Part 16 (2/2)
”No, you didn't mention meeting her,” said Mrs. Dolihide.
”But what difference does it make, mother?” the daughter spoke up. ”By this time you ought to know that he meets many intelligent persons that we never see. Stuck here all the time,” she added under her breath.
”Ah,” said the Professor, ”man may be walking pleasantly with prosperity hooked upon his arm, talking of the deeds they are to perform in common, when up gallops misfortune on a horse, and that is the end. I was going to take my family to Europe, but there came a galloping down the road and overtook me. Since then my hands have been tied.”
”When I look around,” said Mrs. Dolihide, ”and see ordinary people living on the best in the land, it makes me mad to think that as smart a man as the Professor--”
”My dear, like you I could question fate, but--”
”Fate nothing; I don't know what it is, but it does seem strange to me.
I don't understand why a man as well educated as you are has to struggle with the world when the commonest sort of a person can buy property. I don't understand it.”
”Easy enough,” the Professor replied. ”The commonest sort of a person may have money, and having money, buys property. Nut-sh.e.l.l argument, Milford,” he added, slapping his hand flat upon the table.
”Failure has always been easier to understand than success,” said Milford. ”Failure is natural, it seems to me. It comes from the weakness of man and nothing is more natural than weakness. I am arguing from my own case, and don't mean to reflect on any one else. I have thrown away many an opportunity, but that was in keeping with my weakness.”
”But I hear that you are anything but weak,” said the Professor's daughter. ”They call you a mystery, and a mystery is a success until it is solved.”
”But an unsolved conundrum might starve to death,” he replied.
”Not so long as it remained unsolved,” the Professor declared. ”We feed the performer till he explains the trick.”
”Then I suppose Mr. Milford will not explain his trick,” said the girl.
”I'd be foolish to shut off my supplies, wouldn't I?”
”Yes,” she admitted, ”but if you have a mystery you ought to let your friends share it.”
”Ha,” said the Professor, ”that would mean the disposition of all the shares. But I don't see why they call my friend a mystery. A man comes into the neighborhood and goes to work. Is there anything so mysterious about that? It would be more of a mystery if he lived without work.”
”Father sometimes fails to catch the atmosphere of a situation,” said the girl, giving Milford a smile not so narrow and not so dry with irony. ”One's appearance might have something to do with the estimate formed of him,” she continued.
”The hired man marches from the east to the west and back again,” said Milford. ”And I am a hired man--hired by myself to do something, and I am going to do it,” he added with a tightening of his face.
”But that mysterious something?” queried the girl. ”What is it?”
”To make money,” he answered. ”Simmer it down and that's all there is to life.”
In her heart she agreed with him, but she took issue. She said that there was something better than money. He asked if it were an old mill, and they laughed themselves into better acquaintance.
”It would be well to sit here,” said the Professor to Milford, ”but I want you to go up to my work shop with me. I wish to show you something.”
As Milford arose to follow him, he thought that on the woman's face he saw a sneer at ”work shop,” and he felt that she and her daughter had learned to look upon it as an idle corner, full of useless lumber. The schemes of this ducking failure of a man were not of serious interest to them. His readiness to talk made him seem light of purpose, and a sigh that came from his heart might have been an unuttered word breathed upon the air, a word in excuse of his poverty.
Milford was conducted to an upper room, furnished with two chairs, a worn carpet and a table. But the Professor entered it reverently, as if it were the joss-house of hope. He turned down his light to steady the flame, placed the lamp upon the table, motioned his visitor to a chair, sat down, drew a pile of papers toward him, and said: ”My dear fellow, I think I have something here that will tide me over the quarterly rapids.
I believe that among these sheets lie a life insurance premium of ninety-seven dollars and forty cents. I want you to hear it, and then I will steal it forth to that woman. Now, in writing for a professional man, a physician, we will say, you must of all things employ sky-sc.r.a.ping terms. Medicine has no use for the simple. I wanted to start off with a cloud-capped sentence, a quotation, and here is one I found in Hazlett, referring to old Sir Thomas Brown: 'He scooped an ant.i.thesis from fabulous antiquity and raked up an epithet from the sweepings of chaos.' Isn't that a wild pigeon with the sun on its back?”
”Yes, I know, but what has it to do with an article on medicine?”
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