Chapter 12

In his youth he was the progressive of Evangelical theology. In his age he stands the proud and reticent conservative, the now silent representative of a departed glory, a departed severity--and, we must admit, of a departed strength--from which the theology of our times has melted away. Like other men in such positions, he has had battles to fight, and he has fought them; enemies to make, and he has made them. How can he keep them? He is growing old so gently and so kindly! Ardent friends and worshipping admirers he has always had, and kept, and deserved.

A lady well known among the writers of our day, herself a professor's daughter from a New England college town, happened once to be talking with me in a lonely hour and in a mood of confidence.

"Oh," she cried, "it seems some of these desolate nights as if I _must_ go home and sit watching for my father to come back from faculty meeting!"

But the tears smote her face, and she turned away. I knew that she had been her dead father's idol, and he hers.

To her listener what a panorama in those two words: "Faculty meeting!"

Every professor's daughter, every woman from a university family, can see it all. The whole scholastic and domestic, studious and tender life comes back. Faculty meeting! We wait for the tired professor who had the latest difference to settle with his colleagues, or the newest breach to soothe, or the favorite move to push; how late he is! He comes in softly, haggard and spent, closing the door so quietly that no one shall be wakened by this midnight dissipation. The woman who loves him most anxiously--be it wife or be it daughter--is waiting for him. Perhaps there is a little whispered sympathy for the trouble in the faculty which he does not tell. Perhaps there is a little expedition to the pantry for a midnight lunch.

My first recollections of Professor Park give me his tall, gaunt, but well-proportioned figure striding up and down the gravel walks in front of the house, two hours before time for faculty meeting, in solemn conclave with my father. The two were friends--barring those interludes common to all faculties, when professional differences are in the foreground--and the pacing of their united feet might have worn Andover Hill through to the central fires. For years I cultivated an objection to Professor Park as being the chief visible reason why we had to wait for supper.

I remember his celebrated sermons quite well. The chapel was always thronged, and--as there were no particular fire-laws in those days on Andover Hill--the aisles brimmed over when it was known that Professor Park or Professor Phelps was to preach. I think I usually began with a little jealous counting of the audience, lest it should prove bigger than my father's; but even a child could not long listen to Professor Park and not forget her small affairs, and all affairs except the eloquence of the man.

Great, I believe it was. Certain distinguished sermons had their popular names, as "The Judas Sermon," or "The Peter Sermon," and drew their admirers accordingly. He was a man of marked emotional nature, which he often found it hard to control. A skeptical critic might have wondered whether the tears welled, or the face broke, or the voice trembled, always just at the right moment, from pure spontaneity. But those who knew the preacher personally never doubted the genuineness of the feeling that swept and carried orator and hearers down. We do not hear such sermons now.

Professor Park has always been a man of social ease and wit. The last time I saw him, at the age of eighty-five, in his house in Andover, I thought, one need not say, "has been;" and to recall his brilliant talk that day gives me hesitation over the past tense of this reminiscence. On the whole, with the exception of Doctor Holmes, I think I should call Professor Park the best converser--at least among eminent _men_--whom I have ever met.

He has always been a man very sensitive to the intellectual values of life, and fully inclined perhaps to approach the spiritual through those. It is easy to misunderstand a religious teacher of this temperament, and his admiring students may have sometimes done so.

One in particular I remember to have heard of who neglected the lecture-room to cultivate upon his own responsibility the misson work of what was known as Abbott Village. To the Christian socialism of our day, the misery of factory life might seem as important for the future clergyman as the system of theology regnant in his particular seminary--but that was not the fashion of the time; at all events, the man was a student under the Professor's orders, and the orders were: keep to the curriculum; and I can but think that the Professor was right when he caustically said:

"That ---- is wasting his seminary course in what _he calls doing good_!"

Sometimes, too, the students used to beg off to go on book-agencies, or to prosecute other forms of money-making; and of one such Professor Park was heard to say that he "sacrificed his education to get the means of paying for it."

I am indebted to Professor Park for this: "Professor Stuart and myself were reluctant to release them from their studies. Professor Stuart remarked of one student that he got excused _every_ Saturday for the purpose of going home for a _week_, and always stayed a _fortnight_."

The last time that I saw Professor Park he told me a good story. It concerned the days of his prime, when he had been preaching somewhere--in Boston or New York, I think--and after the audience was dismissed a man lingered and approached him.

"Sir," said the stranger, "I am under great obligations to you. Your discourse has moved me greatly. I can truly say that I believe I shall owe the salvation of my soul to you. I wish to offer, sir, to the seminary with which you are connected, a slight tribute of my admiration for and indebtedness to you." The gentleman drew out his purse.

