Superannuated

I

THE June sunshine was glistening on the towering masses of oak leaves, whose shadows patched the rustic little lawn, when Professor Lane stepped from his cottage door, and bared his head in reverent salutation of the beauty of the world. The head thus bared was white, but it was not until the last few days that Professor Lane had been pointed out as the senior professor in Milton University. The professor of mineralogy had been the one to tread at the heels of the dean in the Commencement procession, but yesterday a new grave in the white city on the hill had received its tenant, and Andrew Lane had succeeded to that uncoveted first place in the professorial line.

The strangest thing about it was that he felt younger than ever. It was not that he had grown old. To be sure, his body, mere mortal machine that it was, no longer seconded the impulses of his spirit. The sparkling foliage delighted him as in boyhood, but those elastic limbs that used to climb so eagerly into its midst, — the rheumatic old professor heaved just the least beginning of a sigh.

But, rheumatism or no, he bustled about his diminutive estate with his accustomed morning energy, his red Irish setter, Cuchullin, affectionately getting in his way as much as possible. There was the bird bath, a natural basin in the granite ledge that flanked the lawn, to be put in order for the day’s business, and a thriving business it was in midsummer. On the previous afternoon, the professor had counted, in one hour, over a score of birds — robins, orioles, bluebirds, chipping sparrows, and warblers of several varieties — coming to dip their warm little bodies in this shallow reservoir. So he was not surprised to find the water several shades darker than crystal, and, nodding assurance to the importunate blue jay watching from a branch above, he fetched an old broom from an outside angle of the house, at the back, and swept the puddle, so far as sweeping would do it, from the basin. But still a few dusky pools lingered in cracks and corners, defying the dabs of that distracted broom, whose splintered straws stuck out in all directions, and the professor succumbed, as usual, to the first temptation of the day. Casting a furtive glance toward the kitchen window, he hurriedly dived behind a clump of barberry bushes and drew from its hiding-place,always the same,Norah’s mop, immaculately washed and dried. With those long and decent tresses he scrubbed the granite until it shone again. And then, as always, Norah caught him at it.

“The Lord look down on the poor!” wailed a dolorous voice from the pantry window — the professor invariably forgot that his movements could be overlooked from the pantry as well as from the kitchen — “And is it poor Norah’s clane mop ye must be taking for your dirty hole in the rock ?”

Andrew Lane had learned, in the course of a long pedagogical experience, to have convenient attacks of deafness. One of these befell him now, while he moulded a bit of wax into the leak of a brokennosed watering-pot, long since retired from the regular service, filled it at the hose faucet, and emptied it again into the bird bath, on whose edge the impatient blue jay alighted as he turned away.

“Mother o’ Mercy!” Norah went wailing on. “Now the Lord save us! It’s kaping a boarding-house for the birds we must be all the winter, with a chunk o’ suet here and a bag o’ walnuts there, and then our iligant bathing establishment in the summer. O saints and angels!”

And Norah’s plaint trailed off into long, wild laughter.

Norah had been, in her own parlance, “away,” ever since her only sister, to whom, after years of working and saving, she had joyfully sent the passage money from Ireland to America, was lost in one of the great ocean disasters. The one point on which town and university had been for thirty years agreed was that Professor Lane ought to put his crazy servant into an asylum. But she had loved his bride, the white rose whose lingering fragrance still made his heart a garden of romance, and as long as Norah kept fresh flowers beside that smiling portrait upon his study table, the professor of Greek would have accounted mad all the world who had forgotten to lament his Clara before he would have believed it of Norah who remembered.

There were malicious tongues in the university which said that the reason the professor remained unaware that his domestic had an addled brain was not far to seek. His absent-mindedness furnished material for one of the longest books in the Faculty Apocrypha handed down by word of mouth from class to class. And, after all, it was Crazy Norah who saved him from adding another and peculiarly grotesque chapter this very morning.

After his piazza breakfast, — a slice of melon, a dish of cereal, a cup of coffee,— Professor Lane ran, or, rather, attempted to run, his fingers through his hair. It was a lifelong gesture with him, significant of a course of action determined upon, and he had not, in these later years, accustomed himself to the surprise of finding so little hair where so much used to be. Discomfited, he dropped his hand,patted Cuchullin, and addressed Norah with the dignity of one who covers a mistake.

