The Descent of Man Other Stories | Page 4

Quicksand
A Venetian Night's Entertainment

THE DESCENT OF MAN
I

When Professor Linyard came back from his holiday in the Maine
woods the air of rejuvenation he brought with him was due less to the
influences of the climate than to the companionship he had enjoyed on
his travels. To Mrs. Linyard's observant eye he had appeared to set out
alone; but an invisible traveller had in fact accompanied him, and if his
heart beat high it was simply at the pitch of his adventure: for the
Professor had eloped with an idea.
No one who has not tried the experiment can divine its exhilaration.
Professor Linyard would not have changed places with any hero of
romance pledged to a flesh-and-blood abduction. The most fascinating
female is apt to be encumbered with luggage and scruples: to take up a
good deal of room in the present and overlap inconveniently into the
future; whereas an idea can accommodate itself to a single molecule of
the brain or expand to the circumference of the horizon. The Professor's
companion had to the utmost this quality of adaptability. As the express
train whirled him away from the somewhat inelastic circle of Mrs.
Linyard's affections, his idea seemed to be sitting opposite him, and
their eyes met every moment or two in a glance of joyous complicity;
yet when a friend of the family presently joined him and began to talk
about college matters, the idea slipped out of sight in a flash, and the
Professor would have had no difficulty in proving that he was alone.
But if, from the outset, he found his idea the most agreeable of
fellow-travellers, it was only in the aromatic solitude of the woods that
he tasted the full savour of his adventure. There, during the long cool
August days, lying full length on the pine-needles and gazing up into
the sky, he would meet the eyes of his companion bending over him
like a nearer heaven. And what eyes they were!--clear yet unfathomable,

bubbling with inexhaustible laughter, yet drawing their freshness and
sparkle from the central depths of thought! To a man who for twenty
years had faced an eye reflecting the obvious with perfect accuracy,
these escapes into the inscrutable had always been peculiarly inviting;
but hitherto the Professor's mental infidelities had been restricted by an
unbroken and relentless domesticity. Now, for the first time since his
marriage, chance had given him six weeks to himself, and he was
coming home with his lungs full of liberty.
It must not be inferred that the Professor's domestic relations were
defective: they were in fact so complete that it was almost impossible
to get away from them. It is the happy husbands who are really in
bondage; the little rift within the lute is often a passage to freedom.
Marriage had given the Professor exactly what he had sought in it; a
comfortable lining to life. The impossibility of rising to sentimental
crises had made him scrupulously careful not to shirk the practical
obligations of the bond. He took as it were a sociological view of his
case, and modestly regarded himself as a brick in that foundation on
which the state is supposed to rest. Perhaps if Mrs. Linyard had cared
about entomology, or had taken sides in the war over the transmission
of acquired characteristics, he might have had a less impersonal notion
of marriage; but he was unconscious of any deficiency in their relation,
and if consulted would probably have declared that he didn't want any
woman bothering with his beetles. His real life had always lain in the
universe of thought, in that enchanted region which, to those who have
lingered there, comes to have so much more colour and substance than
the painted curtain hanging before it. The Professor's particular veil of
Maia was a narrow strip of homespun woven in a monotonous pattern;
but he had only to lift it to step into an empire.
This unseen universe was thronged with the most seductive shapes: the
Professor moved Sultan-like through a seraglio of ideas. But of all the
lovely apparitions that wove their spells about him, none had ever worn
quite so persuasive an aspect as this latest favourite. For the others were
mostly rather grave companions, serious-minded and elevating enough
to have passed muster in a Ladies' Debating Club; but this new fancy of
the Professor's was simply one embodied laugh. It was, in other words,
the smile of relaxation at the end of a long day's toil: the flash of irony
that the laborious mind projects, irresistibly, over labour

conscientiously performed. The Professor had always been a hard
worker. If he was an indulgent friend to his ideas, he was also a stern
task-master to them. For, in addition to