CHAPTER VI.

When Tredennis found himself standing out in the street, half an hour later, it was this picture which remained in his mind, and no other. If an effort had been required to retain the impression upon his mental retina he would have made the effort with the deliberate intention of excluding all else; but no effort was needed.

"I suppose it is sentiment," he said, taking his cigar out of his mouth, and looking up at the starlit sky. "I have no doubt it is sentiment. A man who has lived mooning alone as long as I have, drifts in that direction naturally, I suppose. And I am a rigid, old-fashioned fellow. I don't fit in with the rest of it. But, with her child in her arms and her gewgaws laid on the table, I seemed to see something I knew. I'll think of that, and not of the other."

It was just at this moment that he caught sight of a figure approaching him from a distance of a few yards. It was the figure of a man, wrapped in a cloak, and walking with bent head at a leisurely pace, which argued that he was deep in meditation. As it drew nearer Tredennis recognized something familiar in its outlines, and before it had taken half-a-dozen steps forward the head was raised suddenly, almost as if attracted by something in his gaze, and he recognized the professor, who, seeing him, came toward him at once, and laid a friendly hand on his shoulder.

"You are coming away from the house, are you?" he said. "I might have known I should have the chance of meeting you when I came out to take my ramble before going to bed. I do it every night. I find I sleep better for it. Perhaps Bertha told you."

[Pg 61]

"No," answered Tredennis; "I had not been told of it."

The professor gave him a little impetus forward with the hand he still kept on his shoulder.

"Walk on with me," he said. "What I like is the deserted look of things, and the silence. There is nothing more silent and deserted than such a street as this at night. There is a quiet and emptiness about it which impress themselves on you more than the stillness of a desert. Perhaps it is the sleep around you in the houses,—the people who have lost their hold on the world and life for the time being. They are far enough away by this time, most of them, and we are no more certain where they are than we shall be after they have lain down for the last time. How did you find Bertha?"

His voice changed as he asked the question, dropping its key somewhat; and, quiet though its tone was, Tredennis thought he recognized a faint suggestion of consciousness in it.

"She looked very well," he answered; "and was very bright."

"She is generally that," said the professor. "Who was there?"

"A Mr. Arbuthnot."

"Arbuthnot! Yes; to be sure. He generally is there. He is a relative of Richard's. They are fond of him. I was to have been there myself, but I had a previous engagement. And I suppose they made light of each other, as usual?"

"You mean"—began Tredennis.

"Arbuthnot and Bertha. They always do it, and Richard looks on and enjoys it. He is a queer fellow."

"Mr. Amory?" Tredennis questioned, uncertainly.

"No, no; Arbuthnot. He is a queer fellow, Arbuthnot."

Tredennis laughed.

"That is what they said in the house," he responded.

[Pg 62]

"Well, it's true," said the professor, reflectively, "and there is no denying it."

"They said that, too," said Tredennis. "And Mrs. Amory added that it was a habit they had."

"I don't know," said the professor, still keeping his hand on Tredennis' shoulder, and seeming to study the pavement as he walked,—"I don't know what the man has done with his past, and I don't know what he is going to do with his future. I don't think he knows about the future himself."

"It struck me," said Tredennis,—"I don't know why,—that he did not care."

"That's it," said the professor. "He doesn't care."

They walked a few steps in silence, and then he went on:

"He never will care," he said, "unless something happens to rouse him."

"I am obliged to confess," said Tredennis, "that I am afraid I am prepared to underrate him. And it seemed to me that there wasn't much in him to rouse."

"Oh, you'll underrate him," returned the professor, "at first. And you may never get over it; but there are also ten chances to one that you do. I did."

"You began by underrating him?"

"I don't overrate him now," said the professor. "I don't know that I am particularly fond of him, though there have been moments—just moments—when I have been threatened with it. But I have come to the conclusion that there is something in him to rouse, and that it wouldn't be the wisest thing in the world to rouse it."

"Do you mean," said Tredennis, slowly, "that it would take a woman to rouse it?"

"Yes," answered the professor, just as slowly, "it would take a woman. And there are circumstances under which it would be better for the woman if she let what she might rouse lie and sleep."

"For instance?" said Tredennis, with a fierce leap of every pulse in his body.

[Pg 63]

"If," said the professor, deliberately,—"if she were not free to give what his feeling for her demanded."

