Christmas Telegrams [pp. 18-32]

Chzristimas 7elegramts.
sunshine without suffering from heat,music was in the breeze,- life was an
elysium from every point of view.
And yet my spirits were depressed
continually as with the weight of an impending doom. From morning until
night my companion was before me
rather as an instrument of an unpleasant destiny than as an attraction to be
desired. I felt that I could not love
her. She was vivacious and pleasant
in speech, and with certain charms of
person,- and yet all the same I could
not regard her in any other way than
with constant criticism of her defects.
Sometimes this feeling of repugnance
was carried to such an excess that it
was almost a torture to be held at her
side; and at times I felt even gratitude
to a fellow countryman, Professor Carr,
who about that time chanced to join in
and break up the exclusiveness of our
party.
He was from the West, and was
Professor of Antiquities in a secondrate college. His duties were not onerous, consisting in lecturing twice a week
for three months each year. He never
by any chance lectured on antiquities,
but only on myths and legends, for
which he had a natural passion that had
become almost a craze. Most of the
remaining months he spent in traveling
about Europe in search of more myths
and legends, of which he had already
several hundred written out in great
quarto volumes, to be published in some
indefinite future. It may be thought
that he could not have been of such
value to the college as to be long retained; but as he required no salary,
and his name helped fill out the page
of faculty in the catalogue, the corporation was well satisfied, and as the arrangement gave him the title of Professor, which he claimed was of much
service to him in any university city
where he might be visiting, he too had
nothing with which to find fault.
Personally he was a tall, thin man,
with light, almost sandy hair and a not
unpleasing expression of countenance.
With me his most disagreeable trait
consisted in a somewhat patronizing
manner, manifesting itself in a kind of
caressing action,- dropping his hand at
times familiarly upon my shoulder, as
though I were an exceedingly immature
and unformed Telemachus and he a
thrice-seasoned Mentor, enumerating
the while most commonplace utterances
in satisfactory accents, as though
freshly drawn from the utmost depths
of wisdom. This was the more intolerable to me, as in reality there was no
very great difference in our ages. I
had so far lived a careless, easy-going
life, and thereby had managed to retain
a youthful appearance; and he had apparently grown old, With prematurely
gray hair, thin, pinched lips, and a scholastically bent back; but in the church
registers five or six years would be
about all the difference shown between
us.
Once in a while I thought I detected
in him a slight leaning towards Mary
Carnaby, and I ventured to throw out
to her a passing jest about him. It
might in fact be a little relief to find
that such a thing wvas possible. But
she only laughed at the idea.
" Professor Carr?" she said. "Were
he young and beautiful as Adonis, I
could not marry him. I feel that I am
pledged to another."
"Ah? " And I felt myself giving a
sigh of relief. "And would it be too
much for me to ask about the happy
person? You have so far successfully
concealed the fact, and I "
" To whom? How can I tell? I do
not know him yet,- only that he must
some day come. For during the past
fewv days I have felt that I am in the
hands of an uncontrollable fate. Shall
I tell you how? I have been reading
some old Italian annals, and I came
across the story of a Duchess of Padua
who lost a jeweled fan, and it was found
by a Count of Verona, and that very
fact brought them so closely together
I 892.1
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