“ I am now going over to Professor Andrews’ house” —

“Oh, and it’s in his long home he is, poor man. The Lord resave his soul!”

And Norah laughed.

“By the terms of the will — I was in his confidence, Norah — there is to be a public sale of all his goods for the benefit of the university ” —

“Mother o’ Moses! And what will the university be wanting of his old pans and kettles ?”

“His colleagues are invited to choose for themselves, in advance of the auction, personal souvenirs ” —

“Lord love ye, sir! Get one o’ them things, do. We’re out.”

“I, as his oldest colleague, have the first choice.”

“Be shure ye pick out the best quality.”

“And it seems to me, on the whole, most appropriate that I should ask for his academic cap and gown.”

Norah gasped.

“It is true,” continued the professor, with his classroom manner, “that I regard the gown as worn in our American institutions of learning as a ridiculous affectation. A survival of monastic dress as it is, it may be no unfitting garb for a scholar under the Gothic shadow of an Old-World foundation, but to foist it capriciously and artificially upon our infant colleges, a dress notably unsuited to our climate, environment, and tradition, — well, well ! Professor Andrews was older than I, two years older, and my senior in appointment by three, yet he gave way and bought a cap and gown, and wore them at the president’s inauguration, and I think it now becomes me to subdue my prejudice to his example. Yes, I will ask for his cap and gown, and wear them this Commencement.”

Norah did not ordinarily permit her master to indulge uninterrupted in so long a monologue, but on this occasion her eyes were fixed in a ghastly stare. It was not until the professor had taken his hat and cane, and was moving down the gravel walk, Cuchullin’s nose snuggling beseechingly into his hand, that Norah found breath to scream: —

“Mother of God, sir! Don’t ye do it. Don’t ye do it. It ’s ill luck to be stripping the dead o’ their grave-clothes and — Mary save us from the Pain! — him coffined but yisterday.”

The professor stopped short. Ah, true enough. He saw again the wasted form as it lay in its unaccustomed bed of flowers, there below the altar in the university church, with the stalwart young bearers waiting at foot and head. Professor Andrew’s had been buried in his academic gown. “Surely,” thought the professor of Greek, shaking his white head sadly, “surely I am beginning to grow forgetful.”

But he had not forgotten that this was the day when electives were due. Precisely on the stroke of nine, Professor Lane entered his study, opened his desk, dusted it with his pocket handkerchief, and laid out upon a new saffron writing-pad a very long strip of carefully ruled paper. For the next three hours it would be his duty to examine into the qualifications and register the names of students applying for admission to his classes of the ensuing college year.

“Norah,” called the professor cheerily, “ I expect a number of callers this morning, young gentlemen of the university. Please have lemonade ready and iced raspberry shrub. It’s a hot walk across the campus.”

“ Our Lady of Sorrows! ” shrilled Norah with ready agitation, as she hastened to the refrigerator. “It’s melted into butter they ’ll be, and mother’s sons ivery one of thim. The Lord look down in mercy!”

The professor waited. His gentle blue eyes roved lovingly from one to another of the high, black-walnut bookcases set around his study walls, — old-fashioned bookcases, which he had picked up, one by one, at some twelve dollars apiece, in the auction-rooms of the neighboring city. His Homeric library was here, his collection of Greek dramatists there, the orators and historians were grouped together. In less honored position stood the case of Greek grammars, dictionaries, and reference books. Most precious, because most personal, were the contents of the tallest and grimmest of all these tall, grim bookcases, the one which he had inherited from his father’s country parsonage. His father’s worn Greek Testament was here, with Plato, and the Lyric Anthology, and Theocritus,— all nearer and sweeter than any living friends to the professor’s peaceful heart. On the top shelf stood a row of plump little volumes in faded blue and gold, — the set of American poets which his girl wife had prized as the best of her wedding gifts. How like a silver bell her voice would ring out as she read the spirited ballads of Whittier to him of an evening during their first — their only — winter! And while that voice still sounded in his ears, the clock struck ten.