"I waited, breathless," said Professor Park, with his own tremendous solemnity of manner; "I awaited the tribute of that grateful man. At what price did he value his soul? I anticipated a contribution for the seminary which it would be a privilege to offer. At what rate did my converted hearer price his soul?--Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? With indescribable dignity the man handed to me--a five-dollar bill!"

THE WAGER OF THE MARQUIS DE MÉROSAILLES.

BY ANTHONY HOPE,

AUTHOR OF "THE PRISONER OF ZENDA," "THE DOLLY DIALOGUES," ETC.

In the year 1634, as spring came, there arrived at Strelsau a French nobleman, of high rank and great possessions, and endowed with many accomplishments. He came to visit Prince Rudolf, whose acquaintance he had made while the prince was at Paris in the course of his travels. King Henry received Monsieur de Mérosailles--for such was his name--most graciously, and sent a guard of honor to conduct him to the Castle of Zenda, where the prince was then staying in company with his sister Osra. There the marquis on his arrival was greeted with much joy by Prince Rudolf, who found his sojourn in the country somewhat irksome, and was glad of the society of a friend with whom he could talk and sport and play at cards. All these things he did with Monsieur de Mérosailles, and a great friendship arose between the young men, so that they spoke very freely to one another at all times, and most of all when they had drunk their wine and sat together in the evening in Prince Rudolf's chamber that looked across the moat toward the gardens; for the new chateau that now stands on the site of these gardens was not then built. And one night Monsieur de Mérosailles made bold to ask the prince how it fell out that his sister the princess, a lady of such great beauty, seemed sad, and showed no pleasure in the society of any gentleman, but treated all alike with coldness and disdain. Prince Rudolf, laughing, answered that girls were strange creatures, and that he had ceased to trouble his head about them--of his heart he said nothing--and he finished by exclaiming, "On my honor, I doubt if she so much as knows you are here, for she has not looked at you once since your arrival!" And he smiled maliciously, for he knew that the marquis was not accustomed to be neglected by ladies, and would take it ill that even a princess should be unconscious of his presence. In this he calculated rightly, for Monsieur de Mérosailles was greatly vexed, and, twisting his glass in his fingers, he said:

"If she were not a princess, and your sister, sir, I would engage to make her look at me."

"I am not hurt by her looking at you," rejoined the prince; for that evening he was very merry. "A look is no great thing."

And the marquis being also very merry, and knowing that Rudolf had less regard for his dignity than a prince should have, threw out carelessly:

"A kiss is more, sir."

"It is a great deal more," laughed the prince, tugging his mustache.

"Are you ready for a wager, sir?" asked Monsieur de Mérosailles, leaning across the table toward him.

"I'll lay you a thousand crowns to a hundred that you do not gain a kiss, using what means you will, save force."

"I'll take the wager, sir," cried the marquis; "but it shall be three, not one."

"Have a care," said the prince. "Don't go too near the flame, my lord. There are some wings in Strelsau singed at that candle."

"Indeed, the light is very bright," assented the marquis, courteously. "That risk I must run, though, if I am to win my wager. It is to be three, then, and by what means I will, save force?"

"Even so," said Rudolf, and he laughed again. For he thought the wager harmless, since by no means could Monsieur de Mérosailles win so much as one kiss from the Princess Osra, and the wager stood at three. But he did not think how he wronged his sister by using her name lightly, being in all such matters a man of careless mind.

But the marquis, having made his wager, set himself steadily to win it; for he brought forth the choicest clothes from his wardrobe, and ornaments and perfumes; and he laid fine presents at the princess's feet; and he waylaid her wherever she went, and was profuse of glances, sighs, and hints; and he wrote sonnets, as fine gentlemen used in those days, and lyrics and pastorals, wherein she figured under charming names. These he bribed the princess's waiting-women to leave in their mistress's chamber. Moreover, he looked now sorrowful, now passionate, and he ate nothing at dinner, but drank his wine in wild gulps as though he sought to banish sadness. So that, in a word, there was no device in Cupid's armory that the Marquis de Mérosailles did not practise in the endeavor to win a look from the Princess Osra. But no look came, and he got nothing from her but cold civility. Yet she had looked at him when he looked not--for princesses are much like other maidens--and thought him a very pretty gentleman, and was highly amused by his extravagance. Yet she did not believe it to witness any true devotion to her, but thought it mere gallantry.

Then one day Monsieur de Mérosailles, having tried all else that he could think of, took to his bed. He sent for a physician, and paid him a high fee to find the seeds of a rapid and fatal disease in him; and he made his body-servant whiten his face and darken the room; and he groaned very pitifully, saying that he was sick, and that he was glad of it, for death would be better far than the continued disdain of the Princess Osra. And all this, being told by the marquis's servants to the princess's waiting-women, reached Osra's ears, and caused her much perturbation. For she now perceived that the passion, of the marquis was real and deep, and she became very sorry for him; and the longer the face of the rascally physician grew, the more sad the princess became; and she walked up and down, bewailing the terrible effects of her beauty, wishing that she were not so fair, and mourning very tenderly for the sad plight of the unhappy marquis. Through all Prince Rudolf looked on, but was bound by his wager not to undeceive her; moreover, he found much entertainment in the matter, and swore that it was worth three times a thousand crowns.

