John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein Part 30

"The words 'Mr. Howard' grated upon my nerves. Up to this moment, except through the translatophone, she had not addressed me by my name in any form; and every tentative lover knows that when his lady addresses him as though he had no name it means that she does not wish to use his formal t.i.tle and that the time has not arrived for her to call him by his Christian name.

"'You deaf?' cried Sarah, turning to me. 'I have never heard anything of that. When did it come on? It must have been very recent.'

"'Oh, he isn't deaf,' said Mary, impatiently. 'It is only one of his inventions. But tell me something of your brothers. I have not heard a word about them yet.'

"But the knowledge-loving Sarah was not to be bluffed off in this way.

"'Oh, they are all right,' said she. 'They are both in college now. But Mr. Howard deaf! I am truly amazed. Do you have to talk to him through this, Mary?'

"Mary Armat was not an ill-natured girl, but, as I said before, she was a high-spirited one, and was at the time in a state of justifiable irritation.

"'Oh, bother that thing!' she answered. 'I told you it is only one of his inventions, and I wish he would put it in his pocket.'

"'Not just yet,' said Sarah. 'I am really anxious to know about it. Why do you use it, Mr. Howard, if you are not deaf?'

"My face must have displayed my extreme embarra.s.sment at this unanswerable question, for Mary came to my relief.

"'Oh, it is a kind of musical instrument,' she said. 'But don't let us talk any more about it. This is the second time I have seen you, but we have not really had a good chance to say anything to each other.'

"I took advantage of this very strong hint, and rose.

"'Musical!' exclaimed the irrepressible Sarah. 'Oh, Mr. Howard, please play on it just the least little bit!'

"Mary allowed herself an expression of extreme disgust. 'Please not while I am present,' she said; 'I could not abide it.'

"I now advanced to take my leave.

"'Do not go just now,' said Sarah; 'I merely ran over for a minute to ask Mary about the Wilmer reception; but as you are going, Mr. Howard, you might as well see me home. It is later now.'

"I retired to a book-table at the other end of the parlor, and it was a good deal later when the two young ladies had finished talking about the Wilmer reception.

"'I do not understand it at all,' said Miss Castle, when we were on the sidewalk. 'You are not deaf, Mr. Howard, and yet you use an ear-trumpet.

What does it mean?'

"Of course I did not know what to say, but I had to say something, and, moreover, that something must not be wholly inconsistent with my explanation to Mary.

"'Oh, it is a thing,' I answered, 'that is intended to be used in connection with foreign languages.' Then I made a bold stroke: 'It shows the difference in their resonant rhythms.'

"'Well, I am sure I do not understand that,' said Miss Castle. 'But what is the good of it? Does it make them any pleasanter to listen to?'

"I admitted that it did.

"'Whether you understand them or not?' she asked.

"If this young woman had at this moment fallen down a coal-hole I cannot truthfully say that I should have regretted it.

"'I cannot explain that, Miss Castle,' I said, 'for it would take a long time, and here we are at your door.'

"'Come in and let me try it,' said Sarah.

"'Thank you very much,' I replied, 'but I really cannot. I have an engagement at my club. In fact, I was just going to take leave of Miss Armat when you came in.'

"She looked at me scrutinizingly. 'You used to call her Mary Armat when you spoke of her,' said she, 'but I suppose her having been a missionary makes a difference in that way. I do not believe much in club engagements, but of course we have to recognize them. And if you cannot come in now I wish you would call on me soon. If your invention has anything to do with foreign languages I truly want to try it. I am studying German now, and if it will put any resonant rhythm into that language it will be very interesting.'

"I made a hasty and indefinite promise, and gladly saw the front door shut behind Miss Sarah Castle.

"That night I did not sleep; in fact, I did not go to bed. The words Mary Armat had spoken to me in Burmese should have completely engrossed my every thought, but they did not. For one moment my mind was filled with rapture by the knowledge that I was loved by this lovely girl; and in the next I was overwhelmed by anxiety as to what should be done to make it impossible for her to know that I knew she had spoken those words. But whether my thoughts made me happy or distressed me, there seemed to be but one way out of my troubles; I must be content with Mary's love, that is, if I should be so fortunate as to secure it. There might be doubts about this; women are fickle creatures, and Mary had been very much provoked with me when I parted from her."

"I see what is coming," here interrupted the Next Neighbor, "and I don't approve of it at all!"

"It would be hard," continued the Old Professor, after pausing for further remarks, "to turn my back upon the golden future which my invention would give to Mary and me; but I must win her, golden future or not. I sat before my study fire, and planned out my future actions.

As soon as I could see Mary alone I would tell her my love, and I would explain to her why I had not spoken when I first saw her. But in order to do this I should have to be very careful. I would say nothing but the truth, but I would be very guarded in telling that truth. She must not imagine that anything she had said had made me speak. She must not imagine that I thought she expected me to speak.

"I would begin by asking her pardon for worrying her with my invention when I knew she disliked problematic mechanics. Then I would tell her, in as few words as possible, that I had expected this little instrument to give me fame and fortune, and therefore I wanted her to know all about it; and then, before she could ask me why I wanted her to know this, I would tell her it was because I wished to lay that fame and fortune at her feet. After that, in the best way my ardent feelings should dictate, I would offer myself to her without fortune, without fame, just the plain John Howard who loved her with all his heart. If she accepted me, I would tell her that the invention had not worked as I had intended it should, and therefore I should put it behind me forever."

