Paul Patoff Part 11

"What makes them so?"

"It is the very low and common view which they take of life," put in Miss Dabstreak, who entered the room while we were speaking, and sank upon the couch with a little sigh. "They have no aspirations after the beautiful,--and what else can satisfy the human mind? The Greeks were never dull."

"What do you call dull?" asked Mrs. Carvel very mildly.

"Oh--anything; parliamentary reports, for instance, and agricultural shows, and the Rural Dean,--anything of that sort," answered Miss Chrysophrasia languidly.

"In other words, civilization as compared with barbarism," I suggested.

"It is true that there cannot be much boredom among barbarous tribes who are always scalping their enemies or being scalped themselves; those things help to pa.s.s the time."

"Yes, scalping must be most interesting," murmured Chrysophrasia, with an air of conviction.

Hermione laughed.

"I really believe you would like to see it done, aunt Chrysophrasia,"

said she.

"Hermy, Hermy, what dreadful ideas you have!" exclaimed Mrs. Carvel, in gentle horror. But she immediately returned to her embroidery, and relapsed into silence.

"It is Mr. Griggs, mamma," said Hermione, still laughing. "He agrees with me that learned people are all oppressively dull, and that the only tolerably exciting society is found among scalping Indians."

"Did you not once scalp somebody yourself, Griggs?" asked John, suddenly lowering his newspaper.

"Not quite," I answered; "but I once shaved a poodle with a pocket-knife. Perhaps you were thinking of that?"

While I spoke there was a sound of wheels without, and John rose to his feet. He seemed impatient.

"That must be Cutter at last'" he exclaimed, moving towards the door that led into the hall. "I thought he was never coming."

I rose also, and followed him. It was Cutter. The learned professor arrived wrapped in a huge ulster overcoat, his hands in the deep pockets thereof, and the end of an extinguished cigar between his teeth. He furtively disposed of the remains of the weed before shaking hands with our host. After the first greetings John led him away to his room, and I remained standing in the hall. The professor's luggage was rather voluminous, and various boxes, bags, and portmanteaus bore the labels of many journeys. The men brought them in from the dog-cart; the strong cob pawed the gravel a little, and the moonlight flashed back from the silver harness, from the smooth varnished dashboard, the polished chains, and the plated lamps. I stood staring out of the door, hardly seeing anything. Indeed, I was lost in a fruitless effort of memory. The groom gathered up the reins and drove away, and presently I was aware that Stubbs, the butler, was offering me a hat, as a hint, I supposed, that he wanted to shut the front door. I mechanically covered my head and strolled away.

I was trying to remember where I had seen Professor Cutter. I could not have known him well, for I never forget a man I have met three or four times; and yet his face was perfectly familiar to me, and came vividly before me as I paced the garden walks. Instinctively I walked round the house again, and paused before the door that had attracted my attention an hour earlier. I listened, but heard nothing, and still I tried to recall my former meeting with Cutter. Strange, I thought, that I should seem to know him so well, and that I should nevertheless be unable to connect him in my mind with any date, or country, or circ.u.mstance. In vain I went over many scenes of my life, endeavoring to limit this remembrance to a particular period. I argued that our meeting, if we really had met, could not have taken place many years ago, for I recognized exactly the curling gray hairs in the professor's beard, the wrinkles in his forehead, and a slight mark upon one cheek, just below the eye. I recollected the same spectacles; the same bushy, cropped gray hair; the same ma.s.sive, square head set upon a short but powerful body; the same huge hands, spotlessly clean, the big nails kept closely pared and polished, but so large that they might have belonged to an extinct species of gigantic man. The whole of him and his belongings, to the very clothes he wore, seemed familiar to me and witnesses to his ident.i.ty; but though I did my best for half an hour, I could not bring back one circ.u.mstance connected with him. I grew impatient and returned to the house, for it was time to dress for dinner, and I felt cold as I strolled about in the frosty moonlight.

We met again before dinner, for a few minutes, in the drawing-room. I went near to the professor, and examined his appearance very carefully.

His evening dress set off the robust proportions of his frame, and the recollection I had of him struck me more forcibly than ever. I am not superst.i.tious, but I began to fancy that we must have met in some former state, in some other sphere. He stood before the fire, rubbing his hands and answering all manner of questions that were put to him. He appeared to be an old friend of the family, to judge by the conversation, and yet I was positively certain that I had never seen him at Carvel Place. He knew all the family, however, and seemed familiar with their tastes and pursuits: he inquired about John's manufacturing interests, and about Mrs. Carvel's poor people; he asked Hermione several questions about the recent exhibitions of flowers, and discussed with Chrysophrasia a sale of majolica which had just taken place in London. After this round of remarks I suspected that the professor would address himself to me, for his gray eyes rested on me from time to time with a look of recognition.

But he held his peace, and we presently went to dinner.

