Part 30 (1/2)

”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.