"But she need not see you as you are now," I protested, half smiling at the incongruous picture which he had drawn of Penelope walking down the avenue by the side of this shabby waiter. "They need not even know——"
I paused to grasp at some inoffensive phrase in which to describe his forlorn condition.
"That I have fallen so low," he exclaimed. He had been quick to see my predicament, and laughed. "I know what you are thinking of, David. You saw me an obsequious, tip-grasping fellow, with a spirit as heavy as his feet. You think me broken and down and out." The hands spread wide again. "I—down and out? Why, Davy, I've been like this a score of times, and I am still game. You must not think that because of a little temporary embarrassment I am in prime condition to go crawling to Rufus and tell him that I have failed and need his help. I told Rufus that I would come back and claim Penelope when she could be proud to own me as her father." He brought his fist down on his knee again. "She couldn't be very proud now, but I'll show them!"
It was hard to combat so overwhelming a pride as this, a pride which seemed to thrive in the ashes of hope. I tried to break it by speaking of his brother and daughter, giving him an account of my renewed acquaintance with them and of their talk of him. The effect was to set him smoking a very black pipe. Rising and leaning over the foot-rail of the bed, much as in the old days he leaned lazily over the store counter, he held his eyes fixed on mine, and smoked while I argued. He was a patient listener. My own story was interwoven with his, and that he might understand my relations with his brother and Penelope, I told him briefly all that had occurred with me since that day when we parted in the clearing. When I came to the college lecture, and my efforts to see him then, and to find him, he made a motion as though to interrupt. I paused. He commanded me to go on, and the smile which came to his face at my mention of his discourse on "Life" held there until I had finished. But my story, intended to give force to my arguments for him to surrender his pride, only served to put him in a reminiscent mood.
"That was a lecture, wasn't it, David?" he said, laughing. "Why, do you know that when I talked that night I almost imagined that I was a success in life. It was the introduction that did it—distinguished traveller—famous journalist. And you, I suppose, accepted it all as truth. Still, you may be thankful you didn't have to hear Harassan—a gigantic windbag, if there ever was one. I fell in with him one day in a smoking-car and got to talking about my travels. He was preparing a lecture on China, and as he had never been there, I was useful, so he took me into his house until he had pumped me dry. I substituted for him that night at your college for half the fee—was to read his lecture, but when I got started on it I couldn't stand it. An astonishing man, Harassan! When he died he left a modest fortune made in spouting buncombe; and yet—" The Professor held out a hand in appeal. "How many men are called great because they succeed in talking buncombe and selling rubbish! That is what discourages me so; and doesn't it make you a little bitter when you meet men surrounded by every material evidence of success and go fishing in their brains and can't hook up a single original idea of any kind? Why, I've met hundreds of them, Davy. Now that night Harassan would have hurled at you a lot of pompous commonplaces, and you would have hailed him as a great and wise man. I broke from the beaten path. I told you plain truth. Was I ever asked to lecture again? People won't pay to hear plain truth, Davy. I suspect that I should have done better had I not been trying all my life to drive plain truth into unwilling ears."
"I suspect so, too," said I mildly.
He laughed at my ready acquiescence. "I started wrong at home," he went on. "Had I listened to Rufus and plodded along in his humdrum way, I suppose I'd be rich now. But I couldn't. After I left the valley I went to Kansas and really settled down, got a school to teach, and for a time I was quite in the way of becoming a successful educator—principal of a high-school, perhaps. I might even have become president of a college, but to die the head of a fresh-water college did not seem a very glorious end; nor did teaching a lot of foolish young men to live what are held successful lives seem very inspiring living. So I went on west to San Francisco and tried newspaper work. It seemed just the vocation for me. Here I could use my sword against the dragons of untruth and corruption. The beast stalks forth brazenly enough, and without considering the moral side at all, it is sport to attack him. To get myself into a position to attack him, I had to serve an apprenticeship. You know what that means—the daily digging for ephemeral facts. But I stuck to it. I saw the day when I should be the most feared man on the coast, wielding a pen as efficacious as a surgeon's knife. Unfortunately, my knife first struck a politician named Mulligan, who owned some stock in the paper. You know the result. I could direct my caustic pen against O'Connor or Einstein, but from Mulligan came my living. I took to the sea to breathe purer air, sailing as supercargo on a trading vessel. For two years I knocked about the South Sea Islands and along the coast of Asia, and it seemed that I was gathering a vast amount of information which would be of service to the race if preserved in a book. How I worked over that book! When I got back to San Francisco I saw my fame and fortune about to be made by it. At last the power to do something worth while was in my reach."
The Professor paused. He spread wide his arms in a gesture to express futility. "I had as well stood on the highest peak of the Rockies and read my manuscript to space. The distinguished traveller and author!" With a hand upon his heart, he bowed gravely. "The author of one thousand volumes of uncut leaves. Useless! Well, I suppose Harassan found the one I gave him of some service, for he got most of his famous Chinese lecture out of it. There was some pretty good stuff in that book, too, but Harassan was the only man I ever heard of who agreed with me; and he—well, he was a successful idiot."
"And of course you never shared the benefits he reaped," said I.
"Benefits from Harassan?" The Professor laughed. "Why, David, you might have thought that I had ruined Harassan from the way he talked when he received a letter from Todd, that president of yours. Todd said that I would subvert the morals of the country. So the Reverend Valerian and I parted with words—he to go to China in his mind, I to work my way there in the body." The Professor rested himself on the bed, and between puffs at his pipe continued: "I had an idea of going to Tibet. That seemed to be really doing something—to go to Lhasa and unveil its mysteries to the world. I started from Peking, afoot mostly, and so you see I didn't make very rapid progress, and while walking I had plenty of time to think. When I was about half-way to the border, the absurdity of the thing came to me—spending years to get into Tibet, only to find there a filthy land ruled by a mad religion. I got almost to Shen-si, and turned back. Somehow China suited me. I fell into the Chinese way of thinking, and might have gone on satisfied with a daily dole of rice and fish had it not been for Penelope. I never could forget Penelope. Always, it seemed to me, she must be waiting for me to come back with my promises fulfilled, to return a man she could be proud to own her father. It looked pretty black for me then, David. China isn't a place to accomplish much, and I might as well have gone on to Lhasa as to do what I did—work three years in the consulate at Che-Foo as interpreter and useful man, eyes, arms, and brains for a politician from Missouri. But my one purpose was to get home, to see Penelope, to see her a woman grown, and perhaps—I would say to myself sometimes—to speak to her."