Revolving this mystery in his mind, he passed into his sitting-room on the eastern side of the building. It was pleasant to think that Cardington was to accompany him to the bishop's, but as it was still too soon to call for him, he stood for a few moments looking down upon the campus. The giant shadow of the Hall had now crept to the verge of the plateau. There was no human figure on its bleak expanse, but the small trees which found scant nourishment in the rock beneath swayed gently in the broken wind, like a line of sentries marking time. In the centre of the line the flagpole sprang up, thin and white, lifting the stars and stripes into the lurid light above the shadow. He could hear the whipping of the halyards against the pole; but suddenly the sound ceased, the flag began to flutter downward till its colours were quenched, and only the gilded ball above now caught the sun's last rays. Straining his gaze, he saw the janitor fold the flag on the grass and carry it within. Then darkness seemed to fall like a canopy, beneath which the lights of the city trembled into view.
A moment later he stood in Cardington's doorway, and looked with relief upon the sight presented to his eyes. The flickering fire in the grate, the bewildering congeries of books, statues, and furniture, were doubly homelike by contrast with Leigh's late vision of the descending night without. The old caretaker of the tower was wont to say that she never knew a neater man than Professor Cardington, or a more disorderly room than his. The accumulation of articles in the room seemed to symbolise the owner's mental furniture, while his personal neatness was a habit acquired during his stay at West Point, where he had once occupied the chair of a modern language. There was a suggestion of the soldier also in his unbending back as he sat at his desk, so absorbed in his work that he did not at first look up to see who had answered his invitation to enter.
The face he turned upon his visitor presently was stern and grey in effect, like that of a man who has seen service. His blue eyes, though pale in tone, were brilliant, as if the intellect behind them burned with steady intensity and force. Nature had concealed his true quality behind a baffling mask, for there was not a line in his face to hint of his sensitive spirit, or of the humorous moods that swept over him in unexpected gusts. Now his aspect brightened, as from a warmth within.
"Come in, Mr. Leigh," he cried cheerily. "Come in. I thought it was some student who wished to ask me what use there was in studying Latin. I am just outlining an article on the Roman Forum for the new encyclopaedia. You might like to see Boni's latest contribution, and the photographs I took myself last summer."
He reached for his meerschaum pipe, and paused to gaze with a smoker's admiration at the red-brown perfection of the polished bowl.
"But you have n't forgotten the dinner?" Leigh asked, perceiving that the other was preparing to settle back in his chair for one of those discursive talks in which his guests delighted.
"The dinner! I had quite forgotten it." And he put down the pipe with evident reluctance. "Such is the power of preoccupation."
"We 're a tall set of men here," Leigh said, as the professor rose to his feet. "You and the bishop and I would measure eighteen feet or more, placed one above the other."
"Pelion on Ossa!" Cardington cried. "How much more impressive it makes us seem than if you had merely stated that each of us was six feet tall! It takes an astronomer to calculate great distances. I quite compassionate those little fellows, our colleagues." His eyes twinkled behind his rimless spectacles. "Just amuse yourself with these photographs awhile. Not in your line, perhaps, but interesting to us glow-worms that flit about in ruinous places. I 'll be with you in a few moments."
Even from the room beyond he continued the conversation in his own odd manner, passing to antipodal subjects by paths of association beyond the guess of an imagination less vagrant than his own. With Cardington conversation was a fine art. He loved the adequate or picturesque word as a miner loves an ingot of gold, yet he was able to display his linguistic stores without incurring the charge of pedantry, much as certain women can carry without offence clothes that would smother a more insignificant personality.