"Oh, dear!" cried the Next Neighbor. "I knew it was coming!"

"Maybe it didn't," said the Master of the House.

"Having come to a decision," the Old Professor went on, with more animation, "upon this most important matter, my mind grew easier and I became happier. What was anything a black tube could do for me--what, indeed, was anything in the world--compared to the love of that dear girl? And so I sat and gazed into the fire, and dreamed waking dreams of blessedness.

"After a time, however, it came to me that I must make up my mind what I was going to do about the translatophone. I might as well take it apart and throw it into the fire at once, and then there would be an end to that danger to the future of which I had been dreaming. Yes; there would be an end to that. But there would also be an end to the great boon I was about to bestow upon the world, a boon the value of which I had not half understood. It truly was a wonderful thing--a most wonderful thing.

An American or an Englishman, or any one speaking English, could take with him a translatophone and travel around the world, understanding the language of every nation, of every people--the polished tongues of civilization, the speech of the scholars of the Orient, and even the jabber of the wild savages of Africa. To be sure, he could not expect to answer those who spoke to him, but what of that? He would not wish to speak; he would merely desire to hear. All he would have to do would be to pretend that he was deaf and dumb, and my simple translatophone might put him into communication with the minds of every grade and variety of humanity.

"Then a new thought flashed into my mind. Why only humanity? If I should attach a wide mouth-piece to my instrument, why should I not gather in the songs and cries of the birds? Why should I not hear in plain English what they say to each other? Why should not all creation speak to me so that I could understand? Why should I not know what the dog says when he barks--what words the hen addresses to her chicks when she clucks to them to follow? Why should I not know the secrets of what is now to us a tongue-tied world of nature?

[Ill.u.s.tration: And dreamed waking dreams of blessedness.]

"Then I had another idea, that made me jump from my chair and walk the floor. I might know what the monkeys say when they chatter to each other! What discovery in all natural history could be so great as this?

The thought that these little creatures, so nearly allied to man, might disclose to me their dispositions, their hopes, their ambitions, their hates, their reflections upon mankind, had such a sudden and powerful influence on me that I felt like seizing my translatophone and rus.h.i.+ng off to the Zoological Gardens. It was now daybreak. I might obtain admission!

"But I speedily dismissed this idea. If I should ever hear in English what the monkeys might say to me, I must give up Mary. I should be the slave of my discovery. It would be impossible then to destroy the translatophone. I sat down again before the fire. 'Shall I put an end to it now?' I said to myself. Nothing would be easier than to take its delicate movements and smash them on the hearth. Now a prudent thought came to me: suppose Mary should not accept me? Then, with this great invention lost,--for I never should have the heart to make another,--I should have nothing left in the world. No; I would be cautious, lest in every way my future life should be overcast with disappointment. The sun had risen, and I felt I must go out; I must have air. Before I opened the front door, however, I said to myself, 'Remember it is all settled.

It is Mary you must have--that is, if you can get her.'

"Of all things in this world, the mind of man is the most independent, the most headstrong. It will work at your bidding as long as it pleases, and then it will strike out at its own pace and go where it chooses.

During a walk of a couple of miles I thought nearly all the time of what the monkeys might say to me if I should attach a wide mouth-piece to my translatophone and place it against the bars of their cage. Over and over again I stopped these thoughts and said to myself: 'But all this is nothing to me. I must consider Mary and nothing else.' Then in a very few minutes I was wondering if the monkeys would ask me questions--if they have as strong a desire to know about us as we have to know about them. From such questions how much I might learn in regard to the mental distance between us and them! But again I put all this away from me and began to plan anew what I should say to Mary. And then again it was not very long before I found myself thinking how intensely interesting it would be to know what the tree-toads say, and what the frogs talk about when they sit calling to each other all night. It might be a little difficult to get near enough to tree-toads and frogs, but I believed I could manage it.

"However, when I returned home I was thinking of Mary.

"It was early in the afternoon, and I was trying to decide what would be the best time to visit the Armat house. The monkeys had not ceased to worry me dreadfully, and I had begun to think that when bees buzz around their hives they must certainly say something interesting to each other.

Then a note was brought to me from Mary. I tore it open and read:

"'I want you to come to see me this afternoon. If you possibly can, come about four o'clock, and bring that speaking-tube with you. Miss Castle has been here nearly all the morning, and some things she has said to me have worried me very much. Please come, and do not forget the ear-trumpet.'

"This she signed merely with her initials.

"Mary's note drove to the winds monkeys, bees, and the rest of the world. What had that wretched mischief-maker, that Castle girl, been saying to her? I did not believe that the mind of Mary Armat was capable of originating an unfounded suspicion of me; but the mind of Sarah Castle was capable of originating anything. She had doubtless suspected that there must be some extraordinary reason for my desire to have people talk to me through a tube in a language I did not understand. She had been too impatient to wait until she could try her German upon me, and she had gone to Mary and had filled her mind with horrible conjectures. One thing was certain: no matter what else happened, I must not take that translatophone to Mary. After what Sarah had said to her there could be no doubt that she would make me speak to her in a foreign language through the tube. It would be easy enough: she could give me a French book and tell me to read a few pages. No matter how badly I should p.r.o.nounce the words, they would reach her ears in pure Englis.h.!.+

"And then!