A Court of Inquiry Part 9

PART II

I

DAHLIA AND THE PROFESSOR

Amen Stuck in my throat.

--_Macbeth._

The Skeptic and his wife, Hepatica, being happily established in a beautifully s.p.a.cious flat in town, measuring thirty feet by forty over all, invited me to visit them. As both had spent considerable time at my country home in summer, they insisted that it was only just for me to allow them, that second winter after their marriage, to return my hospitality. This argument alone would hardly have sufficed, for winter in the country--connected by trolley with the town--is hardly less delightful to me than summer itself. But there were other and convincing arguments, and they ended by bringing me to the city for a month's visit in the heart of the season.

On the first morning at breakfast--I had arrived late the night before--there was much to talk about.

"It's a curious fact," said the Skeptic, stirring a cup of yellow-brown coffee with which his wife had just presented him, "as Hepatica and I discovered only the other day, that three of those girls who visited you that summer four years ago, when she and I were avoiding each other----"

"You--avoiding!" I interpolated.

"Well--I was trying to avoid being avoided by her," he explained. "Three of those girls are married and living in town."

"Yes, I know," said I. "At least I know Camellia and Althea are. Who else? Azalea lives across the river, doesn't she?"

"Yes. You haven't heard of the latest matrimonial alliance, then?" The Skeptic chuckled. Hepatica looked at him, and he looked at her, and then they both looked at me. "Dahlia was married yesterday," the Skeptic announced with relish, "in a manse study, with two witnesses."

I was astounded. I had just come from home, and Dahlia was my next neighbour. She had been away more or less all winter, but there had been no announcement of any engagement--nor sign of one.

The Skeptic, enjoying my stupefaction, proceeded to give what he considered an explanation. "I don't see why you should be so surprised,"

he said. "You knew Dahlia's methods. Her net was always spread, and though a certain wise man declares it in vain to spread it in the sight of any bird, humans are not always so wary. A man who chanced to be walking along with his head in the clouds might get his feet entangled in a cunningly laid net. And so it happened to the Professor."

"The Professor!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Not--our Professor?"

The Skeptic nodded solemnly.

"He was our Professor," he amended. "He's hers now. And day before yesterday he was free!"

He glanced at his watch, folded his napkin in haste, seized his coat and hat, kissed his wife, patted her shoulder, nodded at me, and was gone. A minute later we heard the whirr and slide of his car, and Hepatica, at the window, was returning his wave.

"He's looking extremely well," I observed. "He must be twenty pounds heavier than he was that summer. Avoiding being avoided was probably rather thinning."

"He does seem to enjoy his food," admitted Hepatica, regarding the Skeptic's empty plate with satisfaction.

"Not much doubt of that," I agreed, remembering the delicately hearty breakfast we had just consumed.

"It's really quite dreadful about Dahlia and the poor Professor, isn't it?" said Hepatica presently. "And it's just as Don says: he was literally caught in her net. I presume he couldn't tell to-day precisely how it happened."

"I've no doubt she could," said I ungenerously. "I shall be anxious to see them."

"Oh, you'll see them. It's in the middle of term--he couldn't take her away. And his old quarters are just two blocks below us. She knew you were coming. You'll probably see them within forty-eight hours."

We did, though not where we could do more than take observations upon them. The Philosopher came in that evening--he had known of my coming from the moment that Hepatica had planned to ask me. He was looking rather less well-fed than the Skeptic, but quite as philosophical, and altogether as friendly as ever. He looked hard at me, and wrung my hand, and immediately began to lay out a programme for my visit. As a beginning he had procured tickets for the Philharmonic Society concert to be given on the following evening.

We told him about Dahlia. He had not heard. He looked quickly and dumbfoundedly at the Skeptic, and the Skeptic grinned back at him. "You feel for him, don't you, Philo?" he queried.

The Philosopher shook his head, and seemed, for a time, much depressed; upon which the Skeptic rallied him. "You ought to be jubilant to think it's not yourself," he urged his friend. "You know, there was one time when you feared even to go home with her, though you were to be within call from the porch all the way."

But the Philosopher cheered up presently in the pleasure of talking over old times at the Farm. He had spent the past summer tramping through Germany, and he and I had not met for many months.