Professor Lane sprang to his feet, and looked into the broad white face of his timepiece incredulously. Ten o’clock ? And no students yet ? He stepped to the window. The gravel walk was empty save for Cuchullin, who, at sight of the countenance in the casement, flopped over on his back, waving his four paws in air as an entreaty for his master to come out and pat his breastbone. The professor was more startled than he would have liked to own,even to Cuchullin. He returned to his chair and waited, questioning within himself the wisdom of the elective system. During his first years in the university, every student was obliged to take Greek, to drink from the primal fountain of culture, to feel the moulding and transforming touch of “the humanities.” Those were golden times, and it was but a silver age that followed, an age when Greek was required only in the classical course. There came, some ten years since, the great tide of innovation, the sweeping away of all prescribed, disciplinary studies, this reckless system of free electives, and, with that, such enlargement of the university, such expansion in all departments, that a junior Greek professor was appointed to assist Professor Lane. And now he had five assistant professors in his department, assisting him so well that it began to look as if they would leave him nothing at all to do. For the clock was striking eleven, and still there had appeared not a single candidate for any one of his three advertised courses.

The professor waited. He remembered how, in Junes gone by, his study had been thronged on elective day, while waiting groups filled the piazza, and stood about the lawn. Why was his teaching less acceptable now, when his stores of knowledge were richer, his love for his subject more deeply passionate than ever before ? But these new methods of criticism! This vast importance attached to archæology! Yes, his classes had certainly been falling off of late years. There had been a considerable drop in his electives last June. He had wanted to talk it over with Andrews, but Andrews had been ill for eighteen months with that cruel, eating cancer. A man could not remember his own troubles in the presence of such agony as that. Poor Andrews! And such a brilliant lecturer as he had been! How short a time ago it seemed when they two were cheered at an alumni banquet as the Castor and Pollux of the university, its twin stars, the “two ablest and most progressive men” upon its faculty!

The clock struck twelve. A little boy was running up the walk. Norah, a glass of iced raspberry shrub in one hand, and of lemonade in the other, hustled him into the study with joyous promptitude. The urchin pulled off his cap, wiped his sweat-beaded face with it, and handed an envelope to Professor Lane.

The senior professor of Milton University adjusted his glasses, and took the note in a hand that trembled with eagerness. Perhaps some change had been effected — many things escaped his notice nowadays — in the method of choosing courses. Perhaps the interview plan, which consumed so much professorial time — ah, not his, of late — had given place to the simpler way of presenting the electives in written form. Perhaps some arrangement had been made by which the full list was thus handed in. He smiled back to the pictured girl-face on his study table. Then the old professor unfolded an official looking sheet of letter paper, and read a typewritten notice: “In view of the limited resources of the university, any course for which less than seven students have applied must be withdrawn from the announcements for the next calendar year.”

II

The sultry heat was growing insupportable. The professor, sitting quiet in his armchair on the piazza though he was, wiped the perspiration from his purpled face. Another moment and the storm had broken in wild and terrible beauty. The rain rushed down through the windless air in straight, unswerving lines, beating to an earthward slant the broad branches of the oaks, and bringing dismay and ruin to many a frail nest-nursery. The streets and walks, just now so deep in dust, were floods of dashing water. The more distant trees grew silvery to the vision as if veiled in mist. The thunder peals broke on the ear with a suddenness so appalling, a violence so awful, that Cuchullin’s red sides panted with terror, and Norah’s cries rang piteously from her refuge in the cellarway.

“Oh, praise be to the Highest!” she shrieked. “Good Lord, you never killed poor Norah with your thunder yet. Don’t do it now. Oh, grace of Mary! Poor Norah believes in God the Father, and Christ the Son, and in the Holy Ghost. Mercy of Heaven! Poor Norah believes in thim all.”

While Cuchullin anxiously eyed the livid sky, there broke out, close on a fierce leap of lightning, such a shattering crash that the red setter, with a shamefaced look back to his master, fled into the house and crouched beside Norah on the cellar stairs.

“ Now I wonder,” mused the professor, watching the storm with the adoring joy of a nature-lover, “if Cuchullin fancies there is a big dog growling up there, and flashing angry eyes at him — a big dog trying to get at Cuchullin — hide away, old fellow! — and I wonder, if it comes to that, how far Norah’s creed is an advance on his.”

