SHORT STORIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3509, 14 June 1921, Page 57

SHORT STORIES.

[CoPTUiuiir.J Tfin PkOFLS OR AND “ BLOSSOM.*' By James Bvckham. I do not be.ieve there v.ucj a student :n tiie cjiuniical laboratory who ctul not Rave a ieeiiiig of positive altectkm for Froleesor i teiocuui. Even those who thought him soine.t hat fussy and old-tiiakiish and overparticular about trivial matters, spoke of ilis Uuiltts—if they ever d:<i speak of them -Aitii a sort of iovnig to.era nee, as if tfic\ could Jiardiv aflord to spare them ait-er all, at tlie expense ol making I’rolessor Slocum less the dear, odd character that lie was. His pecuiia 1 iiic. were a part, and an intrinsic part, ot hum elf, as we all felt; and l am sure we should have missed something in our friend and teacher, if he, had succeeded in getting rid of them. Professor Slocum’s hair had been black, but wati now iron-grey, at forty-five. His frame was thin, and appeared fragile, with that kind of fragility that conies from Ummkenness, rather than from constitutional we-akne s. He walked feeblv, like an old man, and gave the -eneral iinpre*ion of having been broken, both in body and spirit. An elderly man, one would have mid, not knowing his years. < t lie had curiously youthful wavs about him, too—-dressed fine!v. almost foppi-hly ; carried a little, flexible, ivoryheaded cane; loved to chatter, to talk lightly and airily with young people : a.npveciated m< • t intensely little courte : es and confident es from lii.s young friends, and was almost pitifully fond of the gayest society : in whose whirl, however, it was not ced that he never fairly plunged, but eddied restlessly about the edges, like a puff of foam drift n.g about a whirlpool. Before I had known him for a week. I marked him for a man who hail suffered, and was trying to itifle the memory of his anguish. How these life-stricken ones .ire changed from the re t of us. like one who steals aside, with ihe poison of virus in his veins, and tries to wash the wound, and then hides it and comes forth with a new madness for life, but cannot <lnt -li it. heeause of the many haunting, eonfu.-.ing shadows that flit between ! Did it ever chance, T wonder, that oddness was not t’lp mark of inward suffering? Ve were all together, boys and girls (young men and voting women, we preferred to say) in the chemical lnborntorv of Stratford College. Stratford bad '‘gone'’ eo-eduention.n! (denoting a woeful leoartuio. in the general opinion of its younger graduates) in 1879. Mv fellow-student at the next table in the laboratory, Miss Knapton, had, iincnneiuusly, been speculating about i’ro-fes-or Slocum's pa t life, and so had 1 ; and it was but natural, when the prufe - or had gone out of the room, leaving us o work out our own perilous devices with the chemicals, that those of us who alnio.-t touched elbows in our researches should go ip a litile. to relieve the mental strain. It was mv opinion, or theory, that Professor Slocum had been disappointed ill love, and that the anguish of it had gone so deep a* to make him the peculiar, in-c-omprt henmble man he wa-. 1 his theory I gradually unfolded to Miss Knapton—she civiim me some encouragement to do so, it may be said. But Miss Knapton was of a contrary opinion. She thought that the professor had ji.led somebody, and thereby done nil injure whose re n ts had filled inm with a lifelong tormenting remorse. It was this remorse, she said* that was dragging him clown and ageing him : this remorse that he trying to fight off. to throttle, to stupefy, by his me’a of holy gaieties and strained touch with life. AVe both guessed that unhappv love wrought the mischief ; but Mbs Knapt n would have it that the mitten came from my sex. while I was equa’lv strenuous to pi*ove that it came from hers. Still, l liked Miss Knapton very well. She was, a ide from a c-erta’n 'itiffness <f opinion, o very sen-able girl, and understood chemist vy better than 1 did. it. was quite (liarr.cteristic of Professor Slocum that, when Lvall s Aggregated Circrue-i made an encampmcpt in our college town, he should have invited half-a-dozen of hi- favourite pupls to accompany him to an evening exhibition. Poor man I I had never seen him gaver than when lie chanc-roncd us clown the Ini! that evening to the great illumined tern. Hi" jokes cracked continuously, and served as a fittimr prologue, we thought, to those of the four painted clowns. Miss Knapton confided to me afterwards that she could not help thinking all the while of those poor, ghflstly-facod lniunn'ers . AVe had a section of ic cried scats all to ourselves, oppo-ite the central ling, and the professor sat in the midst of us, piking and applauding, and invoking the Ganv--odes' who dispensed acarlet lemonade. Indeed at a little di truce, lie must have seemed’ by far the youngest and merriest II ’ldie’ crowning feature of the entertainment that night wa-: the wonderful trapeze performance of Mdllo. Dalz.ic a slender, speetoral. hectic-looking damsel, wlm peifermed breath stopping fe .to < n -wnigina bars and rings, fifto feet alien c o-p heads, and seemed as mu b at home m the air as a flying squirrel. The professor was carried awav bv her performan e. Ilis eyes ghtt -r-------ed and his cheeks at tunes grew a.most as pink as those of the painted lady. The last feat on the programme wa- an rpwaid flight to a trapeze hanging in the dixzv peak of the great tent. To do this, Mdi’.e. Dalzie must swing upon a lower vin,r three times over the heads of the spectators, and then, with the impetus of the last swing, lot go. and pour up to the lofty trapeze. It was enough to electrify evf.ii a herd of cattle, and out human hearts began to beat like trip-hammers at

the first creaking swing of the lithe performer over the seats. The first swing carried mademoiselle to the third teir of .eats on our side. The second carried her hack over our heads. At the third swing, Professor Slocum started up in feveru.i excitement, and lifted his face; and, as she was on the point of coming back o\er us and soaring up to the peak of the tent, the eyes of the hollow-cheeked woman and the eyes of the haggard-raced man met. “Blossom!” gasped the Professor.* How plainly we all heard him! An instant later, with a whistling sound, the airy lady was flying back over the ring and up toward the trapeze, and the Profe sor had leaped clean down over six tiers of seats, on the tinsel like turf below. Then he was off like a deer, looking up as he ran. For the first time during her professional carreer, Mdlle. Dalzie fell short of the trapeze. .She lifted her hands mechanically. but they did not reach it bv ten ipches. It was as if something lay heavy tvithin her. a weight in her breast, so that she could not rise. Then came the inevitable descent, the long, shivering sob of the spectators, the awful listening and looking. Professor Slocum stood in the centre of the ring, holding up his arms ; and when the little lady fell, it was his body that went down beneath hers, that gave forth that short, thick thud, most mortal of any under heaven. When we lifted him, his face had lo t that drawn and haunted and wistful look, but a narrow rill of blood was winding like a scarlet thread from his lips down into his bosom. The doctors said it was the shock that killed him—stopped all the machinery of life at that moment, as when a delicate watch is heavily jarred. Mrlllt. Dalzie's name appeared in the papers, even after that —AI i ss. Knapton and I uced to look for it—but net as a traneze performer. She became a noted hospital nurse ; and her name was among the first of those who did service under the Red Cross at Santiago. The difference of opinion between Miss Knapton and myself has never been quite settled, though we have travelled five years together along the path of matrimony. She till inclines to think that the professor broke oft with Blossom, and that made her go to the had. But I am not sure. Blossom might have gone to the bad, at first, out of contempt for herself. It matters little, any way, since the tragedy was to be. And of one thing we are both sure, my wife and 1 : when the broken threads of life are taken up again, beyond these treacherous looms of time, the professor and Blossom will work out together, beautiful and the pattern their hearts once dreamed over. [The End.]