IV
Where the ambition of this infatuated
woman had led her appalled us all. The personal sacrifice she had
made in the name of science awed us.
Still when I remembered that detaining arm sleepily lifted from the nuptual
hammock, I was not so certain concerning her continued martyrdom.
I cast an involuntary glance of critical appraisal upon James Skaw.
He had the golden hair and beard of the early Christian martyr. His
features were classically regular; he stood six feet six; he was lean because
fit, sound as a hound’s tooth, and really a superb specimen of masculine
health.
Curry him and trim him and clothe him in evening dress and his physical
appearance would make a sensation at the Court of St. James.
Only his English required manicuring.
The longer I looked at him the better I comprehended that detaining hand
from the hammock. Fabas indulcet fames.
Then, with a shock, it rushed over me that there evidently had been some
ground for this man’s letters to me concerning a herd of frozen mammoths.
Professor Bottomly had not only married him to obtain the information but
here she was still camping on the marsh!
“James Skaw,” I said, tremulously, “where are those mammoths?”
He looked at me, then made a vague gesture:
“Under the mud—everywhere—all around us.”
“Has she seen them?”
“Yes, I showed her about a hundred. There’s one under you.
Look! you can see him through the slush.”
“Ach Gott!” burst from Dr. Fooss, and he tottered in his saddle.
Lezard, frightfully pale, passed a shaking hand over his brow. As
for me my hair became dank with misery, for there directly under my feet,
the vast hairy bulk of a mammoth lay dimly visible through the muddy ice.
What I had done to myself when I was planning to do Professor Bottomly
suddenly burst upon me in all its hideous proportions. Fame, the
plaudits of the world, the highest scientific honours—all these in my effort
to annihilate her, I had deliberately thrust upon this woman to my own
everlasting detriment and disgrace.
A sort of howl escaped from Dr. Fooss, who had dismounted and who
had been scratching in the slush with his feet like a hen. For already
this slight gallinaceous effort of his had laid bare a hairy section of
frozen mammoth. Lezard, weeping bitterly, squatted beside him clawing
at the thin skin of ice with a pick-axe.
It seemed more than I could bear and I flung myself from my mule and seizing
a spade, fell violently to work, the tears of rage and mortification coursing
down my cheeks.
“Hurrah!” cried Dr. Delmour, excitedly, scrambling down from her
mule and lifting a box of dynamite from her saddle-bags.
Transfigured with enthusiasm she seized a crowbar, traced in the slush
the huge outlines of the buried beast, then, measuring with practiced eye
the irregular zone of cleavage, she marked out a vast oval, dug holes along
it with her bar, dropped into each hole a stick of dynamite, got out the
batteries and wires, attached the fuses, covered each charge, and retired
on a run toward the moraine, unreeling wire as she sped upward among the
bowlders.
Half frantic with grief and half mad with the excitement of the moment
we still had sense enough to shoulder our tools and drive our mules back
across the moraine.
Only the mule-hammock in which reposed Professor Bottomly remained on the
marsh. For one horrid instant temptation assailed me to press the
button before James Skaw could lead the hammock-mules up to the moraine.
It was my closest approach to crime.
With a shudder I viewed the approach of the mules. James Skaw led
them by the head; the hammock on its bar and swivels swung gently between
them; Professor Bottomly slept, lulled, no doubt, to deeper slumber by
the gently swaying hammock.
When the hammock came up, one by one we gazed upon its unconscious occupant.
And, even amid dark and revengeful thoughts, amid a mental chaos of grief
and fury and frantic self-reproach, I had to admit to myself that Jane
Bottomly was a fine figure of a woman, and good-looking, too, and that
her hair was all her own and almost magnificent at that.
With a modiste to advise her, a maid to dress her, I myself might have—but
let that pass. Only as I gazed upon her fresh complexion and the
softly parted red lips of Professor Bottomly, and as I noted the beautiful
white throat and prettily shaped hands, a newer, bitterer, and more overwhelming
despair seized me; and I realized now that perhaps I had thrown away more
than fame, honours, applause; I had perhaps thrown away love!
At that moment Professor Bottomly awoke. For a moment her lilac-tinted
eyes had a dazed expression, then they widened, and she lay very quietly
looking from one to another of us, cradled in the golden glory of her hair,
perfectly mistress of herself, and her mind as clear as a bell.
“Well,” she said, “so you have arrived at last.” And to Dr. Delmour
she smilingly extended a cool, fresh hand.
“Have you met my husband?” she inquired.
We admitted that we had.
“James!” she called.
At the sound of her voice James Skaw hopped nimbly to do her bidding.
A tender smile came into her face as she gazed upon her husband.