Professor Lane had been having a trying afternoon. Three of his five assistant professors had run in to announce their large electives. The man whose Aristophanes course fell just short of the number which allowed a division into two sections, with a proportional increase of salary, made voluble demands for commiseration. The other two expected repeated congratulations, a delighted interest in their success. Professor Lane’s response, it must be admitted, fell a little short of the demand. Ever gentle and kindly, his sympathy was less spontaneous than usual. Only one of the men thought to ask, and that out of a half malicious curiosity, about his own electives. The old professor told the truth unflinchingly, although he knew his hearer for a coarse-grained gossip who would have the story all over the chattering college town within twenty-four hours.

He had hoped the storm would free him from more visitors, but the new president of Milton University was not a man whom common or uncommon obstacles turned from his course. The professor of Greek shivered a little as the spare, erect figure came swiftly up the gravel walk, but he hastened forward, and greeted the ominous caller with his characteristic simple courtesy.

The president touched the professor’s hand with the cool, light, inexpressive touch which was the same for all the subjects, faculty or students, of his little university realm. Charles Gavotte had a wife whom he loved, children whom he fondled, early friends for whom his clasp was lingering and warm, but to the members of Milton University he meant to be, and was, merely the bloodless potentate.

“You have a snug little place here, Professor Lane,” began the president, glancing carelessly about. “ I wish I could make the clematis grow as luxuriantly over my piazza.”

“I dare say the only difference is that my vines have been growing longer,” replied the professor.

“Ah, yes, longer. Very much longer, I am sure. You are our senior professor now you know, — our senior professor.”

Cuchullin pressed against his master’s knee.

The president continued easily and steadily, secure in a good conscience, for one of his first duties had been distinctly defined for him by the trustees as “the clearing out of the dead timber on the faculty.”

“It seems to me, Professor Lane, that you have fairly earned a rest. Man does not live by work alone.”

He had added the second sentence with a vaguely pious intention, and found something disconcerting and secular in the way Professor Lane sat pulling at Cuchullin’s ears.

“I have been meaning for some time,” pursued the president, “to talk over the situation with you, and the way the Greek electives have gone for next year seems to bring the matter to a head.”

Professor Lane made an unexpected remark.

“I believe it was at your suggestion, President Gavotte, that every course I offer is duplicated, substantially,though not in title, by courses offered by the younger professors in the department.”

President Gavotte’s tone, as he replied to this man old enough to be his father, was sharp with official rebuke.

“You will pardon me for reminding you, sir, that what concerns us in this interview is the result, not the suggestion. My stratagem, if you choose to call it so, developed the following fact. Given a choice between another man’s presentation, and your own, of any subject in Greek letters, the preference of our students is manifest.”

“Youth calls to youth,” murmured the old professor dreamily.

“Quite so,” agreed the president, in a voice of less asperity. “Few men ought to teach beyond the age of forty; not one in a hundred beyond fifty. It is no secret to you that life has its successive periods of growth, full vigor, and decay. In any profession whatever, a man past sixty is practically out of the running. I should myself put the limit five years earlier.”

“Sophocles wrote Antigone at fiftyfive,” remarked Professor Lane.

The president made a slight gesture of impatience. He was a product of the modern scientific and engineering education, and had never wasted eyesight over Greek. He would have had more respect for Antigone, if, instead of a play, it had been a piston. However, the professor’s words gave him his opportunity.

“I trust you are sure of your assertion,” he said, “and are not depending upon old-fashioned authorities. To speak plainly, the charge is brought against you of indifference to the more recent advances in your subject. Much that was taught as fact a quarter - century ago has been reduced to fable, exploded into poetry, by the acuteness of the new scholarship. Your assistant professors are all keeping pace with the times, and are making, in one way or another, contributions to Greek philology and textual criticism. Waldron’s views on the latest disputed fragment of Sappho are quoted with respect in German periodicals.”

“ He told you so ? ” queried the old professor, smiling faintly. “This afternoon, perhaps, when he carried you the report of our electives ? But I will not trouble you for further explanations, President Gavotte. You have made the situation clear. There are no students for my courses; my scholarship, such as it was, has ceased to confer distinction on the university; worst of all, I am sixty-seven. You shall have my resignation by the evening mail.”

