“Father,” she whispered, leaning towards him, “do you believe what you have just been saying to me?”
It was the professor's turn to be disturbed. He concealed his discomfiture, however, with a gesture of annoyance.
“That is scarcely a proper question, Beatrice,” he answered sharply. “Ah,” he added, with more geniality, “the cocktails! My young friend Tavernake, I drink to our better acquaintance! You are English, as I can see, a real Britisher. Some day you must come out to our own great country—my daughter, of course, has told you that we are Americans. A great country, sir,—the greatest I have ever lived in—room to breathe, room to grow, room for a young man like you to plant his ambitions and watch them blossom. To our better acquaintance, Mr. Tavernake, and may we meet some day in the United States!”
Tavernake drank the first cocktail in his life and wiped the tears from his eyes. The professor found safety in conversation.
“You know,” he went on, “that I am a man of science. Physiognomy delights me. Men and women as I meet them represent to me varying types of humanity, all interesting, all appealing to my peculiar love of the science of psychology. You, my dear Mr. Tavernake, if I may venture to be so personal, represent to me, as you sit there, the exact prototype of the young working Englishman. You are, I should judge, thorough, dogmatic, narrow, persistent, industrious, and bound to be successful according to the scope and nature of your ambitions. In this country you will never develop. In my country, sir, we should make a colossus of you. We should teach you not to be content with small things; we should raise your hand which you yourself kept to your side, and we should point your finger to the skies. Waiter,” he added, turning abruptly round, “if the quails are not yet ready I will take another of these excellent cocktails.”
Tavernake was embarrassed. He saw that Beatrice was anxious to talk to her father; he saw, also, that her father was determined not to talk to her. With a little sigh, however, she resigned herself to the inevitable.
“I have lectured, sir,” the professor continued, “in most of the cities of the United States, upon the human race. The tendencies of every unit of the human race are my peculiar study. When I speak to you of phrenology, sir, you smile, and you think, perhaps, of a man who sits in a back room and takes your shilling for feeling the bumps of your head. I am not of this order of scientific men, sir. I have diplomas from every university worth mentioning. I blend the sciences which treat with the human race. I know something of all of them. Character reading to me is at once a passion and a science. Leave me alone with a man or a woman for five minutes, paint me a map of Life, and I will set the signposts along which that person will travel, and I shall not miss one.”
“You are doing no work over here, father, are you?” Beatrice asked.
“None, my dear,” he answered, with a faint note of regret in his tone. “Your sister Elizabeth seemed scarcely to desire it. Her movements are very uncertain and she likes to have me constantly at hand. My daughter Elizabeth,” he continued, turning to Tavernake, “is a very beautiful young woman, left in my charge under peculiar circumstances. I feel it my duty, therefore, to be constantly at hand.”
Again there was a flash of that strange look in the girl's face. She leaned forward, but her father declined to meet her gaze.