CHAPTER XVII.
In which a Professor professes nothing, a Lecture is not delivered, and yet something happens.
It was the morrow Wednesday, in London, at Galton's Rooms, and near five o'clock.
Professor Higginson was feeling exceedingly nervous. He came into the little room where it was customary to receive the Lecturer when the Research Club organised one of its great functions at Galton's, and he was not overpleased to see three gentlemen waiting for him. He had hoped there would be no one but a servant, or at the most the secretary. He was holding a little brown bag in his hand. It contained his MSS. and a cap and gown. He asked whether he was to wear his cap and gown.
"O—O—ah! I suppose so, what?" said one of the gentlemen who was beautifully groomed, and had iron grey hair, and what is more wore a single eye-glass.
"That 's all right, Biggleton, isn't it?"
He turned to a very portly man, quite bald, who kept his eyes so close shut that one might have thought him blind; but Professor Higginson knew at that word that he was standing in the presence of Lord Biggleton, and he suffered that mixture of pleasure and apprehension which Dons suffer in the presence of the great.
He wondered who the first speaker might be. If this bald-headed man with eyes shut fast like a pig was Lord Biggleton, why then the well-groomed man with iron-grey hair and the single eye-glass, who was so familiar, might be the greatest in the land.
He was not to be informed. All old Biggleton said was—
"What 's that, Jack? Yes," and steadfastly refused to open his eyes; but Professor Higginson, unobservant as he was, could see that they were not absolutely fast, but that between the upper and the lower lid there gleamed an intense and dangerous cunning.
It was always said that Lord Biggleton might have had the Premiership if he had chosen, but certainly a man with those eyes had reached whatever eminence he cared to reach. There was no meeting them. They lay in ambush behind the heavy lids, and did useful work through the slits beneath.
Professor Higginson knew at that word that he was in the presence of Lord Biggleton.
All this did not put the Professor at his ease. He pulled out his MSS. and let it drop. A third man picked it up, and handed it to him again with a ready smile. Professor Higginson on first coming into the room had taken him for a young man, for he had the cut and the facial lines of youth; but as the light from the window fell upon him as he picked up the papers, the face that smiled was a face well over fifty, perhaps nearer sixty. Professor Higginson was not a little astonished to see the same smile suddenly appearing and disappearing on the face three or four times about nothing in particular, and directed towards no one. A little more experience of the world would have enabled him to label the features and the man, for that smile goes with the Ministry of the Fine Arts, and no less a one than Sir John Hooker stood before him. But Mr. Higginson had got no further than Lord Biggleton, that was enough for him!
He struggled into his gown with difficulty, and wondered whether a fourth man who helped him on was a Home Secretary or a Field-Marshal or what.
They made a little procession, Biggleton putting upon the Professor's back a powerful pushing hand by way of encouragement, the well-groomed man with the eye-glass saying "What?" twice to himself inanely, and the Minister for the Fine Arts leading the way with a gait like a dromedary's.
They passed through a door and a lifted curtain, and came into the great room. There was a small raised platform to which the Professor was guided, the three men walked back into the body of the hall, and the Professor found himself alone, and without friends, gowned, with his body of MSS. before him upon a desk, and over-looking three or four hundred of the richest and therefore the most powerful men and women in England—with not a few of their hangers-on.
In moments of strain sub-conscious impressions are the strongest, as no one should know better than a Professor of Psychology; and Professor Higginson was free to confess in later years that in the first moments of nervous agony which he suffered as he looked over that mass of Cabinet Ministers, fine ladies, actresses, money-lenders, black-mailers, courtesans and touts, the chief thing that impressed him was the enormous size of the women's hats!
He grasped the desk firmly, cleared his throat, and began to read.
"The hope of a life beyond the grave"
The hope of a life beyond the grave
Here Professor Higginson lifted his head and fumbled for a moment with his collar-stud. It was an unfortunate, it was a tragic move! For as he lifted his eyes during that one instant he saw a sight that froze his blood. Squeezing with many apologies through the standing mass at the end and sides of the great room was a very well-dressed young gentleman, close-knit, dark in features, an athlete, and the features above the smart coat and collar were features that he knew!
The form edged its way, bearing before it with exquisite skill an exquisite top hat, inverted. It was making for the front row of chairs, where one or two places still remained reserved and unused, and, as that form advanced, subliminal fear—the Oldest of the Gods—towered up over Professor Higginson's soul. It was Jimmy!
The young man had made his way to the front row of chairs; he had sat down; he had carefully deposited his hat beneath it. The mass of those who govern us were beginning to turn their faces, some in annoyance, some in amusement, towards him—the two duchesses, the four actresses, the eight courtesans had already lifted to their eyes long-handled spectacles of scorn, when the dreadful little silence was broken by the Professor mumbling once more mechanically with eyes staring before him his opening sentence—
"The hope of a life beyond the grave"
The young man had looked up and had seen the Professor's face! The Professor had seen the sudden recognition in the young man's eyes!
