“Wife?” answered he. “Wife! There is neither marriage nor giving in marriage. She is a farmer, and I, who was once a Professor of Economics, am her labourer. Intellectually I am in despair, but physically I am in such rude health that I cannot entertain the thought of self-destruction long enough to commit the act. She is my niece, and when the change came she undertook, as all women did, to provide work for her male relatives above a certain age.”
“Change?” I whispered. “What change?”
“Have you not heard?” he said. “Is the country severed from the civilised world?”
I informed him of the expedition which I had joined. He gave a long hopeless sigh and fell into a great silence which moved me far more than his words had done. We plied our hoes in the immense field which was situated in a desolate region of slight undulations the outlines of which were blurred with rank growth.
Presently I broke in upon his silence to ask his name.
“I was,” he murmured, “I was Professor Ian Baffin.”
“Can it be possible?” I cried, for the fame of that great man was world-wide, and during the notorious Anti-Trust elections in my country his works had been in every cultured home. I told him this, but it brought him no comfort.
“At the time of the change,” he said, “I and fifty other Professors and Fellows of Colleges published a manifesto in which we pointed out the disasters that must ensue, and we even went so far as to promise them degrees at the major universities, but the change came and the universities were destroyed.”
“What change?” I asked again.
He leaned on his hoe and gazed toward the setting sun.