David Malcolm. Nelson Lloyd
would have led me on in silence, not to disturb his labors with either mind or hoe, but he looked down and asked in a tone of yawning interest: "Who's the lad, Penelope?"
"I don't know," she answered. "He fell into the creek, and I pulled him out. I've brought him in to warm him up."
Wet, shivering boys emerging suddenly from the woods might have been a common sight about the Professor's home, did one judge from the way he received his daughter's explanation. He merely nodded and fell upon the weeds with newly acquired vigor. As we walked on we heard the spasmodic crunching of his hoe. But the noise stopped before we reached the house door, and the silence caused us to turn. He was standing erect looking at us.
"I think you'd better have something, lad," he cried, and, dropping the hoe, he hurried after us.
So it came that the Professor did me the honors of his home, and with such kindness that all my fear of him was soon gone. He stirred the fire to a roaring blaze and placed me in front of it. He spread my coat before the stove and drew my boots, and quickly my clothes began to steam, and I was as uncomfortably warm as before I had been uncomfortably cold. The shy politeness of my age forbade my protesting against this over-indulgence in heat, and not until the Professor declared that he must give me a dose to ward off sickness did I raise a feeble voice in remonstrance.
My protest was in vain. From the cupboard he brought a large black bottle. Had I seen my mother approaching me with a bottle as ominous as that, even her favorite remedy that I knew so well, the Seven Seals of Health and Happiness, I should have fled far away, but now the girl had my coat, and was turning it before the fire, while her father stood between me and my boots. He smiled so benignly that had he offered me our family nostrum I should have taken it without a grimace. I accepted the proffered glass and drank. Never had anything more horrible than that liquid fire passed my lips. In a moment I seemed to be turned inside out and toasting at a roaring blaze, and to increase my discomfort the Professor poured another dose, many times larger than the first. Had he held it toward me I should have abandoned my coat and boots, but to my relief he raised it to his lips and drained it off with a smile of keen appreciation of its merits.
"Now I feel better," he said, putting the bottle and glass on the table, and dropping into a chair.
It was strange to me that he, who was perfectly dry, should prescribe for himself exactly the same remedy that he had given to me for my wringing wetness. Yet there was no denying the beneficence of the dose, for I was most uncomfortably warm, and had he been feeling badly he was certainly now in fine spirits.
Drawing his daughter between his knees, he enfolded her in his arms protectingly. "Well, boy, I warrant you feel better," he said.
I replied that I did, and if he did not mind I should like to sit a little farther from the stove.
He consented, laughing. "And now we should introduce
ourselves—formally," he went on. "You have met my daughter, Miss
Blight—Miss Penelope Blight. I am Mr. Blight—Mr. Henderson
Blight—in full, Andrew Henderson Blight. And you?"
"I am David Malcolm, sir," I answered.
"Ah!" He lifted his eyebrows. "You are one of those bumptious
Malcolms."
"Yes, sir," I returned proudly, for the word "bumptious" had a ring of importance in it, and I had every reason to believe that the Malcolms were persons of quite large importance.
Why Mr. Blight laughed so loud at my reply I could not understand, but I supposed that in spite of his saturnine appearance he was a man of jovial temperament and I liked him all the more.
The wave of merriment past, he regarded me gravely. "Then you must be the son of the distinguished Judge Malcolm."
"Yes, sir," I said, pride rising triumphant over my polite humility.
"Penelope," he said, as though addressing only his daughter, "we are greatly honored. Our guest is a Malcolm—a sop of the celebrated Judge Malcolm."
By this adroit flattery my host won my heart, and in the comfort he had given me I lost all care for passing time. When I recalled James, it was with the thought that I was safe and he would find me, and I was troubled by no obligation to save him worry. This strange man interested me, he held my family in high regard, and I was well satisfied to see more of him. So I fixed my heels on the rung of my chair, folded my hands in my lap, sat up very straight, and watched him gravely. In this was the one grudge that I long bore against the Professor—that he baited me as he did, played with my child's pride, and with my innocent connivance vented his contempt on all that I held most dear. I did not understand the covert sneer against my father. Years have given me a broader view of life than was my father's, and at times I can smile with Henderson Blight at the solemnity with which he invested his judgeship, but mine is the smile of affection. With no knowledge of the law, with a power restricted to county contracts, when he sat on the bench in court week with his learned confrère, drew his chin into his pointed collar, and furrowed his brow, Blackstone beside him would have appeared a tyro in legal lore. The distinguished Judge Malcolm! So Henderson Blight spoke of him in raillery and so he was in truth, distinguished in his village and his valley, and as I have come to know men of fame in larger villages and broader valleys I can still look back to him with loving pride. Yet that day I sat complacently with my feet on the chair-rung, regarding the Professor with growing friendliness.
"You know my father?" I asked, seeking to draw forth more of this agreeable flattery.
"I have not the honor," he replied. "You see I am comparatively new in these parts—driven here, as you may suspect, by temporary adversity. But a man with ideas, David, must some day rise above adversity. All he needs is a field of action." He looked across the bare room and out of the door, where the weeds were charging in masses against the very threshold; he looked beyond them, above the wall of woods, to a small white cloud drifting in the blue. Young as I was, I saw that in his eyes which told me that could he reach the cloud he might set the heavens afire, but under his hand there lay no task quite worthy of him. "A field of action—an opportunity," he repeated meditatively. "It's hard, David, to have all kinds of ideas and no place to use them. When a man knows that he has it in him and——"
"Is that why Mr. Shunk calls you the Professor?" I interrupted.
Henderson Blight turned toward me a melancholy smile. "Yes," he said. "They all call me that, David, down in the village. Ask them who the Professor is. They will tell you, a vagrant, a lazy fellow with a gift of talking, a ne'er-do-well with a little learning. Ask Stacy Shunk. Ask Mr. Pound—wise and good Mr. Pound. He will tell you that ideas such as mine are a danger to the community, that I speak out of ignorance and sin. As if in every mountain wind I could not hear a better sermon than he can give me and find in every passing cloud a text to ponder over. They don't understand me at all."
The Professor drew his little daughter close to him and regarded me fixedly, as though to see if I understood.
"Yes, sir," I said. "I will ask them."
At this matter-of-fact reply his mouth twitched humorously. "And perhaps you will find that they are right," he said. "That's the worst of it. Even dull minds can generate a certain amount of unpleasant truth; that's what sets me on edge against them—when they ask me why I don't carry out some of my fine ideas instead of criticising others."
"Why don't you?" The question was from no desire to drive my host into a corner, but came from an innocent interest in him and a wish to get at something concrete.
He took no offence at my presumption, but rose slowly, lifted his arms above his head, and stretched himself. Unconsciously he answered my question.
"Had I the last ten years to live over again I would," he said as he paced slowly up and down the room. "Perhaps I shall yet. Long ago, when I was home on a little farm with the mountains tumbling down over it, I used to plan getting out in the world and doing something more than to earn three meals a day. It is stupid—the way men make meals the aim of their lives. I wanted something