ROBERT S. HICHENS
HOW LOVE CAME TO PROFESSOR GUILDEA
1
Dull people often wondered how it came about that Father Murchison and Professor Frederic Guildea were intimate friends. The one was all faith, the other all scepticism. The nature of the Father was based on love. He viewed the world with an almost childlike tenderness above his long, black cassock; and his mild, yet perfectly fearless, blue eyes seemed always to be watching the goodness that exists in humanity, and rejoicing at what they saw. The Professor, on the other hand, had a hard face like a hatchet, tipped with an aggressive black goatee beard. His eyes were quick, piercing and irreverent. The lines about his small, thin-lipped mouth were almost cruel. His voice was harsh and dry, sometimes, when he grew energetic, almost soprano. It fired off words with a sharp and clipping utterance. His habitual manner was one of distrust and investigation. It was impossible to suppose that, in his busy life, he found any time for love, either of humanity in general or of an individual.
Yet his days were spent in scientific investigations which conferred immense benefits upon the world.
Both men were celibates. Father Murchison was a member of an Anglican order which forbade him to marry. Professor Guildea had a poor opinion of most things, but especially of women. He had formerly held a post as lecturer at Birmingham. But when his fame as a discoverer grew, he removed to London. There, at a lecture he gave in the East End, he first met Father Murchison. They spoke a few words. Perhaps the bright intelligence of the priest appealed to the man of science, who was inclined, as a rule, to regard the clergy with some contempt. Perhaps the transparent sincerity of this devotee, full of common sense, attracted him. As he was leaving the hall he abruptly asked the Father to call on him at his house in Hyde Park Place. And the Father, who seldom went into the West End, except to preach, accepted the invitation.
"When will you come?" said Guildea.
He was folding up the blue paper on which his notes were written in a tiny, clear hand. The leaves rustled drily in accompaniment to his sharp, dry voice.
"On Sunday week I am preaching in the evening at St. Saviour's, not far off," said the Father.
"I don't go to church."
"No," said the Father, without any accent of surprise or condemnation.
"Come to supper afterwards?"
"Thank you, I will."
"What time will you come?"
The Father smiled.
"As soon as I have finished my sermon. The service is at six-thirty."
"About eight then, I suppose. Don't make the sermon too long. My number in Hyde Park Place is 100. Good-night to you."
He snapped an elastic band round his papers and strode off without shaking hands.
On the appointed Sunday, Father Murchison preached to a densely crowded congregation at St. Saviour's. The subject of his sermon was sympathy, and the comparative uselessness of man in the world unless he can learn to love his neighbour as himself. The sermon was rather long, and when the preacher, in his flowing, black cloak, and his hard, round hat, with a straight brim over which hung the ends of a black cord, made his way towards the Professor's house, the hands of the illuminated clock disc at the Marble Arch pointed to twenty minutes past eight.
The Father hurried on, pushing his way through the crowd of standing soldiers, chattering women and giggling street boys in their Sunday best. It was a warm April night, and, when he reached number 100, Hyde Park Place, he found the Professor bareheaded on his doorstep, gazing out towards the Park railings, and enjoying the soft, moist air, in front of his lighted passage.
"Ha, a long sermon!" he exclaimed. "Come in."
"I fear it was," said the Father, obeying the invitation. "I am that dangerous thing - an extempore preacher."
"More attractive to speak without notes, if you can do it. Hang your hat and coat - oh, cloak - here. We'll have supper at once. This is the dining room."
He opened a door on the right and they entered a long, narrow room, with a gold paper and a black ceiling, from which hung an electric lamp with a gold-coloured shade. In the room stood a small oval table with covers laid for two. The Professor rang the bell. Then he said:
"People seem to talk better at an oval table than at a square one."
"Really. Is that so?"
"Well, I've had precisely the same party twice, once at a square table, once at an oval table. The first dinner was a dull failure, the second a brilliant success. Sit down, won't you?"
"How d'you account for the difference?" said the Father, sitting down, and pulling the tail of his cassock well under him.
"H'm. I know how you'd account for it."
"Indeed. How then?"
"At an oval table, since there are no corners, the chain of human sympathy - the electric current, is much more complete. Eh! Let me give you some soup."
"Thank you."
The Father took it, and, as he did so, turned his beaming blue eyes on his host. Then he smiled.
"What!" he said, in his pleasant, light tenor voice. "You do go to church sometimes, then?"
"To-night is the first time for ages. And, mind you, I was tremendously bored."
The Father still smiled, and his blue eyes gently twinkled.
"Dear, dear!" he said, "what a pity!"
"But not by the sermon," Guildea added. "I don't pay a compliment. I state a fact. The sermon didn't bore me. If it had, I should have said so, or said nothing."
"And which would you have done?"
The Professor smiled almost genially.
"Don't know," he said. "What wine d'you drink?"
"None, thank you. I'm a teetotaller. In my profession and milieu it is necessary to be one. Yes, I will have some soda water. I think you would have done the first."
"Very likely, and very wrongly. You wouldn't have minded much."
"I don't think I should."
They were intimate already. The Father felt most pleasantly at home under the black ceiling. He drank some soda water and seemed to enjoy it more than the Professor enjoyed his claret.
"You smile at the theory of the chain of human sympathy, I see," said the Father. "Then what is your explanation of the failure of your square party with corners, the success of your oval party without them?"
"Probably on the first occasion the wit of the assembly had a chill on his liver, while on the second he was in perfect health. Yet, you see, I stick to the oval table."
"And that means -"
"Very little. By the way, your omission of any allusion to the notorious part liver plays in love was a serious one to-night."
"Your omission of any desire for close human sympathy in your life is a more serious one."
"How can you be sure I have no such desire?"
"I divine it. Your look, your manner, tell me it is so. You were disagreeing with my sermon all the time I was preaching. Weren't you?"
"Part of the time."
The servant changed the plates. He was a middle-aged, blond, thin man, with a stony white face, pale, prominent eyes, and an accomplished manner of service. When he had left the room the Professor continued.
"Your remarks interested me, but I thought them exaggerated."
"For instance?"
"Let me play the egoist for a moment. I spend most of my time in hard work, very hard work. The results of this work, you will allow, benefit humanity."
"Enormously," assented the Father, thinking of more than one of Guildea's discoveries.
"And the benefit conferred by this work, undertaken merely for its own sake, is just as great as if it were undertaken because I loved my fellow man, and sentimentally desired to see him more comfortable than he is at present. I'm as useful precisely in my present condition of - in my present non-affectional condition - as I should be if I were as full of gush as the sentimentalists who want to get murderers out of prison, or to put a premium on tyranny - like Tolstoi - by preventing the punishment of tyrants."
