III
Again some odd millions upon millions of years have swept by in the eternal procession of Time, and we find Professor Jebbway, F.R.S., etc., etc., sitting disconsolate at his desk, with a review of his last monumental work in his hands.
The reviewer was absolutely uninformed concerning Professor Jebbway’s recondite subject; he had therefore been wise enough simply to gush and gloat through four columns of his journal, and declare that no such achievement of the human brain could be recorded since the stupendous life-work of Darwin.
Mrs. Jebbway brought in a cup of tea and rated the Professor.
“I’m sure that’s nothing to be so precious glum about,” she said. “The man’s all butter, from start to finish. If his blessed paper mattered, it might do you some good. I read it yesterday.”
“It isn’t that. From this gentleman, praise or blame are equally unimportant. I’m a little overburdened with my own limitations to-day. I wish I’d come later, when the world knew more.”
“It never will know more. It knows too much already, thanks to men like you—that is if I read the Scriptures aright.”
“No—we’re only at the outset. A man’s such an unfinished, incomplete, futile, short-lived machine. Just the dawning of a few senses done up in a poor, puny envelope.”
“We’re nothing of the sort, and if you’d only let all this nonsense out of your head and take more exercise, and study the Bible now and again for a change from Huxley and all the rest of them——”
“A puny envelope, holding nothing of worth. If a million million years were past, and I had come then——”
“If I didn’t know you,” she said, “I might be cross. Surely your wife counts? At all events man is the greatest of created things—the first thing Nature ever made that knew it was alive—her masterpiece. And nothing greater than man will ever tread this planet. Mark my words, and read the Bible. Now drink your tea, and don’t talk nonsense about puny envelopes. You’re a well-nourished, good-looking and learned man, with a thousand a year. And if Nature ever made anybody better and wiser and more sensible—as a rule—I should like to see him.”
Professor Jebbway sighed and took his tea.
“Something better is hid in Time,” he said: “nothing better than you, my dear partner, that is impossible; but something better far, wiser far than your humble servant.”