He dipped his face and hands in cooling water and, at the table, with squared elbows, addressed himself to a set task.
II
Elim Meikeljohn laid before him a small docket of foolscap folded lengthwise, each section separately indorsed in pale flowery ink, with a feminine name, a class number and date. They were the weekly themes of a polite Young Ladies' Academy in Richmond, sent regularly north for the impressive opinion of a member of Elim's college faculty. The professor of philosophy and letters had undertaken the task primarily; but, with the multiplication of his duties, he had turned the essays over to Elim, whose careful judgments had been sufficiently imposing to secure for him a slight additional income.
He sat for a moment regarding the papers with a frown; then, with a sudden movement, he went over the names that headed each paper. Two he laid aside. They bore above their dates in March, eighteen sixty-one, the name Rosemary Roselle.
He picked one up tentatively. It was called A Letter. Elim opened it and regarded its tenuous violet script. Then, with an expression of augmented determination, he folded it again and placed it with its fellow at the bottom of the heap. He firmly attacked the topmost theme. He read it slowly, made a penciled note in a small precise hand on its margin, folded it once more and marked it with a C minus. He went carefully through the pile, jotting occasional comments, judging the results with A, B or C, plus or minus. Finally only the two he had placed at the bottom remained.
Elim took one up again, gazing at it severely. He wondered what Rosemary Roselle had written about—in her absurd English—this time. As he looked at the theme's exterior, his attention shifted from the paper to himself, his conscience towered darkly above him, demanding a condemnatory examination of his feelings and impulses.
Had he not begun to look for, to desire, those essays from a doubtless erroneous and light young woman? Had he not even, on a former like occasion, awarded her effort with a B minus, when it was questionable if she should have had a C plus? Had his conduct not been dishonest, frivolous and wholly reprehensible? To all these inexorable accusations he was forced to confess himself guilty. He had undoubtedly, only a few minutes before, looked almost impatiently for something from Rosemary Roselle. Beyond cavil she should have had an unadorned C last month. And these easily proved him a broken reed.
He must at once take himself in hand, flames were reaching hungrily for him from the pit of eternal torment. In a little more he would be damned beyond any redemption. He was married ... shame! His thoughts turned to Hester, his wife for nine and more years.
Her father's farm lay next to the Meikeljohns'; the two places formed practically one convenient whole; and when Elim had been no more than a child, Meikeljohn Senior and Hester's parents had solemnly agreed upon a mutually satisfactory marriage. Hester had always been a thin pale slip of a girl, locally famous for her memory and grasp of the Scriptures; but it was only at her fourteenth year that her health began perceptibly to fail, at the same time that a succession of material mischances overwhelmed her family. Finally, borne down to actual privation, her father decided to remove to another section and opportunity. He sold his place for a fraction more than the elder Meikeljohn could pay ... but there was Hester, now an invalid; and there was the agreement that Meikeljohn had made when it had seemed to his advantage. The latter was a rigidly upright man—he accepted for his son the responsibility he himself had assumed, and Hester was left behind. Space in the Meikeljohn household was valuable, the invalid presented many practical difficulties, and, with the solemn concurrence of the elders of their church, Elim—something short of seventeen but a grave mature-seeming boy—and Hester were married.
The winter of his marriage Elim departed for college—his father was a just man, who had felt obscurely that some reparation was due Elim; education was the greatest privilege of which Meikeljohn could conceive, so, at sacrifices that all grimly accepted, Elim was sent to Cambridge. There, when he had been graduated, he remained—there were already more at the Meikeljohn home than their labor warranted—assistant to the professor of philosophy and letters.