That day he read no more. With a curious unformed cry, such as a hunted animal will give when it is too suddenly roused from its retreat, he snatched his papers up, stumbled down the three steps of the platform, bolted through the curtain and the door—and was off!
He was off, racing through the little ante-room, he was flying down the stone staircase three steps at a time. The Subliminal Self was out on holiday; it was working top-notch, and Lord! how it drove the man!
In the room thus abruptly abandoned by its principal figure there was confusion and not a little of that subdued delight with which the rich always hail some break in the monotony of their lives.
Most of the men were standing up, the less bulky of the ladies had followed their example, perhaps a hundred people were talking at once, when, not thirty seconds after the Professor had performed his singular gymnastic feat, one in that audience had put two and two together, and had been struck by an inspiration from heaven. And the fine frocks, and the good coats and trousers and the top hats, and the lorgnettes and the single eye-glasses got a sharp second shock at seeing Jimmy, who had so lately arrived, leap with the quick and practised gesture of an athlete to the platform, cut across it like a hare, and disappear in his turn through the curtain and the door beyond.
He was after him! … Down the long corridor which ran along the basement of Galton's, to the side door where professionals entered, tore the Professor. He had reached its end, when, glancing over his shoulder, he saw that face he would not see, and as he passed the door-keeper he shouted in an agonised cry, "Stop him!" and plunged into the street.
The door-keeper was the father of a family, a heavy drinker, and a man of peace. But for all he knew there was a shilling in it somewhere, and he stood up—ah, how unwisely!—to meet the charge of that young Cambridge bone and muscle which was thundering down the passage in pursuit.
He spread out his arms awkwardly to enforce his message of delay, and before he knew what had happened he was down on the stone floor, holding desperately to something living that struggled above him, but himself oblivious of his name and place. As he came to, the first thing he was conscious of was some considerable pain in the right arm upon which he lay. The next was a sharp memory of football in early youth, and the next was the sight of an over-well-dressed young man holding a top hat in his clenched hand, and sprinting a hundred yards away up the street.
The delay had been one of only a few seconds, but ten seconds is a hundred yards.
Jimmy saw a little knot of people running ahead. They took a turning and were lost to him; but Jimmy was too eager to suffer a check. Either Brassington was not Brassington, or there were two Brassingtons, or there was no Brassington, or pursy old merchants were Dons, or the world was standing on its head! But anyhow, one man knew the truth, and that one man must be gripped tight, and the truth had out of him—quick—quick!
Painful alternatives followed through Jimmy's mind as he ran—prison, suicide, enlistment—for in such an order of evils does luxury put the British Army. But one obvious purpose stamped itself upon him: the man who knew must be got hold of, privately and securely, and must tell him all—and must tell him soon. He picked up the scent again from a gentleman leaning against an area railing (who sold it for a trifling sum), and hotly followed up his quarry—not two minutes behind.
At top speed, hatless and gowned, clutching his notes, the tall and lanky Don careered, as might a camel career whom some massive lion pursues in the deserts of the East. Not often are the streets of London afforded so great a spectacle as that of a Philosopher, muddily splashed, gowned and hatless, with long loose legs and wild head in air, racing with a mob at his heels.
Those Londoners who happened to be at once at lesiure and unconstrained by convention—news-boys and boot-blacks, loungers, rambling thieves—pelted after him in a small but increasing crowd. Mr Higginson heard their steps, and, what was worse, he saw amongst them a policeman. He dashed down an alley that opened to his left, turned up a court, and ran to ground with a promptitude that was amazing. For in the little court and under a dark arch of it he had seen the swing-door of a low and exceedingly ill-favoured public-house.
Once within the refuge, he sat down gasping. An elderly woman crowned with false hair was watching him severely from behind the bar as he sank, with head thrown back, and leaning upon the wooden partition attempting to recover himself. Outside he heard to his immense relief the thundering feet go past. They had missed his doubling!
Mind speaks to mind in moments of strong emotion without the medium of words. Professor Higginson recognised that unless he drank something he would be thrown to the wolves. He had never been in a public-house in his life. He had no conception of its habits. But the woman's eye was strong upon him, and he had to give an order. He gave it in this form—
"I think I should like—no, I think on the whole I should prefer a glass of, let us say, ale."
"Four Ale?" said the woman severely.
"No, one," said Professor Higginson, whereat she fired suddenly and said—
"None of your lip, young man!" (Professor Higginson was in his fifty-seventh year, and looked it.) "None of your funny business! Who are yer, any way? I 've half a mind" but the thought of profit recalled her.
