professor loring g. hibbart, of purewater university, clio, n. y., settled himself in the corner of his compartment in the marseilles–ventimiglia express, drew his velvet ear-pads from his pocket, slipped them over his ears, and began to think.
it was nearly three weeks since he had been able to indulge undisturbed in this enchanting operation. on the steamer which had brought him from boston to marseilles considerable opportunity had in truth been afforded him, for though he had instantly discovered his fellow-passengers to be insinuating and pervasive, an extremely rough passage had soon reduced them to inoffensiveness. unluckily the same cause had in like manner affected the professor; and when the ship approached calmer waters, and he began to revive, the others revived also, and proceeded to pervade, to insinuate and even to multiply — since a lady gave birth to twins as they entered the mediterranean.
as for the tumultuous twenty-four hours since his landing, the professor preferred not to include them in his retrospect. it was enough that they were over. “all i want is quiet,” he had said to the doctors who, after his alarming attack of influenza, followed by bronchial pneumonia, had ordered an immediate departure for warmer climes; and they had thrust him onto an excursion-steamer jammed with noisy sight-seers, and shipped him to a port whither all the rest of the world appeared to be bound at the same moment! his own fault, perhaps? well — he never could plan or decide in a hurry, and when, still shaken by illness, he had suddenly been told that he must spend six months in a mild climate, and been faced with the alternatives of southern california or southern france, he had chosen the latter because it meant a more complete escape from professional associations and the terror of meeting people one knew. as far as climate went, he understood the chances to be equal; and all he wanted was to recover from his pulmonary trouble and employ his enforced leisure in writing a refutation of einstein’s newly published book on relativity.
once the professor had decided on the south of france, there remained the difficulty of finding, in that populous region, a spot quiet enough to suit him; but after much anxious consultation with colleagues who shared his dread of noise and of promiscuous human intercourse, he had decided on a secluded pension high up in the hills, between monte carlo and mentone. in this favoured spot, he was told, no dogs barked, cocks crew or cats courted. there were no waterfalls, or other sonorous natural phenomena, and it was utterly impossible for a motor (even with its muffler knocked off) to ascend the precipitous lane which led to the pension. if, in short, it were possible to refute einstein’s theory, it was in just such a place, and there only, that the feat might be accomplished.
once settled in the train, the professor breathed more freely. most of his fellow-passengers had stayed on the ship, which was carrying them on to swarm over a succession of other places as he had just left them swarming over marseilles. the train he got into was not very crowded, and should other travellers enter the compartment, his ear-pads would secure him from interruption. at last he could revert to the absorbing thought of the book he was planning; could plunge into it like a diver into the ocean. he drew a deep breath and plunged . . .
certainly the compartment had been empty when the train left marseilles — he was sure of that; but he seemed to remember now that a man had got in at a later station, though he couldn’t have said where or when; for once he began to think, time vanished from him as utterly as space.
he became conscious of the intruding presence only from the smell of tobacco gradually insinuating itself into his nostrils. very gradually; for when the professor had withdrawn into his inner stronghold of pure reason, and pulled up the ladder, it was not easy for any appeal to reach him through the channel of the senses. not that these were defective in him. far from it: he could smell and see, taste and hear, with any man alive; but for many years past he had refrained from exercising these faculties except in so far as they conduced to the maintenance of life and security. he would have preferred that the world should contain nothing to see, nothing to smell, nothing to hear; and by negativing persistently every superfluous hint of his visual, auditive or olfactory organs he had sheathed himself in a general impenetrability of which the ear-pads were merely a restricted symbol.
his noticing the whiff of tobacco was an accident, a symptom of his still disorganized state; he put the smell resolutely from him, registered “a man opposite,” and plunged again into the abstract.
once — about an hour later, he fancied — the train stopped with a jerk which flung him abruptly out of his corner. his mental balance was disturbed, and for one irritating instant his gaze unwillingly rested on silver groves, purple promontories and a blue sea. “ugh — scenery!” he muttered; and with a renewed effort of the will he dropped his mental curtain between that inconsequent jumble of phenomena and the absolutely featureless area in which the pure intellect thrones. the incident had brought back the smell of his neighbour’s cigarette; but the professor sternly excluded that also, and the train moved on . . .
professor hibbart was in truth a man of passionately excitable nature: no one was ever, by temperament, less adapted to the lofty intellectual labours in which his mind delighted. he asked only to live in the empyrean; but he was perpetually being dragged back to earth by the pity, wrath or contempt excited in him by the slipshod course of human affairs. there were only two objects on which he flattered himself he could always look with a perfectly unseeing eye; and these were a romantic landscape and a pretty woman. and he was not absolutely sure about the landscape.
suddenly a touch, soft yet peremptory, was laid on his arm. looking down, he beheld a gloved hand; looking up he saw that the man opposite him was a woman.
to this awkward discovery he was still prepared to oppose the blank wall of the most complete imperception. but a sharp pinch proved that the lady who had taken hold of his arm had done so with the fixed determination to attract his attention, at the cost of whatever pain or inconvenience to himself. as she appeared also to be saying something — probably asking if the next station were the one at which she ought to get out — he formed with soundless lips the word “deaf,” and pointed to his ears. the lady’s reply was to release his wrist, and with her free hand flick off an ear-pad.
