Short Stories of Various Types Part 15

Professor Endicott's thin shoulders executed a resigned shrug. "You are always right in your calculations, my dear Harrison," he said; adding, with an ambiguous intonation, "And I suppose I am to salute in you the American scholar of the future."

Harrison laughed again without resentment, and proceeded indulgently to rea.s.sure his chief. "No, sir, you needn't be alarmed. There'll always be enough American-born scholars to keep you from being lonesome, just as there'll always be others like me, that don't pretend to have a drop of real scholar's blood in them. I want to _teach!_--to teach history!--American history!--teach it to fool young undergraduates who don't know what kind of a country they've got, nor what they ought to make out of it, now they've got it. And I'm going in to get a Ph. D.

the same way I wear a stiff s.h.i.+rt and collars and cuffs, not because I was brought up to believe in them as necessary to salvation--because I wasn't, Lord knows!--but because there's a prejudice in favor of them among the people I've got to deal with." He drew a long breath and went on, "Besides, Miss Warner and I have been engaged about long enough. I want to earn enough to get married on, and Ph. D. means advancement."

Professor Endicott a.s.sented dryly: "That is undoubtedly just what it means nowadays. But you will 'advance,' as you call it, under any circ.u.mstances. You will not remain a professor of history. I give you ten years to be president of one of our large Western universities."

His accent made the prophecy by no means a compliment, but Harrison shook his hand with undiminished good-will. "Well, Prof, if I am, my first appointment will be to make you head of the history department with twice the usual salary, and only one lecture a week to deliver to a cla.s.s of four P.G's--post-graduates, you know. I know a scholar when I see one, if I don't belong to the tribe myself, and I know how they ought to be treated."

If, in his turn, he put into a neutral phrase an ironical significance, it was hidden by the hearty and honest friendliness of his keen, dark eyes as he delivered this farewell.

The older man's ascetic face relaxed a little. "You are a good fellow, Harrison, and I'm sure I wish you any strange sort of success you happen to desire."

"Same to you, Professor. If I thought it would do any good, I'd run down from Paris to Munich[116-1] with a gun and try scaring the editor of the _Central-Blatt_ into admitting that you're right about that second clause in the treaty of Utrecht."[116-2]

Professor Endicott fell back into severity. "I'm afraid," he observed, returning to the papers on his desk, "I'm afraid that would not be a very efficacious method of determining a question of historical accuracy."

Harrison settled his soft hat firmly on his head. "I suppose you're right," he remarked, adding as he disappeared through the door, "But more's the pity!"

II

He made short work of settling himself in Paris, taking a cheap furnished room near the Bibliotheque Nationale,[117-1] discovering at once the inexpensive and nouris.h.i.+ng qualities of _cremeries_ and the Duval restaurants, and adapting himself to the eccentricities of Paris weather in March with flannel underwear and rubber overshoes. He attacked the big folios in the library with ferocious energy, being the first to arrive in the huge, quiet reading-room, and leaving it only at the imperative summons of the authorities. He had barely enough money to last through March, April, and May, and, as he wrote in his long Sunday afternoon letters to Maggie Warner, he would rather work fifteen hours a day now while he was fresh at it, than be forced to, later on, when decent weather began, and when he hoped to go about a little and make some of the interesting historical pilgrimages in the environs of Paris.

He made a point of this writing his fiancee every detail of his plans, as well as all the small happenings of his monotonous and laborious life; and so, quite naturally, he described to her the beginning of his acquaintance with Agatha Midland.

"I'd spotted her for English," he wrote, "long before I happened to see her name on a notebook. Don't it sound like a made-up name out of an English novel? And that is the way she looks, too. I understand now why no American girl is ever called Agatha. To fit it you have to look sort of droopy all over, as if things weren't going to suit you, but you couldn't do anything to help it, and did not, from sad experience, have any rosy hopes that somebody would come along to fix things right. I'm not surprised that when English women do get stirred up over anything--for instance, like voting, nowadays--they fight like tiger-cats. If this Agatha-person is a fair specimen, they don't look as though they were used to getting what they want any other way. But here I go, like every other fool traveler, making generalizations about a whole nation from seeing one specimen. On the other side of me from Miss Midland usually sits an old German, grubbing away at Sanskrit roots. The other day we got into talk in the little lunchroom here in the same building with the library, where all we readers go to feed, and he made me so mad I couldn't digest my bread and milk. Once, just once, when he was real young, he met an American woman student--a regular P.

G. freak, I gather--and nothing will convince him that all American girls aren't like her. 'May G.o.d forgive Christopher Columbus!' he groans whenever he thinks of her...."

