They exchanged mischievous glances and both looked down. Minute by minute they were approaching the point where nothing short of violence would separate them. Had he been sodium and she chlorine, they would have turned into table salt before the astonished father’s eyes. And indeed Ambrose Rich was not blind. He saw his disaster steadily approaching, and resigned himself with the courage of a historian.
After supper Marvin sat down in the library and lighted the pipe that of late he had rarely touched. He wished to hear Dr. Rich talk, and he wished to see if Jean would slip out of the house to borrow maple syrup. When the soft rattle of dishes ceased in the kitchen, there was silence. She had departed, and he imagined her paddling up the river to Miss Mabel’s.
So he opened up the subject of grain, and soon had the scholar tracing it from the earliest days. He learned that long before Christ the farms of Italy had passed from the small holders and that these were herded in barracks. He learned of the effort of Gracchus to limit farms to two hundred and fifty acres, an effort that cost him his life. He heard how the younger brother tried to liberate the farmers by curbing the power of the senate, and how Caius had to kill himself to escape the senatorial mob.
He was astonished to be told that the revolt of his own British ancestors under Queen Boadicea was probably caused by the sudden withdrawal of a gigantic mortgage held by the moralist Seneca. Such were the things that ruined Rome. The picture grew blacker and blacker till it reached the reign of Domitian, when half of Italy lay uncultivated, and the farms of plundered Greece refused to yield another crop. The earth seemed about to be inherited by two surviving classes—the money lenders who devoured everything, and their slaves who could live on nothing. The thrilling recital took up an hour, and was full of wholesome warning for America.
But there was still no sound in the kitchen.
A question or two started the terse eloquence again. New emperors discussed the situation. Nothing could eventually save Rome from exhaustion, but something might be done to defer the collapse. He saw a system of state loans developed and the agriculture of northern Italy restored. He saw farm colonies established for time-expired soldiers. He saw the profits of state banks devoted to education. He beheld the franchise granted to women, and two Julias sitting in the senate. He saw every effort made to restore the sacredness of marriage, though that was the most hopeless enterprise of all, since it had become a matter of commercial contract. As Tacitus put it, the advantages of childlessness prevailed.
He listened to a keen analysis of the money system, with its progressive contraction. And when finally the doctor unexpectedly revealed an intimate knowledge of American farm loans and farm colonies, Marvin vowed to himself that this man should lecture at Yale.
The second lecture was hardly over when he heard the screen door of the kitchen lightly open and shut. He rose and expressed his gratitude for what he had learned, and when Jean appeared in the door of the library, all glowing with exercise, he went forward and took her by the hand.
“Do I need to tell you that this has been the happiest day of my life?”
She glanced down shyly. “I’m glad you liked it.”