“deaf? oh, no,” she said briskly, in fluent but exotic english. “you wouldn’t need ear-pads if you were. you don’t want to be bothered — that’s all. i know the trick; you got it out of herbert spencer!”
the assault had nearly disabled the professor for farther resistance; but he rallied his wits and answered stonily: “i have no time-table. you’d better consult the guard.”
the lady threw her spent cigarette out of the window. as the smoke drifted away from her features he became uneasily aware that they were youthful, and that the muscles about her lips and eyes were contracted into what is currently known as a smile. in another moment, he realized with dismay, he was going to know what she looked like. he averted his eyes.
“i don’t want to consult the guard — i want to consult you,” said the lady.
his ears took reluctant note of an intonation at once gay and appealing, which caressed the “you” as if it were a new pronoun rich in vowels, and the only one of its kind in the world.
“eeee-you,” she repeated.
he shook his averted head. “i don’t know the name of a single station on this line.”
“dear me, don’t you?” the idea seemed to shock her, to make a peculiar appeal to her sympathy. “but i do — every one of them! with my eyes shut. listen: i’ll begin at the beginning. paris — ”
“but i don’t want to know them!” he almost screamed.
“well, neither do i. what i want is to ask you a favour — just one tiny little enormous favour.”
the professor still looked away. “i have been in very bad health until recently,” he volunteered.
“oh, i’m so glad — glad, i mean,” she corrected herself hastily, “that you’re all right again now! and glad too that you’ve been ill, since that just confirms it — ”
here the professor fell. “confirms what?” he snapped, and saw too late the trap into which he had plunged.
“my belief that you are predestined to help me,” replied his neighbour with joyful conviction.
“oh, but that’s quite a mistake — a complete mistake. i never in my life helped anybody, in any way. i’ve always made it a rule not to.”
“not even a russian refugee?”
“never!”
“oh, yes, you have. you’ve helped me!”
the professor turned an ireful glance upon her, and she nodded. “i am a russian refugee.”
“you?” he exclaimed. his eyes, by this time, had definitely escaped from his control, and were recording with an irrepressible activity and an exasperating precision the details of her appearance and her dress. both were harmonious and opulent. he laughed incredulously.
“why do you laugh? can’t you see that i’m a refugee; by my clothes, i mean? who has such pearls but russian refugees? or such sables? we have to have them — to sell, of course you don’t care to buy my sables, do you? for you they would be only six thousand pounds cash. no, i thought not. it’s my duty to ask — but i didn’t suppose they would interest you. the paris and london jewellers farm out the pearls to us; the big dressmakers supply the furs. for of course we’ve all sold the originals long ago. and really i’ve been rather successful. i placed two sets of silver fox and a rope of pearls last week at monte carlo. ah, that fatal place! i gambled away the whole of my commission the same night . . . but i’m forgetting to tell you how you’ve already helped me . . . ”
she paused to draw breath, and in the pause the professor, who had kept his hand on his loosened ear-pad, slipped it back over his ear.
“i wear these,” he said coldly, “to avoid argument.”
with a flick she had it off again. “i wasn’t going to argue — i was only going to thank you.”
“i can’t conceive for what. in any case, i don’t want to be thanked.”
her brows gathered resentfully. “why did you ask to be, then?” she snapped; and opening a bejewelled wrist-bag she drew forth from a smother of cigarette-papers and pawn-tickets a slip of paper on which her astonished companion read a phrase written in a pointed feminine hand, but signed with his own name.
“there!”
the professor took the paper and scanned it indignantly. “this copy of ‘the elimination of phenomena’ was presented by professor loring g. hibbart of purewater university, clio, n. y., to the library of the american y. m. c. a. refugee centre at odessa.
“a word of appreciation, sent by any reader to the above address, would greatly gratify loring g. hibbart.”
