From Gorgas, Allen knew that his letters were public property. That may have had some effect upon their construction and style; certainly, they grew in finished form and came to lend themselves easily to public family reading.
But none of the matters that troubled him, nor any of his pedagogic dreams or literary ambitions found their way into these chatty epistles. It was a selected, semi-impersonal college world that he sorted out and presented to the Levering family; but a real one, for all that.
Through these newsletters Gorgas knew that he had been lured by the siren of the lecture platform—always lying in wait for talkative young professors. Diccon saw to it that every public utterance of the distinguished young scholar who had been called to the chair of English in Holden College should be properly placed before the readers of the city newspapers. It worried Blynn, to be sure, to find his casual illustration made the subject of “small-heads”—there is nothing more frightful to sincere teachers than this sort of up-side-down publicity—but he solaced himself by hoping no one would see it.
In Mount Airy Gorgas Levering was searching every page for such notices and was happy to get even a three-line flyer just above the obituaries; and she cut them out and pasted them in a scrap-book. She felt responsible for his going to Holden, she assured herself, and she developed an I-told-you-so spirit with every discovery of what she believed to be proper fame. “Professor Allen Blynn, head of the division of English of Holden College, also spoke,” was often sufficient proof to her of her wisdom in advising him to go up to the larger work.
She learned, too, of other matters, his phenomenal success in teaching his young children by way of correspondence, his pedagogic reforms in the administration at Holden, all of which she mused over with something akin to maternal calm; but one day his letter broke forth with the discovery of a “lady,” and Gorgas grew apprehensive and suspicious and on guard.
“My dear Leverings,” he wrote. “Here’s Mystery for you! And a Lady! And local newspaper notoriety—not yet scandalous!”
He had been lecturing before the Alpha Women’s Club on “The Dull Pleasures of the Mob.” It was one of those defenses of the intellectual life which every enthusiastic scholar is prepared to utter at a moment’s notice. The intellectual audience were proud of him; they applauded every one of his clever shafts as justification for their life of charming indolence. Then he forgot himself and inquired:
“Is there any question on that point?”
That was an absent-minded schoolroom phrase.
“Yes; there is a question on that point,” came a strong pleasant voice from the extreme end of the hall. He could not at first discern the lady, for she did not rise. “Do you really believe all this twaddle you are giving us, or are you just ‘parroting’ from a book?”