She had already seized the handle of the pump and drawn him his glass, when the noise of feet returned, less tumultuous, and an exceedingly unpleasing voice was saying that there was no thoroughfare. An official-sounding voice was replying with dignity, and Professor Higginson went to pieces—inwardly altogether, outwardly not a little—when he saw entering through the swing-door a policeman, a policeman who, when he looked the Philosopher up and down with due care, asked him, "What 's this?" and received no coherent reply.
"That 's what I was asking myself," said the woman with the false hair vigorously. "Come in here all of a blow, muttering, with something wicked in his eyes, as you can see. I was ordering of him out when you came in!"
Professor Higginson had exhausted that vein of invention which the Evil One had hitherto so liberally supplied. He sank upon the dirty little beer-stained stool behind him, and jibbered at the avenger of the law.
"I 've lost my memory," he said.
"Lost your what?" said the policeman, half threatening and half in doubt, hesitating in his venal mind between a really good cop and the disastrous results of interfering with a toff; when, before a reply could be given to so simple a query, an authoritative voice and strong step were heard together pushing through the crowd outside, and there came into the mean place the excellently dressed figure and strong young face of Jimmy.
They say that the youngest generals make the best tacticians, though sometimes the worst strategists. Jimmy acted like lightning.
"There you are!" he said genially to Mr. Higginson—and a little shriek automatically cut itself short in the Professor's throat and ended in a gurgle.
"There you are!" he said again, laying a powerful left hand upon Mr. Higginson's shoulder—and it was pitiful to see the Pragmatist shrink as he did so.
Jimmy turned round and gazed in a pained but authoritative way at the policeman, who instinctively touched his helmet, recognising the master-class.
"It 's my father, officer," said Jimmy, gently and sadly.
"It 's my father, officer," said Jimmy.
"I 'm sure," said the policeman, finding a little coin as large as a sixpence, but much more valuable, which had suddenly appeared in his great palm, "I 'm glad you 've come, sir! I was worrying what to do!"
"Oh, you needn't worry!" said Jimmy kindly again; then, with a pained look, he added, "It 's not so serious as it looks!"
He almost broke down, but he struggled manfully, and the policeman followed him with solemn respect.
"It will be all right. It 's over-work."
He turned to Higginson and said with pathetic reverence, "Come, dad," and he exercised upon the Professor's arm so authoritative a grip that instinctively that Philosopher rose.
Conflicting doubts and fears were in that academic mind, and when the doubts and fears in the academic mind run not in one current, then is the academic mind so confused that it is impotent. If he fought or struggled he would be arrested. If he was arrested and in the hands of the law there might come out at any moment … oh, Lord! and if he acquiesced—what then? What would that young fiend do to him? Where would he take him? Between the two he did nothing, but stood helpless there, hating Jimmy, hating the whole organisation of British credit, hating its cheque books and its signatures, hating the majestic fabric of his country's law, hating its millions, hating the wretched mass of poverty that waited tip-toe and expectant outside, and now and then peeped in through the swing-doors.
As Jimmy led the older man out firmly by the arm the little mob would have followed. But the policeman who has touched coin is a different animal from a policeman before feeding time. He savagely struck at the dirty lads and frowsy women who made up the little assembly, and cleared them off in loud tones, aiming a violent kick which just missed the little child who dodged it. The gentlemen must be left in peace. He touched his helmet again to the said gentlemen. He very tactfully sauntered slowly behind as Jimmy hurried his prize rapidly down the alley and into the broad street outside.
A quarter of a mile away, or a little more, the swell crowd would be coming out of Galton's. Five minutes in the open street with a gowned, hatless figure would mean another crowd. Jimmy decided again with admirable rapidity.
"Come into the Rockingham with me," he said, still keeping his arm tightly linked in the Professor's.
"To the where?" said Mr. Higginson, recognising the name. "What do you want with me?" He was not exactly dragging back, but sending signals of resistance through the nervous gestures he made.
"Simply to talk with you; only ten minutes, Mr. Brassington."
"I am not Brassington."
"Yes. I know. At least, I must see you for ten minutes," said Jimmy, rapidly making for the fine great portal of the Rockingham. That great portal meant safety and retreat, and it was not one hundred yards up the broad pavement.
Professor Higginson yielded. They went past the magnificent porter, through the lounge; they were stared at a little, but no more.
Jimmy took his capture to a corner of the smoking-room, sat him down in comfort, and asked him what he drank.
The Professor, with a confused memory of a recent experience, muttered, "A little ale," but when it came he did not drink it, for ale was something which he could not touch. Jimmy, drinking brandy, spoke to him in a low tone, and with enormous earnestness.
