Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich Part 18

"Quite so," answered his father, "quite so. I fully admit the force of that. I am only asking you, is it worth it? Mind you, I am not speaking now as a Christian, but as a businessman. Is it worth it?"

"I thought that perhaps, in view of the fact of our large surplus in other directions-"

"Exactly," said his father, "a heavy surplus. It is precisely on that point that I wished to speak to you this morning. You have at present a large annual surplus, and there is every prospect under Providence-in fact, I think in any case-of it continuing for years to come. If I may speak very frankly I should say that as long as our reverend friend, Dr. McTeague, continues in his charge of St. Osoph's-and I trust that he may be spared for many years to come-you are likely to enjoy the present prosperity of your church. Very good. The question arises, what disposition are we to make of our acc.u.mulating funds?"

"Yes," said the rector, hesitating.

"I am speaking to you now," said his father "not as the secretary of your church, but as president of the Hymnal Supply Company which I represent here. Now please understand, Edward, I don't want in any way to force or control your judgment. I merely wish to show you certain-shall I say certain opportunities that present themselves for the disposal of our funds? The matter can be taken up later, formally, by yourself and the trustees of the church. As a matter of fact, I have already written to myself as secretary in the matter, and I have received what I consider a quite encouraging answer. Let me explain what I propose."

Mr. Furlong senior rose, and opening the door of the office,

"Everett," he said to the ancient clerk, "kindly give me a Bible."

It was given to him.

Mr. Furlong stood with the Bible poised in his hand.

"Now we," he went on, "I mean the Hymnal Supply Corporation, have an idea for bringing out an entirely new Bible."

A look of dismay appeared on the saintly face of the rector.

"A new Bible!" he gasped.

"Precisely!" said his father, "a new Bible! This one-and we find it every day in our business-is all wrong."

"All wrong!" said the rector with horror in his face.

"My dear boy," exclaimed his father, "pray, pray, do not misunderstand me. Don't imagine for a moment that I mean wrong in a religious sense. Such a thought could never, I hope, enter my mind. All that I mean is that this Bible is badly made up."

"Badly made up?" repeated his son, as mystified as ever.

"I see that you do not understand me. What I mean is this. Let me try to make myself quite clear. For the market of today this Bible"-and he poised it again on his hand, as if to test its weight, "is too heavy. The people of today want something lighter, something easier to get hold of. Now if-"

But what Mr. Furlong was about to say was lost forever to the world.

For just at this juncture something occurred calculated to divert not only Mr. Furlong's sentence, but the fortunes and the surplus of St. Asaph's itself. At the very moment when Mr. Furlong was speaking a newspaper delivery man in the street outside handed to the sanctified boy the office copy of the noonday paper. And the boy had no sooner looked at its headlines than he said, "How dreadful!" Being sanctified, he had no stronger form of speech than that. But he handed the paper forthwith to one of the stenographers with hair like the daffodils of Sheba, and when she looked at it she exclaimed, "How awful!" And she knocked at once at the door of the ancient clerk and gave the paper to him; and when he looked at it and saw the headline the ancient clerk murmured, "Ah!" in the gentle tone in which very old people greet the news of catastrophe or sudden death.

But in his turn he opened Mr. Furlong's door and put down the paper, laying his finger on the column for a moment without a word.

Mr. Furlong stopped short in his sentence. "Dear me!" he said as his eyes caught the item of news. "How very dreadful!"

"What is it?" said the rector.

"Dr. McTeague," answered his father. "He has been stricken with paralysis!"

"How shocking!" said the rector, aghast. "But when? I saw him only this morning."

"It has just happened," said his father, following down the column of the newspaper as he spoke, "this morning, at the university, in his cla.s.sroom, at a lecture. Dear me, how dreadful! I must go and see the president at once."

Mr. Furlong was about to reach for his hat and stick when at that moment the aged clerk knocked at the door.

"Dr. Boomer," he announced in a tone of solemnity suited to the occasion.

Dr. Boomer entered, shook hands in silence and sat down.

