Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1883 — THE PROFESSOR’S STORY. [ARTICLE]

THE PROFESSOR’S STORY.

BY J. M. WHITMAN.

Taking tea one evening with an old acquaintance, now professor in a New England college, the conversation recalled some of the friends of our younger days, and he surprised me with this remark: “A woman’s sympathies lie nearer her heart than her love, unless her love is born of them.” But he surprised me more by the story he told to prove it. I guess it was seven years, he said, that our chair of astronomy remained vacant. You knew of Dr. Mendon. It was justly that the world finally gave him fame. Well, after his death the trustees were at loss to fill his place. A weak man would have been insufferable there. Do you remember his family ? Charming wife and daughter. They spent several years abroad after his death, and when they returned, notwithstanding that the widow still wore mourn-, ing, the number of our little social events was doubled. The daughter had a string of young millionaires after her constantly. Female society, perhaps you know, wasn’t unlimited, and it was with a foundation of truth that the fellows grimly joked about calling on the girls their fathers had courted before them. Charlotte Merdon was as fascinating a girl as her mother had been, so said the old folks, and it was to her that young Prof. Lutz quoted from Horace, “Oh daughter, more beautiful than thy beautiful mother!" when he brought down on himself the ridicule of the mountain-day party. Yes, she could have had her pick from a dozen very rich boys, and I think she would have taken it, too, if she hadn’t discov-’ ered that her mother was trying to influence her in their favor. At the senior party that year Charlotte held her court, as she did everywhere. She was surrounded, I remember, by the rich fellows of Charlie Elliott’s set. Elliott was happy that night. Charlotte had been unusually gracious and her mother had made her favor clearer than ever.

Over near the door sat the last man to be expected at a President’s party, Brent Seymour. He was senior the year before, and taking post graduate study at the observatory Merdon had built shortly before his death—a town boy, who supported his mother and worked his way through college, not often seen in society, and his ill-fitting clothes and embarrassed manner attested it. Elliott, looking around the room for a subject for his next brilliant remark to Miss Merdon, caught sight of Mm, . “Ed,” said he, turning to his chum, “I tell you what will be great sport. Bring Seymour Tip and formally present him to Miss Merdon. It will confuse him. He won’t know what to do, and there’ll be a deuce of a scene.” The chum complied and in a moment had the reluctant Seymour by the arm. The scene that followed must have been all that Elliott desired. For a moment the poor student stood before the belle. It was not unlike the tableau of the beggar and the princess. Her easy attitude contrasted strangely with his painful awkwardness. Elliott had not miscalculated. The effect was immediate. All eyes were turned toward the couple, and a smile went around. Charlotte Merdon saw it, and her cheeks flamed. She had divined the heartless joke. To the surprise of those about her she begged Seymour to be abated—insisted that he should be seated. Then she tried to draw him into the conversation. But it was impossibles Embarrassment seemed to have driven his wits away. Only one remark he ventured. Glancing at a portrait on the wall, he stammered out, “That’s a good picture of the President.” The portrait was one taken thirty years beforehand was anything but a good likeness of the President as he then appeared. The unfortunate remark caused another smile. Elliott was delighted. His joke was a splendid success. Poor Seymour twisted about in his chair and hung his head. His discomfiture was complete.

Miss Merdon took a deliberate look •t the picture, and did not smile. “Yes,” she said “it is called a very good likeness of him just after graduation. Have you seen the President’s flowers, Mr. Seymour? Let me show them to you. Bising, and excusing herself, the led the young man into the greenhouse, adjoining the parlor. “The devil!” said Elliott. “I didn’t look for anything like that.” Seymour, rescued in this way from his trying ordeal, hardly knew what to say or do. He felt as if a millstone had been taken from his neck. The pain and the manner of relief worked strangely on his sensitive nature. He felt that he was in great debt* to his companion. He wanted to kiss the hem of her garment. He wanted to cry. He knew he was feeling and acting like a fool. He expected that he should make a greater fool of himself than in the parlor. But some way he didn't care. He had lost all fear of the beautiful girl. Her act of mercy had brought her nearer than years of acquaintance could. He talked rapidly of the flowers, for he knew of them, and Charlotte listened —listened wondering why she caren to listen, little thinking that her sympathy had brought the awkward student nearer than he would have been had she known him half her

lifetime and never seen him in pain So when he pointecLout to her the observatory where he worked, the queer-ly-shaped building that showedits dark outlines in the moonlight, just oyer the campus on the hill, she wondered what it was that prompted her to beg him to take her there, to exact, a premise from him that, on the very next evening, he would conduct lier through the building, that had been built after her father’s orders. She persuaded herself that it was a desire to see some manuscripts of her father which Seymour told her had been left thOre. Perhaps it was. ." Notwithstanding her mother’s mild remonstrance, the next evening found her with Brent Seymour in the telescope room of the observatory. The roof had been let down and she was watching the stars. “I wonder if father often studied them from this room,” she said. , “Whenever the sky was clear.” “I wonder if he can see them now.” “No, I think that through some one of them he is looking at us.” Far from science and astronomy, far, very far, from his scholarly stand-point, the man’s childish reply had taken him, but it had carried him nearer the heart of the girl than he dreamed. Mrs. Merdon’s disapproval of her daughter’s visit to the observatory with Seymour broadened into anger as his calls were repeated, and repeated often. An intimacy grew between the young people that, even to themselves, they did not undertake to explain. The girl’s friendship had opened a new world to the hard-worked student. Had he known more of life, he would have known that he was falling in love. Over the ether a secret.was stealing as steadily as comes over us the morning. A month had passed sfnee the senior party. The two sat together in the telescope room. She seemed to be studying the stars. -“And do you remember,” she was asking, “that, that evening, you thought through some one of them father was looking at us?” “Yes.”