Professor Cutter talked much and talked well, in a continuous, consistent manner that was satisfactory for a time, but a little wearisome in the long run. His ideas were often brilliant, and his expression of them was always original, but he had an extraordinary faculty of dominating the conversation. Even John Carvel, who knew a great deal in his way, found it hard to make any headway against the professor's eloquence, though I could sometimes see that he was far from being convinced. The professor had been everywhere and had seen most things; he talked with absolute conviction of what he had seen, and avoided talking of what he had not seen, doubtless inferring that it was not worth seeing. Nevertheless, he was not a disagreeable person, as such men often are; on the contrary, there was a charm of manner about him that was felt by every one present. I longed for the meal to be over, however, for I intended to seize the first opportunity which presented itself of asking him whether he remembered where we had met before.

I was destined to remain in suspense for some time. We had no sooner risen from dinner than John Carvel came up to me and spoke in a low voice.

"Will you excuse me if I leave you alone, Griggs?" he said. "I have very important business with Professor Cutter, which will not keep until to-morrow. We will join you in the drawing-room in about an hour."

It was nothing to me if the two men had business together; I was sufficiently intimate in the house to be treated without ceremony, and I did not care for anybody's company until I could find what I was searching for in the forgotten corners of my brain.

"Do not mind me," I answered, and I retired into the smoking-room, and began to turn over the evening papers. How long I read I do not know, nor whether the news of the day was more or less interesting and credible than usual; I do not believe that an hour elapsed, either, for an hour is a long time when a man is not interested in what he is doing, and is trying to recall something to his mind. I cannot even tell why I so longed to recollect the professor's face; I only remember that the effort was intense, but wholly fruitless. I lay back in the deep leathern easy-chair, and all sorts of visions flitted before my half-closed eyes,--visions of good and visions of evil, visions of yesterday and visions of long ago. Somehow I fell to thinking about the lattice-covered door in the wall, and I caught myself wondering who had been behind it when I pa.s.sed; and then I laughed, for I had made up my mind that it must have been Miss Chrysophrasia, who had entered the drawing-room five minutes after I did. I sat staring at the fire. I was conscious that some one had entered the room, and presently the scratching of a match upon something rough roused me from my reverie. I looked round, and saw Professor Cutter standing by the table.

It sometimes happens that a very slight thing will recall a very long chain of circ.u.mstances; a look, the intonation of a word, the att.i.tude of a moment, will call up other looks and words and att.i.tudes in quick succession, until the chain is complete. So it happened to me, when I saw the learned professor standing by the table, with a cigar in his mouth, and his great gray eyes fixed upon me from behind his enormous spectacles. I recognized the man, and the little I knew of him came back to me.

The professor is one of the most learned specialists in neurology and the study of the brain now living; he is, moreover, a famous anthropologist. He began his career as a surgeon, and would have been celebrated as an operator had he not one day inherited a private fortune, which permitted him to abandon his surgical practice in favor of a special branch for which he knew himself more particularly fitted.

So soon as I recalled the circ.u.mstances of our first meeting I realized that I had been in his company only a few moments, and had not known his name.

He came and sat himself down in an easy-chair by my side, and puffed in silence at a big cigar.

"We have met before," I said. "I could not make you out at first. You were at Weissenstein last year. You remember that affair?"

Professor Cutter looked at me curiously for several seconds before he answered.

"You are the man who let down the rope," he said at last. "I remember you now very well."

There was a short pause.

"Did you ever hear any more of that lady?" asked he, presently.

"No, I did not even know her name, any more than I knew yours," I replied. "I took you for a physician, and the lady for your patient."

We heard steps on the polished floor outside the smoking-room.

"If I were you, I would not say anything to Carvel about that matter,"

said the professor quickly.

The door opened, and John entered the room. He was a little pale and looked nervous.

"Ah," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "I thought you would fraternize over the tobacco."

"We are doing our best," said I.

"It is written that the free should be brothers and equal," said the professor, with a laugh.

"I never knew two brothers who were equal," said Carvel, in reflective tones. "I do not know why the ideal freedom and equality, attaching to the ideal brothers, should not be as good as any other visionary aim for tangible earthly government; but it certainly does not seem so easy of realization, nor so sound in the working, as our good English principle that exceptions prove the rule, and that the more exceptions there are the better the rule will be."

"Is that speech an attack upon American freedom?" asked the professor, laughing a little. "I believe Mr. Griggs is an American."

"No, indeed. Why should I attack American freedom?" said John.

"American freedom is not so easily attacked," I remarked. "It eludes definition and rejects political paradox. No one ever connects our republic with the fas.h.i.+onable liberty-fraternity-and-equality doctrines of European emanc.i.p.ation; still less with the communistic idea that, although men have very different capacities for originating things, all men have an equal right to destroy them."

"Griggs is mounted upon his hobby," remarked John Carvel, stretching his feet out towards the fire. The professor turned the light of his spectacles upon me, and puffed a cloud of smoke.

"Are you a political enthusiast and a rider of hobby-horses, Mr.

Griggs?" he asked.

"I do not know; you must ask our host."

"Pardon me. I think you know very well," said the professor. "I should say you belonged to a cla.s.s of persons who know very well what they think."

"How do you judge?"

"That is, of all questions a man can ask, the most difficult to answer.