"You have heard our sad news, I suppose?" he said. He used the word "our" as between the university president and his honorary treasurer.

"How did it happen?" asked Mr. Furlong.

"Most distressing," said the president. "Dr. McTeague, it seems, had just entered his ten o'clock cla.s.s (the hour was about ten-twenty) and was about to open his lecture, when one of his students rose in his seat and asked a question. It is a practice," continued Dr. Boomer, "which, I need hardly say, we do not encourage; the young man, I believe, was a newcomer in the philosophy cla.s.s. At any rate, he asked Dr. McTeague, quite suddenly it appears; how he could reconcile his theory of transcendental immaterialism with a scheme of rigid moral determinism. Dr. McTeague stared for a moment, his mouth, so the cla.s.s a.s.sert, painfully open. The student repeated the question, and poor McTeague fell forward over his desk, paralysed."

"Is he dead?" gasped Mr. Furlong.

"No," said the president. "But we expect his death at any moment. Dr. Slyder, I may say, is with him now and is doing all he can."

"In any case, I suppose, he could hardly recover enough to continue his college duties," said the young rector.

"Out of the question," said the president. "I should not like to state that of itself mere paralysis need incapacitate a professor. Dr. Thrum, our professor of the theory of music, is, as you know, paralysed in his ears, and Mr. Slant, our professor of optics, is paralysed in his right eye. But this is a case of paralysis of the brain. I fear it is incompatible with professorial work."

"Then, I suppose," said Mr. Furlong senior, "we shall have to think of the question of a successor."

They had both been thinking of it for at least three minutes. "We must," said the president. "For the moment I feel too stunned by the sad news to act. I have merely telegraphed to two or three leading colleges for a loc.u.m tenens and sent out a few advertis.e.m.e.nts announcing the chair as vacant. But it will be difficult to replace McTeague. He was a man," added Dr. Boomer, rehearsing in advance, unconsciously, no doubt, his forthcoming oration over Dr. McTeague's death, "of a singular grasp, a breadth of culture, and he was able, as few men are, to instil what I might call a spirit of religion into his teaching. His lectures, indeed, were suffused with moral instruction, and exercised over his students an influence second only to that of the pulpit itself."

He paused.

"Ah yes, the pulpit," said Mr. Furlong, "there indeed you will miss him."

"That," said Dr. Boomer very reverently, "is our real loss, deep, irreparable. I suppose, indeed I am certain, we shall never again see such a man in the pulpit of St. Osoph's. Which reminds me," he added more briskly, "I must ask the newspaper people to let it be known that there will be service as usual the day after tomorrow, and that Dr. McTeague's death will, of course, make no difference-that is to say-I must see the newspaper people at once."

That afternoon all the newspaper editors in the City were busy getting their obituary notices ready for the demise of Dr. McTeague.

"The death of Dr. McTeague," wrote the editor of the Commercial and Financial Undertone, a paper which had almost openly advocated the minister's dismissal for five years back, "comes upon us as an irreparable loss. His place will be difficult, nay, impossible, to fill. Whether as a philosopher or a divine he cannot be replaced."

"We have no hesitation in saying," so wrote the editor of the Plutorian Times, a three-cent morning paper, which was able to take a broad or three-cent point of view of men and things, "that the loss of Dr. McTeague will be just as much felt in Europe as in America. To Germany the news that the hand that penned 'McTeague's Shorter Exposition of the Kantian Hypothesis' has ceased to write will come with the shock of poignant anguish; while to France-"

The editor left the article unfinished at that point. After all, he was a ready writer, and he reflected that there would be time enough before actually going to press to consider from what particular angle the blow of McTeague's death would strike down the people of France.

So ran in speech and in writing, during two or three days, the requiem of Dr. McTeague.

Altogether there were more kind things said of him in the three days during which he was taken for dead, than in thirty years of his life-which seemed a pity.

And after it all, at the close of the third day, Dr. McTeague feebly opened his eyes.

But when he opened them the world had already pa.s.sed on, and left him behind.