The Rivet in Grandfathers Neck | Page 9

beautiful boy, Olaf, that
young-eyed cherub, who developed into a musty old man who wrote
musty old books, and lived a musty, dusty life all by himself, and never
married or had any fun at all! How horrid, Olaf!" she cried, with a
queer shrug of distaste.
"I fail," said Colonel Musgrave, "to perceive anything--ah--horrid in a
life devoted to the study of anthropology. His reputation when he died
was international."
"But he never had any fun, you jay-bird! And, oh, Olaf! Olaf! that boy
could have had so much fun! The world held so much for him! Why,
Fortune is only a woman, you know, and what woman could have
refused him anything if he had smiled at her like that when he asked for
it?"
Miss Stapylton gazed up at the portrait for a long time now, her hands
clasped under her chin. Her face was gently reproachful.
"Oh, boy dear, boy dear!" she said, with a forlorn little quaver in her
voice, "how could you be so foolish? Didn't you know there was
something better in the world than grubbing after musty old tribes and
customs and folk-songs? Oh, precious child, how could you?"
Gerald Musgrave smiled back at her, ambiguously; and Rudolph
Musgrave laughed. "I perceive," said he, "you are a follower of
Epicurus. For my part, I must have fetched my ideals from the tub of
the Stoic. I can conceive of no nobler life than one devoted to
furthering the cause of science."
She looked up at him, with a wan smile. "A barren life!" she said: "ah,

yes, his was a wasted life! His books are all out-of-date now, and
nobody reads them, and it is just as if he had never been. A barren life,
Olaf! And that beautiful boy might have had so much fun--Life is queer,
isn't it, Olaf?"
Again he laughed, "The criticism," he suggested, "is not altogether
original. And Science, no less than War, must have her unsung heroes.
You must remember," he continued, more seriously, "that any great
work must have as its foundation the achievements of unknown men. I
fancy that Cheops did not lay every brick in his pyramid with his own
hand; and I dare say Nebuchadnezzar employed a few helpers when he
was laying out his hanging gardens. But time cannot chronicle these
lesser men. Their sole reward must be the knowledge that they have
aided somewhat in the unending work of the world."
Her face had altered into a pink and white penitence which was
flavored with awe.
"I--I forgot," she murmured, contritely; "I--forgot you were--like
him--about your genealogies, you know. Oh, Olaf, I'm very silly! Of
course, it is tremendously fine and--and nice, I dare say, if you like
it,--to devote your life to learning, as you and he have done. I forgot,
Olaf. Still, I am sorry, somehow, for that beautiful boy," she ended,
with a disconsolate glance at the portrait.

VII
Long after Miss Stapylton had left him, the colonel sat alone in his
study, idle now, and musing vaguely. There were no more addenda
concerning the descendants of Captain Thomas Osborne that night.
At last, the colonel rose and threw open a window, and stood looking
into the moonlit garden. The world bathed in a mist of blue and silver.
There was a breeze that brought him sweet, warm odors from the
garden, together with a blurred shrilling of crickets and the
conspiratorial conference of young leaves.

"Of course, it is tremendously fine and--and nice, if you like it," he said,
with a faint chuckle. "I wonder, now, if I do like it?"
He was strangely moved. He seemed, somehow, to survey Rudolph
Musgrave and all his doings with complete and unconcerned aloofness.
The man's life, seen in its true proportions, dwindled into the merest
flicker of a match; he had such a little while to live, this Rudolph
Musgrave! And he spent the serious hours of this brief time writing
notes and charts and pamphlets that perhaps some hundred men in all
the universe might care to read--pamphlets no better and no more
accurate than hundreds of other men were writing at that very moment.
No, the capacity for originative and enduring work was not in him; and
this incessant compilation of dreary footnotes, this incessant
rummaging among the bones of the dead--did it, after all, mean more to
this Rudolph Musgrave than one full, vivid hour of life in that militant
world yonder, where men fought for other and more tangible prizes
than the mention of one's name in a genealogical journal?
He could not have told you. In his heart, he knew that a thorough digest
of the Wills and Orders of the Orphans' Court of any county must
always rank as a useful and creditable