CHAPTER XIV
THE QUEST OF TRUTH
“And broader and brighter
The Gleam flying onward,
Wed to the melody,
Sang thro’ the world;
* * *
After it, follow it,
Follow the Gleam.”
Tennyson.
It was nine o’clock on a cold, bleak evening in late December. A bitter, stinging, northwest wind raged unopposed up and down the length of the passive, shivering, all but deserted Avenue; buffeting the few unfortunate stragglers still out-of-doors, making shrill music among the chimney-tops, shouting and storming at fast-closed doors, and tracing every moment deeper and deeper its bold, yet delicate design on rattling window and frost-embroidered pane.
A pleasant thing, indeed, on this wild night, to turn indoors to some place where comfort lay; and for a moment to glance at the little room where Professor Emerson sat alone among his books, reading peacefully, and with such absorption, that to the tumult without he paid no heed. His venerable, white-bearded figure lay for the greater part almost wholly in shadow, and the light of the study lamp, shining full upon his features, brought out in vivid contrast the strong and well-etched outline of his face. It was a face noble and sensitive, with a certain clear-cut delicacy of line; pale as if hewn from the very marble, and yet as if lighted by the cold, clear fire of the spirit within, so fine, so keen, so intellectual still, that one must needs peer more closely to discover the network of tiny, almost imperceptible wrinkles; one must needs note more carefully the trembling of the thin, blue-veined hand that held the book, to realize that the professor, alert and active for so many long years, was but a professor emeritus now; and that one was gazing on a man feeble, infirm and old.
Peacefully he sat there, and indeed, in that quiet room, on an ear far quicker and readier than his own the fury of the gale would scarce have struck disturbingly. Blow the wind as it might around the casement, rug and curtain and tapestry laughed it to scorn; whistle as it would down the chimney, the mounting warmth of the crackling flame met and repulsed it at every turn. Verily the little room, restful and serene, the scholar’s orderly abode, seemed a sanctuary alike from the storms of nature and from the storms of the world.