“Do you suppose lie can see us now ?” “Yes,” (in a surprised way.) “Then” (hesitatingly) “do you think he is glad—is glad to see us together ?” “Won’t you” (the voice was very husky)-—“won’t you answer for me ?” “Yes,” she said, in a voice clear as a harp chord, “I know he is.” Seymour wondered if_his senses were giving way. He hardly knew what followed. He meant to ask—he tried to ask if she didn’t think her father would be glad to see them always together. Somehow that seemed long and heavy and he couldn’t make the words come. He had a choking sensation in his throat and his eyes were blinded with tears. He felt just as he had in the greenhouse the night of the senior party. He wanted to kiss the hem of her garment. *He felt that he was in debt to her and falling deeper in debt every moment. He knew he was making a fool of himself, but he didn’t Care. He was the happiest feol that moment in God’s happy world. “You are just as much mine,” she said at last, her hands resting upon his head, which some way br other had found a place in her lap—“you are just as milch mine as if I had not done all the wooing myself.” The Merdon mansion had never seen such a storm as followed Charlotte’s avowal of her betrothal. Her mother insisted that she would never consent, never in the world, and the girl who had always honored, her wishes above everything else was in distress. “But you did not marry a rich man yourself, mother; why should you want me to?” she urged. “I married a man who was great—whom everybody knew; why, if you were to marry the man, whoever he is, who will fill his chair, I should be happy forever, but this fellow,—and her indignation overpowering her, she left the room. It was late in the evening when Charlotte stole upstairs. Passing her mother’s room she saw that the door was partially open. She knew what it meant. Women, even among themselves, make their reconciliations gracefully, gradually. She pushed the door wide open, as her mother had intended She should, and went in. The lady sat by her writing table; her head rested on her hand, and she was evidently sleeping. A little pile of letters lay before her, a picture before them. Tearshad dropped upon the letters, and the picture showed the stains of tears. Charlotte looked at the picture closely. The face was familiar. Suuely she had seen it before. But where? She could not place it among her acquaintances. Whose face was it ? She started. A broken, uncertain voice seemed to say: “That’s a good picture of the President.” Her lover’s awkward remark at the party, the portrait on the wall, the picture that her mother cried over. It was all clear, very clear, and she didn’t care to read the open letter by the picture.

“My poor, dear mother!" she thought, as, without awakening her, she glided to her pwn room, carrying the greatest secret of her lifetime, save one. It was after midnight when Mrs. Merdon awoke. She had hoped her daughter w ould come in. She wanted to tell her that she was no longer angry. She had been carried back over parts of her own life and she wanted to tell Charlotte that after all she must follow the voice of her heart, that her own experience had taught her so. She w r as almost ready to confess to her that although she had married a man who was great, whom everybody knew, she—no, no, no, she could not tell her daughter that. Very slowly she put away the letters and the picture, saying: “Yes, I loved him then, and, God forgive me, I have loved him ever since.” t At noon the next day a servant brought a note to the president’s study: “Charlotte E. Merdon requests the pleasure of a few moments’ private conversation.” “I wonder what Addie ■ Mather's daughter wants of me,” thought the old bachelor as he passed down into the reception room. “How the girl brings her to my mind!” In a dignified way that even surprised herself, Charlotte began: “I understand that the trustees have pvon you the appointing power regarding the

professorship which my father’s death made vacant,” e , “Yes.” “Have you made any provision yet ?’ “No.” • “I have a candidate to present.” “What—you? A candidate! Whc is it?” • , , “Brent Sevmoiir.” Charlotte's intimacy with Seymoui was not unknown to the President, but this astounded him. “It is impossible,”he said; “I do not see how you can ask it—how you can think it.” “Would you not do much to bring you to one you loved?” she asked, boldly. A peculiar light came into the gray eves behind the steel bowed spectacles. “Yes.” “How much?” “Anything.” “Would you give a professorship ?” The peculiar light increased. It was almost a blaze. “Yes.” “Will you give me this professorship if I bring you to one you love?” The gray eyes were now fairly a flame. She was understood. He sprang to his feet. Age seemed to fall from him like a scale. “Girl, what do you mean?” he shoufed.

“That she loves you all the time,” There was a base-ball match on the college grounds, but it was not the topic of the afternoon. A report that Brent Seymour had been appointed to the chair of astronomy had sent half the college to his house to congratulate him. They could not begin to get inside, so he stood in the yard and shook hands with them one by one. In the early evening a passing student saw an unusual visitor go up the path to the Merdon mansion. It was the gray-haired President. Mrs. Merdon opened the door herself, and the student couldn’t help seeing the look oi astonishment on her face, and that she tottered as she stepped back into the hall; couldn’t help hearing, in tones that he will never forget, two exclamations, “Addiel” Frank!” and the door closed; When Seymour and Charlotte camq in from their evening walk they heard voices in the sitting room, and Seymour was speechless with astonishment as he recognizcd the President’s voice: .“l am glad that you rejected me once, for my joy is made wonderful by years of darkness.” —Catching her lover’s hand Charlotte stepped with him into the room. “Mother,” she said, “if you haven’t got too much happiness already,”— looking at the venerable man who did not release the hand he was holding—“remember you promised to be happy forever if I should marry the man who will fill my father’s chair. Let me present him.”

My host ceased. His story was evidently done, and as he drew back from the table he said: “The only thing ficticious is the name I have given the poor student.” “But,” I asked, “did Charlotte ever tell her mother of the visit she made to her chamber when she was asleep at her writing-desk.” “You may ask,” he said, smiling. “She sits at the head of the table.” Absorbed in the story, I had not noticed that my hostess was concealing her blushes behind the tea urn. Springfield (Mass.) Republican.