There was no more in this letter about his English neighbor, but in the next, written a week later, he said:

"We've struck up an acquaintance, the discouraged-looking English girl and I, and she isn't so frozen-up as she seems. This is how it happened. I told you about the little lunchroom where the readers from the library get their noonday feed. Well, a day or so ago I was sitting at the next table to her, and when she'd finished eating and felt for her purse, I saw her get pale, and I knew right off she'd lost her money. 'If you'll excuse me, Miss Midland,' I said, 'I'll be glad to loan you a little. My name is Harrison, Peter Harrison, and I usually sit next you in the reading-room.'

Say, Maggie, you don't know how queerly she looked at me. I can't tell you what her expression was like, for I couldn't make head or tail out of it. It was like looking at a Hebrew book that you don't know whether to read backward or forward. She got whiter, and drew away and said something about 'No! No! she couldn't think----' But there stood the waiter with his hand out. I couldn't stop to figure out if she was mad or scared. I said 'Look-y-here, Miss Midland, I'm an American--here's my card--I just want to help you out, that's all. You needn't be afraid I'll bother you any.' And with that I asked the waiter how much it was, paid him, and went out for my usual half-hour const.i.tutional in the little park opposite the library.

"When I went back to the reading-room, she was there in the seat next me, all right, but my, wasn't she buried in a big folio! She's studying in some kind of old music-books. You would have laughed to see how she didn't know I existed. I forgot all about her till closing-up time, but when I got out in the court a little ahead of her, I found it was raining and blowing to beat the cars, and I went back to hunt her up, I being the only person that knew she was broke. There she was, moping around in the vestibule under one of those awful pancake hats English women wear. I took out six cents--it costs that to ride in the omnibuses here--and I marched up to her. 'Miss Midland,' I said, 'excuse me again, but the weather is something terrible. You can't refuse to let me loan you enough to get home in a 'bus, for you would certainly catch your death of cold, not to speak of spoiling your clothes, if you tried to walk in this storm.'

"She looked at me queerly again, drew in her chin, and said very fierce, 'No, certainly not! Some one always comes to fetch me away.'

"Of course I didn't believe a word of _that_! It was just a bluff to keep from seeming to need anything. So I smiled at her and said, 'That's all right, but suppose something happens this evening so he doesn't get here. I guess you'd better take the six sous--they won't hurt you any.' And I took hold of her hand, put the coppers in it, shut her fingers, took off my hat, and skipped out before she could get her breath. There are a _few_ times when women are so contrary you can't do the right thing by them without bossing them around a little.

"Well, I thought sure if she'd been mad at noon she'd just be hopping mad over that last, but the next morning she came up to me in the vestibule and smiled at me, the funniest little wavery smile, as though she were trying on a brand-new expression. It made her look almost pretty. 'Good morning, Mr. Harrison,' she said in that soft, singsong tone English women have, 'here is your loan back again. I hope I have the sum you paid for my lunch correct--and thank you very much.'

"I hated to take her little money, for her clothes are awfully plain and don't look as though she had any too much cash, but of course I did, and even told her that I'd given the waiter a three-cent tip she'd forgotten to figure in. When you _can_, I think it's only the square thing to treat women like human beings with sense, and I knew how I'd feel about being sure I'd returned all of a loan from a stranger. 'Oh, thank you for telling me,' she said, and took three more coppers out of her little purse; and by gracious! we walked into the reading-room as friendly as could be.

"That was last Wednesday, and twice since then we've happened to take lunch at the same table, and have had a regular visit. It tickles me to see how scared she is yet of the idea that she's actually talking to a real man that hasn't been introduced to her, but I find her awfully interesting, she's so different."

III

During the week that followed this letter, matters progressed rapidly.

The two Anglo-Saxons took lunch together every day, and by Friday the relations between them were such that, as they pushed back their chairs, Harrison said: "Excuse me, Miss Midland, for seeming to dictate to you _all_ the time, but why in the world don't you go out after lunch and take a half-hour's walk as I do? It'd be a lot better for your health."

The English girl looked at him with the expression for which he had as yet found no word more adequately descriptive than his vague "queer."

"I haven't exactly the habit of walking about Paris streets alone, you know," she said.

"Oh, yes, to be sure," returned the American. "I remember hearing that young ladies can't do that here the way they do back home. But that's easy fixed. You won't be out in the streets, and you won't be alone, if you come out with me in the little park opposite. Come on! It's the first spring day."

