Loveliness Part 2

"Come along furder," said the boy, looking around uneasily. He spoke a few words in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

The blood leaped to the professor's wan cheeks, and back again.

"I'll show ye for a V," suggested the boy cunningly. "But I won't take no noter hand. Make it cash, an' I'll show yer. Ye ain't no time to be foolin'," added the gamin. "It's sot for termorrer 'leven o'clock. He's down for the biggest show of the term, _he_ is. The students is all gwineter go, an' the doctors along of 'em."

His own university! His own university! The professor repeated the three words, as he dashed into the city with the academic cabman's fastest horse. For weeks his detectives had watched every laboratory within fifty miles. But--his own college! With the density which sometimes submerges a superior intellect, it had never occurred to him that he might find his own dog in the medical school of his own inst.i.tution.

Stupidly he sat gazing at the back of the gamin who slunk beside the aversion of the driver on the box. The professor seemed to himself to be driving through the terms of a false syllogism.

The cabman drew up in a filthy and savage neighborhood, in whose grim purlieus the St. George professors did not take their walks abroad. The negro boy tumbled off the box.

The professor sat, trembling like a woman. The boy went into the tenement, whistling. When he came out he did not whistle. His evil little face had fallen. His arms were empty.

"The critter's dum gone," he said.

"_Gone?_"

"He's dum goneter de college. Dey'se tuk him, sah. Dum dog to go so yairly."

The countenance of the professor blazed with the mingling fires of horror and of hope. The excited driver lashed the St. George horse to foam; in six minutes the cab drew up at the medical school. The pa.s.senger ran up the walk like a boy, and dashed into the building. He had never entered it before. He was obliged to inquire his way, like a rustic on a first trip to town. After some delay and difficulty he found the janitor, and, with the a.s.surance of position, stated his case.

But the janitor smiled.

"I will go now--at once--and remove the dog," announced the professor.

"In which direction is it? My little girl--There is no time to lose.

Which door did you say?"

But now the janitor did not smile. "Excuse me, sir," he said frigidly, "I have no orders to admit strangers." He backed up against a closed door, and stood there stolidly. The professor, burning with human rage, leaned over and shook the door. It was locked.

"Man of darkness!" cried the professor. "You who perpetrate"--Then he collected himself. "Pardon me," he said, with his natural dignity; "I forget that you obey the orders of your chiefs, and that you do not recognize me. I am not accustomed to be refused admittance to the departments of my own university. I am Professor Premice, of the Chair of Mental Philosophy,--Professor Theophrastus Premice." He felt for his cards, but he had used the last one in his wallet.

"You might be, and you mightn't," replied the janitor grimly. "I never heard tell of you that I know of. My orders are not to admit, and I do not admit."

"You are unlawfully detaining and torturing my dog!" gasped the professor. "I demand my property at once!"

"We have such a lot of these cases," answered the janitor wearily. "We hain't got your dog. We don't take gentlemen's dogs, nor ladies' pets.

And we always etherize. We operate very tenderly. You hain't produced any evidence or authority, and I can't let you in without."

"Be so good," urged the professor, restraining himself by a violent effort, "as to bear my name to some of the faculty. Say that I am without, and wish to see one of my colleagues on an urgent matter."

"None of 'em's in just now but the a.s.sistant demonstrator," retorted the janitor, without budging. "_He_'s experimenting on a--well, he's engaged in a very pretty operation just now, and cannot be disturbed. No, sir.

You had better not touch the door. I tell you, I do not admit nor permit. Stand back, sir!"

The professor stood back. He might have entered the lecture room by other doors, but he did not know it; and they were not visible from the spot where he stood. He had happened on the laboratory door, and that refused him. He staggered out to his cab, and sank down weakly.

"Drive me to my lawyer!" he cried. "Do not lose a moment--if you love her!"

It was eleven o'clock of the following morning; a dreamy June day, afloat with color, scent, and warmth, as gentle as the depths of tenderness in the human heart, and as vigorous as its n.o.blest aspirations.

The students of the famous medical school of the University of St.

George were crowding up the flagged walk and the old granite steps of the college; the lecture room was filling; the students chatted and joked profusely, as medical students do, on occasions least productive of amus.e.m.e.nt to the non-professional observer. There chanced to be some sprays of lily of the valley in a tumbler set upon the window sill of the adjoining physiological laboratory, and the flower seemed to stare at something which it saw within the room. Now and then, through the door connecting with the lecture room, a faint sound penetrated the laughter and conversation of the students,--a sound to hear and never to forget while remembrance rang through the brain, but not to tell of.

The room filled; the demonstrator appeared suddenly, in his fresh, white blouse; the students began to grow quiet. Some one had already locked the door leading from the laboratory to the hallway. The lily in the window looked, and seemed, in the low June wind, to turn its face away.

