The cheerfulness of the professor was spurious, but, such as it was, it lasted, unimpaired, until the letter was posted. The mail was just going out, and the postmaster, obliging as postmasters invariably are, held it long enough to slip in the letter to the provost. The professor saw it go; then doubts began to assail him, and his cheerfulness ebbed. He stood irresolute until he heard the train. It was useless to stand irresolute longer. It is always useless to stand irresolute for any length of time whatever. The professor knew that very well. With a quick compression of the lips, he turned homeward. He was no longer cheerful.
No doubt I was wrong in speaking of him as the professor that last time. He was, henceforth, to be Mr. Ladue. His professorial career had been cut off by that letter to the provost as cleanly and as suddenly as by a sharp axe. That would be true of any college. Mr. Ladue did not deceive himself about that. There was a need of adjustment to the new conditions, and he set himself the task of thinking out just what the new conditions were. He was so busy with his thinking that he nearly ran into a young man. The young man had just issued from Mr. Ladue's own gate. But was it his gate? Mr. Ladue happened to have got to that very matter. There seemed to be a reasonable doubt of it; indeed, as he progressed farther in his thinking-out process and his recollection emerged from the fog of habit, there seemed to be no doubt that it was not his gate at all and that he had been allowed to think of it as his and to call it his, purely on sufferance.
For he remembered, with a shock, a thoughtless moment, a moment of inadvertence,—a moment of insanity,—in which he had made over the place to his wife, Sarah. He had got into the habit of forgetting all about it. Now it was necessary that he should get out of that habit. He had never regretted that act more keenly than at that moment. It was the act of a madman, he told himself impatiently.
As these thoughts passed rapidly through his mind, the aforesaid young man had gone on his way. If he was to speak, he must speak quickly.
He turned. "Oh, Fox," he said casually, "I am afraid I was rather abrupt a short time ago. Pray accept my apologies."
It was a new rôle for Mr. Ladue. It cost him something to assume it, but it was necessary to his purposes that he should. This was one of the new conditions which must be faced. It was an opportunity which must be seized before it ceased to be. For Fox it was a totally new experience to receive an apology from a man like Mr. Ladue. The experience was so new that he blushed with embarrassment and stammered.
"Oh,—er—that's all right. Certainly. Don't apologize." He managed to pull himself together, knowing that what he had said was not the right thing at all. "And, Professor," he added, "shall we resume our studies when Mrs. Ladue is better?—when she will not be disturbed?"
Fox did not know as much about Mr. Ladue's affairs as we know, or he might not have called him by that title. But yet he might.
"To be sure," answered Mr. Ladue, apparently in surprise; "why not? Is she in a condition to be disturbed by such little matters? I had rather expected to see her, to talk over an important question." If Fox chose to infer that the important question related to certain delinquencies of his own, why, let him think so.
"I am afraid that will be impossible for some time," Fox replied firmly. "Dr. Galen left instructions that she is, on no account, to be disturbed. She is not to be compelled to think. It seems to be important. His instructions were explicit and emphatic on that point."