ON the morning following the final lecture Tom woke early, and his mind flew to the miracle of the preceding night. He was now ablaze with Nancy! It was a dazzling business, but when had it happened? It had not been as though he had gazed too boldly into the sun and had fallen down, blinded by the light of it. It had, to date, been altogether painless. He had seen Nancy in various situations, some of them pleasant, some of them trying. He had liked the way she had met them; and then it dawned upon him that her behaviour was consistently good; and next he knew that it would always be so. This was a stupendous discovery, the more so since he was not aware of any such consistency in his own character. Had he not learned in elementary physics that unlike poles attract one another? He could even now picture a diagram in the book showing the hearty plus pole in happy affinity with the retiring minus pole, a figure which proved the thing beyond a doubt. Science, when made to serve as handmaiden to the arts, has its uses, after all, and Tom took comfort in its present service.
Still, Nancy wasn't "cut and dried"; it would be a grave injustice to imagine her so. She was consistent in an ever new and charming way; she never obtruded her consistency. One would almost certainly never be bored with her; and yet one could depend upon her through thick and thin. He thought of the way the crew on a ferry boat throw their ropes over the great piles as they make fast in the slip. Nancy was such a pile—but what an odious figure! He thought of her face as he had first seen it on the night of the Vernal, when, slightly flushed and smilingly expectant, she had peered into the costume closet. A couplet floated out of Freshman English into his mind—something about a countenance which had in it sweet records and promises as sweet. He jumped out of bed to verify it, and found:
"A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet."
He read on:
"A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food,
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles."
There was one more verse, and the last two couplets covered everything.
"A perfect Woman, nobly planned
To warm, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel-light."
He turned the book down, open at this point, and resolved to memorize those lines.
His youth and playtime had now left him for good. The time for half-hearted or three-quarters-hearted attempts to forge ahead were over. He had pledged his heart and shortly hoped to pledge his hand in the service of the loveliest young lady in the world, none less. At present he was only a young instructor; of promise, perhaps, but still unproved. The immediate goal in his academic career was an Assistant Professorship; and although, even under the most favourable circumstances, it would probably be a matter of at least three years before he got it, nevertheless he could at least make it plain that he was indubitably on the way to it, and that (giddy thought) he was even of the stuff that Full Professors are made on! And no time should be lost before this were shown. Dressing feverishly, he corrected some slightly overdue test papers; and when he appeared at breakfast his landlady's three other guests noted the spirit in his bearing and commented upon it when he left.
There was to be a meeting of the Freshman English Department in the afternoon, and Tom found himself looking eagerly forward to it. He had no idea of the business that was coming up, but he was going to be extremely keen-eyed and watchful about it, whatever it was. The little slump which he had allowed to creep into his work recently was over. He wondered if any of his colleagues had noticed it, and in particular he wondered if Professor Dawson, Head of the Department, had noticed it.