However this may be, there is no doubt that Mr. Byles Gridley was beginning to take a part in his neighbors' welfare and misfortunes, such as could hardly have been expected of a man so long lost in his books and his scholastic duties. And among others, Myrtle Hazard had come in for a share of his interest. He had met her now and then in her walks to and from school and meeting, and had been taken with her beauty and her apparent unconsciousness of it, which he attributed to the forlorn kind of household in which she had grown up. He had got so far as to talk with her now and then, and found himself puzzled, as well he might be, in talking with a girl who had been growing into her early maturity in antagonism with every influence that surrounded her.
"Love will reach her by and by," he said, "in spite of the dragons up at the den yonder.
'Centum fronte oculos, centum cervice gerebat Argus, et hos unus saepe fefellit amor.'"But there was something about Myrtle,--he hardly knew whether to call it dignity, or pride, or reserve, or the mere habit of holding back brought about by the system of repression under which she had been educated,--which kept even the old Master of Arts at his distance.
Yet he was strongly drawn to her, and had a sort of presentiment that he might be able to help her some day, and that very probably she would want his help; for she was alone in the world, except for the dragons, and sure to be assailed by foes from without and from within.
He noticed that her name was apt to come up in his conversations with Murray Bradshaw; and, as he himself never introduced it, of course the young man must have forced it, as conjurers force a card, and with some special object. This set him thinking hard; and, as a result of it, he determined the next time Mr. Bradshaw brought her name up to set him talking.
So he talked, not suspecting how carefully the old man listened.
"It was a demonish hard case," he said, "that old Malachi had left his money as he did. Myrtle Hazard was going to be the handsomest girl about, when she came to her beauty, and she was coming to it mighty fast. If they could only break that will, but it was no use trying. The doctors said he was of sound mind for at least two years after making it. If Silence Withers got the land claim, there'd be a pile, sure enough. Myrtle Hazard ought to have it. If the girl had only inherited that property--whew? She'd have been a match for any fellow. That old Silence Withers would do just as her minister told her,--even chance whether she gives it to the Parson-factory, or marries Bellamy Stoker, and gives it to him after his wife's dead.
He'd take it if he had to take her with it. Earn his money, hey, Master Gridley?""Why, you don't seem to think very well of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker?" said Mr. Gridley, smiling.
"Think well of him? Too fond of using the Devil's pitchfork for my fancy! Forks over pretty much all the world but himself and his lot into--the bad place, you know; and toasts his own cheese with it with very much the same kind of comfort that other folks seem to take in that business. Besides, he has a weakness for pretty saints--and sinners. That's an odd name he has. More belle amie than Joseph about him, I rather guess!"The old professor smiled again. "So you don't think he believes all the mediaeval doctrines he is in the habit of preaching, Mr.
Bradshaw?"
"No, sir; I think he belongs to the class I have seen described somewhere. 'There are those who hold the opinion that truth is only safe when diluted,--about one fifth to four fifths lies,--as the oxygen of the air is with its nitrogen. Else it would burn us all up.'"Byles Gridley colored and started a little. This was one of his own sayings in "Thoughts on the Universe." But the young man quoted it without seeming to suspect its authorship.
"Where did you pick up that saying, Mr. Bradshaw?""I don't remember. Some paper, I rather think. It's one of those good things that get about without anybody's knowing who says 'em.
Sounds like Coleridge."
"That's what I call a compliment worth having," said Byles Gridley to himself, when he got home. "Let me look at that passage."He took down "Thoughts on the Universe," and got so much interested, reading on page after page, that he did not hear the little tea-bell, and Susan Posey volunteered to run up to his study and call him down to tea.