"Professor Higginson," he began, "there 's been some bad mistake, some very bad mistake."
"I don't understand what you mean," said Professor Higginson doggedly.
"Good heavens!" said Jimmy, really startled, and looking him full in the face. "You mean to say you don't …"
"I lost my memory," muttered Professor Higginson savagely, looking at the floor, "I should have thought you would have heard about it. I lost it," he said, with rising voice and passion, "after the brutal treatment"
"Oh, then, you remember that!" said Jimmy coolly.
"Dimly," replied the Professor through his set teeth. He was getting to feel ugly. "Very dimly. And after that my memory fails altogether."
"Well," said Jimmy, leaning back at his ease, and drinking his brandy, "I 'll refresh it for you. We gave you your cheque book, Mr. Brassington"
"I tell you my name 's not Brassington," whispered the Professor in a mixture of anger and fear. "If you talk like that at the top of your voice someone 'll hear you!"
"You 're not Mr. Brassington?" said Jimmy, eyeing him steadily. "That 's what you said on the night when you—when you lost your memory."
"Is it?" answered the Philosopher sullenly. "Then I told the truth. Damn it all, man," he said, exploding, "isn't it plain who I am? Didn't you see the people in that room? And don't you" (here a recollection of his own importance swelled him), "don't you know what my position is in the Guelph University?"
"Certainly, Professor Higginson," said Jimmy, in exactly the same tone in which he had said "Mr. Brassington" a minute before. "I quite understand. Unfortunately, during that terrible mental trouble of yours you signed something"
"Then it doesn't count," said Professor Higginson, shaking his head very rapidly from side to side like a dog coming out of a pond, "it doesn't count!" he said again in a still higher tone, "it doesn't count! I won't have it! I don't understand a word you say!" and he sank back with every symptom of exhaustion.
"There 's nothing to get nervous about. Professor Higginson," said Jimmy quietly, as he leant forward to emphasise his words. "Supposing you did sign something, it wouldn't be any harm, would it? As a matter of fact, you signed a cheque"
"Doesn't count!" said Professor Higginson, staring in front of him, and beginning to get a little yellow.
"No, of course it doesn't," said Jimmy soothingly, "but it was Mr. Brassington's cheque."
"I don't believe it!" said Professor Higginson, still yellower, "and it doesn't count, anyhow! I 've taken legal advice, and I know it doesn't count!"
"Oh, you 've taken legal advice—about something you don't remember?" said Jimmy with a curious smile. "However, it 's silly to go on like this. The point is," he added rather earnestly, "that that cheque was made out to me."
"Then, I 've got you!" said the worthy Don triumphantly, though in truth he had but the vaguest idea of how or why, but he wanted to keep his end up in general, and he thought the phrase was useful.
"Yes," said Jimmy, with a glance of quiet affection and control, "and I 've got you; and what 's more, I 've got a witness. Your unfortunate loss of memory prevents your knowing that, Professor Higginson."
The Professor's lips were framing once more the ritual formula, "It doesn't count," when his eyes fixed with a horrid stare upon the short but pleasing figure of Mr. Kirby, which walked into the room, nodded genially at him, then as genially at Jimmy.
The solicitor drew up a chair and sat down before the two men.
"Didn't know you knew each other," he said in his cheerful, rather jerky voice.
"We don't" had almost framed itself on the Professor's lips, when he thought better of it, and to his horror heard Jimmy say that the Professor and he had met on board ship in the Mediterranean some years ago—and how glad he was to come across him again.
"It is a funny thing how small the world is," said Mr. Kirby simply. "You meet a man under one set of circumstances, and you get to know him quite intimately—so that you will remember him all your life—and then you think never to see him again, when he turns up quite unexpectedly, doesn't he? … You know Mr. Brassington?" he added genially, looking at the Professor.
"I—I—I—I know the name," said the wretched man.
"Oh, you must know the man himself," said Mr. Kirby in his heartiest manner. "He 's one of the best men in your town, and he 's got a particular devotion to intellectual things, you know. You know him, I think?" he continued, turning round to the younger man.
"Yes," said Jimmy solemnly, "yes; at least, I don't know that I ever met Mr. Brassington, but I was at college with his son, you know that, Mr. Kirby."
"You don't know him?" said Mr. Kirby, in mild astonishment. "Well, you 'll be glad to meet him, he likes young men; and between you and me, he 's a useful kind of man to know. You know his son? I 'm sure he 's talked of you often enough! I ought to remember that!"
Jimmy winced. There was an interval of silence, during which all three men were occupied apparently with idle thoughts. It was broken by Mr. Kirby saying, as he looked at both his acquaintances in turn—
"Mr. Brassington and his son are in the hotel now. I 'll go and fetch them."