"Gentlemen," began the operator, "we have before us to-day a demonstration of unusual beauty and interest. It is our intention to study"--here he minutely described the nature of the operation. "There will be also some collateral demonstrations of more than ordinary value.

The material has been carefully selected. It is young and healthy,"

observed the surgeon. "We have not put the subject under the usual anaesthesia,"--he motioned to his a.s.sistant, who at this point went into the laboratory,--"because of the importance of some preliminary experiments which were inst.i.tuted yesterday, and to the perfection of which consciousness is conditional. Gentlemen, you see before you"--

The a.s.sistant entered through the laboratory door at this moment, bearing something which he held straight out before him. The students, on tiered and curving benches, looked down from their amphitheatre, lightly, as they had been trained to look.

"It is needless to say," proceeded the lecturer, "that the subject will be mercifully disposed of as soon as the demonstration is completed. And we shall operate with the greatest tenderness, as we always do.

Gentlemen, I am reminded of a story"--

The demonstrator indulged in a little persiflage at this point, raising a laugh among the cla.s.s; he smiled himself; he gestured with the scalpel, which he had selected while he was talking; he made three or four sinister cuts with it in the air, preparatory cuts,--an awful rehearsal. He held the instrument suspended, thoughtfully.

"The first incision"--he began. "Follow me closely, now. You see--Gentlemen? Gentlemen! Really, I cannot proceed in such a disturbance--What _is_ that noise?" With the suspended scalpel in his hand, the demonstrator turned impatiently.

"It's a row in the corridor," said one of the students. "We hope you won't delay for that, doctor. It's nothing of any consequence. Please go ahead."

But the locked door of the laboratory shook violently, and rattled in unseen hands. Voices clashed from the outside. The disturbance increased.

"Open! Open the door!" Heavy blows fell upon the panels.

"In the name of humanity, in the name of mercy, open this door!"

"It must be some of those fanatics," said the operator, laying down his instrument. "Where is the janitor? Call him to put a stop to this."

He took up the instrument with an impetuous motion; then laid it irritably down again. The attention of his audience was now concentrated upon the laboratory door, for the confusion had redoubled. At the same time feet were heard approaching the students' entrance to the lecture room. One of the young men took it upon himself to lock that door also, which was not the custom of the place; but he found no key, and two or three of his cla.s.smates joined him in standing against the door, which they barricaded. Their blood was up,--they knew not why; the fighting animal in them leaped at the mysterious intrusion. There was every prospect of a scene unprecedented in the history of the lecture room.

The expected did not happen. It appeared that some unsuccessful effort was made to force this door, but it was not prolonged; then the footsteps retreated down the stairs, and the demand at the laboratory entrance set in again,--this time in a new voice:--

"It is an officer of the court! There is a search-warrant for stolen property! Open in the name of the Law! _Open this door in the name of the Commonwealth!_"

Now the door sank open, was burst open, or was unlocked,--in the excitement, no one knew which or how,--and the professor and the lawyer, the officer and the search-warrant, fell in.

The professor pushed ahead, and strode to the operating table.

There lay the tiny creature, so daintily reared, so pa.s.sionately beloved; he who had been sheltered in the heart of luxury, like the little daughter of the house herself; he who used never to know a pang that love or luxury could prevent or cure; he who had been the soul of tenderness, and had known only the soul of tenderness. There, stretched, bound, gagged, gasping, doomed to a doom which the readers of this page would forbid this pen to describe, lay the silver Yorks.h.i.+re, kissing his vivisector's hand.

In the past few months Loveliness had known to the uttermost the matchless misery of the lost dog (for he had been sold and restolen more than once); he had known the miseries of cold, of hunger, of neglect, of homelessness, and other torments of which it is as well not to think; the sufferings which ignorance imposes upon animals. He was about to endure the worst torture of them all,--that reserved by wisdom and power for the dumb, the undefended, and the small.

The officer seized the scalpel which the demonstrator had laid aside, and slashed through the straps that bound the victim down. When the gag was removed, and the little creature, shorn, sunken, changed, almost unrecognizable, looked up into his master's face, those cruel walls rang to such a cry of more than human anguish and ecstasy as they had never heard before, and never may again.

The operator turned away; he stood in his butcher's blouse and stared through out of the laboratory window, over the head of the lily, which regarded him fixedly. The students grew rapidly quiet. When the professor took Loveliness into his arms, and the Yorks.h.i.+re, still crying like a human child that had been lost and saved, put up his weak paws around his master's neck and tried to kiss the tears that fell, unashamed, down the cheeks of that eminent man, the lecture room burst into a storm of applause; then fell suddenly still again, as if it felt embarra.s.sed both by its expression and by its silence, and knew not what to do.