President Gavotte’s keen visage grew bland with gratification.

“You understand, I hope, Professor Lane, that we — the trustees and I — appreciate your long term of service, highly valued service in its prime, I understand.”

The professor bowed in silence. He was thinking of trustees and presidents whom he had known in the vanished years, known as friends and comrades, rendering honor for honor, and faith for faith, — trustees and presidents who were men when Charles Gavotte was a baby.

But that hard - edged, authoritative voice claimed attention.

“In fact, Professor Lane, there has been some little talk, among the older and more conservative trustees, of a pension. I do not hesitate to tell you frankly that I have discouraged it. The needs of the university are so many and so pressing; the demands of the young life, for whose nurture the university was founded and exists, are so exigent, — all this, taken in connection with the fact that one pension means another, until as an inevitable result we get our treasury burdened with a regular pension system, — all this has led me to believe that you, devoted as you have ever been to the highest welfare of this seat of learning, would be the first to reject such a proposition.”

The full stop required speech from Professor Lane, who was gently rubbing his forefinger under Cuchullin’s chin.

“Apparently I cannot have the pleasure of being the first,” he said, again smiling faintly, “but I would undertake to follow your lead and be a good second.”

President Gavotte knitted his brows, but the old professor’s conclusion, however perversely put, was satisfactory.

“And then, as Ireminded the trustees,” proceeded the president, who had inherited a fortune, “there is really no necessity for a pension in your case. You have not, I am aware, children upon whom to lean ” —

The professor’s mind sped back by a sacred, tearworn way to a blue-eyed baby girl, long since “a plaything in the Palace of Persephone.”

“But you own your little place, I believe,” continued the president suavely, “and you would undoubtedly prize — as I said to the trustees — a life of frugal independence above any grant that might seem to savor, however remotely, of charity. And yet, if you should wish it, I might suggest to a few of our wealthier alumni” —

“No, sir, you might not,” interposed Professor Lane, springing so suddenly to his feet that President Gavotte involuntarily rose also. Yet, after all, why should he stay ? He had two other superannuated professors to dismiss before dinner. And there were important guests coming to dine, — guests with money which, could one but wheedle it out of their pockets, might stand the university in excellent stead. Then there was his address before the Civics Club that evening on “Refinements of American Civilization.” So he took the old, quivering hand again in his slack, impersonal hold, and went his ways, a man remote from suffering, bent on a rigid execution of the work that it was given him to do.

And Professor Lane, sinking upon the steps of his vine-wreathed porch, took his dog’s head between his palms, and looked wistfully into the troubled, worshipful eyes.

“ Oh, Cuchullin, Cuchullin,” he asked, in a voice between a laugh and a sob, “what does a dog do when he has had his day ?”

III

The dark, slender woman leaned forward, wrestling with her grief. Looking upon her, Andrew Lane marveled at the ancestral strength that spoke through that delicate form. She was of mighty stock and bore her weight of nearly sixty years with triumphant vitality. Not a thread of gray in the gleaming black hair, not a wrinkle on the broad white forehead. There was fire in the deep eyes; grim endurance in the thin lips and in the stern, almost rugged jaw. The hands, exquisite though they were, suggested forceful graspings. Something vigorous, vehement, tragic, dwelt in that woman’s heart and had written, for the few eyes skilled to read, its sign-manual on face and frame. The society of the little university town in general considered Miss Elva Hazleton cold and proud. Among the faculty she had friends who admired her dignity, her reserve, the clear - cut judgments that fell on appeal from her usually reticent lips. Since the death of her half - brother, Edwin Andrews, late professor of mineralogy, none were left who recognized the volcanic energies pent within that outwardly tranquil and monotonous existence. To one alone had her treasures of tenderness been revealed. She was a genius in love. Only in loving did she fully realize herself. Then she was complete, clothed with all the ermine of her nature, royal in passionate devotion. The thing, ecstatic, tormenting, that for forty years she had brooded in her heart was love. The wings of silence that hid it from the world warmed and cherished its growth. People saw but the wintry wall of her. Her garden of spices was shut far within. Only once had she opened the door with invitation. In one wild hour of girlhood she had let Andrew Lane see that she loved him. He had deemed it the part of a gentleman to forget. And so, with the moonlight falling strangely upon her craving face, she leaned forward on the rustic settle, wrestling with her grief.