“there!” she repeated. “why did you ask to be thanked if you didn’t want to be? what else does ‘greatly gratify’ mean? i couldn’t write to you from odessa because i hadn’t the money to buy a stamp; but i’ve longed ever since to tell you what your book did for me. it simply changed my whole life — books do sometimes, you know. i saw everything differently — even our refugee centre! i decided at once to give up my lover and divorce my husband. those were my two first eliminations.” she smiled retrospectively. “but you mustn’t think i’m a frivolous person. i have my degree as a doctor of philosophy — i took it at sixteen, at the university of moscow. i gave up philosophy the year after for sculpture; the next year i gave up sculpture for mathematics and love. for a year i loved. after that i married prince balalatinsky. he was my cousin, and enormously wealthy. i need not have divorced him, as it turned out, for he was soon afterward buried alive by the bolsheviks. but how could i have foreseen it? and your book had made me feel — ”
“good gracious!” the author of the book interrupted desperately. “you don’t suppose i wrote that rubbish about wanting to be thanked, do you?”
“didn’t you? how could i tell? almost all the things sent from america to the refugee camp came with little labels like that. you all seemed to think we were sitting before perfectly appointed desks, with fountain pens and stamp-cases from bond street in our pockets. i remember once getting a lip-stick and a bernard shaw calendar labelled: ‘if the refugee who receives these would write a line of thanks to little sadie burt of meropee junction, ga., who bought them out of her own savings by giving up chewing-gum for a whole month, it would make a little american girl very happy.’ of course i was sorry not to be able to write to little sadie.” she broke off, and then added: “do you know, i was sure you were my professor as soon as i saw your name on your suit-case?”
“good lord!” groaned the professor.
he had forgotten to remove the obligatory steamer-labels! instinctively he reached out a hand to tear off the offending member; but again a gesture of the princess’s arrested him. “it’s too late now. and you can’t surely grudge me the pleasure of thanking you for your book?”
“but i didn’t ask — ”
“no; but i wanted to. you see, at that time i had quite discarded philosophy. i was living in the actual — with a young officer of preobrajensky — when the war broke out. and of course in our camp at odessa the actual was the very thing one wanted to get away from. and your book took me straight back into that other world where i had known my only pure happiness. purity — what a wonderful thing it is! what a pity it is so hard to keep; like money, and everything else really valuable! but i’m thankful for any little morsel of it that i’ve had. when i was only ten years old — ”
but suddenly she drew back and nestled down into her lustrous furs. “you thought i was going to tell you the story of my life? no. put your ear-pads on again. i know now why you wear them — because you’re planning a new book. is it not so? you see i can read your thoughts. go on — do! i would rather assist at the birth of a masterpiece than chatter about my own insignificant affairs.”
the professor smiled. if she thought masterpieces were born in that way — between railway stations, and in a whirl of prattle i yet he was not wholly angry. either because it had been unexpectedly agreeable to hear his book praised, or because of that harmonious impression which, now that he actually saw her, a protracted scrutiny confirmed, he began to feel more tolerantly toward his neighbour. deliberately, his eyes still on hers, he pushed the other ear-pad away.
“oh — ” she said with a little gasp. “does that mean i may go on talking?” but before he could answer, her face clouded. “i know — it only means that i might as well, now that i’ve broken in on your meditations. i’m dreadfully penitent; but luckily you won’t have me for long, for i’m getting out at cannes, and cannes is the next station. and that reminds me of the enormous little favour i have to ask.”
the professor’s face clouded also: he had a nervous apprehension of being asked favours. “my fountain pen,” he said, regaining firmness of tone, “is broken.”
“ah — you thought i meant to ask for your autograph? or perhaps for a cheque?” (lord, how quick she was!) she shook her head. “no, i don’t care for compulsory autographs. and i’m not going to ask for money — i’m going to give you some.”
he faced her with renewed dismay. could it be —? after all, he was not more than fifty-seven; and the blameless life he had led had perhaps helped to preserve a certain . . . at least that was one theory . . . in these corrupt european societies what might a man not find himself exposed to? with some difficulty he executed a pinched smile.
“money?”
she nodded again. “oh, don’t laugh! don’t think i’m joking. it’s your ear-pads,” she disconcertingly added.
“yes. if you hadn’t put them on i should never have spoken to you; for it wasn’t till afterward that i saw your name on the suitcase. and after that i should have been too shy to break in on the meditations of a great philosopher. but you see i have been watching — oh, for years! — for your ear-pads.”
he stared at her helplessly. “you want to buy them from me?” he asked in terror, wondering how on earth he would be able to get others in a country of which he did not speak the language.
she burst into a laugh that ran up and down the whole scale of friendly derision and tender mockery.
