David Malcolm

by Nelson Lloyd

I, a boy of ten, afraid of this mite! Had she really been what I was beginning to suspect, a decoy sent out by the Professor to lure me to his den, she could not have used more cunning than to put to me such a question. I afraid? Though the blood still waved through me, I squared my shoulders, dissembled a laugh, and stepped before her, and it was I who led the way along the path into the open day of the clearing. There I came face to face with the Professor.

First I saw that he was human in shape and attire. Indeed, both his appearance and his occupation were exceedingly commonplace. When we came upon him he was leaning on a hoe and watching a passing cloud. Had he smiled at me, I think I must have fallen to my knees and lifted my hands in pleading, but he gave no sign of pleasure that another victim had fallen into his toils. In fact, there was something reassuring in the perfect indifference with which he regarded me. When the crackling of the bushes called his eyes to us, he threw one glance our way as though a trifle annoyed at being disturbed in his study. Then he returned to the contemplation of the sky. So I stood on the edge of the woods my hand holding the girl's, and watched him, and as the seconds passed and he did not change his form, but remained a lazy man leaning on a hoe in a patch of riotous weeds, fear left me and wonder took its place.

There was nothing about this man to merit the opprobrium of his name, and from appearances Stacy Shunk had as well warned me against being caught by Mr. Pound. In the village Mr. Pound was the mould of respectability. He always wore a short frock-coat of glossy black material, which strained itself to reach across his chest. So did the Professor. But his black had turned to green in spots, and he was so thin and the tails were so short and the coat so broad that it seemed as though its length and breadth had become transposed. It was a marvellously shabby coat, but even in its poverty there was no mistaking its blue blood. It was a decayed sartorial aristocrat, ill nourished and sad, but flaunting still the chiselled nose and high, white brow of noble lineage. Here it was all out of place. Mr. Pound wore a great derby which swelled up from his head like a black ominous cloud, and so dominated him that it seemed to be in him the centre of thought and action, and likely at any moment to catch a slant on the wind and carry him from earth. The Professor wore a great derby, too, but one without the buoyant, cloud-like character of Mr. Pound's. It was a burden to him. Only his ears kept it from dragging him to earth and smothering him, and now as he looked up at the sky I saw clear cut against its blackness a thin quixotic visage, shaded by a growth of stubble beard. I marvelled at a man working in such attire, for the sun baked the clearing, but watching, I saw how little he swung his hoe and how much he studied the sky. The whole place spoke of one who kept his coat on while he worked, and gazed at the clouds more than he hoed. It was wretched and dismal. It hid itself away in the woods from very shame of its thriftlessness. Age had twisted the house askew, so that the mud daubing crumbled from between the logs, and the chimney was ready to tumble through the roof with the next puff of wind. The shanty barn was aslant and leaned heavily for support on long props. The hay burst through every side of it, and the sole occupant, an ancient white mule, had burst through too, and with his head projecting from an opening and his ears tilted forward, he was regarding me critically. Everywhere the weeds were rampant. Everywhere there were signs of a feeble battle against them, bare spots where the Professor had charged, cut his way into their massed ranks, only to retreat wearied and beaten by their numbers.

Over this wretchedness the girl waved her hand and said: "Here is our farm." The blue ribbon in her hair bobbed majestically as she pointed across the stretch of weeds to the cabin. "And yonder is our house." She pinched my arm as a sign of caution. "And there is father," she added in a voice of muffled pride. "He's studying. Father's always studying."

She would have led me on in silence, not to disturb his labors with either mind or hoe, but he looked down and asked in a tone of yawning interest: "Who's the lad, Penelope?"

"I don't know," she answered. "He fell into the creek, and I pulled him out. I've brought him in to warm him up."

Wet, shivering boys emerging suddenly from the woods might have been a common sight about the Professor's home, did one judge from the way he received his daughter's explanation. He merely nodded and fell upon the weeds with newly acquired vigor. As we walked on we heard the spasmodic crunching of his hoe. But the noise stopped before we reached the house door, and the silence caused us to turn. He was standing erect looking at us.

"I think you'd better have something, lad," he cried, and, dropping the hoe, he hurried after us.

So it came that the Professor did me the honors of his home, and with such kindness that all my fear of him was soon gone. He stirred the fire to a roaring blaze and placed me in front of it. He spread my coat before the stove and drew my boots, and quickly my clothes began to steam, and I was as uncomfortably warm as before I had been uncomfortably cold. The shy politeness of my age forbade my protesting against this over-indulgence in heat, and not until the Professor declared that he must give me a dose to ward off sickness did I raise a feeble voice in remonstrance.

My protest was in vain. From the cupboard he brought a large black bottle. Had I seen my mother approaching me with a bottle as ominous as that, even her favorite remedy that I knew so well, the Seven Seals of Health and Happiness, I should have fled far away, but now the girl had my coat, and was turning it before the fire, while her father stood between me and my boots. He smiled so benignly that had he offered me our family nostrum I should have taken it without a grimace. I accepted the proffered glass and drank. Never had anything more horrible than that liquid fire passed my lips. In a moment I seemed to be turned inside out and toasting at a roaring blaze, and to increase my discomfort the Professor poured another dose, many times larger than the first. Had he held it toward me I should have abandoned my coat and boots, but to my relief he raised it to his lips and drained it off with a smile of keen appreciation of its merits.