At last the marquis sent, by the mouth of the physician, a very humble and pitiful message to the princess, in which he spoke of himself as near to death, hinted at the cruel cause of his condition, and prayed her of her compassion to visit him in his chamber and speak a word of comfort, or at least let him look on her face; for the brightness of her eyes, he said, might cure even what it had caused.

Deceived by this appeal, Princess Osra agreed to go. Moved by some strange impulse, she put on her loveliest gown, dressed her hair most splendidly, and came into his chamber looking like a goddess. There lay the marquis, white as a ghost and languid, on his pillows; and they were left, as they thought, alone. Then Osra sat down, and began to talk very gently and kindly to him, glancing only at the madness which brought him to his sad state, and imploring him to summon his resolution and conquer his sickness for his friends' sake at home in France, and for the sake of her brother, who loved him.

"There is nobody who loves me," said the marquis, petulantly; and when Osra cried out at this, he went on: "For the love of those whom I do not love is nothing to me, and the only soul alive I love--" There he stopped, but his eyes, fixed on Osra's face, ended the sentence for him. And she blushed, and looked away. Then, thinking the moment had come, he burst suddenly into a flood of protestations and self-reproach, cursing himself for a fool and a presumptuous madman, pitifully craving her pardon, and declaring that he did not deserve her kindness, and yet that he could not live without it, and that anyhow he would be dead soon and thus cease to trouble her. But she, being thus passionately assailed, showed such sweet tenderness and compassion and pity that Monsieur de Mérosailles came very near to forgetting that he was playing a comedy, and threw himself into his part with eagerness, redoubling his vehemence, and feeling now full half of what he said. For the princess was to his eyes far more beautiful in her softer mood. Yet he remembered his wager, and at last, when she was nearly in tears, and ready, as it seemed, to do anything to give him comfort, he cried desperately:

"Ah, leave me, leave me! Leave me to die alone! Yet for pity's sake, before you go, and before I die, give me your forgiveness, and let your lips touch my forehead in token of it! And then I shall die in peace."

At that the princess blushed still more, and her eyes were dim and shone; for she was very deeply touched at his misery and at the sad prospect of the death of so gallant a gentleman for love. Thus she could scarcely speak for emotion; and the marquis, seeing her emotion, was himself much affected; and she rose from her chair and bent over him, and whispered comfort to him. Then she leant down, and very lightly touched his forehead with her lips; and he felt her eyelashes, that were wet with her tears, brush the skin of his forehead; and then she sobbed, and covered her face with her hands. Indeed, his state seemed to her most pitiful.

Thus Monsieur de Mérosailles had won one of his three kisses; yet, strange to tell, there was no triumph in him, but he now perceived the baseness of his device; and the sweet kindness of the princess, working together with the great beauty of her softened manner, so affected him that he thought no more of his wager, and could not endure to carry on his deception. And nothing would serve his turn but to confess to the princess what he had done, and humble himself in the dust before her, and entreat her to pardon him and let him find forgiveness. Therefore, impelled by these feelings, after he had lain still a few moments listening to the princess's weeping, he leapt suddenly out of the bed, showing himself fully clothed under the bedgown which he now eagerly tore off, and he rubbed all the white he could from his cheeks; and then he fell on his knees before the princess, crying to her that he had played the meanest trick on her, and that he was a scoundrel and no gentleman, and yet that, unless she forgave him, he should in very truth die. Nay, he would not consent to live, unless he could win from her pardon for his deceit. And in all this he was now most absolutely in earnest, wondering only how he had not been as passionately enamoured of her from the first as he had feigned himself to be. For a man in love can never conceive himself out of it; nor he that is out of it, in it: for, if he can, he is halfway to the one or the other, however little he may know it.

At first the princess sat as though she were turned to stone. But when he had finished his confession, and she understood the trick that had been played upon her, and how not only her kiss but also her tears had been won from her by fraud; and when she thought, as she did, that the marquis was playing another trick upon her, and that there was no more truth nor honesty in his present protestations than in those which went before--she fell into great shame and into a great rage; and her eyes flashed like the eyes of her father himself, as she rose to her feet and looked down on Monsieur de Mérosailles as he knelt imploring her. Now her face turned pale from red, and she set her lips, and she drew her gown close round her lest his touch should defile it (so the unhappy gentleman understood the gesture), and she daintily picked her steps round him lest by chance she should happen to come in contact with so foul a thing. Thus she walked toward the door, and, having reached it, she turned and said to him:

"Your death may blot out the insult--nothing less;" and with her head held high, and her whole air full of scorn, she swept out of the room, leaving the marquis on his knees. Then he started up to follow her, but dared not; and he flung himself on the bed in a paroxysm of shame and vexation, and now of love, and he cried out loud:

"Then my death shall blot it out, since nothing else will serve!"

