It was a charmingly mild and balmy day. The sun shone beyond the orchard, and the shade was cool inside. A light breeze stirred the boughs of the old apple-tree under which the philosopher sat. None of these things did the philosopher notice, unless it might be when the wind blew about the leaves of the large volume on his knees, and he had to find his place again. Then he would exclaim against the wind, shuffle the leaves till he got the right page, and settle to his reading. The book was a treatise on ontology; it was written by another philosopher, a friend of this philosopher"s; it bristled with fallacies, and this philosopher was discovering them all, and noting them on the fly-leaf at the end. He was not going to review the book (as some might have thought from his behaviour), or even to answer it in a work of his own. It was just that he found a pleasure in stripping any poor fallacy naked and crucifying it.
Presently a girl in a white frock came into the orchard. She picked up an apple, bit it, and found it ripe. Holding it in her hand, she walked up to where the philosopher sat, and looked at him. He did not stir. She took a bite out of the apple, munched it, and swallowed it. The philosopher crucified a fallacy on the fly-leaf.
The girl flung the apple away.
"Mr. Jerningham," said she, "are you very busy?"
The philosopher, pencil in hand, looked up.
"No, Miss May," said he, "not very."
"Because I want your opinion."
"In one moment," said the philosopher, apologetically.
He turned back to the fly-leaf and began to nail the last fallacy a little tighter to the cross. The girl regarded him, first with amused impatience, then with a vexed frown, finally with a wistful regret. He was so very old for his age, she thought; he could not be much beyond thirty; his hair was thick and full of waves, his eyes bright and clear, his complexion not yet divested of all youth"s relics.
"Now, Miss May, I"m at your service," said the philosopher, with a lingering look at his impaled fallacy; and he closed the book, keeping it, however, on his knee.
The girl sat down just opposite to him.
"It"s a very important thing I want to ask you," she began, tugging at a tuft of gra.s.s, "and it"s very--difficult, and you mustn"t tell any one I asked you; at least, I"d rather you didn"t."
"I shall not speak of it; indeed, I shall probably not remember it," said the philosopher.
"And you mustn"t look at me, please, while I"m asking you."
"I don"t think I was looking at you, but if I was I beg your pardon,"
said the philosopher, apologetically.
She pulled the tuft of gra.s.s right out of the ground, and flung it from her with all her force.
"Suppose a man--" she began. "No, that"s not right."
"You can take any hypothesis you please," observed the philosopher, "but you must verify it afterward, of course."
"Oh, do let me go on. Suppose a girl, Mr. Jerningham--I wish you wouldn"t nod."
"It was only to show that I followed you."
"Oh, of course you "follow me," as you call it. Suppose a girl had two lovers--you"re nodding again--or, I ought to say, suppose there were two men who might be in love with a girl."
"Only two?" asked the philosopher. "You see, any number of men _might _ be in love with--"
"Oh, we can leave the rest out," said Miss May, with a sudden dimple; "they don"t matter."
"Very well," said the philosopher, "if they are irrelevant we will put them aside."
"Suppose, then, that one of these men was, oh, _awfully_ in love with the girl, and--and proposed, you know--"
"A moment!" said the philosopher, opening a note-book. "Let me take down his proposition. What was it?"
"Why, proposed to her--asked her to marry him," said the girl, with a stare.
"Dear me! How stupid of me! I forgot that special use of the word.
Yes?"
"The girl likes him pretty well, and her people approve of him, and all that, you know."
"That simplifies the problem," said the philosopher, nodding again.
"But she"s not in--in love with him, you know. She doesn"t _really_ care for him--_much_. Do you understand?"
"Perfectly. It is a most natural state of mind."
"Well then, suppose that there"s another man --what are you writing?"
"I only put down (B)--like that," pleaded the philosopher, meekly exhibiting his note-book.
She looked at him in a sort of helpless exasperation, with just a smile somewhere in the background of it.
"Oh, you really are--" she exclaimed. "But let me go on. The other man is a friend of the girl"s: he"s very clever--oh, fearfully clever--and he"s rather handsome. You needn"t put that down."
"It is certainly not very material," admitted the philosopher, and he crossed out "handsome"; "clever" he left.
"And the girl is most awfully--she admires him tremendously; she thinks him just the greatest man that ever lived, you know. And she--she--" The girl paused.
"I"m following," said the philosopher, with pencil poised.
"She"d think it better than the whole world if --if she could be anything to him, you know."
"You mean become his wife?"
"Well, of course I do--at least, I suppose I do."
"You spoke rather vaguely, you know."
The girl cast one glance at the philosopher as she replied:
"Well, yes; I did mean become his wife."
"Yes. Well?"
"But," continued the girl, starting on another tuft of gra.s.s, "he doesn"t think much about those things. He likes her. I think he likes her--"
"Well, doesn"t dislike her?" suggested the philosopher. "Shall we call him indifferent?"