The sagacious reader will already recognize nearly all the elements necessary to a well-ordered plot. We have introduced a heroine, inferred a hero, and constructed a hostile parent after the most approved model. A movement for the story, a deus ex machina, is alone lacking. With considerable satisfaction I can promise a perfect novelty in this line, a deus ex machina never before offered to the public.
It would be discounting ordinary intelligence to say that I sought with unwearying assiduity to figure my way into the stern father’s good-will; that never did dullard apply himself to mathematics more patiently than I; that never did faithfulness achieve such meager reward. Then I engaged a private tutor. His instructions met with no better success.
My tutor’s name was Jean-Marie Rivarol. He was a unique Alsatian, though Gallic in name, thoroughly Teuton in nature; by birth a Frenchman, by education a German. His age was thirty; his profession, omniscience; the wolf at his door, poverty; the skeleton in his closet, a consuming but unrequited passion. The most recondite principles of practical science were his toys; the deepest intricacies of abstract science, his diversions. Problems which were foreordained mysteries to me were to him as clear as Tahoe water. Perhaps this very fact will explain our lack of success in the relation of tutor and pupil; perhaps the failure is alone due to my own unmitigated stupidity. Rivarol had hung about the skirts of the university for several years, supplying his few wants by writing for scientific journals or by giving assistance to students who, like myself, were characterized by a plethora of purse and a paucity of ideas; cooking, studying, and sleeping in his attic lodgings; and prosecuting queer experiments all by himself.
We were not long discovering that even this eccentric genius could not transplant brains into my deficient skull. I gave over the struggle in despair. An unhappy year dragged its slow length around. A gloomy year it was, brightened only by occasional interviews with Abscissa, the Abbie of my thoughts and dreams.
Commencement day was coming on apace. I was soon to go forth, with the rest of my class, to astonish and delight a waiting world. The professor seemed to avoid me more than ever. Nothing but the conventionalities, I think, kept him from shaping his treatment of me on the basis of unconcealed disgust.
At last, in the very recklessness of despair, I resolved to see him, plead with him, threaten him if need be, and risk all my fortunes on one desperate chance. I wrote him a somewhat defiant letter, stating my aspirations, and, as I flattered myself, shrewdly giving him a week to get over the first shock of horrified surprise. Then I was to call and learn my fate.
During the week of suspense I nearly worried myself into a fever. It was first crazy hope, and then saner despair. On Friday evening, when I presented myself at the professor’s door, I was such a haggard, sleepy, dragged-out specter that even Miss Jocasta, the harsh-favored maiden sister of the Surds, admitted me with commiserate regard, and suggested pennyroyal tea.
Professor Surd was at a faculty meeting. Would I wait?
Yes, till all was blue, if need be. Miss Abbie?