For he was in a very desperate mood. For a long while he lay there, and then, having risen, dressed himself in a sombre suit of black, and buckled his sword by his side, and put on his riding-boots, and, summoning his servant, bade him saddle his horse. "For," said he to himself, "I will ride into the forest, and there kill myself; and perhaps when I am dead, the princess will forgive, and will believe in my love, and grieve a little for me."

Now, as he went from his chamber to cross the moat by the drawbridge, he encountered Prince Rudolf returning from hawking. They met full in the centre of the bridge, and the prince, seeing Monsieur de Mérosailles dressed all in black from the feather in his cap to his boots, called out mockingly, "Who is to be buried to-day, my lord, and whither do you ride to the funeral? It cannot be yourself, for I see that you are marvellously recovered of your sickness."

"But it is myself," answered the marquis, coming near and speaking low that the servants and the falconers might not overhear. "And I ride, sir, to my own funeral."

"The jest is still afoot, then?" asked the prince. "Yet I do not see my sister at the window to watch you go, and I warrant you have made no way with your wager yet."

"A thousand curses on my wager!" cried the marquis. "Yes, I have made way with the accursed thing, and that is why I now go to my death."

"What, has she kissed you?" cried the prince, with a merry, astonished laugh.

"Yes, sir, she has kissed me once, and therefore I go to die."

"I have heard many a better reason, then," answered the prince.

By now the prince had dismounted, and he stood by Monsieur de Mérosailles in the middle of the bridge, and heard from him how the trick had prospered. At this he was much tickled; and, alas! he was even more diverted when the penitence of the marquis was revealed to him, and was most of all moved to merriment when it appeared that the marquis, having gone too near the candle, had been caught by its flame, and was so terribly singed and scorched that he could not bear to live. And while they talked on the bridge, the princess looked out on them from a lofty narrow window, but neither of them saw her. Now, when the prince had done laughing, he put his arm through his friend's, and bade him not be a fool, but come in and toast the princess's kiss in a draught of wine. "For," he said, "though you will never get the other two, yet it is a brave exploit to have got one."

But the marquis shook his head, and his air was so resolute and so full of sorrow that not only was Rudolf alarmed for his reason, but Princess Osra also, at the window, wondered what ailed him and why he wore such a long face; and she now noticed, that he was dressed all in black, and that his horse waited for him across the bridge.

"Not," said she, "that I care what becomes of the impudent rogue!" Yet she did not leave the window, but watched very intently to see what Monsieur de Mérosailles would do.

For a long while he talked with Rudolf on the bridge, Rudolf seeming more serious than he was wont to be; and at last the marquis bent to kiss the prince's hand, and the prince raised him and kissed him on either cheek; and then the marquis went and mounted his horse and rode off, slowly and unattended, into the glades of the forest of Zenda. But the prince, with a shrug of his shoulders and a frown on his brow, entered under the portcullis, and disappeared from his sister's view.

Upon this the princess, assuming an air of great carelessness, walked down from the room where she was, and found her brother, sitting still in his boots, and drinking wine; and she said:

"Monsieur de Mérosailles has taken his leave, then?"

"Even so, madam," rejoined Rudolf.

Then she broke into a fierce attack on the marquis, and on her brother also; for a man, said she, is known by his friends, and what a man must Rudolf be to have a friend like the Marquis de Mérosailles!

"Most brothers," she said, in fiery temper, "would make him answer for what he has done with his life. But you laugh--nay, I dare say you had a hand in it."

As to this last charge the prince had the discretion to say nothing; he chose rather to answer the first part of what she said, and, shrugging his shoulders again, rejoined, "The fool saves me the trouble, for he has gone off to kill himself."

"To kill himself?" she said, half-incredulous, but also half-believing, because of the marquis's gloomy looks and black clothes.

"To kill himself," repeated Rudolf. "For, in the first place, you are angry, so he cannot live; and in the second, he has behaved like a rogue, so he cannot live; and in the third place, you are so lovely, sister, that he cannot live; and in the first, second, and third places, he is a fool, so he cannot live." And the prince finished his flagon of wine with every sign of ill-humor in his manner.

"He is well dead," she cried.

"Oh, as you please!" said he. "He is not the first brave man who has died on your account;" and he rose and strode out of the room very surlily, for he had a great friendship for Monsieur de Mérosailles, and had no patience with men who let love make dead bones of them.