She made no explanation concerning him, no apology for him. And,
watching her, it slowly filtered into my mind that she liked him.
With one hand in her husband’s and one on Dr. Delmour’s arm she listened
to Daisy’s account of what we were about to do to the imbedded mammoth,
and nodded approval.
James Skaw turned the mules so that she might watch the explosion.
She twisted up her hair, then sat up in her hammock; Daisy Delmour pressed
the electric button; there came a deep jarring sound, a vast upheaval,
and up out of the mud rose five or six dozen mammoths and toppled gently
over upon the surface of the ice.
Miserable as we were at such an astonishing spectacle we raised a tragic
cheer as Professor Bottomly sprang out of her hammock and, telling Dr.
Delmour to get a camera, seized her husband and sped down to where one
of the great, hairy frozen beasts lay on the ice in full sunshine.
And then we tasted the last drop of gall which our over-slopping cup of
bitterness held for us; Professor Bottomly climbed up the sides of the
frozen mammoth, dragging her husband with her, and stood there waving a
little American flag while Dr. Delmour used up every film in the
camera to record the scientific triumph of the ages.
Almost idiotic with the shock of my great grief I reeled and tottered away
among the bowlders. Fooss came to find me; and when he found me he
kicked me violently for some time. “Esel dumkopf!” he said.
When he was tired Lezard came and fell upon me, showering me with kicks
and anathema.
When he went away I beat my head with my fists for a while. Every
little helped.
After a time I smelled cooking, and presently Dr. Delmour came to
where I sat huddled up miserably in the sun behind the bowlder.
“Luncheon is ready,” she said.
I groaned.
“Don’t you feel well?”
I said that I did not.
She lingered apparently with the idea of cheering me up. “It’s been
such fun,” she said. “Professor Lezard and I have already located
over a hundred and fifty mammoths within a short distance of here, and
apparently there are hundreds, if not thousands, more in the vicinity.
The ivory alone is worth over a million dollars. Isn’t it wonderful!”
She laughed excitedly and danced away to join the others. Then, out
of the black depth of my misery a feeble gleam illuminated the Stygian
obscurity. There was one way left to stay my approaching downfall—only
one. Professor Bottomly meant to get rid of me, “for the good of
the Bronx,” but there remained a way to ward off impending disaster.
And though I had lost the opportunity of my life by disbelieving the simple
honesty of James Skaw,—and though the honors and emoluments and applause
which ought to have been mine were destined for this determined woman,
still, if I kept my head, I should be able to hold my job at the Bronx.
Dr. Delmour was immovable in the good graces of Professor Bottomly;
and the only way for me to retain my position was to marry her.
The thought comforted me. After a while I felt well enough to arise
and partake of some luncheon.
They were all seated around the campfire when I approached. I was
welcomed politely, inquiries concerning my health were offered; but the
coldly malevolent glare of Dr. Fooss and the calm contempt in Lezard’s
gaze chilled me; and I squatted down by Daisy Delmour and accepted a dish
of soup from her in mortified silence.
Professor Bottomly and James Skaw were feasting connubially side by side,
and she was selecting titbits for him which he dutifully swallowed, his
large mild eyes gazing at vacancy in a gentle, surprised sort of way as
he gulped down what she offered him.
Neither of them paid any attention to anybody else.
Fooss gobbled his lunch in a sort of raging silence; Lezard, on the other
side of Dr. Delmour, conversed with her continually in undertones.
After a while his persistent murmuring began to make me uneasy, even suspicious,
and I glared at him sideways.
Daisy Delmour, catching my eye, blushed, hesitated, then leaning over toward
me with delightful confusion she whispered:
“I know that you will he glad to hear that I have just promised to marry
your closest friend, Professor Lezard—”
“What!” I shouted with all my might, “have you put one over on me, too?”
Lezard and Fooss seized me, for I had risen and was jumping up and down
and splashing them with soup.
“Everybody has put one over on me!” I shrieked. “Everybody! Now I’m
going to put one over on myself !”
And I lifted my plate of soup and reversed it on my head.
They told me later that I screamed for half an hour before I swooned.
Afterward, my intellect being impaired, instead of being dismissed from
my department, I was promoted to the position which I now hold as President
Emeritus of the Consolidated Art Museums and Zoölogical Gardens of
the City of New York.
I have easy hours, little to do, and twenty ornamental stenographers and
typewriters engaged upon my memoirs which I dictate when I feel like it,
steeped in the aroma of the most inexpensive cigar I can buy at the Rolling
Stone Inn.
There is one typist in particular—but let that pass.
Vir sapit qui pauca loquitor.
FINIS