Professor Lane, simplest and most deceivable of men, supposed that Miss Hazleton had been accidentally passing by, when, seeing him pacing his piazza in the moonlight, she had turned in to rest for a few minutes and exchange consolations with an old friend for the loss they both had suffered in the death of Edwin Andrews. They had spoken in hushed voices of his sterlingvirtues and his amusing foibles, finding cause for reverence in what had hitherto been cause for mirth. They had talked of his gay, engaging youth, the dash and high spirit of his early manhood, the half-affected cynicism, the sacrilegious grumbling against university authorities which characterized his later years. And Elva Hazleton’s soul was hot with anguish because, although she had deftly turned the conversation a dozen times so as to give him opportunity, Andrew Lane had betrayed no impulse to confide in her, to bring his wound to the healing that she yearned to give, to lay his burden of humiliation upon the strength of her unvanquishable pride in him.

“Professor Lane,” she said abruptly, “I want to learn Greek.”

“Do you mean it ?” he asked, brightening.

“I mean it,” she answered earnestly. “You know I shall find myself old presently, unless I keep my courage for attempting new things. The secret of youth is adventure. I want to embark on the enterprise of the Greek Grammar.”

“Good! good!” cried the professor, rubbing his palms together in momentary glee. “A little rough weather of verbs and accents, and then — ah, the enchanted isles of poetry, the mystic groves of deep philosophy, the golden fleece ” -

“Not too fast!” interrupted Miss Hazleton, throwing up her hand, ivory in the moonlight, to check him. “Will you steer my Argo ? Will you give me lessons ? Have you time to take a private pupil ? ”

She had surprised him into confession. He winced, flushed to the roots of the hair that had grown so thin, and then said, with a pathetic attempt to speak lightly, —

“Time enough and more. The boys do not like my work any longer. I have become aback number. So runs the world away. And — this afternoon President Gavotte asked for my resignation. I mailed it not an hour ago. Everybody will know all about it by to-morrow.”

She might have told him that everybody knew all about it to-night, that, dining out, the word had come to her across the soup, and,thenceforward, plate after plate had been set before her and taken away unnoted; but she let him suppose that she now first heard the news.

“I congratulate you on your liberty,” she said, “but I am ashamed of the university. It is more barbarous than the Indians whose tepees used to stand where the campus is now. Painted savages though they were, they prized the wisdom of age.”

For all her effort to speak quietly, anger and grief vibrated in her voice. Professor Lane was absently watching the play of the moonshine through the leafy branches of the oaks, and she saw, with a rush of misery, the misery of helplessness, that her words carried him no comfort.

But there was one thing that she must do. She set her teeth and tried again.

“Do you know that Professor Eldridge and Professor Page have also” —

“Oh, no, no,” cried their colleague of many years. “They too! Oh, no! Even Gavotte could not, — why, how will they live ?”

“How will you live?” asked Miss Hazleton.

“How? oh, anyhow,” answered the professor, disconcerted. “Dear me! Everybody will say that I ought to have put by money.”

“Not people who know what paltry salaries the university pays its professors, — salaries that a first-class janitor would refuse. Not people who know the cost of books and learned periodicals. Not people who know how many subscription lists you have headed, how many alumni you have entertained, how many poor students you have aided, how many” —

“Please!” begged the old professor, blushing crimson. “ Please!”

He should never entreat her in vain. She was silent. And he presently began to speak again, in apologetic fashion: —

“Of course, if Clara and the baby had lived” — his tone sank in tender memory — “I should have contrived to make more money, to save more. But when it was just a question of myself, — well! if I had gathered together a little to put by against the chance of a rainy day, there was always somebody at hand in present need of an umbrella. Was I to let my neighbor be drenched for fear I might get a wetting to-morrow ? And this promises nothing worse than a sprinkle. I have the cottage and the bit of land, and my library is valuable. I could live for months on literal scraps from the feast of Homer. And after we have eaten up the books, we might begin on my grandmother’s china that all the Commencement ladies rave about. Norah!” he called cheerily to the bent, gray-haired servant, who was washing and wringing out her mop with ostentatious care beside the barberry bushes. “How does it feel to be hungry ? ”

“The Lord look down on the poor!” chanted Norah, as if in ritual response. “ But it’s not mesilf that can tell ye that. Though, shure, there was people of mine in Ireland through the famine time, but I don’t remimber of any of thim telling me as they died of it.”

