold dear. That"s grief." He leaned forward upon the table, with his head on his arms.
"You had no right to go to see her," said Milford. "You had no divorce."
"But I could"ve got one, couldn"t I? Are they so blamed scarce that a man can"t get "em? Well, let it go."
"Yes, I must go," said the Professor, getting up. "Is it raining yet? I slipped off between showers without an umbrella."
"Sorry I haven"t one," Milford replied. "Yes, it"s raining. Take that coat up there. It may protect you some."
"Thank you. I shall avail myself of your offer."
He put on the coat, bade them good-night, and set out for home. The road was muddy and he walked close to the fence. Once he strode into a patch of briars. "The waste land of my years of study," he said. He shied when he saw the light in his window, and he cleared his throat and braced himself. His wife and Miss Catherine, hearing him upon the veranda, sat down upon the floor, as if they had no chairs. He stepped in, looked at them, and sadly shook his head.
"I would be polite enough to choose a finer insinuation," said he.
"There may be virtue in a hint--there may be all sorts of spice in it, but there"s nothing but insult in squatting around on the floor like this. I don"t know how to choose words for the occasion. I will simply bid you good-night."
He heard them talking after he went to bed. He sighed out his distemper and fell asleep. In the morning he found that he had hung Milford"s coat upside down. A paper had fallen from the pocket. He took it up, opened it, and with a start he recognized his medical treatise.