We went to the concert next evening, we four, in a jovial mood. There was considerable sly joking, on the Skeptic's part, concerning the change of conditions which now made Hepatica my chaperon, instead of, as in former days, my being alert to protect her from visiting philosophers and skeptics. The Philosopher and I took it quite in good part, for nothing could be more settled than the unimpa.s.sioned character of our old friends.h.i.+p--as there could be nothing more satisfactory.

We had not more than taken our seats when the Skeptic leaned past Hepatica to call my attention to two people who had come down the aisle and were finding their places just across it and in the row ahead of us.

I turned to the Philosopher.

"There they are," I whispered. So our four pairs of eyes gazed interestedly that way.

As she settled into place, Dahlia, whose pretty, flushed face had been turned in every direction over the house as she got out of her evening coat, caught sight of us. She bowed and smiled with great cordiality, and immediately called her companion's attention to us. The Professor--eighteen years Dahlia's senior, but one of the best men who ever walked the earth, as we had long since discovered--turned and scanned us over his spectacles. Then he also responded to our smiling recognitions with a somewhat subdued but pleased acknowledgment. Dahlia continued to whisper to him, still glancing back at us from time to time with looks of good-fellows.h.i.+p, and he appeared to lend an attentive ear, though he did not again turn toward us.

As for us, in the interest of our observation of the bridal pair, we fell rather silent. I was conscious that the Philosopher, regarding them somewhat steadily, drew a deep breath which sounded like a sigh of dissatisfaction. Noting how thin the Professor's ash-coloured hair seemed to be, over the crown of his head, in comparison with Dahlia's luxuriant and elaborately dressed chestnut locks, I felt depressedly that the disparity in age was more marked than is often seen. This, in itself, of course, was nothing; but taken in connection with----

The Skeptic leaned forward again.

"What'll you wager I couldn't get up a flirtation with her to-night, if I happened to sit next her?" he challenged in a whisper.

"Don!" murmured Hepatica; but she smiled.

"I'm not anywhere near his age," continued the Skeptic. "My auburn tresses are thick upon my head, my evening clothes were made a decade later than his. If I were only sitting next her!"

At this moment some more people came down the aisle and were shown to the seats immediately beyond our friends. As the Professor and Dahlia stood up to let them through, we saw that though the newcomers pa.s.sed the Professor without recognition, the young man exchanged greetings with Dahlia. As they took their seats the man, a floridly handsome person, was at Dahlia's elbow.

For the third time the Skeptic leaned forward. "It's just as well, perhaps," he whispered, "that my observations are to be made upon a proxy. What do you think the new chap's chances are for fun on both sides of him?"

I did not condescend to answer. And without further delay the famous conductor of a famous orchestra came commandingly to the front of the stage, welcomed by an outburst of applause, and with the rest of the audience we became silent.

But amidst all the delights of the ear which were ours that evening, the eyes of all of us would wander, from time to time, across the aisle. The Professor sat, with arms folded and head bent, drinking in the beauties of sound which beat against his welcoming ears. Next him, Dahlia, the bride of three days, was vindicating the Skeptic's opinion of her undiminished accomplishments. The young man upon her right proved an able second. The girl on his other side, by the time the concert was half over, was holding her head high, or bending it to study a programme which I am sure she did not see, while her companion played Dahlia's old game with a trained hand.

"Can the Ethiopian change his skin?" breathed the Philosopher in my ear, during an intermission.

"I'm afraid not," I a.s.sented dubiously. "But, of course, she may make a devoted wife, nevertheless. That sort of thing doesn't mean anything to her, you know. She merely does it as a matter of habit."

"It can't be precisely an endearing habit to a husband," protested the Philosopher. "If she would address a remark now and then to the poor man at her left one might excuse her. And if she could carry on a conversation with the other one in an ordinarily well-bred, friendly way--and confine it to the intervals between numbers--one might be able to forget her, which would be a relief. But all those silly tricks of hers--those smiles, those archings of the neck--those lengthy looks up into the eyes of that fool----"

"Don't look at them," I advised.

"I can't help looking at them. Everybody else is looking at them--including yourself."

It was quite true--everybody was, even people considerably out of range.