“buy them? gracious, no! i could make myself a better pair in five minutes.” she smiled at his visible relief. “but you see i’m ruined — stony broke; isn’t that what they call it? i have a young american friend who is always saying that about himself. and once in the caucasus, years ago, a gipsy told me that if ever i had gambled away my last penny (and i nearly have) it would all be won back by a pale intellectual looking man in velvet ear-pads, if only i could induce him to put a stake on the tables for me.” she leaned forward and scrutinized him. “you are very pale, you know,” she said, “and very intellectual looking. i was sure it was you when you told me you’d been ill.”
professor loring d. hibbart looked about him desperately. he knew now that he was shut up with a madwoman. a harmless one, probably; but what if, in the depths of that jewelled bag, a toy revolver lurked under the pawn-tickets and the cigarette papers? the professor’s life had been so guarded from what are known as “exciting situations” that he was not sure of his ability to meet one with becoming tact and energy.
“i suppose i’m a physical coward,” he reflected bitterly, an uncomfortable dampness breaking out all over him. “and i know,” he added in self-extenuation, “that i’m in no condition yet for any sort of a struggle . . . ”
but what did one do with lunatics? if only he could remember! and suddenly he did: one humoured them!
fortified by the thought, he made shift to glance more kindly toward the princess balalatinsky. “so you want me to gamble for you?” he said, in the playful tone he might have adopted in addressing little sadie burt of meropee.
“oh, how glorious of you! you will? i knew you would! but first,” she broke off, “you must let me explain — ”
“oh, do explain, of course,” he agreed, rapidly calculating that her volubility might make the explanation last until they reached the next station, where, as she had declared, she was to leave the train.
already her eye was less wild; and he drew an inward breath of relief.
“you angel, you! i do,” she confessed, “simply love to talk about myself. and i’m sure you’ll be interested when i tell you that, if you’ll only do as i ask, i shall be able to marry one of your own compatriots — such a beautiful heroic youth! it is for him, for him only, that i long to be wealthy again. if you loved, could you bear to see your beloved threatened with starvation?”
“but i thought,” he gently reminded her, “that it was you who were threatened with starvation?”
“we both are. isn’t it terrible? you see, when we met and loved, we each had the same thought — to make the other wealthy! it was not possible, at the moment, for either of us to attain our end by the natural expedient of a rich marriage with reasonable prospect of a quick divorce — so we staked our all at those accursed tables, and we both lost! my poor betrothed has only a few hundred francs left, and as for me, i have had to take a miserably paid job as a dressmaker’s mannequin at cannes. but i see you are going on to monte carlo (yes, that’s on your luggage too); and as i don’t suppose you will spend a night there without visiting the rooms, i— ” she was pulling forth the hundred francs from her inexhaustible bag when the professor checked her with dismay. mad though she might be, he could not even make believe to take her money.
“i’m not spending a night at monte carlo,” he protested. “i’m only getting out there to take a motorbus for a quiet place up in the hills; i’ve the name written down somewhere; my room is engaged, so i couldn’t possibly wait over,” he argued gently.
she looked at him with what seemed to his inflamed imagination the craftiness of a maniac. “don’t you know that our train is nearly two hours late? i don’t suppose you noticed that we ran over a crowded excursion charabanc near toulon? didn’t you even hear the ambulances rushing up? your motorbus will certainly have left monte carlo when you arrive, so you’ll have to spend the night there! and even if you don’t,” she added persuasively, “the station’s only two steps from the casino, and you surely can’t refuse just to nip in for half an hour.” she clasped her hands in entreaty. “you wouldn’t refuse if you knew my betrothed — your young compatriot! if only we had a few thousands all would go smoothly. we should be married at once and go to live on his ancestral estate of kansas. it appears the climate is that of africa in summer and of the government of omsk in winter; so our plan is to grow oranges and breed sables. you see, we can hardly fail to succeed with two such crops. all we ask is enough money to make a start. and that you will get for me tonight. you have only to stake this hundred franc note; you’ll win on the first turn, and you’ll go on winning. you’ll see!”
with one of her sudden plunges she pried open his contracted fist and pressed into it a banknote wrapped in a torn envelope. “now listen; this is my address at cannes. princess balala — oh, here’s the station. goodbye, guardian angel. no, “au revoir”; i shall see you soon. they call me betsy at the dressmaker’s . . . ”
before he could open his convulsed fingers, or dash out after her, she had vanished, bag and baggage, in the crowd and confusion of the platform; other people, pushing and chattering and tearing themselves from the embrace of friends, had piled into her place, and were waving from the window, and blocking the way out; and now the train was moving on, and there he sat in his corner, aghast, clutching the banknote . . .