Miss Midland dropped her arms with a gesture of helpless wonder. "Well, _really_!" she exclaimed. "_Do_ you think that so much better?" But she rose and prepared to follow him, as if her protest could not stand before the kindly earnestness of his manner. "There!" he said, after he had guided her across the street into the tiny green square where in the sudden spring warmth, the chestnut buds were already swollen and showing lines of green. "To answer your question, I think it not only better, but absolutely all right--O.K!"

They were sitting on a bench at one side of the fountain, whose tinkling splash filled the momentary silence before she answered, "I can't make it all out--" she smiled at him--"but I think you are right in saying that it is all O.K." He laughed, and stretched out his long legs comfortably. "You've got the idea. That's the way to get the good of traveling and seeing other kinds of folks. You learn my queer slang words, and I'll learn yours."

Miss Midland stared again, and she cried out, "_My_ queer slang words!

What can you mean?"

He rattled off a glib list: "Why, 'just fancy now,' and 'only think of that!' and 'I dare say, indeed,' and a lot more."

"But they are not queer!" she exclaimed.

"They sound just as queer to me as 'O.K.' and 'I guess' do to you!" he said triumphantly.

She blinked her eyes rapidly, as though taking in an inconceivable idea, while he held her fixed with a steady gaze which lost none of its firmness by being both good-humored and highly amused. Finally, reluctantly, she admitted, "Yes, I see. You mean I'm insular."

"Oh, as to that, I mean we both are--that is, we are as ignorant as stotin'-bottles of each other's ways of doing things. Only I want to find out about your ways, and you don't about----"

She broke in hastily, "Ah, but I do want to find out about yours!

You--you make me very curious indeed." As she said this, she looked full at him with a grave simplicity which was instantly reflected on his own face.

"Well, Miss Midland," he said slowly, "maybe now's a good time to say it, and maybe it's a good thing to say, since you _don't_ know about our ways--to give you a sort of declaration of principles. I wasn't brought up in very polite society--my father and mother were Iowa farmer-folks, and I lost them early, and I've had to look out for myself ever since I was fourteen, so I'm not very long on _polish_; but let me tell you, as they say about other awkward people, I _mean_ well.

We're both poor students working together in a foreign country, and maybe I can do something to make it pleasanter for you, as I would for a fellow-student woman in my country. If I can, I'd like to, fine! I want to do what's square by everybody, and by women specially. I don't think they get a fair deal mostly. I think they've got as much sense as men, and lots of them more, and I like to treat them accordingly. So don't you mind if I do some Rube things that seem queer to you, and do remember that you can be dead sure that I _never_ mean any harm."

He finished this speech with an urgent sincerity in his voice, quite different from his usual whimsical note, and for a moment they looked at each other almost solemnly, the girl's lips parted, her blue eyes wide and serious. She flushed a clear rose-pink. "Why!" she said, "Why, I _believe_ you!" Harrison broke the tension with a laugh. "And what is there so surprising if you do?"

"I don't think," she said slowly, "that I ever saw any one before whom I would believe if he said that last."

"Dear me!" cried Harrison, gaily, getting to his feet. "You'll make me think you are a hardened cynic. Well, if you believe me, _that's_ all right! And now, come on, let's walk a little, and you tell me why English people treat their girls so differently from their boys. You are a perfect gold mine of information to me, do you know it?"

"But I've always taken for granted most of the things you find so queer about our ways. I thought that was the way they were, don't you see, by the nature of things."

"_Aha_!" he said triumphantly. "You see another good of traveling! It stirs a person up. If you can give me a lot of new facts, maybe I can pay you back by giving you some new ideas."

"I think," said Miss Midland, with a soft energy, "I think you can, indeed."

IV

A week after this was the first of April, and when Harrison, as was his wont, reached the reading-room a little before the opening hour, he found a notice on the door to the effect that the fall of some plastering from a ceiling necessitated the closing of the reading-room for that day. A week of daily lunches and talks with Miss Midland had given him the habit of communicating his ideas to her, and he waited inside the vestibule for her to appear. He happened thus, as he had not before, to see her arrival. Accompanied by an elderly person in black, who looked, even to Harrison's inexperienced eyes, like a maid-servant, she came rapidly in through the archway which led from the street to the court. Here, halting a moment, she dismissed her attendant with a gesture, and, quite unconscious of the young man's gaze upon her, crossed the court diagonally with a free, graceful step. Observing her thus at his leisure, Harrison was moved to the first and almost the last personal comment upon his new friend. He did not as a rule notice very keenly the outward aspect of his a.s.sociates. "Well, by gracious,"

he said to himself, "if she's not quite a good-looker!--or would be if she had money or gumption enough to put on a little more style!"

He took a sudden resolution and, meeting her at the foot of the steps, laid his plan enthusiastically before her. It took her breath away.