“You see,” said the professor, turning to Miss Hazleton with an echo of his old blithe laugh, “Norah and I are not afraid. And Cuchullin, more provident than his master, has the lawn planted full of bones against an hour of need. No, it will hardly come to hunger, but if it should, better that than the food that is begrudged. It is worse for Eldridge, with that mortgage on his house, — far worse for Page, with his invalid daughter. Oh, I shall manage. I will turn gardener, and I have, at all events, money enough to buy a cow.”

“A cow!” groaned Miss Hazleton. “ Money enough to buy a cow, after the devoted and illustrious labor of a lifetime!”

“A cow and hens,” assented the professor firmly. “Capital company, all of them. Really, I wonder that I have been content to associate with college faculties — and trustees — so long.”

“ I hope your cow will hook the president,” breathed Miss Hazleton vengefully.

“ Yes, I will turn gardener,” ran on the professor, like a boy telling himself a fairy tale,“ and then I can wear my old clothes every day.”

A burst of student song from the campus dashed his whimsical mirth, which had almost infected his companion.

“ But my work is over,” he said simply. “My work has failed. My life closes in dishonor. I am turned out of the university, — much as Norah throws away a broken clothespin.”

Blind tears rushed to the woman’s eyes. He suffered, and she was powerless to help. She had a luxurious home, an abundant income. How gladly would she have given him her all, and sewed in a garret for the rest of her thwarted life! But the very bitterness of it lay in the fact that she had no right to give, — no more right to minister to the outer need than to enter the inner sanctuary of his pain. She knew his vitality of spirit too well to doubt that, after a little, even the shame would be transmuted into sweetness, into beauty, into triumph. She recalled the words of his own beloved Æschylus: —

But it must be her part to stand aside and watch, from afar, his struggle and his victory. The utmost it was given her to do was to bring him a token from a love that was less than hers.

“I have something to tell you,” said Miss Hazleton, crossing the shaft of moonlight, and taking a seat nearer the professor. “It is a message from Edwin.”

“From Ned? Dear Ned!” murmured Andrew Lane.

“He feared that this was coming. He knew that it was only his wealth, the expectation that he would leave it to the university, which kept President Gavotte from demandinghis resignation two years ago; and he knew that,so longas he lived, he protected the men next in line, yourself and Eldridge and Page. His will keeps the vow of his graduation day, — that the bulk of his property, like the strength of his life, should go to his Alma Mater. But a month before he died he made a few gifts to friends who, he believed, cared for him enough to allow him that last joy. He asked me to be his messenger, after all was over.”

The ivory hand passed out an envelope to the old professor. Holding the page of painful handwriting to the moonlight, he read aloud in a shaking voice: —

“DEAR ANDY: — If Gavotte is up to any of his tricks, cut it. Make that trip to Greece you have been planning since the time of Deucalion. Start with the notion of taking a holiday,but be sure that some good work will come out of it. And don’t get huffy with your old chum who has no use for money any more.”

A check for ten thousand dollars was folded within the note. The old professor made a choking sound. Elva Hazleton turned away her face.

Poor Norah’s crazy laugh from the kitchen roused them both. Miss Hazleton rose to go.

“It is hard to leave you here alone,” she said impulsively.

“Thank you,” replied Professor Lane, rising also, and carefully stepping across the dog sleeping at his feet. “But I have Cuchullin, who is both solitude and society, and, especially on moonlight nights, Clara seems to be here with me again.”

Judge Hazleton’s proud daughter smiled a grim little smile as she refused the professor’s offered escort. No, let him sit on his moon-silvered piazza and dream of Clara. His romantic faith to that dead girl — the foolish chit of a thing — had become a part of him. And Elva Hazleton loved him as he was.