He paused to turn Tredennis round.

"Confound him!" he said, with a curiously irritable seriousness. "If he once reached a white heat,—that fellow with his objectless follies, and his dress-coat, and his white necktie, and his opera hat under his arm,—if he once forgot them and himself, it would be her fate to remember him as long as her life should last."

"Her fate?" said Tredennis.

"I said it would have to be a woman," said the professor. "I should not like it to be a woman I felt an interest in. We have reached the end of the block. Let us walk back again."

When he spoke again it was of Richard Armory, not of Arbuthnot.

"You went upstairs into the Museum, as Bertha calls it?" he said.

"Yes," answered Tredennis; "and into the workroom."

"And saw the models, and the collections, and the books?"

"Yes."

"He has a good many enthusiasms, Richard," said the professor. "They might form a collection of themselves. He won't tire of life easily. He is a fine contrast to—the other."

They were nearing the house again by this time, and he glanced up at its front.

"There is a light in the nursery window," he said. "It must be one of Janey's restless nights."

"Yes," said Tredennis. "Mrs. Amory was with her when we came downstairs, and she told us that the child was nervous and needed her."

"She has wonderful patience with them," said the professor, "and a sort of genius for understanding their vague young needs and desires. She never does them an injustice for want of thought, and never fails them.[Pg 64] I have seen her spend half an hour half-kneeling, half-sitting on the nursery floor, by one of them, with her arm round it, questioning it, and helping it to tell its own story, in a way that was very motherly. There is a great deal of the maternal instinct in her."

Tredennis made no reply, but there rose before his mental vision the picture before the nursery fire, and he saw again the soft, close clasp of the fair hand and arm.

"It's curious how seldom we speak of paternal instinct," the professor went on. "It is always maternal instinct. Well, it is a great thing. And it is a great safeguard where—where life is not satisfactory. And as one grows older one sees a good deal of that. It is pitiful sometimes, when one finds it, as one so often does, in young things who haven't got over their desperate mental insistence on their right to be happy."

He checked himself with a faint laugh.

"I'm prosing, my boy," he said. "I always do it when I take my saunter at night. It is a sort of safeguard against doing it in the day. And I find I am specially given to it when I talk of Bertha. It is the paternal instinct, if there is such a thing. You remember how we talked of her when she came home from school. Do you find her much changed?"

"She has changed from a girl—a child, almost—to a woman," said Tredennis.

"Yes," said the professor, "from a child to a woman. And yet, when you look back upon it, eight years is a very short time. Sometimes it seems only yesterday that she startled me at the dinner-table by saying that she expected me to classify and label her."

"There have been times," said Tredennis, "when it seemed only yesterday to me; but to-night it is something far away."

The professor looked up at him quickly.

"Is it?" he said. "Well, well," rather vaguely, "it is a habit they have fallen into, that of making light of things. It is a kind of fashion nowadays. She did[Pg 65] not treat things lightly then, did she? How she believed all that she believed—how frankly she impugned your veracity in argument, without being at all conscious of the incivility! How bright her eyes and lips were when she asked me if she could not have the label without the pin! I wish"—

He stopped suddenly once more.

"We have reached the end of the block again, my boy," he said, "and I have walked long enough, and talked long enough. We must say good-night to each other."

They were standing beneath a street-lamp, and having looked up at Tredennis to say this, he drew back a pace to look again, in whimsically gentle admiration of his stalwart proportions.

"What a soldierly fellow you are!" he said; "and how you stand out among the rest of us!" And then, with an odd change of manner, he drew nearer, and laid his hand on his shoulder once more. "I'll say again," he said, "what I have said before. I wish you had been a son of mine, my boy."

And, as he said it, there fell upon the quiet of the street the sound of approaching footsteps ringing on the pavement, and, turning instinctively toward them, each saw an easily recognized masculine figure, which, reaching the house in which the Amorys lived, paused for a moment beneath the lighted window, and flung forth to the night, airily, and by no means unmusically, a few bars of one of the popular airs from a gay French opera, and then, crossing the street, applied a latch-key to the door of the opposite house, and, entering, closed it.

"The fellow has a pleasant voice," said the professor. "It is a voice you like to hear. And that is one of his whims."

"I thought I recognized the figure," said Tredennis. "It is"—

"Arbuthnot," said the professor. "Arbuthnot."

And then they parted.