Part 18 (2/2)

Mr. Furlong was about to reach for his hat and stick when at that moment the aged clerk knocked at the door.

”Dr. Boomer,” he announced in a tone of solemnity suited to the occasion.

Dr. Boomer entered, shook hands in silence and sat down.

”You have heard our sad news, I suppose?” he said. He used the word ”our” as between the university president and his honorary treasurer.

”How did it happen?” asked Mr. Furlong.

”Most distressing,” said the president. ”Dr. McTeague, it seems, had just entered his ten o'clock cla.s.s (the hour was about ten-twenty) and was about to open his lecture, when one of his students rose in his seat and asked a question. It is a practice,” continued Dr. Boomer, ”which, I need hardly say, we do not encourage; the young man, I believe, was a newcomer in the philosophy cla.s.s. At any rate, he asked Dr. McTeague, quite suddenly it appears; how he could reconcile his theory of transcendental immaterialism with a scheme of rigid moral determinism. Dr. McTeague stared for a moment, his mouth, so the cla.s.s a.s.sert, painfully open. The student repeated the question, and poor McTeague fell forward over his desk, paralysed.”

”Is he dead?” gasped Mr. Furlong.

”No,” said the president. ”But we expect his death at any moment. Dr. Slyder, I may say, is with him now and is doing all he can.”

”In any case, I suppose, he could hardly recover enough to continue his college duties,” said the young rector.

”Out of the question,” said the president. ”I should not like to state that of itself mere paralysis need incapacitate a professor. Dr. Thrum, our professor of the theory of music, is, as you know, paralysed in his ears, and Mr. Slant, our professor of optics, is paralysed in his right eye. But this is a case of paralysis of the brain. I fear it is incompatible with professorial work.”

”Then, I suppose,” said Mr. Furlong senior, ”we shall have to think of the question of a successor.”

They had both been thinking of it for at least three minutes. ”We must,” said the president. ”For the moment I feel too stunned by the sad news to act. I have merely telegraphed to two or three leading colleges for a loc.u.m tenens and sent out a few advertis.e.m.e.nts announcing the chair as vacant. But it will be difficult to replace McTeague. He was a man,” added Dr. Boomer, rehearsing in advance, unconsciously, no doubt, his forthcoming oration over Dr. McTeague's death, ”of a singular grasp, a breadth of culture, and he was able, as few men are, to instil what I might call a spirit of religion into his teaching. His lectures, indeed, were suffused with moral instruction, and exercised over his students an influence second only to that of the pulpit itself.”

He paused.

”Ah yes, the pulpit,” said Mr. Furlong, ”there indeed you will miss him.”

”That,” said Dr. Boomer very reverently, ”is our real loss, deep, irreparable. I suppose, indeed I am certain, we shall never again see such a man in the pulpit of St. Osoph's. Which reminds me,” he added more briskly, ”I must ask the newspaper people to let it be known that there will be service as usual the day after tomorrow, and that Dr. McTeague's death will, of course, make no difference-that is to say-I must see the newspaper people at once.”

That afternoon all the newspaper editors in the City were busy getting their obituary notices ready for the demise of Dr. McTeague.

”The death of Dr. McTeague,” wrote the editor of the Commercial and Financial Undertone, a paper which had almost openly advocated the minister's dismissal for five years back, ”comes upon us as an irreparable loss. His place will be difficult, nay, impossible, to fill. Whether as a philosopher or a divine he cannot be replaced.”

”We have no hesitation in saying,” so wrote the editor of the Plutorian Times, a three-cent morning paper, which was able to take a broad or three-cent point of view of men and things, ”that the loss of Dr. McTeague will be just as much felt in Europe as in America. To Germany the news that the hand that penned 'McTeague's Shorter Exposition of the Kantian Hypothesis' has ceased to write will come with the shock of poignant anguish; while to France-”

The editor left the article unfinished at that point. After all, he was a ready writer, and he reflected that there would be time enough before actually going to press to consider from what particular angle the blow of McTeague's death would strike down the people of France.

So ran in speech and in writing, during two or three days, the requiem of Dr. McTeague.

Altogether there were more kind things said of him in the three days during which he was taken for dead, than in thirty years of his life-which seemed a pity.

And after it all, at the close of the third day, Dr. McTeague feebly opened his eyes.

But when he opened them the world had already pa.s.sed on, and left him behind.

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